Nice Card File - Nomar Garciaparra

This is a 2003 E-X Emerald Essentials Jersey card numbered to 250.

It's got everything going for it:

Silver foil lettering on the front
Die cut
Game-worn jersey patch
Serial numbered
Heavy glossy finish
It's a parallel card (there are similar cards numbered to 345, 175, 60 and 15)
It features a probably future Hall of Famer

And I only paid $3.99, including $2 shipping for it on eBay. That's nuts. Beckett lists the card at $18.

It's outer dimensions are the same as a regular card, but a lot of its been cut away.

The dark spots on the jersey piece are loose threads. My sewing expert daughter thinks it looks like something had been sewed on and thread hadn't been fully removed.

Nice Card File - 2005 Prime Patches

This set was produced by Donruss in 2005. There are 89 cards in the base set. There are 209 different insert sets amounting to another 4,345 cards. The inserts all have either autographs or game-used material or both. They are all serial numbered. I never saw a pack of these cards in the wild but I image they were pretty expensive since each pack had 2 inserts. They are pretty easy to find on eBay, which is where I got these. With the exception of the J.D. Drew card, which I got about a yer ago, I acquired all of these in the past 3 weeks.
Mike Schmidt (Prime Patches Hall of Fame Materials Double Swatch Prime). I'm pretty much a sucker for Mike Schmidt cards and I paid more for this ($14.32) then I normally would for a baseball card. It has a game-used stirrup and jersey. The jersey has two colors, which is a bonus. On the card it calls the jersey piece jersey-prime. I don't know what the prime notation means. I might mean that the piece is a 'prime' piece, in that it comes from a specific part of the jersey. It must be from the edge of the wide red stripe on the shoulder. The card is #54 of 65.

J. D. Drew (Prime Patches Major League Materials Triple Swatch). There are several basic designs for the inserts. The Schmidt card was the Hall of Fame version, this is the Major League version. If has pieces of a game used bat, jersey and shoe. I believe it's the only card I have with a shoe piece. I paid $4.99 for this in July 2007. The card is #7 of 150.

Tony Gwynn (Prime Patches Portraits Jumbo Swatch). This is the Portraits insert set. The jersey piece is huge, the biggest I've ever seen. Tony is a surefire Hall of Famer, so I think $5.28 for the card was a good price. I actually have another of these cards coming from eBay with a white jersey piece. This card is #268 of 499.


Jim Thome (Prime Patches Portraits Team Logo Patch). Another future Hall of Famer, I paid $6.62 for this. The card features a portion of the team logo from a jersey. Like aboriginal peoples who kill a large animal, no part of the jersey went to waste in this set. They have cards with buttons, logo patches, name plates, number patches and laundry tags. This card is #21 of 150.


Moises Alou (Prime Patches Portraits Triple Patch). Another variation on the Portraits theme, this time with 3 pieces of game-used material, 2 jerseys and a bat. Alou's last year with the Astros was 2001. I guess Donruss had some old Alou stuff laying around in the warehouse. I paid $6.20 for this card which is numbered #80 of 150.

Jeromy Burnitz (Prime Patches Portraits Quad Swatch Prime). Yet another variation of the Portraits theme with 4 jersey swatches, from at least 3 different jerseys. The upper left swatch is labeled Prime, I'm guessing because of the small piece of a patch included. I have found that game-used and autographed cards are plentiful on eBay, if you're not to picky about who you get. I'm not a particular fan of Burnitz but, for $6, the card was a good price. It is numbered $64 of 75.

Nice Card File

2005 Flair

I'm attempting to post this from my crappy little work-provided IBM laptop while I'm travelling on business, instead of my magnificant 20" iMac back home. We'll see how this works.

Back in '05, bought a blaster box of 2005 Flair, probably at Target. There were 50 cards in the set and I got about 30 of them in the box, so a pretty good selection. Flair had two parallel sets. The base set was Row 0, cards numbered to 100 were Row 1, and 1/1 cards were Row 2. I pulled the Row 0 Clemens card and was pretty happy about it (2005, pre-steriods accusation Clemens).

Then I pulled the Row 2 card! A 1/1 card! I had never seen such a thing before. Serial numbered cards have lost some of their luster these days but even today a 1/1 card is a good pull. It looks pretty much like the Row 0 card except the background strip is kind of purple.

Now that I had Row 0 and Row 2, I had to have Row 1. I managed to buy one on eBay for abbout $5 (it books for $15). Even with Clemen's troubles I still like these cards.

Blogger's editor works a lot better on my Mac running the Firefox browser than it does on my lap top running Windows Explorer.

Nice Card File - Willie Mays and Mike Piazza Relic Cards

2003 Stadium Club Born In The USA Relic

2003 was the last year for Topps Stadium Club baseball cards. That year they published a 50-card insert set called "Born In The USA". As you can see, the card features a player game used relic (either a bat or jersey piece) in the shape of the state where the player was born. I had gotten a few in 2003 and thought that since there were 50 cards, there would be a card for each state. I don't often try to complete sets but this intrigued me and I decided to try and collect them all.

I learned pretty soon that my thought that there would be a card for every state was incorrect. Apparently there are a lot of players born in California. Maybe Topps' original plan was to have a card for each state but some states, like Alaska with 9, are not well represented by native born baseball players. All of the cards, with the exception of the Willie Mays card are current (in 2003) players, which probably made it harder to have each state represented. The Beckett catalog lists these at $10 to $25, except for the Mays card which it lists for $60. I now have 43 of the cards. The Mays card was the hardest to get. I lost 2 or 3 bids before finally shagging one for $27 (which is the most I paid for any of them). I've gotten most of them for under $10.

Completing the set has been harder than I expected. I thought that once I had the Mays card, half the battle would be won. The last 7 cards however elude me. In the four years I've been looking for these, the last 7 cards have never appeared on eBay. These cards are:

J. D. Drew
Brad Fullmer
Nomar Garciaparra
Toby Hall
Tino Martinez
Scott Rolen
Richie Sexson

If anyone out there has one of these cards and is willing to trade it to me, send me an email and make me an offer.

Nice Card File

2007 Legendary Cuts Legendary Materials


Steve over at White Sox Cards posted one of these a few days ago so I thought I'd post mine. There have been a number of posts in the baseball card blogs lamenting the low price of relic cards, especially relic cards of Hall of Famers. Here are two more to add to the mix. I paid $4.24 for the Schmidt card and $7.30 for the Carlton. And that's including shipping. The Schmidt books at $15 and the Carlton at $8. Regardless I like the cards. The singles feature a nice high gloss and textured gold foil. Both of these have a jersey piece with a stripe. I don't know if that's a coincidence or not.

2007 Legendary Cuts Legendary Materials Dual

On the dual card, two of the cut-out letters are backed with a jersey piece. Before I got these I thought that pieces from two jerseys (maybe a home and an away) were displayed but now that I have it, I think it's just a larger piece from a single jersey. The dual card features a textured silver foil. I paid $6.50. It books at $9.60.

2007 Legendary Cuts Legendary Materials Triple

The Triple has three of the letters filled. Duh. This card features copper looking textured foil. I paid $7.84. It books at $12.

2007 Legendary Cuts Legendary Materials Quad

I don't have one of these. There were only a few on eBay when I bought the others and they were going for $15-$20. More than I wanted to pay for the players available.

Nice Card File - Joba Chamberlain

2007 Bowman Draft Future's Game Jersey

This guy was the Yankee's 1st round draft pick in 2006. He started the 2007 season in single A, moved to AA and then to AAA, compiling a 9-2 record with 135 K's and just 27 walks. He made his major league debut on August 7, 2007. As a middle reliever, he won 2, saved 1, struck out 34 in 24 innings and walked 6. Pretty good for a guy who didn't start pitching until his senior year in high school. I saw a recent story in the paper that the Yankees are trying to figure out what to do with him this year. Looks like he's going to start the season as a middle reliever. My prediction is that when Andy Pettitte goes down again, they will make Joba a starter.

You can go on eBay these days and pick up relic cards pretty cheap (99 cents plus shipping) as long as you don't care who's on the card., as low as 99 cents and a few bucks for shipping. But I pulled this card from a pack. The catalog lists it at $25. The pack cost me $0.42/card. I love pulling cards like this.

His name jumped out at me because my mother's maiden name was Chamberlain. But this guy isn't any more related to me than Wilt Chamberlain or Neville Chamberlain were. Joba was born in Nebraska and he's a Native American. But there haven't been all that many Chamberlains in sports so I hope he does well.

He's also one of the first players to make it into the major's who is younger than my oldest son.

Nice Card File - Double jersey card

2002 Upper Deck Double Game-Worn Gems


I just got this card today. It was packaged with a jumbo pack of 2006 Upper Deck for $9.99. That works out to 30 cents/card. I don't mind getting a double jersey, limited edition, serially numbered card for 30 cents. Especially since the card books at $15.

But there are some curious things about this card.

1. Although this is a card issued by Upper Deck in 2002, it features jerseys worn "at the 2000 All-Star Event".

2. The name of the card says "game-worn" but the back says the jerseys were worn at an "event". It doesn't say they were worn in the All-Star game. Besides, I don't remember that the American League players wore red jerseys in the game. So how can they be game-worn?

3. The card features Jermaine Dye and Tim Hudson both of whom appeared in the 2000 All-Star game. Dye, however, was still with the Royals at All-Star time. He was traded to the A's in late July.

Nice Card File - Greg Maddux

1996 Pinnacle Christie Brinkley Collection

When I first started collecting cards I lived in the Philadelphia PA area and there were any number of card shops and baseball card shows in the area. In those days I concentrated on buying packs of new cards and Phillies cards from the past. When I moved to the Houston TX area in 1995, I was disappointed to find an entirely different market. Baseball card shows were rare events and there was only one card store (since closed) that I liked. So I turned to eBay. I started buying hobby boxes on eBay in 1999. In early 2003, I wondered how difficult it would be to find specific individual cards. I picked up a recent Beckett catalog and pretty much picked a card a random, found it on eBay, bid on it and won it. This is what I got.


I paid $3.54 for it in January 2003. I didn't record the shipping but it would have been $2-3. At that time the card was listed in Beckett at $15. It's dropped to $12 now. I thought it was a pretty good deal. I've learned that almost any card I look for on eBay can be found if I'm willing to pay enough for it. I'm generally in the market for cards I can get for $10 and less. You'd be surprised what I've been able to find. I estimate that I've bought about 1,000 individual cards on eBay since then and maybe another 100 insert sets. This Maddux card is the first card I specially targeted to buy so it holds a special place in my collection.

No more Braves pitchers for awhile. Next up will be the continuation of my series on the 1993 Phillies.

Nice Card File - Tom Glavine

2001 Leaf Certified Materials Fabric of the Game

I'm not sure when the first baseball cards with pieces of a players game-worn uniform or game-used bat appeared. The oldest one I have is from the year 2000. This is one of my favorites. For one thing, it features Tom Glavine, one of my favorite players. The piece of jersey (or relic as its called in the baseball card world) is relatively large. And the card is a numbered limited edition. Glavine had a great year in 2001. He was 16-7 with an ERA of 3.57 and 116 strikeouts. He's had a great career. He is a 10-time All Star and a 2-time Cy Young Award winner. And last year he won his 300th game of his career. A sure Hall of Famer.

Nice Card File

Larry Walker - 1998 Circa Thunder Thunder Boomer insert


Fleer/Skybox produced the Circa brand of cards from 1996 through 1998 (they were renamed Circa Thunder in 1998). This is an insert from the 1998 set. The Circa cards base sets featured unconventional backgrounds with very colorful abstract designs. The inserts were also unconventional often featuring materials not common in baseball cards. This card is a composite with white card stock on the front and clear acetate on the back. The card stock is cut away around the player allowing the blue clouds on the acetate to show through. All of the text on the front is in red foil. The card commemorates Walker's 1997 season when his slugging percentage was 0.700 and he hit an NL leading 49 home runs. I purchased this on eBay for $1.50 in December 2007. Beckett lists the card at $6.00.