Mom Goes to the Card Show

While I was busy digging through the vintage bin, my mom, who accompanied me to this particular card show earlier this year, surreptitiously took a stab at selecting a few singles for me. I know she reads my blog, and by now she surely has a pretty good idea of what would fit in my collection. The surprise stack of cards that were wrapped for my birthday alongside the vintage beauties I picked out really hit the mark. Just see for yourself.

2002 Topps All-World Team #AW-5 Larry Walker

Larry Walker is one of the best to ever wear a Rockies uniform, thanks to his MVP and near-Triple Crown season in 1997, a slew of batting titles, and even a few Gold Gloves. This card, however, highlights that performance not as a Rockie, but as a Canadian. Topps' All-World Team insert set from 2002 contains 25 players from all around the globe. The USA, Canada, Japan, Korea, Venezuela, Panama, and plenty more. Larry Walker holds the career record among Canadians for Home Runs, RBIs, and more, but fellow Canuck Joey Votto is making his mark and keeps getting mentioned as the best player not named Mike Trout.

In case you were wondering, yes, this surprisingly thick card mentions hockey. It also has lots of gold foil all over the front, about what you'd expect for an early-millennium insert card. Topps used an all-caps font on the back that is slightly difficult to read, but the world maps found in the background and in the globe are rather interesting. The globe primarily shows the Indian Ocean, flanked by Africa and the Arabian Peninsula on the left...er, West side of the card, and bits of Australia and Southeast Asia to the East. The background shows quite a bit more, and you can tell they're using the projection that makes Greenland and the Arctic areas of Canada look about as big as Africa.

2014 Topps Museum Collection Momentous Material Jumbo Relics #MMJR-CA Chris Archer /50 (MEM)

Following that, we have the Mercator projection example of a relic card. I promise I won't get further into cartography here, but this this is huge. Frankly, I'd expect nothing less from Topps Museum Collection. This giant swatch steals the show, but hiding off to the right is a serial number, #10 of just 50 printed. This is probably the first relic card I have of a Ray, and it makes sense that it would be Chris Archer. I've been running into him a lot this year.

There's an $8 price tag on the back of this one, but it probably came out of one of the discount relic boxes that most dealers put out on their table. 2 for $5 or something like that.

2002 Fleer Premium On Base! Game Used #11 Todd Helton /100 (MEM)

In fact, it was probably purchased with this Todd Helton relic, the easiest player to find at any Denver-area card show. The serial number is much less noticeable on this one, as it appears on the back in black, blending in with the rest of the printing.

Fleer was putting out some very boring white sets in their later years, but they jazzed up this Fleer Premium card by adding a piece of a base, a first in my collection. The vast majority of my relic collection is made up of uniform swatches, with a handful of wooden bat slivers and the occasional baseball leather. But to have a piece of an actual base is certainly unique, and Fleer even states that this is from an official game at Coors Field. You might think it was smoother, like the back of a golf glove, but it's actually more like the soft rubber grip on a kitchen utensil.

Amazingly, in all that white space, Fleer somehow forgot to add a card number. Beckett says it's number 11 in the 30-card memorabilia set, so we'll go with that. The aforementioned serial number is out of 100 copies, but even the base version of this is limited. In keeping with the "On Base!" theme, the insert cards without relics were given a print run equal to the player's 2001 on-base percentage. At least in the base set, the higher the card number, the higher the print run. Helton is on the upper end of that with 432 base card copies, topping out at 515 with none other than on-base machine Barry Bonds.

2013 Bowman Platinum Prospect Autographs Green Refractors #BPAP-WS Will Swanner /399 (AU)

Maybe my mom has a preference for negative space in the cards she picks out. Bowman Platinum left plenty of space for then-prospect Will Swanner to sign in blue Sharpie without even covering up the /399 serial number. It's not quite as empty as a specific Jeff Francis card in my collection, but the autograph is clearly the star of the show here, even with that green background behind the photo.

As we all know, Bowman is a prospecting set. But for every Stephen Strasburg, you have a flotilla of players that never get the big call-up, even during September when rosters expand. Swanner was billed as a power-hitting catcher, but he topped out at the Double-A level. He hit 17 homers in 2015 for the New Britain Rock Cats, and progressed up to Triple-A Albuquerque in 2016. There, in just ten games, he managed one homer on a .194 batting average, was sent back down the farm system, and was released in June of 2016. That's the last line on his stats page, so it looks like his baseball career is over. The Rockies are pretty well set on catchers these days anyway, having just traded for Jonathan Lucroy, and with young guys like Tom Murphy and Tony Wolters looking promising.

2013 Topps Update Franchise Forerunners #FF-9 Rickey Henderson / Yoenis Cespedes

Mom must know I like green cards. This one makes me wonder why I don't collect more Oakland A's cards, so I'll have to give that some thought. But she picked an insert card from 2013 Topps Update's Franchise Forerunners set, one of the few that year that didn't hit us over the head with the "Chase" theme. All ten cards are combo cards, with this one showing the all-time stolen base leader Rickey Henderson taking a lead, pictured below the now-Met Yoenis Cespedes.

If he's now a Met, you might be thinking that means he's had some injury problems this season. And you'd be correct. Cespedes recently injured his (other) hamstring, the same injury that kept him out for the first couple months of 2017. And as I write this, I'm reading the ticker on MLB Network all about Michael Conforto, who injured his shoulder on a swing (yes, really) late last month. Both Conforto and Cespedes will miss the rest of the Mets season.

2013 Select Skills #SK39 Ozzie Smith

Just because you can't use logos doesn't mean you can't make a card shiny. Select was relaunched for a one-year run in 2013, making us all remember the mid-range set that Pinnacle put out year after year in the 1990s. I don't remember it ever being quite this shiny, but I'll take it. The "Skills" word at the top indicates this is another insert card, which is from a rather huge 45-card set. We get a zoomed-in version of the same photo on the back, along with a well-written paragraph describing Smith's unmistakable flair in the field, and that he "always recorded outs in style."

Even without calling him The Wizard or mentioning his signature backflip, Panini put out a great card of Ozzie Smith.

1994 Flair #36 Frank Thomas

Finally, the only main set card in this stack is also the oldest. Frank Thomas was a cardboard god in 1994, strike or no. And his card from a premium brand like Flair probably could have paid for lunch. The stats on the back are a little hard to read since they're superimposed over another full-bleed photo of Thomas in his pinstripes, but it's clear enough to spot his 41 home runs in 1993, along with an average that was well over .300 for each year thus far in the big leagues. He had a few down years, but his lifetime average just squeaked over the line at .301. Fleer doesn't list it as the batting average but rather the percentage, abbreviated "Pct." We can all assume that's the batting average, as there's nothing like an on-base percentage, slugging percentage, or fielding percentage included, let alone a modern Sabermetrics stat like OPS or BABIP.

Obviously, Thomas's initial is given the royal treatment, framed in a gold banner like medieval heraldry. Hard to miss that. In my early collecting days, I found more 1993 Flair than 1994, but the overall theme is more or less the same. 1994 gave us more gold foil and a bit less soft focus. This might be found in the discount bin today, but it still has a little essence left of the prestige it carried during the tail end of the baseball card boom.

This was an awesome surprise to receive as a gift earlier in the year, and I think any non-collector would be hard-pressed to do a better job at picking seven assorted cards for someone else's collection. Well done, Mom, and thanks.

Adam, you won!

I just got back from quite an enjoyable afternoon at the monthly 5280 card show. You might recall that I did a couple posts earlier this summer documenting a previous trip. The girlfriend is out in Seattle this weekend for the International Food Blogger Conference (We both blog...how cute!), so that left my afternoon open to mingle with fellow collectors and sports nuts.

I've been to quite a few shows, but this may have been one of the best trips ever. So get ready for my longest post thus far.

As usual, I headed for Christian's table first. As we were chatting and catching up, he suddenly exclaimed "Oh, Adam. You won last month's drawing!" and proceeded to hand me a sleeve of three autographed cards.

2007 Topps Moments & Milestones Milestone Autographs #MA-GA Garrett Atkins (AU)

This autograph is a little faded, and this is the first card I've seen from the gargantuan Moments and Milestones set that didn't have a serial number, but it's a Rockie and was free! To give a bit of background, every $30 you spend with a dealer gets you a raffle ticket. The other two were of a basketball player and a Denver Bronco. I promptly flipped these to another dealer at the show, which covered 20% of a stack of singles I picked out.

Christian is getting a pretty good idea of what I collect, as he had a showcase of late-80s mini-sets in their original packaging; mostly Donruss Rookies, Topps Traded, Fleer Update, things of that nature. Common, sure, but inexpensive, small, and mint! I hardly had any of these as a kid, as they just didn't seem to show up in my LCS or the Wal-Mart card aisle at the time.

1987 Donruss Rookies #5 Ellis Burks (XRC)

More interestingly, he had a 400-count box with a near-complete set of 1953 Topps Archives, which I believe is only the second reprint set in Topps history. I remember one of these was the front card in a "collector's kit" at Wal-Mart when I was a kid, and was impressed enough at the time to follow through with a purchase of that repack which came with one of those 80-card mini binders.

1991 Topps Archives 1953 #37 Eddie Mathews

While perusing Christian's table, he introduced me to another one of his regulars, a Cubs fan named Paul, who carried a black binder full of autographed cards. Most of that binder contained Rockies and Cubs, but every last one of those cards he got autographed in person, with a story to tell for each one. This Bill Mueller was at the Cubs Convention last year, that Addison Reed was after such-and-such Spring Training game, etc.... It certainly sounded like spring training is the place to be if you're after autographs.

There was plenty more to see at the show, and this time I ventured to a few other tables besides my regular spots. I picked up a 1990 Upper Deck factory set and a 1993 Rangers Stadium Club team set from a gentleman named Tom for $13. And at another table, a real highlight. These are now the oldest cards in my collection by four years, and they're 1955 Bowmans!

1955 Bowman #201 Allie Reynolds

I can't wait to show this to my dad. He collected these as a child, and as a Yankees fan, it's entirely possible he had Yankee righty Allie Reynolds in his own collection. The other three were Don Newcombe, Preacher Roe, and Carl Furillo. Not quite Hall-of-Famers, but well-known stars from an iconic set at $5 each.

Next, Adam had a table full of ten-cent cards, and I parked myself in front of one of the baseball boxes, right next to a fellow collector named Vince who I've seen for each of the past few months. Adam keeps his cards pretty well divided by sport, which is fortunate since Vince only collects football, and I only baseball. That allows us to sit and chat while digging for gems without having to be on top of each other the whole time. Of course, there are always a handful of stowaways from other sports in a baseball box, and vice-versa, so Vince and I separate those out and make sure that the other has a chance to see them before they go into the correct box. It's quite a sight, really.

Anyway, I had picked out a pretty large stack of cards, and even at the "disregard the price tag" prices that Adam offers, I was really getting up there. I thought it might be worth asking for a price on the entire 5000-count box, and after a little haggling, I walked away with the whole thing for $80.

2007 Topps Own The Game #OTG15 Justin Morneau

Given that this box seemed to have everything from shiny inserts like the above to foil-laden commons from the '90s below, I figured that it would save time (and potentially help out the collections of my dear readers) to just get the whole thing. Adam was happy to let me mix-and-match from a couple other boxes, since I really didn't have much interest in the giant stacks of Bowman. That brand has lost quite a bit of its allure for me since the 1955 set.

1993 Marlins Team Stadium Club #13 Jeff Conine

Coincidentally, while I was at Adam's table, I saw a tweet pop up in my feed from Nick at Dime Boxes, who confirmed that a shipment I sent arrived to him today. It's the first shipment I've sent his way since I won his contest back in January, and I can't wait to see what he chooses to highlight from that "UD-dominated" box.

And to top it all off, when I got home and checked the mail, there was another box of cards waiting for me from Pat at Hot Corner Cards. Night Owl recently referred to a team set giveaway that Pat was doing, so I promptly clicked over and picked the Cubs in exchange for a shipment of Tigers. Pat even threw in a few Rockies for me! More importantly, the contents of that box gives me the material for my first-ever trade post, coming soon! Yes, I did two posts from the spoils of Nick's giveaway, but that wasn't really a trade post. All I did was put my name into a virtual hat, and now Infield Fly Rule exists.

This hobby is really fun. And now that the craze of twenty years ago died down long ago, the few that are left in it are the ones who really want to be here.

1992 Topps Gold Winners #61 Paul O'Neill

Just like this Topps Gold card, I feel like a winner.