Repack box finds

I bought a 15-pack repack box distributed by www.worldsgreatestcardchase.com. On the box it says "The Big Find - A Ty Cobb 1909-1911 T206 Card!" Good luck with that.

2005 Donruss Throwback Threads

 Donruss/Leaf had several sets back then with similar look. I had bought a blaster of this which had yielded 40 cards. That's 50 cents/card. Kind of a lot back in 2005 for a nondescript set. The best card in his pack is this Mike Mussina card as I collect him and didn't have this card.

2013 Panini Cooperstown Colgan's Chips

A set composed of Hall of Famers can be a good idea. 2012 Panini Cooperstown was such a good idea. 2013 Panini Cooperstown, was not so good. The cards were kind of mud colored and just unattractive. I had bought one blaster and was disappointed, as I had liked the 2012 set. Of the four regular cards in the pack, I already had 2. Man, I hate that. The set also included these disks, 165 of them. I don't really care for them, but this one has Steve Carlton so it's OK with me.

2013 Panini Cooperstown Lumberjacks

And then there was this. Wood veneer on card stock. There were a spate of this type of card in the mid 1990s but I don't remember seeing any like it recently. Just about every card in this 24-card set is available on eBay from $1.50 to $10 depending on the player.

Out of 15 packs and about 200 cards, these were the most interesting. The rest of the packs are the usual collection of sets like 1991 Upper Deck, 1989 Topps and 1990 Fleer you're used to seeing. I'm sure there are some other unexciting cards in the box I need however.

2015 Leaf Heroes of Baseball - Base Cards

These blaster boxes starting showing up in the local Target in the spring.

An autographed Stan Musial card in every box! The problem was they wanted about $40 for this and, while I buy a lot of cards, my budget isn't unlimited. Sure I'd like a card autographed by Stan the Man, but for $40? Then, last week, I saw this.

 $12.99? I snapped it right up.

The base cards are pretty nice. The 60-card set is a collection of Hall of Famers, near Hall of Famers, a couple of current players who are future Hall of Famers and an umpire. The cards aren't fancy. Full-bleed photographs but no gloss or foil.  And certainly no team logos or team names. But it's a good selection of players and photographs and the box contained the entire set. Here are some representative base cards. Next week I'll show the Musial Milestone insert set and the Musial Milestone autographed card.

Al Kaline #1

There are a mixture of color and b/w cards. The backs repeat a cropped version of the front photo and a paragraph about the player. The problem with a set like this is trying to figure out what team the player is with in the photo. Al Kaline is easy, he spent his whole career with the Tigers.

Albert Pujols #2

Pujols, one of only 2 current players (the other is Ichiro) has played for two teams, the Cardinals and the Angels, both of which wear red. I'm going with Angels for this card because of the red piping on the pants.

Bruce Sutter #9

Sutter played for the Cubs, Cardinals and Braves. Due to the home pin stripes and the wall of ivy in the background, this has to be with the Cubs. Notice the base runner behind him with a Cards logo on his hat.

Doug Harvey #16

Nicknamed "God" by the players, what makes an umpire a Hero of Baseball? He is in the Hall of Fame so I guess that helps.

Frank Robinson #21

I would have had a hard time with this card except that I also have this card from 2011.

Ozzie Smith #39

Obviously with the Cardinals and not the Padres, with a guest appearance by Chris Sabo.

Red Schoendienst #45

Maybe my favorite card from the set.

Steve Carlton #53

There are only 2 Phillies in the set, Carlton and Jim Bunning, both clearly in Phillies unis. I would have easily traded Bunning, or even Carlton, for Mike Schmidt card in the set.

Tommy Lasorda #54

I was trying to make a case that this photo was taken in Connie Mack Stadium when Lasorda pitched for the Dodgers in 1954 and 1955. With that Ballantine beer sign, that looks a lot like Connie Mack's scoreboard. But after some digging, I learned that Ballentine also sponsored the Yankees. Yankee Stadium's scoreboard in these days looked a lot like Connie Mack's, including the big clock on top. But Connie Mack had the beer sign on the top while Yankee Stadium had it on the bottom. So I conclued that this photo is from when Lasorda pitched for the KC A's in 1956.

My Reference Cards #9 - Fleer Focus and Fleer Club 3000

In the second half of the 1990s and right up until they went bankrupt, Fleer issued so many different card sets it was near impossible to keep up. And sets would come and go. If you found a set one year that you liked, good luck finding it the next year. Fleer/Skybox will issue 12 different card sets in 2000. Of course the other companies were issuing lots of cards as well, but there was less stability from year to year with Fleer.

2000 was the inaugural year for Fleer Focus. It's first year of two. I bought a hobby box on May 2000 for about $0.24/card.

2000 Fleer Focus #185 Cal Ripken, Jr.

The base set has 250 cards. Fleer Focus (as did most of Fleer's sets) had a gimmick. Note that the background of the photo is out-of-focus, while the player is, not only in focus, but surrounded by a white aura. The player is also glossy, while the background is not. Not a bad gimmick really, and not a bad looking card. I like the logo-on-a-cap, although it's been done before. The back has career stats and a small photo.

Cards numbered 226-250 are serial numbered Prospect cards. These have a red foil shield on the front and are numbered to 3999. I just pulled one of these from the box.

2000 Fleer Focus Green #206 Jeromy Burnitz

It's hard to see, but the player and team names are in green foil. This was a full parallel set, serial numbered to 300.  I pulled two of these, the other being Michael Barrett of the Expos.

There was another full parallel set, serial-numbered to 1.

2000 Fleer Focus Focal Points #1 Mark McGwire

This 15-card set was inserted 1:6 packs. I pulled 5 of the set.  These are foil board on the front and glossy on the back. The foil and back color is color coded to the players team. There was an insert to this set as well, called "Focal Points Striking" which I didn't get.

2000 Fleer Focus Fresh Ink #13 J. D. Drew

This autographed insert set has 48 cards and was inserted 1 in 96 packs. This is the very first autographed or relic card I ever pulled directly from a pack. In the scan it looks a bit like a sticker auto, but the autograph is directly on a piece of foil printed on the card. This was a pretty good card in 2000. Drew had just come off his rookie season and even though he hadn't exactly set the world on fire, he was still considered a future great player.

2000 Fleer Focus Future Vision #3 Ruben Mateo

Another 15-card set, this one inserted 1 in every 9 packs. Multicolored foil on the front, glossy on the back. Although this card says "Ruben is the Rangers' All-Star outfielder of the future", I'm guessing that Mateo never got closer to the All-Star Game than watching it on television.

2000 Fleer Focus Pocus #3 Nomar Garciaparra

Lots of multicolored holographic foil gives this 10-card set some eye appeal. Inserted 1 in 14 packs, I pulled 3 of them from the box.

There was one other 10-card insert set "Feel The Game" which I didn't get.

Fleer Club 3000

There are 14 base cards and 71 memorabilia cards in this set. The cards celebrate players who have either 3000 hits or pitchers who have 3000 strikeouts in their career. They were inserted in five of the Fleer branded card packs,  Fleer Tradition, Fleer Focus, Fleer Mystique, Fleer Showcase and Ultra. The cards are not numbered.

Fleer Club 3000 George Brett

The cards are die cut across the top and bottom to cut out the numbers. The Brett card came in Fleer packs, but I paid $0.83 for this in 2003.  I have half the set and would like to own the whole thing.

Fleer Club 3000 Memorabilia Steve Carlton

I didn't actually know that these memorabilia cards existed until I saw this one in a baseball card store in the Philadelphia area when we were visiting there last spring. I gladly paid $10 for it.

2014 Panini Golden Age - Very tiny look

I really liked 2013 Panini Golden Age and bought a hobby box of it. With Topps Allen and Ginter hobby boxes being out of reach ($110 and up on eBay), I decided to get another hobby box of Panini Golden Age this year. Before I decided I bought a couple of Phillies cards to see them in person. I did three posts on the 2013 set last year and they were some of my more popular posts. You can see them here, here, and here.

2014 Panini Golden Age #114 Steve Carlton

Although superficially similar to last year's set, the design has some significant changes. The picture area is circular this year versus a vertically oriented oval shape last year. Last year's backs are very similar.

2014 Panini Golden Age #80 Robin Roberts

I'll do a couple of posts when I get my hobby box.

2014 Topps Archives

I'm not a real big fan of Archives but I'll buy some every year. Last weekend I bought 3 rack-packs, totaling 54 cards (50 base). If I see a blaster, I may buy it. I've got a bunch of Phillies cards from the set coming from eBay.  I wasn't planning to do a big review of the set and now that Night Owl has published an exhaustive (and exhausting) post on Archive, I'm resolved in my plan.

I found 4 of the 50 base cards to have reused photographs which I'll post later in a reprise of an earlier post.

What I want to do now, is show the 3 cards I got for which the players had an actual card in the original set (and which I own).

2014 Topps Archives #31 Steve Carlton

1973 Topps #300 Steve Carlton

I think the photo on the Archives card is from a later season than 1973. I don't think Carlton had that fu manchu 'statch in 1972-1973.

The catcher in the 1973 card is Tim McCarver. McCarver was traded to the Expos June 14, 1972, so this photo can only be from a handful of games early in 1972. Carlton only won two games at home with McCarver catching in 1972, April 19 and May 7. There aren't enough clues in the photo to narrow it down any further.

How do the designs match up? The type fonts look close but the colors don't match. The pitcher silhouette in the bottom right corner is a bit smaller on the Archives card. The 1973 card does not have a Topps logo on it.

2014 Topps Archives #31 Steve Carlton

1973 Topps #300 Steve Carlton

The colors don't quite match up. I like the 1973 cartoon "Steve likes to play billiards". On the 1973 card he is identified as "Steven Norman Carlton" instead of just "Steve Carlton". Also on the 1973 card his home town is listed as St. Louis. He'd just been traded to the Phillies in February from St. Louis so I guess he hadn't had time to move. Note all the fine print at the bottom of the Archives card compared to the 1973 card.

2014 Topps Archives #102 Goose Gossage

1986 Topps #530 Rich Gossage

The biggest difference is that in 1986, Gossage was a Padre. He had left the Yankees after the 1983 season and joined the Padres in 1984. Also note that on the 1986 card he is Rich Gossage. Looking at the Gossage cards I have scanned from this era, it looks like Fleer, Donruss and Topps weren't very consistent in what they called him. One Fleer card actually had "Goose" Gossage.

 2014 Topps Archives #102 Goose Gossage

 1986 Topps #530 Rich Gossage

 Except for all the fine print at the bottom of the Archives card, the designs match pretty well. Note that on the Gossage cards, they give stats through the 1986 season whereas an actual 1986 card would only have stats through 1985. The Carlton Archives card gives stats through 1979 for some reason.

2014 Topps Archives 1987 All-Stars #87-VC Vince Coleman

1989  Topps Glossy All Stars #17 Vince Coleman

 

This is kind of confusing. The set is called "1987 All-Stars" but the Archives card says 1988 on the top. Coleman wasn't actually an All-Star in 1987, but he was in 1988. The Topps card with "1988 All-Star" actually was released in 1989. Topps released these glossy sets from about 1985 through 1991. They had the same design each year. And they were very glossy. The Archives reproduction isn't glossy. The two cards look pretty similar.  The NL logo is smaller on the Archives card. There's no Topps logo on the 1989 card.

2014 Topps Archives 1987 All-Stars #87-VC Vince Coleman

 1989  Topps Glossy All Stars #17 Vince Coleman

The only comment I want to make is the background color. The original card backs were white when issued but they look yellowed today. I used a Photoshop tool to make the 1989 card look white again. The Archives card backs look more like a 25 year old white card would look.