Card of the Day: 2010 Topps Chrome Purple Refractor Nick Johnson

Oh, Nick. I wish your career would have turned out better. If only you weren’t made out of glass.

Card of the Day: 2001 Topps American Pie Joe Pepitone

This was a fun little set, and I liked the Pepitone card a lot. I need to pick up some more of these.

Morning Coffee and the Blog Roundup 11/10 – AL Gold Glove Edition

Presented without comment…

Oh, that link goes here, by the way. Wtf, voters?

Speaking of crappy decisions…

That video just never fails to amuse me. I think Alou is the funniest part of it.

Added a new feature yesterday, the Card of the Day. I have a lot of scanned cards sitting around that I want to show but can’t figure out how to work them into proper article/posts, so I thought this was a good middle-ground. I hate making low-content posts, but as long as I’m working on some true content-filled posts, then I’m good with the little bite-sized stuff. I guess that’s something I haven’t talked about much: my goal is to have at least one post with true content on weekdays. Sometimes life intercedes, but I’ve been doing that fairly well to this point, I think. Part of it is a goal of providing content, part of it is continuing to hone my writing in between work assignments and working on my novel.

Going to start porting over the posts from my “I Was a Teenage Prospector” site on the weekends; when I created that site, this site was purely Nationals/Expos, but with a more diffuse approach on this site, albeit still heavily Nationals/Expos-leaning, I think it’s okay to bring that stuff over and maybe eventually restart the concept on this site. It was a fun site to write, it was just too much for me to maintain with everything else I work on.

I’m rapidly approaching 700 posts, but I don’t plan on celebrating in any way. I think 1,000 is when I’ll really do something up proper, maybe hold my first giveaway or something along those lines. We’ll see.

I guess that’s all I have to say for today. Let’s see what other folks were saying!

• Core Contrarian talked about Bud Selig’s erroneous belief about Abner Doubleday.
• The Greatest 21 Days featured Chuck Malone, soon to be of the 1990 Project.
• Collector From Across the Pond polled a verdict on those ridiculous Pujols fakes.
• Texas Rangers Cards featured a 1987 minor league card of Tom O’Malley.
• White Sox Cards continued his birth years series with a 1963 Topps card of Conan O’Brien. Sweet!
• Crinkly Wrappers showed off a Mel Ott jersey card. Love those old fabric GU cards.
• JD’s Wild Cardz showed a King Arthur Allen and Ginter mini. Holy crap I need that card!
• Can’t Have Too Many Cards showed a card of Lee Smith as a Yankee. I had no idea!
• The Great Orioles Autograph Project has a Willie Greene autographed card. Cool.

And that’s it for today. See you guys tomorrow.

Trade from The Sandlot

Remember that David Wright card I listed? Well I had a few people interested, and Joe from The Sandlot had some cards that intrigued me, so we pulled the trigger on the trade. His end arrived yesterday, and the Wright card should be in his hands either today or tomorrow. What did I manage to land? Let’s take a look…

2006 Flair Showcase Showcase Signatures /35

Nice one. I have a few Cordero autos in my collection, but I couldn’t turn down one that was numbered this low.

2000 Fleer Fresh Ink

Another Jose Vidro auto to add to my collection.

2007 Topps Co-Signers "Blue" #/250

Always happy to add another numbered Zimmerman card to my collection.

2007 Topps Chrome White Refractor

I’m a refractor junkie, and I really like the white chrome design from 2007. In addition, I think Hughes has a bright future, so even if he is a Yankee, I wanted.

The wear on this and the vidro are from the cases.

A sweet little gray swatch of a Hall of Famer. It has stitching, too! I like to pick up HOF stuff when it’s possible, so, again, this was a no-brainer.

So thanks, Joe! I hope you like your card.

The 1989 Project Day 1 – Jerome Walton

Well, here we go again, folks. I think I’m more prepared for this, though, as I learned a lot from the 88 project.

Today we’re starting with 1989 NL Rookie of the Year Jerome Walton.

 

1989 Donruss Baseball's Best

 

There was no bigger-deal rookie in 1989 than Jerome Walton, bar none. It’s a testament to how weak that class was, however, that a guy who hit .293/.335/.385 was the ROY. But it was 89, and WGN was still king for us guys…so the Cubs were still as hot as when Mark Grace made his debut the previous year. Which meant Walton cardboard was scorching hot as far as we were concerned. Never mind that I thought Dwight Smith was the better player, I needed Walton cards.

 

1989 Donruss The Rookies

 

Walton made his major league debut on April 4th after a torrid Spring Training, especially on defense, where he earned rave reviews. He also hit .284 that spring and stole seven bases, living up to the Cubs’ hopes for him.

 

1989 Fleer Update

 

I think what really won “Juice” the ROY, though, was his hitting streak. From July 21st to July 31st of that year, he hit in 30 straight games (a Cubs record), and it was a big deal. Capital letters Big Deal. It was written about quite a bit, and of course there were always questions of whether he could match DiMaggio (as if). The streak ended as these cards started hitting the market, and he was red-hot. We all had to have his cards.

 

1989 Score Rookie and Traded

 

July 13th was arguably the high point of Jerome’s 1989 season. He went 4 for 4 with a double, 2 RBI. Of course, he also stole four bases on June 18th, and drove in three runs on July 7th, so he had some high-water marks that year. Marks he would never again live up to, but we were eating it up.

 

1989 Topps Traded

 

The rest of Walton’s career is depressing. He started falling off in 1990, and only hit .219/.275/.330 in 1991. The Cubs let him go after a .127/.273/.164 1992, and he bounced around the league, managing a decent year with the Reds in 1995, when he hit .290/.368/.525, but fell off another cliff after that. He landed with Tampa Bay in 1998 for his final season, and it was just as odd a sight as you might think:

His last team was actually the Yankees, though, as he tried out for the team in 1999 Spring Training, but got cut:

 

1989 Upper Deck High Numbers

 

This was the crown jewel of the Jerome Walton experience in 1989. Believe it or not, there was a time when this was a $20 card. I had it entombed in plastic like my Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck card, and figured it was a solid long-term investment. These days it’s a quarter. Sad coda to the whole affair. But there were better long-term rookies in 1989.

2010 Topps Chrome Blaster Break

I was feeling a bit out of sorts last night. Not sure why, but I suspected that opening a blaster of cards might cheer me up a bit. And I knew I wanted to bust some Topps Chrome, especially after learning that the retail version was different than the hobby version (of which I am already in on a group break). So, after some cajoling of my dearly beloved, we went to Target, and I was able to score the next-to-last blaster of Chrome. And what a blaster it turned out to be.

The base cards, of course, are great as always. I’ve been a chrome junkie since I returned to the hobby in ’03, and these may be my favorites in that time. I didn’t care for the 10 base design, but something about it works in Chrome.

 

Of course I got a Zimmerman.

 

Of course, the big question for me was the refractors, as I collect them. Thankfully, the published odds on the box seem to be crap, because I got a refractor or some variation of it in every pack. Like this Adam Dunn refractor:

Out of the 8 packs, I got an equal amount of xfractors and refractors. That means xfractors are a lot easier to pull, which is a little disappointing, but it’s still nice to get them, and I dig the early 80s video game vibe to this year’s design:

So that leaves me with two other refractor-type pulls from the box. The first was this gorgeous purple Nick Johnson refractor. It’s numbered, but I can’t remember the numbering. Maybe 299?

The next one’s really cool. It’s a blue Topps 206 Dan Haren refractor. I think the odds on this one were like 1:420 packs. It’s numbered to 199.

But I saved my absolute favorite card of the blaster for last.

That’s right, the first Stephen Strasburg I’ve pulled and it’s an xfractor. SO happy with that one. Overall, I’m ecstatic with the blaster. I’m definitely hoping to pick up a hobby box or hell even a retail box, as they’re just as much fun.And to me, that’s what this is really all about.

Box Break: 2002 UD Authentics

I haven’t disguised my love for this set, that’s for sure, and yet I’ve always found the boxes tantalizingly out of reach, either too expensive or difficult to find, so when I found a box going for an obscenely cheap amount on Ebay, I bid and sat on that auction. Yesterday the box finally arrived.

Stated odds, as you can see, are 1 in every 16 packs. The box is obviously meant to echo the 1989 box design, as everything in this set is a loving homage to that original set. Including the setup when you open the box:

As you can see, they’ve used that same paper material that UD used in their 1989 issue:

The whole thing gave me nostalgia goosebumps, down to the authentic (heh) feel of opening the first pack.

Now, as to the actual content of the box. Well, first, I should note that I was supposed to get two reverse-negatives card in this box, but I only got one, this Jason Johnson:

And that’s A-okay by me. The reverse negative gimmick is easily the crappiest, most annoying thing about this set, as I’d have preferred to get the base Johnson, which I still don’t have. Sigh. Oh, I’m also okay with it because I not only beat the odds for relics on this box, I pulverized them. 1 in 16 packs, right? 18 packs in the box, so maybe, tops, I could have gotten two if I was extremely lucky. Yeah, I got four, including a reverse-negative game-used card and a gold reverse-negative game-used card. I didn’t even know the latter existed. My first ever hot box!

Very, very cool stuff. I love it. Oh, I also got two inserts: their version of the Baseball Heroes, numbered to 1989

And a 1989 Flashback Mark Grace, numbered to 4225 (though that Cubs picture is more recent than 1989, he didn’t have that facial hair until the 90s).

I also got a mess of base cards that I needed; only two doubles in the whole box, and a small stack of cards that I already had. Look for those cards to wind up in some trades in the near future.

I’m still quite a bit short of the set, so I may pick up another box when I have some money. Overall, I give the box an A for the presentation, the hits, and the collation. Totally worth the money and exceeded my expectations. Oh, and all these cards save the base cards/reverse negative are available.

Another Helping of Reggie

I realized I hadn’t posted any new Reggie cards in quite some time, despite getting them from various sources. So let’s take a peek at what’s new in my collection…

2007 1989 Reprint

Man oh man was I giddy to find out about this set. Classic players on the 1989 design? Sign me up. My first order was Walter Johnson and Reggie Jackson, and they’re even nicer in person than scans – nice thick card stock, heavy gloss, sharp photography. Well worth the price.

2010 Vintage Legends

2010 Vintage Legends is another Throwback/Anachronism set that I’m putting together. So of course I had to have this card. And I like it. Not much more to say.

1972 Topps

I originally picked this up to flip on eBay, but once I got it in my hands, I decided I just couldn’t get rid of it. It’s also my oldest Reggie card at the moment, I believe.

1984 Fleer

Nice failed check swing there, Reg. Not my favorite of cards, as I don’t care for the 84 design.

Game-Used and Auto: Nick Johnson

Okay, technically this is a card of a Yankee, but it was too sweet to pass up, and I’ll always like Nick, even if he’s made of glass.

SPx Young Stars

Absolutely one of my favorite cards in my collection. Sure, the design is busy as hell, but oddly enough I feel like it works, especially with the striped uniform piece, which fits in with all the lines and angles. I think a plain white swatch would have ruined the look. It’s a nice cut sig, as well. Definitely gets an A+ in my book, and I’m going to hold on to it for a long time.

2002 UD Authentics #2

Time to take a break from National finds…

Say what you will about Barry Zito, I like this card a lot. It totally captures the spirit of 1989 Upper Deck, and the colors on his uniform mesh so well with the colors on the border. A card like this is why I think this design was begging to be re-used at least once.

I think this card also captures the spirit of 89 Upper Deck really well; the photography is a bit sharper than the 89 set, but the contrast of dark and light is so well-done that I think it’s what they were shooting for with some of those darker pictures and just weren’t able to capture. I think a lot of thought went into the shot selection for this set.

Here we get to the first mediocre shot of today. I’m not really sure what to say about it other than it’s A-Rod from his few years with the Rangers and was one of the more expensive cards of the set.

Man, there sure are a lot of Yankee logos on this card. But see what I mentioned in my last post about saying a player signed with a team when it’s abundantly obvious on the card? I mean, ABUNDANTLY. Overall, I’m not sure how I feel about these kinds of cards. The first example I can recall was Darryl Strawberry’s 1991 Donruss, Score, and Upper Deck cards:

I guess if you’re trying to beat the other guys to show him in his new uniform, I could see it, but it seems like a waste of a potentially good card. I also take the view that a given set is a historical record of the previous season, so these kinds of cards should be saved for update sets or later series. I don’t know. I’m not crazy about the Giambi, but I get why they did it. Thankfully, it’s the only one in the set.