The Trading Post #3: Chavez Ravining

In a bid to narrow his focus, Alex at Chavez Ravining recently offered some of his extras for sale. I took him up on three of his "mystery packs" for a small PayPal payment. He might even still have a few left as he has been moving the parts of his collection that don't fit anymore.

I debated whether to file this under my "Trading Post" theme as I didn't actually send him cards in return, but I am leaning toward filing anything that is sourced from the blogosphere as a "trade", just because this is a great community and it's easy to hyperlink. Ctrl+K for the win!

These mystery packs consisted of a wide assortment of recent cards, with plenty of shiny stuff and die cuts to keep things interesting. He may have read a recent post of mine in which I covered what might be the craziest die-cut card to ever hit the industry, as I now have another Chrome Collections card, and it's of a Rockie, no less!

2013 Topps Chrome Chrome Connections Die Cuts #CC-CG Carlos Gonzalez

As my longtime readers know, one of my projects is a mini-collection consisting of photos taken in Coors Field. As you might imagine, finding cards like this that aren't Rockies or even NL West teams are quite scarce. Nonetheless, Miami Marlins ace Jose Fernandez appears here delivering a pitch with the forest in the background.

2014 Topps Gypsy Queen Dealing Aces #DA-JF Jose Fernandez

Though this card highlights some impressive feats of Fernandez's 2013 season, his 2014 campaign was sadly cut short due to Tommy John surgery. I hope to see him come back strong next year.

As an aside, the area beyond the center field wall at Coors Field has a lot going on. There's a water feature that's been there since day one, which gets turned on after Rockies home runs and wins. Over the years, they've added many evergreen trees that are native to Colorado, ivy on the batter's eye, solar panels, and boulders sourced from local quarries. The visitors' bullpen is directly attached to this area, so out-of-town pitchers can see how beautiful Colorado is. There is even the occasional family of ducks out there. It's part of what makes it one of the most beautiful ballparks in the whole sport.

As I'm generally a Topps fan, I must admit that I haven't paid much attention to recent Panini releases, nor their resurrection of the Donruss brand. But from what little I've seen, they seem to be paying proper homage to past releases.

2014 Donruss Press Proofs Silver #96 Matt Carpenter /199

The card back is a straight replica of pretty much every Donruss back you remember from the overproduction days, and they even brought back the "Press Proof" parallels from the mid-1990s. I recall pulling one of Matt Williams back then, which is still in my collection.

1995 Donruss Press Proofs #365 Matt Williams

1995 Press Proof parallels have a stated print run of 2,000 (a number that seemed impossibly scarce in 1995), though they weren't serial numbered, much like the early Topps Stadium Club First Day Issues.

I mentioned there were lots of shiny cards in these mystery packs, and this one from 2014 Heritage especially caught my attention.

2014 Topps Heritage Chrome Purple Refractors #THC-432 Jay Bruce

Labeled as a "refractor" on the back, I seem to remember earlier years of Heritage refractor parallels having serial numbers, where the print run matched the year they were reproducing. This one would have been /1965 had that trend continued.

Alex also included a nice assortment of insert cards. From the pyro-themed Fired Up insert set, here's Jason Kipnis getting ready to throw his batting helmet in either disgust or celebration.

2014 Topps Opening Day Fired Up #UP-30 Jason Kipnis

Fun fact: Kipnis was a high-school classmate of my coworker's younger brother.

Poor Yu Darvish. He alone sums up the Rangers' struggles when they're only one out (or strike) from history.

2014 Topps The Future is Now #FN-28 Yu Darvish

This card recalls the unfortunate events of April 2, 2013, where Darvish took a perfect game two outs into the 9th inning, then gave up a hit. He did almost the same thing this past May, losing a perfect game in the 7th, but maintaining a no-hitter until he had only one out to go. I'm sure I don't have to bring up the 2011 World Series to Texas Rangers fans, when they were twice within one strike of winning it all in Game 6, but couldn't seal the deal. David Freese, the deciding factor of that game, was knocked out of this year's playoffs as an Angel.

I recently expressed admiration for 2013's Chasing The Dream insert set that I have been...chasing. This doesn't look quite as good without the White Sox color scheme as seen on Addison Reed's card, but it's still an elegant design and I'm on the hunt for more.

2013 Topps Chasing the Dream #CD-22 Drew Smyly

To wrap things up, I mentioned in a previous post that I was considering building a set of 2013 Topps Emerald. I found quite a deal on eBay last week, and won an auction for over half the base set! The Mystery Packs added to that with another Emerald.

2013 Topps Update Emerald #US176 Matt Lindstrom

Alex may be narrowing his focus, but he hit the sweet spot of my collection.

The Trading Post #2: A Cracked Bat

The trade packages are starting to roll in! My second one came from Julie at A Cracked Bat, who sent over some Rockies in exchange for a shipment of Tigers.

I've been having a lot of fun sending out and receiving trades. I didn't have too many trading partners when I was young other than my next door neighbor. I remember once getting a bunch of hockey cards for free at a mall card show long ago, and traded him most of the Quebec Nordiques shortly after they announced they would move and become the Colorado Avalanche.

Anyway, it's certainly a great way to send some of my extra cards to collectors who might appreciate them more, rather than them just taking up space in a giant duplicates box (hint, hint). Having trading partners and putting together trade packages really lets you look at a batch of cards from someone else's perspective, which can be quite refreshing. Not to mention the obvious benefit of free cards in return!

Julie's been quite active in the community recently, as I noticed she sent a shipment of Blue Jays to Robert at $30 a Week Habit not long ago, and sent Pirates to Matthew at Bob Walk the Plank, whose trade post went up mere minutes ago. As you'll see, the contents of my Rockies shipment mirrored those two pretty closely, and here are some of my favorites, starting with one of the best-ever examples of a team-colored set.

1995 Select #10 Dante Bichette

Just look at all that purple! I'd like to see a Cardinal or Red from this set - the marbled area on the right must look a bit like a steak. Score put out some underrated and well-designed sets under the Select brand in the early- to mid-1990s, other than their 1994 release which had that odd gold bar right down the middle.

1994 Select #174 John Smoltz

Next, a very prominently-placed Pinnacle logo caught my eye as Eric Young rounded the bases and lost his batting helmet.

1994 Pinnacle #133 Eric Young

As his son has been in the Majors for some time, I suppose we ought to start calling him Eric Young, Sr.

Keeping a sharp eye on batting helmets, something about this Charlie Hayes from 1994 Upper Deck looked strange to me.

1994 Upper Deck #167 Charlie Hayes

I don't recall Hayes having a mustache, so I thought they may have swapped in a photo of a different player, but then I noticed the numeral "8" on his batting helmet. Flipping the card over shows him wearing #13, so he must have worn someone else's helmet during that particular at-bat.

However, these weren't all from the first few years of the Rockies' existence. Julie indulged my love of Shiny with a recent example of 2013's NL batting champion.

2014 Topps Chrome #157 Michael Cuddyer

After the Rockies acquired aging Twins stars Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau, one can't help but expect that Joe Mauer will be close behind.

Julie's trade package culminated with one of the best Rockies pitchers ever.

2002 Studio Private Signings #92 Jason Jennings /250

Yes, a signed and serial numbered card of Jason Jennings, who threw a complete game shutout in his debut start in 2001! That feat is even documented on the reverse of this card. Granted, "one of the best Rockies pitchers ever" isn't the highest of accolades, but it will go nicely with another autograph card already in my collection.

1999 Topps Traded Autographs #T70 Jason Jennings

Looks like Jennings changed up his signature a bit once he entered the Majors. I don't have too many certified autographs, but Jason Jennings is one of only two representatives of the Rockies in that stack, the other being Garrett Atkins, which I showed last month. An odd coincidence, and thanks again to Julie for the trade!

The Trading Post #1: Hot Corner Cards

As promised not long ago, it's time for my first-ever trade post! I took advantage of the "Take My Team Sets" offer at Hot Corner Cards, and in exchange for some Tigers, received a shipment primarily containing the Cubs I requested, along with a couple team bags full of Rockies, thanks to Pat's generosity.

Though I am sort of drowning in unfiled cards at the moment, getting a box full of Stuff You Didn't Specifically Pick Out is always interesting. Inevitably, that will result in some duplicates.

1993 Fleer Ultra #352 Darren Holmes

But no matter, as even though I already had that Darren Holmes card, there is always plenty more that I haven't seen before.

2010 Bowman Gold #204 Eric Young, Jr

One interesting aspect of collecting Rockies is that there aren't really any pre-1993 Rockies cards. I've seen a couple of commemorative cards circa-1992 that honor the founding of the franchise, but the bulk of them only started appearing when there was plenty of gold foil to go around. Of course, you won't find any Rockies in legendary vintage sets like 1975 Topps (save for the plethora of retro-themed products like Heritage and Archives), but the flip side of that coin means that there is a conspicuous lack of overproduction-era cards in a stack of Rockies. I guess that's one way to keep 1990 Topps from accumulating like tribbles.

But anyway. I asked for Cubs, and Cubs I did receive.

2014 Bowman #16 Starlin Castro

Starlin Castro looks extremely late on that swing, assuming that whitish blob is actually the baseball and not a Photoshop job or even the rosin bag. Looking at Castro's eyes in this photo, the ball still seems to be far away, not right on his wrists. This doesn't look like a major-league action photo to me, but more like I probably looked the first time I faced the 48-mph pitching machine in little league.

1997 Flair Showcase Row 2 Showpiece #84 Mel Rojas

Here's a nice shiny card from the post-strike 1990s, when all the card companies were trying to out-shiny, out-cursive, and out-fracture the rest. Yes, this is from a fractured set, meaning your brain will hurt if you try to figure out how it's numbered. Beckett lists six varieties of each card number, but they don't take into account the three different possible card backs, nor the one-of-one Masterpiece parallels, so by my count, each card has 27 varieties.

And now my brain hurts.

Incidentally, 1997 Flair Showcase was the set that introduced one-of-one parallels to the hobby, forever giving "supercollectors" a giant headache.

Back to a bit of normalcy, Ernie Banks makes an appearance on this recent mini insert that pays homage to 1989 Topps with a sort-of borderless interpretation.

2014 Topps '89 Topps Die Cut Minis #TM35 Ernie Banks

I like this die-cut design - the extra curves on the corners give it a pleasing appearance but without introducing excessive fragility like other non-rectangular cards.

And last, now-Dodger Darwin Barney with a celebratory action shot on what has to be my favorite parallel set of all time.

2013 Topps Emerald #299 Darwin Barney

I've featured Topps Emerald on this blog already, but there's just something about this green that looks so amazing and eye-catching. This could be a massive and expensive undertaking, but I'm considering chasing the complete parallel set. Perhaps green really is my favorite color. I have quite a few cards from 1994 Finest, which has a similar color scheme. And just take a look at my blog's background, for that matter.

I expect there will be more posts like this to come, as I am finally embracing some real interaction with this blog community. I have a stack of cards picked out for Julie at A Cracked Bat, as well as a few shipments on the way from her and others. After all, these things are called "trading cards", and there are some wonderful people in the blogosphere that help them live up to their name.

Moonshot

Unlicensed sets typically bore me. I know many of my fellow bloggers love the oddball cards, but a photo of George Brett wearing a plain blue hat and a generic white jersey with blue trim is terribly anticlimactic after pages upon pages of action shots.

So what to do when MLB pulls your baseball license, as they did with Upper Deck? You revive an old brand to compete with Allen & Ginter, of course.

Inevitably, this leads to obscure, overpainted photos...
 

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #180 Ozzie Smith SP

...like a very young Ozzie Smith trying to catch a wayward batting helmet...

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #113 Steve Carlton

...Steve Carlton making a call, likely not to the bullpen...

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #9 Nick Faldo

...and British golf legend Nick Faldo with a properly straight left arm.

But the real gems were the ones that appealed to my geeky side. For example, a card of fellow geek Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer.

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #8 Steve Wozniak

Look how excited he is about the idea of mobile computing!

But the best one from this blaster (part of my Dave & Adam's Card World shopping spree) has to be this one of moon-walker Alan Bean.

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #30 Alan Bean

Alan Bean was the Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) of Apollo 12, and the fourth man to walk on the moon. This is a detail from a group shot of the whole crew, and he's standing in front of a mockup of the LEM that he would pilot to land on another world.

When I first composed this post, I couldn't help but wonder if all twelve astronauts that have walked on the moon have been honored on a trading card. Besides this Bean and Buzz Aldrin, which I've shown on this blog before, the only other one that comes to mind is a card from another American Pie set - this one with a photo of Dave Scott, taken during Apollo 15.

A little Googling led me to this post of Fuji's, and it turns out that a whole set of Apollo-era astronauts was produced during the overproduction years. That set is the only one so far to immortalize some of our lesser-known Apollo astronauts like Charlie Duke and Gene Cernan on cardboard. I can assure you that I'd chase a 12-card insert set of those brave pioneers.

Now that China and India are firmly on the list of spacefaring nations, and American private industry is picking up where NASA left off, perhaps we'll start to see a resurgence of interest in the history and future of our space program.

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.

Shiny Object!

​Unsurprisingly, given the universal allure of shiny objects, the first box I finished opening from last week's shopping spree was a blaster of 2013 Topps Chrome, containing 32 cards.

2013 Topps Chrome #96 Yoenis Cespedes

Cadillacs and Buicks of the 1950s led us all to equate chrome with a silver color. I'm glad to see that the borders of 2013 Chrome match that bias, as several previous years used yet another white border. Even in their flagship set, Topps has only given us a non-white border once in the last decade, so I welcome the variety.

Incidentally, I don't believe Topps has ever done a flagship set with full-bleed photos. Upper Deck gave that a whirl 20 years ago, and I'd say it's long overdue. Or at least put a player photo on the back again. It's almost like Upper Deck never existed.

But I digress. Back to the blaster. One of the eight packs was a plain, unmarked silver foil, clearly calling attention to itself as the "bonus pack". Inside were four of these purple refractors.

2013 Topps Chrome Purple Refractors #154 Nick Franklin

Though it would have been ideal to find a Rockie in this pack (or anywhere in the blaster), despite the purple not being quite the Rockies' shade, they're pretty cards and the group of four will stand out in a binder.

Speaking of binders, one of the two insert cards was of the die-cut variety, from the same set that Nick at Dime Boxes wrote about last week, in fact. His post pointed out how challenging it can be to place these into a standard 9-pocket page.

2013 Topps Chrome Chrome Connections Die Cuts #CC-AB Adrian Beltre

I have to agree, though this card certainly is...different. And fragile. Sure, it's on thick Chrome card stock, but that is an awful lot of corners that could get dinged. I bet that using a couple of standard cards as a "sandwich" then removing them once they're in the page would help save that exotic die cut design.

The other insert was significantly less fragile.

2013 Topps Chrome 1972 Chrome #72C-AP Albert Pujols

The psychedelic, disco-era 1972 design it's one of just a handful from the '70s that I can identify at a single glance. All the white borders and horizontal chevrons found during that decade just blend together.

Looking ahead, 2014 Chrome was released quite recently. I'm sure it'll be a while before those start showing up in the clearance section. But at least they're silver.

Man Overboard

I went a little crazy on an online shopping spree at Dave & Adam's Card World recently.

The Haul

What you see there includes unopened 1995 Collector's Choice, a couple early Score factory sets, Topps Traded sets that are surprisingly uncommon in the usual channels, lots of Opening Day, and even some rarities like Goodwin and Topps Chrome.

I hadn't planned on getting this much, but surpassing that free-shipping threshold just became too big a temptation. I haven't even come close to opening everything yet. In fact, I've been rationing, as opening a pack of Opening Day is quite a fun (and calorie-free) alternative to cruising by the fridge again.

I have run across a couple of early highlights, like this card from one of Night Owl's favorite insert sets. It even made his "Awesome Night Cards" showcase.

2011 Topps Opening Day Stadium Lights #UL-2 Troy Tulowitzki

Coors Field Card! Though the details of the stadium are a little tough to discern, the relief surface of the card was a welcome surprise. The texture reminds me of the mid-90s Fleer Ultra Gold Medallion parallels, though these are clearly quite a bit more understated. The numbering leads one to believe that Topps was planning on calling this insert set "Under the Lights" but had a change of heart late in the production process.

Relevant to today's game, when the Rockies unsurprisingly lost to Adam Wainwright, here's the Cardinals' ace in full throwback gear.

2011 Topps Opening Day #151 Adam Wainwright

Sharp eyes might notice an error, not to mention a slightly odd-looking Photoshop job on the jersey lettering, as the star pitcher is listed as an outfielder on the bottom of this card. That's not surprising, as the foil-free treatment of 2011 Opening Day renders the position quite difficult to read.

Finally, longtime collectors might recall a few of Charlie Hayes' 1995 issues, which depict him wearing a football-like faceguard after he was hit in the face by a Salomon Torres pitch mid-season.

1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice SE #207 Charlie Hayes

Given what happened to Giancarlo Stanton and Chase Headley yesterday, we might start seeing more protective masks like this in the not-too-distant future. I wish them both a speedy recovery from those scary hit by pitch plays.

The weather in Colorado has gotten quite wintry in recent days. Sorting through these packs and sets during the upcoming cold months will surely remind me of summer.