Phillies cards from Dan

A few weeks ago, I came upon dansotherworld and saw that he was giving away baseball cards by MBL division. Since he still had the NL East available, I signed on hoping for some Phillies cards. After reading some more of his blog I realized he was a Phillies collector and figured I wouldn't get many Phillies from him.  After an exchange of emails, and him checking my blog, he said he'd see if he could find some Phillies for me.

A big package arrived the other day with almost 400 cards. Rather more than I expected. Among them were about 100 Phillies cards, of which I needed about half. Pretty good ratio. I will be studying Dan's want list and hoping I'll be able to return the favor.  So here are some of the more interesting Phillies he sent.

2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Framed Relics Ryan Howard

This is pretty much the best card of the bunch. The funny thing about this card is that I had actually bought two of these, one with a white jersey, the other with a bat, back in 2009, but I gave them to a friend, and fellow Phillies fan, for his birthday.

2014 Topps Chrome X-fractors #37 Cliff Lee

I love the way the scans of these cards look. I only had one X-fractor from this set and it wasn't a Phillie.

2010 Topps Tribute Roy Halladay

These are the kinds of cards I never buy, unless I go specifically looking for them on eBay. As it turns out I have one other Phillie from this set.

2008 Ultimate Collection Cole Hamels #10

I've never even seen one of these cards. The base cards are numbered to 350.

2007 Upper Deck Goudey #76 Chase Utley

I had the Red Back version of this card. It's nice to get the base card.

2003 Bowman #243 Il Kim

Topps released four cards featuring Il Kim in 2003, this one, a Stadium Club, a Topps and a Topps Total. Each card features a photo taken in the same spot, with Kim either sitting on or leaning on a bench. These are all the major league cards he has. I only need the Topps Total for the set.

2002 Fleer Authentix #70 Fleer Authentix

Fleer used to produce so many different sets each year it was hard to keep up with. I used to stop at my local card shop (when I had a local card shop) and buy a couple of packs of whatever was new. I have some cards from this set but I didn't have any of the Phillies.

2001 Upper Deck Victory #491 Kent Bottenfield

Something you don't see on baseball cards every day, a pitcher batting. In the 3 three months that Bottenfield spent with the Phillies he had 17 plate appearances.

2001 Topps Archives #235 Robin Roberts

When I pulled this card from the box, I thought, this is a nice card but I already have it. In fact, I have the 2002 Topps Archives Robin Roberts, which is the same card only with the Topps Archives logo on the left side.

I'll have some more cards tomorrow.

Roy Halladay Photoshop triplet

In Roy Halladay's long 16-year career, he only played for two teams, the Blue Jays and the Phillies. So Topps didn't have too many opportunities to Photoshop him into a different uniform. They not only didn't miss that chance, they did it twice.

I just pulled this 2010 Topps card from a repack.

But Roy played for the Phillies in 2010. I already had this card.

Even better, I had this card from the Topps Phillies Team Set.

On this card, they got his uniform number correct. Also, the card back has the same photo but cropped differently. Actually, the back photo is cropped differently on all three cards.

Man, I love finding stuff like this.

2014 Topps Update - The Inserts

As usual, there are a lot of insert cards and parallels. Which is why you can't buy a blaster box and expect to get anything close to the 330 cards you need to complete the set.  Between the blaster and the rack box I bought, I pulled 107 base cards. Less than 1/3 of the set. I'm sure that I could use something from my college statistics class to figure out how many blasters I'd have to buy to have a good chance at getting the set but my common sense says, many, many boxes.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about the inserts.

Topps Update Fond Farewells Roy Halladay

Experienced collectors can take one look at this card and figure that there are autographed and relic versions of this set. You'd be right. You might think that this 15-card set is taking advantage of the season-long farewell to Derek Jeter. I image that's so. He's the only player from 2014 featured but the rest of the players in the set had long careers, mostly in one place. The other card I pulled is Al Kaline.

Topps Update World Series Heroes Roberto Clemente

 This is a 50-card set with a self-evident theme. I image you could feature Clemente in any themed set you could think of that highlighted some baseball superlative. Except maybe something involving pitching.

Chris Sabo was such an exciting player when he came up but didn't really have a great career. This is the first post-career Sabo card I have.

Among other things, something that Topps has been doing that I don't like, is extending insert sets from Series 1, through Series 2 and into the Update Series.

Topps Power Players Miguel Cabrera

This is one of those inserts that I actually didn't get in Series 1 or 2. This is now a 110-card insert.

Topps The Future is Now Oscar Taveras

This is another set which is now stretched to a 90-card set. I only mention this particular card because of the tragic death of Traveras in a car crash last Sunday. If you were watching Game 5 of the World Series you heard about his death. I was working on scanning my Topps Update cards while I was watching the game. The very next card I picked up after hearing about his passing, was this card. It made me real sad. He was only 22-years-old.

2014 Donruss - The Inserts Part 1

I'm not feeling the love out there for 2014 Donruss. But I bought a hobby box of this stuff and I've got posts to get out. I promise only one more, sometime next week.

Donruss Press Proof Silver

Donruss/Pinnacle pretty much were the kings of parallel sets. Panini, in reviving the brand has, so far, kept this under control. This sort of thing, Press Proofs, Artist's Proofs, 1st Day Issue and similar ideas were all the rage in the late 1990s. Somehow, this card is made more desirable by foil stamping it "Press Proof" and serial numbering it to 199. The backs look exactly the same as the base set.

Donruss Press Proof Gold

Gold foil and numbered to 99.

Donruss Team MVP

Another borrowed design from the '80s, this time from 1989 Donruss. The "MVP" logo is also from that time frame.

Donruss Signatures

The box promised three hits - two autographed cards and a memorabilia card. Here's the other auto.

There are 50 of these in the set. I'm not too excited about the two I got. Poor photographs, a horrible orange and yellow color scheme and sticker autos. What's to love?

As for the memorabilia card, that was a no-show. I went on Panini's web site and found out how to make a complaint, which I did. I'm curious as to how responsive they will be. I'll keep you posted.

Donruss Elite Dominator

Not a bad looking shiny card based on another ancient Donruss set which I'm too lazy to look up. These are numbered to 999. I also got the Curt Schilling card from the 30-card set. I'm showing this one because the scan looks better.

Donruss Hall Worthy

I don't remember a specific past Donruss set like this but it's a fairly unoriginal idea. I can't argue with the idea of Roy Halladay eventually being in the Hall of Fame, but I suspect he'll go in as a Blue Jay, not a Phillie. I got two of these (the other Johan Santana). These are ugly.

Donruss The Rookies

The last one for today. In the mid to late '80s, "The Rookies" was a separate set, sold in a playing card sized box. They had the same design as the base set of that year but with a different border color. For this, Panini borrowed from one of the unattractive sets ever, 1988 Donruss.

2012 Topps Museum Collection - First Look

First, and probably, only, look. This is a new super-premium set issued by Topps this year. I never buy much from a set like this. For one thing, they don't sell blasters of sets Like Topps Museum Collection down at the local Enormous Mart. For another thing, the price. A box of this is going to set you back a minimum of $200 on eBay, most likely closer to $225. There are 4 packs per box, 5 cards per pack. At $200/box, that 1$10 a card!. OK, you get 4 hits per box. But you know as well as I that there are hits and there are hits.

For sets like this I generally troll eBay looking for Phillies cards. I can usually find enough at a price I'm willing to pay without too much trouble.

The base cards a certainly attractive. They are printed on heavy white card stock and have a nice fell to them. I wouldn't say that the design is very original in appearance. Upper Deck A Piece of History, anyone (but this is much nicer)? I picked up Halladay and Cliff Lee from the same seller for a total of $3.83 including postage.

This gives me a righty-lefty set.

Then there is this card.

There are 4 variations to the base set, Blue, Copper, Red and Green. This us the Blue Variation, numbered17/99, for $5.00.  All I need is to get some variation on the Hunter Pence and Cole Hamels cards and I'll have all the Phillies from the base/base variation set.

I also went for one relic card.

 This card is a Topps Museum Collection Primary Pieces Single-Player Quad Relics. Try holding your breath while you read off the name. I nabbed this for $10.45 including postage. A fair deal I thought. There are at least 2, and maybe 3 separate bits of cloth on the card. The upper left is clearly a different weave. I think the upper left is separate as well. Not sure about the bottom two pieces.  Do you notice something odd about the text in the "Quad Qualities" box. The 2 quality is written with a smaller type font and the spacing between the lines isn't consistent. It's like it was typed up in Microsoft Word by someone with a poor understanding of the format controls.

2012 Topps Stickers - First (and only) Look

Baseball card stickers. I can take 'em or leave 'em. I bought a blaster of this product last year and it turned out pretty blah. This year I only bought a handful of packs. Still pretty blah. Not much change from last year. The logo cards have lost the foil look. The fronts have a variation of the 'surf board' from flagship Topps, which is, I think, I good idea and done well. The photos are the usual group of mixed action and posed shots. Topps also brought back the mascot cards. Here's a small sample of what I pulled.

I bought 6 8-card packs. These yielded 7 mascot cards. But at least I pulled the Phanatic.

If there is a Mantle card in the set I'm happy to see it. It's card #27. There are 7 of these Legend subset cards. This is the only one I pulled.

Like last year, this is actually two stickers, one for each logo. As such there are two numbers on the back, 152 (Cubs) and 160 (Phillies).

I pulled 2 Phillies, the Phanatic and the logo sticker, pretty good for only 6 packs. As I'm writing this (on 4/5), Halladay just won the first game of the season, a 2-hit, 8-inning 1-0 shutout of the Pirates. Paplebon for the save.

The craziest card I pulled. Man, that looks nasty.