Players I collect - 2016

Continuing a series of posts of 2016 cards of Players I Collect that had cards in 2016. I'm excluding Phillies and Astros since I collect all of them. The last player was Ichiro. Next up Bo Jackson.

2016 Topps Bunt was good for a lot of former players. I have 98 Bo Jackson cards in my collection. A career cut way too short.

Yet another Topps Bunt card. Jackson started his career in 1967. I have 78 Reggie Jackson cards but the earliest cards I have for him are in the 1980s. Not surprising as I didn't start collecting until 1985.

7 years after he retired in 2009, The Big Unit still seems popular with the hobby. I have 293 cards of him, bolstered by the half season he played for the Astros in 1998. He was 10-1 with an ERA of 1.98 in 11 starts, helping the Astros into the playoffs.

I only managed to pull one Chipper Jones card this year. A sure Hall of Famer, I have 313 of his cards. The first time I ever heard of Chipper Jones was in 1990, when a guy in my fantasy baseball league drafted him for cheap. He held on to Jones for years.

That's enough for today. Next up, Bary Larkin (yep, another Topps Bunt card)

Random Cards From My Collection #79

Card #5628
2001 Topps Combos #3 Cal Ripken, Jr. and Brooks Robinson

Comments on the card/player: Two great players on one card. How can  you go wrong? This was a 20-card insert set in 2001 Topps. It brings to mind player combo cards from the early years of Topps.
How/When acquired: I paid $0.15/card for a box of Topps in 2001.

Card #19407
2010 Topps #351 Koji Uehara

Comments on the card/player: Two cards, three Orioles. This was Uehara's last full season with the Orioles, when he had 13 saves. He's with the Red Sox now and has 20+ saves a year for them since 2013. And he was an All-Star in 2014.
How/When acquired: I paid $0.19/card for packs of Series 2 Topps in 2001.

Card #24067
2004 Topps Total #170 Roy Oswalt

Comments on the card/player: This Topps set promised to have every player on each team's 40-man roster. The result, an unattractive 880-card set. If that doesn't sound like enough cards, many cards had 2 players on them.
How/When acquired: I paid $0.10/card for a for packs of Topps Total in August 2004. At least they were cheap.

Card #20043
1990 Donruss #278 Von Hayes

Comments on the card/player: Do you like the color red? Then 1990 Donruss is for you. In my opinion, the continuance of several years of weird Donruss designs, which will finally end with 1992 Donruss.
How/When acquired: I don't know.

Card #10215
2008 Upper Deck Star Quest #10 Chipper Jones

Comments on the card/player: Lucky us, we had one of these horrible cards in the last random card post.
How/When acquired: I paid $0.25/card for blasters of Upper Deck in 2008. 25 cents for this junk! At least it's Chipper Jones.

Card #32527
2012 Topps Gypsy Queen #220 Joey Votto

Comments on the card/player: The second year for Gypsy Queen which I liked quite a lot in 2011. I didn't like this as much and I like it less and less each year.
How/When acquired: I paid $0.43/card for a hobby box of Gypsy Queen in April 2012.

Card #54371
2015 Topps Update #189 Adam Warren

Comments on the card/player: I remember everyone, including me, being pretty excited about the 2015 Topps design early in the year. But I was getting burnt out on the design by about half-way through this enormous 400-card update set.
How/When acquired: I aid $0.12/card for a hand-collated set of Topps Update plus inserts from eBay in October 2015.

Card #38735
1988 Donruss #480 John Morris

Comments on the card/player: Hey, another in the string of weird Donruss designs. I have more than half of this 660 card set despite never buying a single pack of it.
How/When acquired: Paid $0.04/card for 100-card Fairfield Repack in arch 2013. Repack fodder, that's why I have so much of this.

Card #32440
2012 Topps Gypsy Queen Future Stars #FS-EH Eric Hosmer

Comments on the card/player: Hosmer was 3rd in the ROY voting in 2011 and he's had a pretty good career since, gathering 3 Gold Gloves and a World Series ring along the way.
How/When acquired: In addition to buying a hobby box of this product as mentioned above, I also bought a rack pack and a blaster box for $0.46/card, which is where I pulled this card.

The 1990s Baseball Card Face-off

Ok, where were we?

Oh, yeah, were were heading into the 2nd round of the Babe Ruth Division Second Quartile. In case you're new here or don't remember what the heck I'm doing, please check this post.

Today it's going to be 1999 Upper Deck MVP vs 1998 Topps Gold Label

1999 Upper Deck MVP

Barry Larkin #57

Chipper Jones #15

There is such a thing as having too much design. That's the basic problem with this set. It's got good photography, the cards have a light gloss, it's got full stats on the back, and even a photo (a small one) on the back. Many collectors don't like foil on cards. I don't mind it so much, except when foil is laid down just for the sake of having foil. What's with all the foil lines and circles on the front? They are repeated on the back, without foil, but still distracting. Also, there are two numbers on the back. One is the card number, very tiny in the upper left, the other is the player's uniform number, much larger on the bottom left. Too confusing.

1998 Topps Gold Label

Randy Johnson #8

Jim Thome #10

When this set came up in it's first match up, I only owned 2 or 3 cards from the set. Now I own 90. After seeing them again I remembered what a great set this was. They were pretty pricy per pack back in 1998 but I got almost the whole set for just $0.15/card. If you'd like to see more of these check them out on tradingcarddb.com. There were only a few cards from the set posted before I uploaded the bunch I bought.

The Results: As you can probably tell from my write up, I'm pretty partial to the 1998 Topps Gold Label.

1998 Topps Gold Label

The other day, 1998 Topps Gold Label defeated 1998 Pinnacle in my contest to determine the best set from the 1990s. This was despite the fact that I didn't own a single card from the set. Since I got a few good comments about the set I decided I better own some in case the set goes far in the contest. Single cards from the set are going on eBay for $1 and up. But I found one auction offering 89 cards from the 100-card set for $13.35 (including shipping). That works out to about 15 cents a card. I'm guessing that these cards cost more than a dollar apiece in packs in 1998.

The cards scan very nicely but are better looking in person. Each card has a chrome refractor look to them except that the finish is harder. The cards appear to have 3 plies. I think that the front and back are actually reverse printed acetate. This is a complicated set. This is the Class 1 variation and should be considered the base set. The pitcher cards feature 2 photos, the foreground shows the pitcher in his delivery while the background photo shows the pitcher in his windup.

The batter cards have the batter at bat in the foreground photo and the player on defense in the background. All the cards feature the player name in gold foil on the front. The abbreviated stats on the back are in a team-color coordinated box.

The Class 2 cards have sparkling silver foil with 2 photos, the same foreground photo as the Class 1. The hitters background shows the player on the base paths. The pitcher cards have the pitcher before his windup in the background.

The Class 3 cards have a sparkling gold foil and also two front photos. I haven't seen enough of them to tell what photo variations are used.

There is also a Red, a Black, and a one-of-one variation for each class.

Here are a few more.

By this selection of cards you can see that Topps varied the ratio of the foreground and background photo sizes. This leads to some unfortunate juxtapositions like the Finley card and especially the I-Rod card where it looks like Ivan is battling an 8-foot clone of himself. This is really my only complaint about the set which may impact a future head-to-head matchup.

Another issue, which could be considered a design flaw is that some of the cards (5 or 6) had a residue on the surface of the cards. This was easily removable with a soft cloth. I've seen similar, and worse, examples of this in Topps Chrome cards from the era. 

With only 100 cards, the set is mostly star players of the day. There are some, in retrospect, errors in some rookie cards, but all in all a solid player selection. Of the 11 cards I'm missing, the only two I would have wanted are Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken, which happen to be the first and last cards of the set.

There were 5 Astros cards in the set but only 2 Phillies cards.