Complete Set: 1999 Skybox EX Century

Last week I posted an unfavorable assessment of the 2000 Skybox EX set and deemed it one of the worst baseball cards sets to occupy space in my collection.  While the 2000 issue of the EX line is terrible Fleer generally did a really good job with this product and I usually made a point to open a box or two every summer.  I posted a write up on my favorite product from the EX line, the 1998 Skybox EX-2001 set, during my 30 Year Top 50 countdown last year.  This week I decided to take a few minutes to assemble my 1999 Skybox EX Century set while I am working on my reorganization project.

1999 Skybox EX-Century J.D. Drew

The 1999 Skybox EX-Century set was the last set of this line that seemed to fit in with the first two EX set issued in 1997 and 1998.  The 2000 set obviously strayed from the course and Fleer would not return to the original look and feel of the set again until the last EX set was issued during the summer of 2003.  Like all of the EX sets, the 1999 EX-Century set is relatively small at 120 cards.  The first 90 cards in the set are veterans and the last 30 cards in the set are younger players and prospects.  The usual cast of characters from the late 90s appear in the base veteran set of 90 players.  Name a team and think of their best three players and chances are that those are the cards in the set for that team.

1999 Skybox EX-Century Pat Burrell 

The "hot" card in the 1999 EX-Century belonged to Phillies prospect and Golden Spikes winner Pat "The Bat" Burrell.  The Phillies selected Burrell first overall in 1998 after they drafted and failed to sign J.D. Drew the previous season.  Burrell played his college baseball at Miami and was viewed by many as a can' miss prospect.  Of course, the usual suspects hyped up his cards and they were pretty popular for a short time.  The card above was the only card I was missing from the set last week, I am sure that I traded for something good back in 1999, and completed this set for less than $0.75.  

2011 Topps 60 Joey Votto Jersey/Autograph

There are cards that are pretty self explanatory.  A Joey Votto card is in that category.  He's a great player and has not signed much over the years keeping his autographs in high demand and high priced. There are some cheap options out on the secondary market, but if you are going to go for a big card than you might as well go for it.  I figured that this copy of a 2011 Topps 60 Joey Votto Jersey/Autograph would be a good addition to the collection.

2011 Topps 60 Joey Votto Jersey/Autograph

As a Cardinals fan there have been many rivals that have annoyed and been avoided in my collection.  For example, I will usually trade anything and everything from the mid 80s Mets teams.  Dwight Gooden.  Not a fan.  Same with Strawberry, Hernandez, and Carter.  Trade Bit.  There have also been plenty of Cardinals rivals over the years that I have respected and enjoyed watching.  The Bagwell and Biggio Astros teams of the late 90s and early 2000s come to mind as a team that butted up with the Cardinals every year, but I did not mind the players on the team.

Votto comes to mind as a player in the same category as the great Astros teams.  I am not a huge fan of Reds, especially Dusty Baker, but I really enjoy watching Votto.  I was fortunate enough to see Votto play for the Louisville Bats in AAA and was impressed with him as a hitter.  Votto's first two and half years in the majors were nice, but the last three have been great.  Basically, Votto is an on-base machine with a good glove and good power.  He's led the National League in walks the past two years and on-base percentage the past three.  In fact, he led the National League in walks despite only playing 111 games.  ESPN writer Jayson Stark compared his season, prior to injury, to Babe Ruth.

Since it's Friday and I have a few extra minutes I will go ahead and post a bonus card for this evening.  My newest Votto card is my second copy of his autograph in my collection.  I was able to pull a copy of his 2004 Bowman autograph out of a pack shortly after the set was released.

2004 Bowman Signs of the Future Joey Votto Autograph 

I've been posting a lot lately about different sets in my collection.  The Bowman sets are an annual addition to my collection, but I usually put the cards into a box and set them aside for a few years.  I try not to get too high or too low on players for a few years until they have some established value.  Every once in awhile I get something good to show off and I cannot complain about this pull almost a decade later.  The Bowman autographs from 2004 are not the nicest looking cards, but the autographs are on-card and are pretty highly sought after on the secondary market.  

Complete Set: 2001 Topps HD

Second complete set of the week.  I am on a roll with my reorganizing project this week.  Today I am going to show off a set which I completed in part way back in 2001 which was a first for my collection.  I have never actually had the base for the 2001 Topps HD set until this week when I completed a trade to pick up a handful of commons to finish filling in the wholes in my set.  So, let's have a look at the set:

2001 Topps HD Derek Jeter

The 2001 Topps HD set is a 120 card set which features some heavy card stock and great photography.  The product was actually introduced in 2000 and ran for two years before Topps pulled the plug.  I believe that Topps intended for this set to be sort of a high end Stadium Club set, but I do not remember the boxes being that expensive (70ish range at the time of the release) and even today can be found cheaply on the secondary market.  There is a mix of rookies and veterans in the set, but there is no Ichiro and no Pujols, so for a 2001 set the rookies are not really that important.  

2001 Topps 20/20 Roberto Alomar

There were a few straight forward inserts in the Topps HD set including Images of Excellence and the 20/20 set pictured above.  The Images of Excellence set features Hall of Famers and the 20/20 set is a die cut featuring current players.  Both sets can be found cheaply on Ebay and have some great photography.  Worth a look.  

My Favorite Cards:

I usually pick a single card, but for the Topps HD set I could only narrow it down to a list of two.  Five or six years ago the list would have been longer and it was also tough for me to ignore the Images of Excellence Nolan Ryan card featuring a sweet picture of him in a rainbow Astros jersey.  So, I will go with the lesser of my two favorite cards first.  

2001 Topps HD Rick Ankiel

Why were there Rick Ankiel cards after 2001, but before 2007?  Definitely a player with a few too many cards floating around, but after his stellar rookie season Ankiel was deserving of seeing a few cards.  I always really liked this Topps HD card which did a great job of capturing Ankiel in the middle of his wind up.  It was fun to watch Ankiel pitch for a year and half, strike out more than a batter an inning, and generally dominate his competition until his famed meltdown in the 2000 NL Divisional Series.  Luckily, Topps actually put a second cool Ankiel card in this set which also needed a little bit of time on my blog.  

2001 Topps HD Rick Ankiel Clear Autographs

Interesting that Ankiel got a sweet autographed card with a picture of him hitting long before he became a full time position player, but this is my favorite card in this set.  One of my first undertakings as a collector of autographs was to put together a complete master set of autographs and game used relics for a set.  I tried a few unsuccessfully during the 2000 calendar year, but first managed the feat with this set.  There are actually very few autographs and relics in the set.  More importantly, after buying one box of this product I pulled the best autograph in the set (at the time) belonging to Marlins prospect Adrian Gonzalez.  The other three autographs, Ankiel, Todd Helton, and Mark Quinn were pretty easy to find.  The relics too.  Most of the relics are younger players with a Steve Finley and Jeremy Burnitz sprinkled in to the mix.  Not a very difficult set to complete, but a great first stepping stone for my collection.  The autographs are on transparent cards with on-card autos.  The relics are also on clear cards.  

2001 Topps HD Ramon Hernandez Jersey Card

Unfortunately, I broke apart my relics set at some point in 2007 for a few trades.  I have not really attempted to reassemble the set, but might post that as a challenge for myself in the next week or two.  It would be fun for old times sake.  

2007 UD Premier Ozzie Smith Premier Patches

I spent a little working on my second copy of a 2007 UD Premier Ozzie Smith Patch card.  Last April I picked up a copy of this card in a trade.  At the time I was really excited and considered the card one of my cooler Ozzie cards.  My newest version of this card is equally as sweet as the first.  Well, close.

Just like my first copy, this card is serial numbered out of 78 and features three pieces of patch from a game used Ozzie Smith jersey.  While my first copy has some sweet Cardinals patches, this card has three pieces of Padres jersey.  The first two patch pieces are clearly from the Padres road uniforms from the early eighties.  The background, or polyester, is brown with yellow patches outlined in orange.  The bottom piece is a little hard to tell, but there is a tiny piece of orange on the left hand side of the L.  The seller could not decided if the third piece was a Padres patch, or possibly a piece from the bat on the front of the Cardinals uniform.

2011 Bowman Hak Ju Lee Futures Game Jersey

A quick post tonight on the Rays shortstop of the future.  Entering this season one of the most exciting players on the Durham Bulls roster, in my opinion, was shortstop Hak Ju Lee.  I picked up an autograph from Lee a few weeks back and did a write up on the hot shortstop prospect.  Unfortunately, Lee has been diagnosed with a torn ligament in his knee and will be out for the remainder of the season.   This Bowman card represents the second big Lee card that I have picked up this spring.  There was also a small one that I posted this past weekend.

2011 Bowman Hak Ju Lee Futures Game Jersey

I was able to trade for this Lee card and was extremely happy to pick up a copy of this Bowman card.  I've used the phrase "dry" in previous posts to describe cards and sets that seem to disappear from the secondary market and rarely make an appearance.  I have been looking for this card since January and have found the market to be extremely dry.  I have seen one copy of this card on COMC and have never seen it on Ebay during the past five months.  Honestly, I know that Bowman puts out a set of Futures Jersey Cards every year and that the cards appear in the regular Bowman set, Bowman Sterling, and sometimes a few other sets.  The 2011 Bowman set was no different, but the triple relics cards in the Bowman base were extremely popular and are generally off the market and in private collections.  There are lots of great names in the set including Mike Trout and Shelby Miller.

Complete Set: 2000 Pacific Aurora

I am now a weeks into my reorganization project and I have started to pull together a few complete sets.   Slowly, I am going to get a few posted over the next few weeks, but I am going to not repeat anything that I already put on my 30 Year Top 50 countdown from late last year.  That group of sets is intact and I have generally kept most of those cards separate from the general stash of baseball cards.  So, here's my third complete post set of the year and my first since the reorganization project began.


I actually stumbled into sorting out my 2000 Pacific Aurora cards this weekend while helping a regular trade partner find a copy of a really cool Ken Griffey Jr. card.  More on that card later.  I went ahead and sorted out the whole set while I was looking for that one card.  The late 90s and early 2000s Pacific sets are generally all the same, but each has it's own wrinkle which makes it unique in some way.  Aurora actually started out in 1998 as a retail product which was advertised as a per pack insert.  Most of the inserts were missable, but the set slowly evolved over it's three year run into its final run in 2000.

2000 Pacific Aurora Will Clark

The cards in the 2000 Pacific Aurora set are all horizontal and feature a large player picture with a colored background and a small circular black and white photograph in the top right-hand corner.  Like all Pacific sets the Aurora set was mainly driven by parallel cards and insert cards.  The most common of which was the pinstripe variations which were a one per pack card.

2000 Pacific Aurora Pinstripe Craig Biggio

The rest of the parallels in the set are the typical colored foil parallels with different print runs for the different color of foil.  While this set does not seem to stand out in any way or shape from other Pacific sets the aforementioned Ken Griffey Jr card is one of my favorites and one of the best examples of a card company properly handling a star player changing teams.  Last fall I posted an entry about my thoughts on the common practice of airbrushing.  The executive summary is that I do not like the idea and card companies should find a better way to handle players changing teams.  Which leads me to:

Favorite Card in the Set

2000 Pacific Aurora Ken Griffey Jr. 

2000 Pacific Aurora Ken Griffey Jr.

What team doesn't hold a press conference these days when they trade or sign a new player?  Pacific managed to put out two versions of the Ken Griffey Jr. card (#133) in the 2000 Aurora set by snapping a few pictures of the future Hall of Famer trying on his Reds jersey at the presser introducing him after his trade from the Mariners.  What's not to love about the two cards?  There is no airbrushing on these two cards and Pacific managed to capture Griffey in both his old Mariners uni and also with his brand new Reds digs.  Well played by Pacific and a great idea for a current card company to follow at some point in the near future.  

The Whole Kitchen Sink Highlights Part 1

What do you do with all the little cards that you pick up?  I am not really big into the photo albums and I do not have enough time or posts within the framework of my week to post all of the cards that I trade for or buy on the cheap.  The other day I was working on a trade for a 2011 Bowman Adron Chambers autograph.  I needed the card for my Cardinals autograph collection since Chambers was apart of the 2011 World Series champions.  I looked for the card when the 2011 Bowman set was first released, but left the card alone when it drifted north of $5.  Chambers is basically a minor league player and there is only so much that I am willing to spend on this card.  Fortunately, I was able to pick up the card and give up a pair of mid 90s inserts.

2011 Bowman Adron Chambers Autograph 

A few days ago my trade partner asked me why I had not made a post about the Adron Chambers card.  Honestly, I do not have the time to post all of the cards that I trade for in a given week.  Extremely happy to own the card and I do not regret the trade for a second, but time is one of the biggest limitation to my blog.  I am not much into the photo album or posting every card into the photo albums on my Twitter and Facebook pages.  Sometimes, I will snap a picture and Tweet out a few things that I pick up, but not many.  So, here's what I am going to do:  Once a month I am going to make a post showing the best of the rest.  It still will probably not show everything that walks into my front door, but it's a start.  I am thinking a the 5 best will make my monthly Whole Kitchen Sink Highlights.  Adron Chambers will be a bonus.  So, this is the premier edition:

1.  2012 Topps Pro Debut Gold Hak Ju Lee Jersey

2.  2010 Topps Pro Debut Mike Montgomery Autograph

3.  2009 UD Signature Stars Alexei Ramirez Autograph

4. 2012 Bowman Kez Carter Autograph

5. 2011 Bowman Chrome Brock Holt Autograph