5280 Monthly Card Show: Adam's Table

It's the day after the All-Star Game, which observant fans will note as the only day during the regular season with absolutely no major league activity.

In order to avoid a complete lack of baseball today, I thought it would be good to do a follow-up post to look at what I bought from Adam's table at last month's card show.

2007 Topps Opening Day Gold #167 Ubaldo Jimenez /2007

Adam used to own a card store in the local shopping mall, which closed last year after the management company didn't renew his lease. He's been trying to open a stand-alone store for some time now, but has been bogged down by lots of red tape. That's a shame, as he is one of my favorite dealers in the Denver area. He'll always cut a deal on recent singles from a wide variety of brands (though there is an awful lot of Bowman to get past), and he is a great source for unopened boxes from the overproduction era. Remember those sealed 1993 Topps Stadium Club packs I sent to Nick at Dime Boxes? Adam's store.

But it's not all just base singles and old wax. That Jimenez parallel at the top of this post was from his special Rockies box, and set me back a dollar or two. But even the ten cent boxes contained some real gems.

2013 Finest Green Refractors #60 Yu Darvish /199

Such as the stack of 2013 Finest. In addition to thirty or so base cards, there were a few of these Green parallels numbered to 199. In addition to this Darvish, I also found Mike Olt and Edwin Encarnacion. I'm sure a Mariner or Athletic would look great with this color scheme.

2011 Topps Diamond Stars #DS13 Jason Heyward

I've probably mentioned this before, but I don't generally buy Topps base cards until the factory set is released each year. In fact, I swung by Target on lunch today specifically for that purpose. Thus, I don't end up with a whole bunch of duplicates, but that also means I miss out on these great inserts until they migrate to the discount bins after a couple years. Topps' diamond anniversary was in full effect in 2011, leading to this excessively sparkly card that works quite well with a Braves uniform.

2014 Topps Museum Collection #80 Hank Aaron

I've heard of this set before, but certainly never expected to find it in a discount box. Topps Museum Collection is one of the most obnoxiously expensive products available, as you'll be set back well over $200 for just twenty cards. Yes, that box does promise several autograph/relic "hits", but for a month's worth of groceries? I'll pass, and will happily give up my shiniest Roosevelt dime to look like a high roller.

2013 Topps Chasing the Dream #CD17 Addison Reed

If Apple designed a baseball card, it would look something like this. It has a pretty simple design, but somehow it just works perfectly. The colors all match, the dots framing the picture remind me of the previous Mac Pro model, and the player's name complements the dot theme as though it were cut from aluminum. The most distracting element is the Topps logo itself, in the upper left. Quite an aesthetically pleasing card, and I'd like to find more from this insert set.

And finally, a non-baseball baseball card, of course from that wacky crew at Allen & Ginter.

        2012 Topps Allen and Ginter World's Tallest Buildings #WTB5 1 World Trade Center

Commonly known as the "Freedom Tower," this building near the site of the former World Trade Center twin towers was featured on a recent PBS miniseries called "Super Skyscrapers." I've always enjoyed engineering-focused TV documentaries, and I'm as fascinated by tall buildings as much as people were a century ago.

My one criticism of this insert set is that only four of the ten cards show buildings outside of New York. Of course, dissertations have been written about how New York is synonymous with skyscrapers, but there are plenty of other interesting buildings around the world that could have been chosen, like The Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, the John Hancock Center in Chicago, or the under-construction Shanghai Tower, also featured in an episode of "Super Skyscrapers."

I'll be missing this month's card show on Saturday since I'm helping my sister and her husband move into their new house (congratulations!), but Christian promises to have a box just for me once August rolls around.

5280 Monthly Card Show: Christian's Table

​A dozen years ago or so, card shows at malls were still a regular (or at least an occasional) thing. I used to visit the Westminster Mall north of Denver for a show every so often, and it was at one of these shows that I first stumbled upon Christian's table.

He had a great assortment of Topps inserts and parallels, and was always happy to cut a deal. That was when I first learned of the existence of serial numbered cards, and I still have the scarce 2003 Topps Chrome X-fractors I purchased during that first visit.

2003 Topps Chrome X-Fractors #183 Aubrey Huff /50

This was issued as a box topper in 2003 Topps Chrome, and is supposed to come in a sealed plastic case with an "Uncirculated" sticker over the top seam. This one is loose, but the cases on the others in my collection are so thick that they don't scan well.

With cards like this, I'd make a beeline for his table during subsequent shows, and was always able to find cards from stellar sets like 2001/2002 Topps Archive Reserves various Topps Finest sets.

Given that mall shows don't really happen anymore, (in fact, the Westminster Mall was torn down several years ago), Christian took it upon himself to start setting up his own card shows in a rented hotel conference room on a monthly basis. A couple weekends ago, I spent a few hours at the June show and walked away with plenty of great cardboard, as well as a Carlos Gonzalez OYO mini-figure, which is now on my shelf at work.

There's a miniature ball and glove, too

Christian always has a box or two of bargain-priced relics and autographs, some dollar boxes, and a couple of interesting display cases, but what really drew me in were the 15-cent boxes packed to the gills. And like all great card dealers, the 15 cent box wasn't really 15 cents. Wink.

I didn't have a ton of time, as there was another table I wanted to visit (more on that in an upcoming post), but here are some of the highlights I picked out.

2004 Bowman Heritage #158 Randy Johnson

2004 in the Topps Heritage cycle (just count back 49 years) meant the 1955 designs were replicated. 1955 Bowman, of course, was the ultimate wood-grain set, with pictures framed by a cabinet-style television. My dad was eight years old that year, and remembers this design well. If only he had saved a few!

2007 Topps Moments & Milestones #12-6 Greg Maddux (Wins 6) /150

I hadn't seen this set before the show, and some research on Beckett and the BaseballCardPedia indicates this is seriously weird. It seems even stranger than Topps Tek - the set with up to 90 design variants per card. Remember that 2008 Mickey Mantle set with a different card for each one of his 565 536 home runs? This is the same idea, but the only way to tell the cards apart is from the numeral on the front. Thus, there are 20 variants of this card, one for each of Maddux's wins in his 1992 Cy Young season. But we don't even get details of the 6th win on the back, just this indication that he had a 6th win on his way to 20. Now, 20 isn't so bad, but he had 199 strikeouts that year, so there are 199 variants of card #13. Add them all up, and 2007 Moments & Milestones is a 12,475-card set.

But hey, serial number. If you want a /1 in your collection, this would be the set to go for.

Anyway, how about something a bit easier to explain? Like a metal card.

1996 Leaf Preferred Steel Gold #50 Charles Johnson

Not much else to say. It's a metal baseball card. Though it did have one of those pesky protective peel-off coatings, which I promptly peeled off. I'd better make sure to take this out of my shirt pocket when I go through airport security.

2000 Upper Deck MVP Scout's Choice #SC6 Nick Johnson

The shininess of this insert card doesn't come across so well in the scan, but I will give kudos to Upper Deck for listing baserunning as one of the fundamentals on the right side of the card. I think that gets overlooked quite a bit. That's appropriate, as Nick Johnson was one of my favorite under-the-radar players during his career.

Besides all those singles, I spent just $15 on one of my favorite collectibles – a complete factory set, this one of 1994 UD Collector's Choice.

1994 Collector's Choice #96 Scott Erickson

I've liked this set ever since the first packs I opened at ten years old. It's almost a continuation of 1993 Upper Deck, arguably the most revered set of the overproduction era. Just look at that photography. And there are a ton of these horizontal cards, to boot.

Of course, Christian's table didn't have the only discount boxes in the room. Come back next time for a look at Adam's table.

They come in threes

​It's been a somber mood in the baseball world these past couple weeks, as several well-known former players have passed away. You may recall my most recent post about the late Don Zimmer. Though I'm a few days late, I wanted to give a proper send-off to Mr. Padre as well.

1994 Score Gold Rush # 12 Tony Gwynn

I had the good fortune to see Tony Gwynn play toward the end of the 2001 season. According to everyone's favorite treasure trove of baseball statistics, Gwynn drew a walk as a pinch-hitter in that late September game, just weeks after 9/11. Further investigation and cross-referencing of my ticket stub collection indicates that, sadly, I never witnessed any of Gwynn's 3,141 hits.

Regardless, as a lifelong NL West fan, I'm sorry to see Mr. Gwynn go to that great baseball diamond in the sky at such a young age.

Though Gwynn and Zimmer have been prominent in the news lately, the recent and also-too-early passing of Bob Welch slipped under the radar a bit.

Though not quite a hall-of-famer, Welch earned plenty of accolades during his pitching career, being elected to the All-Star squad twice, winning three World Series rings (one as a coach with the 2001 Diamondbacks), and even earning the coveted Cy Young award in 1990.

1993 Flair #264 Bob Welch

Though much of this blogging community will remember Welch as a Dodger, he was an established Oakland A when I started collecting, so that's how I remember him. He retired before interleague play, which was long before the days of MLB.TV. Thus, during his playing days, I surely knew him only from baseball cards, like this premium piece from Fleer's Flair brand, printed on some of the thickest card stock around.

They say these things come in threes. Though we fondly remember their great baseball careers, here's hoping that's it for a while.

1931-2014

As you may have heard by now, longtime baseball player and coach Don Zimmer passed away yesterday.

1994 Topps Archives 1954 #258 Don Zimmer

"Zim" had spent nearly all his adult life in professional baseball in some form, including coaching stints with two of my favorite franchises, the Colorado Rockies and the New York Yankees. He's had quite an impact on the game over the years—he was hit in the head by a pitch in 1953 and suffered severe health problems that year. The incident led directly to the use of batting helmets shortly thereafter. More recently, Zimmer took on Pedro Martinez in a hotly-contested 2003 ALCS. Though Martinez defended himself valiantly, the world was reminded that Zimmer still had a fiery passion for baseball.

He earned six World Series rings throughout his career. Four came recently while on the coaching staff of the Yankees, and two on the Dodgers, the first going way back to the Brooklyn days where he played alongside Jackie Robinson. He has been one of the most recognizable faces in baseball for generations, and he will be missed.

The Vast Bering Sea

​We're smack in the middle of another season of Deadliest Catch, which gives me the perfect opportunity to showcase one of my favorite non-baseball baseball cards.

2010 Topps Allen & Ginter #203 Sig Hansen

Sig Hansen is the captain of the fishing vessel Northwestern, one of the longest-running subjects of the Alaskan crab fishing documentary. Sig has become one of the most well-known faces of the Discovery Channel show, along with a few other colorful characters, some of whom are no longer with us. Pixar even called on him to do voice work in Cars 2​ as the character "Crabby".

Even after all these years, I find that the captains and crews who brave the Bering Sea each winter still make for a great TV show. They've been heavily advertising the fact that this is the tenth season of the show, and I'd bet that a decade ago, Captain Sig sure would have chuckled if you told him he'd have his very own baseball card within a few years.

The Extra Pack comes through!

Only a few days ago, I was educating the blogosphere about the existence of Arizona's Baxter the Bobcat mascot, and lamenting the fact that I didn't own a card of Dinger.

Thanks to another $10 blaster of 2014 Topps Opening Day, I pulled exactly the card I had been looking for.

2014 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M10 Dinger

Dinger looks a bit unusual here with this black mask/beard, but he is twenty years old now and has apparently grown up a bit. The card gives us some background on Dinger, mentioning that he "specializes in distracting opposing pitchers in the late innings", can easily be spotted in the wild due to "colorful dots on his head", and that a triceratops skull was discovered during construction of Coors Field.

Though there is a grain of truth to that, further research indicates that this is a bit of an embellished urban legend. Construction at Coors Field did indeed unearth triceratops fossils, though the skull they refer to was found in Brighton, a northern suburb of Denver where Todd Helton happens to reside. In fact, triceratops fossils have been unearthed all over the Denver area, including at Heritage Golf Course not far from my home.

Another Fun Fact: Dinger's uniform number has changed through the years. He was once #94, referring to the year of his "hatching" when the Rockies were a year old, but now sports #00. Dinger remains the only "Rockie" to have worn either of those numbers.

The Rockies lost five of six on their most recent road trip. Dinger is sure to be a sight for sore eyes once they return to Coors Field on Friday.

Zero blog posts plus one extra blog post

​Just before this baseball season started, I saw a deal at Target that I couldn't pass up. Only $10 for a blaster box of 2014 Topps Opening Day, including 10 packs and an extra pack!

Though none of the packs differentiated itself as the "extra pack", I was able to pull some interesting cards to start the 2014 section of my collection. I showed a few cards from this blaster in my two previous posts, but there are plenty more where those came from.

2014 Topps Opening Day #16 Carlos Gonzalez

Although Carlos Gonzalez has gotten off to a slow start, the Rockies are one of the bigger surprises thus far in the 2014 season. Charlie Blackmon, Nolan Arenado, and NL Player of the Month Troy Tulowitzki have led the Rockies to a 22-14 record, in a virtual tie with the first-place San Francisco Giants.

2014 Topps Opening Day #128 Manny Machado

I am happy to see the "Future Stars" subset make a return; the first time Topps has had this subset since the mid-1990s. Night Owl was less than enthused about this turn of events, but for me, this is a nostalgic reminder of some of the first sets I ever collected.

2014 Topps Opening Day Blue #6 Adrian Beltre /2014

2014 Topps Opening Day Blue #173 Josh Reddick /2014

Serial-numbered parallels! Along with the Chris Davis card that came up in a previous post and Craig Kimbrel, I pulled a total of four from this blaster.

2014 Topps Opening Day Breaking Out #BO14 Andrew McCutchen

There were a surprising amount of insert cards in this blaster, my favorite being the "Breaking Out" insert set. Just like the "Future Stars" subset, this one really takes you back to the mid-1990s. I'm sure I'm not the first one to say that this one has plenty of 1995 Fleer DNA in it. The "Opening Day Stars" insert set goes for a Sportflix 3D effect, complete with ridged plastic.

2014 Topps Opening Day Mascots #M18 Baxter the Bobcat

Bobcats are great and all, but how hilarious would it be to have a more team-appropriate rattlesnake mascot slithering around out there without any arms or legs? Seems wacky enough, given the swimming pool and $25 corn dogs at Chase Field.

I think mascot cards are a great idea. I have yet to acquire a card of Dinger, the Rockies' lovable triceratops mascot, but they're a great reminder that baseball is just a game that's meant to be enjoyed.

While my $10 went pretty far, I can only wonder what I would have managed to pull if Topps' marketing department gave me seven packs and four extra packs.