2016 Topps Opening Day Surprise

I made a post about 2016 Opening Day last week and really wasn't planning another one, because, what more could be said?  My post was based on what I found in the first of four 24-card rack packs I had bought.

Then I opened the second pack and found this.

This is exactly the second printing plate I've pulled from a retail pack. The last one was in 2006. I don't exactly chase these since they are so hard to find. I bought one in 2009 on eBay, just because I found one that was cheap enough to buy.  So now I have 3.

The third pack yielded this.

I had shared the foil version of this card in my other 2016 Opening Day post. This isn't really the surprise I had in mind.

Also in that pack was this:

That's right I pulled a short-print variation card in the same pack as the regular issue card. I don't go all gaa-gaa over these variation cards and frankly I don't care if Topps includes them or not. But I sure don't mind getting one.

Nothing to report about from the 4th pack.

Problems of being a team collector

I have several collecting goals, but chief among them is Phillies and post-1994 Astros cards. Phillies cards because I'm from Philadelphia and am still a huge phan. Post-1994 Astros because I moved to Houston in 1995 and, although it's been tough the past few years, I'm an Astros fan as well.

I thought I list what I think are the main challenges to being a team collector. This is in any particular order, just the order in which I thought of them.

Leave a comment if there is some particular difficulty in making a team collection that I missed. I'm sure this list isn't exhaustive.  If I get enough comments, I'll use them to make a similar post .

1. Minor league players who never make it to the big leagues.

Should I consider minor league players who appear in mainstream sets as part of the team set?  Of course I do.

2004 Bazooka #298 Anthony Acevedo

Nothing against Anthony Acevedo of course. He was in the Astros minor leagues from 2000 through 2004. According to Beckett.com, there are 29 Acededo cards, counting parallels, all issued in 2004. I have 4 of them. The base set cards aren't that much of a problem, the parallels are.

2003 Stadium Club Royal Gold Il Kim

If one of these minor league players made it into a mainstream set, they also are in the parallel sets. 2003 Stadium Club only had 2 parallel sets, this Royal Gold and a "Photographer's Proof" numbered to 299. Many sets in the past 10 years have come with multiple parallel sets (a virtual rainbow in some cases), each one harder to get than the next.

2. Minor League Sets
I see this as a different problem than #1. Minor league sets may have limited distribution. Generally, I don't consider minor league sets to be part of the team collection, but I don't shun them. If I can get them, I'll take them.  I don't know for sure but I think there are a lot fewer minor league sets than there used to be.

1991 Reading Phillies ProCards #1382 Tony Longmire

Sometimes you can find whole team sets on eBay. I've acquired a few of these Phillies ProCard sets that were available in the late 1980s and early 1990s. They aren't usually very fancy but I always liked this 1991 set.

3. Printing plates
I do not consider printing plates to be part of the team collection. They are just too hard to find. I've pulled exactly one printing plate in all my years of collecting.

2006 Fleer Tradition Threads Printing Plate David Ortiz

I don't mind having one of these but I'm not sure I even consider these baseball cards.

4. 1 of 1 cards
These are pretty hard to get as well, but they are real baseball cards so I consider them part of the team collection.

2005 Flair Row 2 #29 Roger Clemens

This is the only 1 of 1 card (besides that Ortiz printing plate) I've ever pulled. And it was an Astro!

5. Odd-ball cards
Odd-ball cards are ones that come in some thing else than a regular baseball card pack. They might be packaged in a food product or be given away at a gas station. They may be issued as experiment cards by a major card manufacturer. There are a lot fewer of this sort of thing around. I generally love to get odd-ball Phillies and Astros cards but not consider them a part of the team collection.

1986 Topps Quaker Oats #14 Mike Schmidt

I got this in trade with a fellow blogger in 2009. Although I don't consider this an official part of my 1986 Phillies team collection, it is an official part of my Mike Schmidt collection.

6. Relic/Patch/Autographed Cards
I do consider these a part of the team collection. Often hard to pull from a pack, many are pretty easily available on eBay. The rarer cards, especially of front line players, may be expensive and hard to find.

2007 Upper Deck Premier Patches Triple Gold Roy Oswald

Even this triple patch, numbered to 50 only cost me about $12. Of course you can go broke trying to buy all the relic, patch and autograph cards of your favorite team that are available.

2009 Bowman Draft Prospects Printing Plate

I think these printing plate 1 of 1 inserts are pretty cool, but since the odds of actually pulling one from a pack are so high, I don't pay much attention to them. I actually did pull one once, a 2006 Fleer Tradition Threads Printing Plate. This was a printing plate for a relic card. I had bought a hobby box of Fleer Tradition that year.

I was poking around on eBay a few weeks ago looking for Phillies cards from the 20o9 Bowman Draft Picks set. I had bought a blaster box and didn't get a single Phillie. There may have only been one Phillie in the set which I found and bought. But in the process of looking I found this:

2009 Bowman Draft Prospects Printing Plates Black #72 Brian MoranI don't see printing plates for sale often and on a whim I decided to bid and got it for the opening bid. With postage, only $6.87. I didn't really pay attention to the player name but when it came I found that I had this:

2009 Bowman Draft Prospects #72 Brian Moran
I guess it's possible that this card was printed with the printing plate I now own. From what little I know about off-set printing, I know that the printing plates don't last forever. Can they get a whole set of cards done with one set of plates? I think this is a pretty good picture.

Even better, I also had this from my blaster:

2009 Bowman Draft Prospects Orange Refractors #72 Brian Moran
It's numbered 5/25 so it's a pretty good pull for a blaster. So I'm glad I bought the plate. I hope I don't feel compelled to find all of Moran's cards from 2009. Probably not.