Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Jeff Bagwell cards binge

I started collecting Jeff Bagwell cards even before I moved to Houston so I've got a bunch of them already.  I recently won an eBay auction for 59 Jeff Bagwell cards for about $10. I only needed 20 of them, but most of those 20 are pretty good cards. This brings my Bagwell collection to 493 cards. Here's a sample.

These cards are from the early to mid 2000s. I think anyone of these cards is better than almost anything cards out today.

1999 SP Authentic #39
Full bleed photography with silver foil on the front. The backgrounds are a bit sepia tinted. With all that white space on the back, they put the card number at the upper left hand of the photo. Almost impossible to read.

2000 Bowman's Best #99
I had exactly 2 cards from this set. This card is a subset which I didn't have so it goes in the Reference Card Album.

2000 Topps Gold Label Class 3 #60
This was a high-end set from 2000. The base set was called Class 1. Class 2 and 3 cards were parallels with different surface treatments. Class 3 was the rarer and featured a deep gloss with a refractive edge. I had some Class 1s, one Class 2 but this is my first Class 3. Another one for the Reference Card Album.

2001 Upper Deck Ovation #28
Another pricy set. Ovation ran for a few years. The cards are of heavy stock with baseball seams embossed on the front of the card. This is only the second card from this set I have.

2003 Donruss Elite #113
Yet another set I didn't buy any of because the card packs were so expensive. Elite has a shiny mirror finish that never scans well. The only other card I have from this set is fellow Astro Roy Oswalt.

2003 Topps 205 #214
2003 Topps 205 is one of my favorite sets of the decade. I had bought 3 hobby boxes of this, 2 of Series 1 and 1 of Series 2. There are three Bagwell cards in this set. Two of them are card #204 which has a variation. I had both of them but not this one.

2003 Topps Chrome #397
I always liked the design and blue borders of 2003 Topps. I don't have many of the Chrome cards however. I actually don't have the base Bagwell card from the set.

2003 Upper Deck Play Ball #27
2003-2004 was the start of retro card designs. This was one of the Upper Deck entries based on 1940 Play Ball. Interestingly, 1940 Play Ball was produced by Gum, Inc. which after the war became Bowman, which was eventually bought by Topps. How did Upper Deck get the rights to this design?  Maybe the rights were just up for grabs.

2004 Absolute Memorabilia Retail
Another mirror finish set. I have a few of these but I've never seen the hobby version of this set. According to beckett.com, the hobby cards have a limited run and are presumably serial numbered.

2 comments:

Hackenbush said...

Those are nice. I've always liked the Topps Gold Label cards (though I don't think I own many). You guys amaze me, 493 cards! I've never counted my Ron Santo cards (my biggest player collection) but it's nowhere near that. I have maybe 75-80 Ryan Dempsters and Ted Lilly's and that feels big to me.

capewood said...

I have a lot of Bagwell cards because I go looking for him. Ron Santo was a great player but because of when he played, I'd bet there aren't even 493 cards of him. Mike Schmidt is my all-time favorite player but I only have 361 of his cards and I have virtually every card issued while he played. But he retired in 1989 before the explosion of cards that started around 1991.