My super collection of Ray Lankford took a big step forward this week with the addition of a 1998 Skybox EX-2001 Ray Lankford Essential Credentials Now. There are very few Ray Lankford printing plates floating around in the world, so low print parallel cards are the next best thing in my world. In fact, if Beckett would care to price accurately, they would find that parallel sets such as the Essential Credentials, Circa Rave, and Upper Deck Exclusives cards often draw premium prices. Even on minor stars such as Ray Lankford.
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Essential Credentials Now Ray Lankford 22/49
The Essential Credentials cards were featured in all the releases of the Skybox EX sets starting in 1996 and running all the way through 2003. The print run for each card Essential Credential varies, but they are tough finds and have an attached premium on them after ten plus years on the market. Every set also features a Now and Future version of the cards. The 1998 set is my personal favorite. The cards are everything to love about a set from the 90s.
I found this card on Ebay about a week ago and probably paid a little bit more than I would have liked to, but I haven't even seen one of these cards in three or four years. It seemed like a good idea to put one into the collection while one was available and floating around. It adds to my two other Essential Credential cards of Lankford.
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Essential Credentials Future Ray Lankford 50/52
#39-I fully appreciate vintage baseball cards and have plenty of cards that predate 1983. The next set on my countdown of cool sets is the antithesis of vintage baseball cards. I know many vintage collectors who look at some of the modern cards and cringe especially sets like the 1998 Skybox EX-2001.
Before I get rolling on this set: If this were a set name list, this card set would be in the bottom ten. Easily. The name is ridiculous and was a follow up to the 1997 Skybox EX-2000 set. Also a terrible name. The set line continued through 2003 with equally troubling and ridiculous names.
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Mark McGwire
There were several other plastic like cards issued sometime in the late 90s and early 2000s, but this set was always the best of them in my opinion. One argument against plastic cards is the fact that you can have any imperfections with plastic cards. Very true of card sets such as Topps Tek were the picture and design were printed directly onto the card surface. However, the Skybox EX cards always had a raised surface around the player picture that make it subject to the same imperfections as other cards. In fact, take a quick scan of secondary sales sites and you will see that there are graded cards from this set there are clearly imperfect.
The set itself was a 100 card set with an exchange card of Kerry Wood available for a total of 101 base cards. The Wood card might be the best card in this set. Since it was an exchange card and short printed there are obviously fewer cards available, but it also seems to be one of those cards that was an early release of a player, not a true rookie card, that people treat the same as a rookie card issue. The set and base cards can be difficult to locate and the boxes that are stilling floating around are often not cheap.
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Kerry Wood Exchange
The Skybox EX-2001 set did have insert sets and even some autographs. However, the real chase cards in this set were the Essential Credentials cards. I have had a few write ups about these cards in the past featured in a highlight about my Ray Lankford collection. The Essential Credentials were a double parallel set. The Essential Credentials Now and Essential Credentials Futures sets were serial numbered to different numbers with one set having an ascending run with the card numbers and one have a descending run with the card numbers. Complicated I know. There are several up on Ebay write now for triple digits, or close. The last completed sale was a Larry Walker out of 22 for more than $200.
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Craig Biggio Essential Credentials Now
Overall, this set was among the first plastic card sets out on the market and the best of the bunch in my opinion. The fad surrounding these cards has faded and there hasn't been a similar card release in a very long time. Since the set is fairly small it is not very difficult to assemble in a short time. It's a fun set build too.
Like the 1998 Skybox EX-2001 set? Not in my Top 50 for the past 30 years is the 1999 Skybox EX-Century set. I had thought long and hard about putting the 2003 Skybox EX set here, but I think the 1999 model edges it out. The 1999 issue of the Skybox EX set featured a similar design as the 1998 set, but I feel like Skybox did a good job of cleaning up the design a little bit.
1999 Skybox EX-Century Barry Larkin
Mainly, I like how the player name is written going down the side of the card and the team logo has been incorporated into the side of the card. Also similar to the 1998 set, the 1999 set was really about the chase for the Essential Credentials cards. The parallel sets were again set up the same way with the dual sets with varying numbers.
1999 Skybox EX-Century Essential Credentials
The other factor that made the 1999 Skybox EX issue was the insert sets. The earlier sets featured inserts, but they didn't fit the overall feel of the set at times. Later sets started to dabble with autographs and jersey pieces. The 1999 inserts I felt fit the feel of the set very well and were still in the mode of cool 90s inserts too. One of my favorite inserts was the Favorites for Fenway set which somehow tried to predict the All-Star teams for 1999. I guess they missed with J.D. Drew.
1999 Skybox EX-Century J.D. Drew Favorites for Fenway
There are writers who have those blogs that are only about one set. I do not think I could do that. It's hard enough for me to stick to a consistent theme, like Cards That I Love, for month let alone do it for a longer period of time. The Night Owl 1985 Topps Blog is a masterpiece. If you have not read it, you are missing out. Went all out and even did the Traded set too.
If there were ever going to be a set that I could turn into its own blog, it would probably be some modern small set like the 1998 Skybox EX 2001 set. That was one of my favorite sets from the late 1990s. Twenty some years later, it is still one of my favorite sets from that era.
Not the Ray Lankford card mentioned in the title, but this is the base card. Half acetate, half foil. It is the quintessential modern baseball card. If you do not own any of these cards, I suggest you find a few for your collection.
Now for Ray.
I did not do parallel sets in the late 1990s. If I pulled one from a pack that was fine, otherwise I was not going to go chase down a bunch of serial numbered cards with different colored foil or the whatnot. However, I really liked the 1998 Skybox EX set, and I decided to venture out on a limb with this set by finding a few Essential Credentials cards.
There are not many Cardinals in the set, and a hard to find McGwire parallel in the late 1990s has outrageous written all over it. So, instead I went after the Ray Lankford cards. There are two parallel sets in the 1998 Skybox EX set. There is a Essential Credentials Now and Essential Credentials Future. There is some formula to how they are serial numbered, but that's a long story. I like to think of them as a pinkish serial numbered set, and a gold colored parallel set.
I ended up with the Essential Credentials Future card, which is the pink parallel, as my big find from this product.
I have the Essential Credentials Now card too, but I am sticking with the Futures card for this post.
This is a card that I love for several reasons.
First, it is just a great looking card. Who collected in the late 1990s, and wouldn't want to own a card like this of their favorite player? I ended up with several of these cards that are not Lankfords, and I love those too. Maybe not as much. I also own the 1999 Skybox EX Lankfords, which look a little different.
Second, I had always collected Ray Lankford cards, but this card tilted me into doing more with finding some of his good cards. It is tough to collect cards of some of the late 1990s players, their parallels are expensive and hard to track down. By no means do I have a great Lankford collection, but I do consider it very nice. This is my favorite of his tough parallel cards that I own.
I have mentioned the Essential Credential parallels in several past posts and am happy to say that I was able to track down another card from this parallel set featuring a player with Cardinals connection. Today's card comes from the second issue of the EX sets launched in 1998 as the EX-2001 set. The cards are basically half plastic and half cardboard. Kind of an interesting look. Anyway, the parallel cards for these sets, Essential Credentials, can be tough cards to find.
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Fernando Tatis Essential Credentials Now
I have actually seen a few copies of this Fernando Tatis which has one of the higher print runs in the set, checking in at 98 copies. The copies of the Tatis card however have always seemed to drift towards, and north of, $20 which is a little bit steep for this card. A few weeks ago this copy popped up on Ebay and I was able to talk the seller down to a little bit more than $10. Tatis is not a Cardinal on the card, but spent the second half of the 1998 season with the Cardinals after he was traded with Darren Oliver for Todd Stottlemyre and Royce Clayton.
It's opening day, so I am trying to spend most of my day watching baseball. With that goal in mind today's post will be a little bit shorter than normal. I picked up a new Larry Walker card a few weeks back and haven't had a chance to post yet on this space. It would fall into the category of Ebay purchases made for less than $5 which is surprising given that the card comes from a really good chase set and features a pretty good player.
2003 Fleer EX Essential Credentials Future Larry Walker
I have featured a few other Essential Credential cards over the past year in this space and highly recommend collectors taking a look at the EX sets to see if their favorite player or favorite teams have players in these sets. The Essential Credential cards are actually a dual parallel set, there is a Futures and a Now parallel, with one usually being a high number and one being a lower number. With this Walker, who played his final two seasons with the Cardinals, I would assume that this card is the higher print run of the two Essential Credential cards in this set.
I've got to drop a Ray Lankford update in every once in awhile. The last time I made a post with a new Ray Lankford card a Twitter follower asked me when I was going to post the cards that I normally post again. I will answer the question early this morning and say: later today. Every collector needs an interesting player or niche for their collection. For me, I enjoy finding my Ray Lankford cards. They are generally inexpensive and has been retired long enough that the cards are a good challenge to track down. This past week I was actually able to add two more cards to my Ray Lankford collection.
1999 Bowman Chrome International Refractor Ray Lankford
First up this morning is the 1999 Bowman Chrome International Refractor Ray Lankford. The International Refractors are limited to a print run of 100 and differ from the normal refractor in the background of the card. The normal Bowman Chrome card has the same picture of Lankford, but there is a dugout in the background of the regular card. The International Cards have pictures or flags in the backgrounds depending on the year of the card. I rather like the flags, but this is still a nice new card to add to the Lankford collection.
1997 Skybox EX-2000 Ray Lankford Essential Credentials
I have picked up several of the Essential Credential cards for Ray Lankford over the years and posted them in my space here. However, I had never picked up a copy of the 1997 version until this past week. Skybox ran the Essential Credentials set as a straight parallel the first year they ran this set. Meaning that this card is serial numbered 299 along with all the other Essential Credential cards. The 1998 set began the leveled print runs.
It has been a crazy week and I have not had much time for cards this week, but I am through one crazy week at work and ready for some down time. I am going to start my weekend with my original player collection: Ray Lankford. Mark McGwire once said that he was the best protection that he ever had in the lineup. He actually hit fourth behind McGwire during most of the 1998 season. I would like to think that my Ray Lankford collection started way back in 1991 when I spent my Sunday afternoons watching the Cardinals in old Busch Stadium with my father where I witnessed Ray Lankford, as a rookie, hit for the cycle. Still have my scorecard. Six years later I took up collecting Ray Lankford cards. Fifteen years later I have hundreds of Ray Lankford cards and am always on the lookout for rare cards. It's a fun collection still since he played a long time ago and the majority of his cards were made in an era when there were few parallels and printing plates. For this blog entry I have selected my ten favorite Ray Lankford cards.
I have also included the 1991 box score from the September 15th Mets-Cardinals game. You will also note that Rheal Cormier pitched the game of his life that afternoon.
One of my primary player collections is former Cardinals outfielder Ray Lankford. I have shared my love of Lankford cards on this blog before and am always on the lookout for new cards. The problem is that after twenty some years of collecting a minor star I am at a point where I am mainly looking for things like printing plates and parallels with extremely low print runs. Printing plates and low prints runs are usually pricey gets, but one of the great parts of collecting a player like Ray Lankford is that I have never spent more than 50 to add a card of his to my collection. Ever.
The highest I ever went on a card of his was $43 for a copy of his Essential Credentials card from the 1998 Skybox EX-2001 set.
This set is highly collected and the Essential Credentials parallels often sell pretty high. A star player out of the set might easily reach triple digits in price and could go for multiple hundreds. It's just the price you sometimes pay if you want to collect a specific player.
Have you ever asked yourself where your line is on a single card of your favorite player? Being a Ray Lankford fan, I really never thought I would have to answer that question until this week when a copy of his 1998 Donruss Crusade came up for auction on Ebay. There are two copies of the Crusade cards, the green copies numbered to 100 and the red copies numbered to 25. I already have the green copy.
Which left the red copy. I always watch cards on Ebay and then bid at the last minute. No need to bid five days ahead of time. Many theories on this, but that's for a different post. The seller of the card had several Crusade cards up for auction and the pricing quickly escalated with the Lankford card. The morning of the end of the auction the card was sitting in the high 30s. I was more than willing to go into the forties and even push it into the 50s if I needed to go there.
I came home from work, ate dinner, and checked the auction. I was crushed....
Fifty dollars for a Lankford card? Sure. I think I could have convinced myself to go higher still, but I could not look at the screen and honestly justify spending $172 on a Ray Lankford card. The card ended up at $182. Needless to say, I did not put in the winning bid. I am sure at some point another copy of this card while pop up and I will have a chance to add it to my collection. Hopefully for less than $182. In the meanwhile, I picked up some other cool Crusade cards.
I am starting a new thread of posts starting tomorrow morning which I am titling My Baseball Card Top 50. Last fall I did a countdown series of posts showcasing my Top 50 Sets from my thirty years in card collecting. I had a lot of fun going back through all of my old sets, scanning cards, and getting back into some boxes of cards that I had not seen in years. I thought about doing another similar thread this summer and might make it an annual fall tradition to do some kind of list or countdown with my cards. So, here's the run down on my latest set of posts:
I went through a whole mess of my cards with this question in mind: What players have had the greatest impact on the hobby of collecting baseball cards during the last 30 years I have been collecting? My list started out at well over 100 players and through a series of decisions you may or may not agree with a narrowed the field of players down to a cool fifty. Some of the players on the list started their careers before 1983 (3 years) while others have only played briefly. I made a sample post below:
MY BASEBALL CARD TOP 50 #UNRANKED RAY LANKFORD 1990 Upper Deck Ray Lankford RC
Hobby Impact-
When I am out looking for trades, or trying to buy cards, and ask people if they have Ray Lankford cards I often get a confused looks and many moments of stunned silence. Is it because people are reluctant to let Lankford cards out of their collection? Or could it be that Ray Lankford is also, secretly, this person favorite player to collect to? After more than a decade chasing down all the best Ray Lankford cards that I can I have come to the conclusion that people either totally ignore Ray Lankford's hobby impact, or it's giant and people are really hoarding his cards in large quantities. You decide.
On The Field Impact-
While most of Lankford's career was spent as the best player on a lot of bad 1990s Cardinals teams, he did manage to make three postseason appearances with the Cardinals in 1996, 2000, and 2004. His best years probably were between 1996 and 1998 when he spent a year and a half batting fourth behind Mark McGwire and the other half hitting in front of Brian Jordan and Ron Gant. His career OPS+ of 123 ranks even with Tigers and Dodgers outfielder Kirk Gibson and in the same neighborhood as Eric Davis and J.D. Drew. Mark McGwire said of Lankford, "He's the best protection I've ever had in the line-up, that includes in Oakland" Jose Canseco cries a little bit every time he hears that quote.
Favorite Card-
1998 Skybox EX-2001 Ray Lankford Essential Credentials Future
A cool 1990s baseball player with few printing plates, autographs, or relics means you have to go with a cool chase card. Maybe a 1993 Finest Refractor. Could have gone with the Topps Tek variations too, but I have also liked the Essential Credential cards. Limited print runs and difficult to find, but not impossible. I own both the Future and Now versions of this card. A must have for any Lankford card collector.
It has been a great week for the Ray Lankford collection. After collecting Lankford cards for more than a dozen years, it is rare when you see a new card that you need to add. I have my favorites and will still get excited when I see a cool Lankford card that I already own, but I am ecstatic when I fill holes in my collection. This week I have already added a 1998 Fleer EX-2001 Essential Credentials Now card numbered out of 49. I cannot remember the time I added two new Lankford cards in a week. It's probably been four or five years. Anyway, here is the new addition:
1999 Fleer Brilliants Gold Ray Lankford /99
The scratches are on the case
This set was only a one year run for Fleer, but it is actually one of my favorite sets from the late 90s. Fleer Brilliants had no autographs or game used cards, but was simply constructed on a few inserts and variations on the base cards. There were three primary variations in the set: Brilliant Blues, Brilliant Golds, and 24 Karat Gold. I am still missing the 24 Karat Gold version, but was happy to add this short-printed card to my collection. Boxes of the Fleer Brilliants product can be found really cheap if you are looking for a fun and inexpensive box to bust.
Skipping to the other end of the decade for my second 1990s Cardinals post to write up one of my favorite players from that era. The late 1990s were not kind to the Cardinals after the 1996 trip to the National League Championship Series. The pitching thinned out and the team had a hard time cracking the top half of the league. Still, a lineup featuring Mark McGwire always made things entertaining.
McGwire was the most popular Cardinals player on the field for good reason at this point for good reason. Home runs.
As a baseball card collector, 1999 was sort of a golden year to be a Cardinals collector. There was the huge enormous glut of McGwire cards. They were everywhere. So much shine and gloss. Too many expensive cards. Looking back on it now it's fun to go to card shows now to pick up his cards that were $10 and $15 inserts twenty years ago from the dollar card bins.
Loved the Gold Label cards from the late 1990s. Probably one of my favorite products of that era, the rehash job Topps has done doesn't compare to the original.
The Cardinals had some pretty popular players around the baseball card hobby beyond Big Mac. Two of the more highly sought after prospects around the hobby at the time were J.D. Drew and Rick Ankiel. Drew's first cards actually came out in 1998, loved his Fleer Update card, but the craze spilled over into 1999. He had a terrible year, baseball card collectors still were all over him.
I stopped going out of my way for J.D. Drew cards at some point in the middle of the summer. I moved on to being an Ankiel collector. Seemed like a solid pitching prospect. He had a bunch of Minor League stuff throughout the summer in products like Best and Just Minors. His first "real" card was his Fleer Update.
I am 99.9% certain that I ended up with a copy of this card the first day that the Fleer Update set was available for sale. There were some other young players beyond Drew and Ankiel that were worthy of my time back then. I dabbled in Fernando Tatis and Edgar Renteria cards. Of course there were always Ray Lankford cards.
My favorite Lankford card from 1999 was his Essential Credentials card out the Skybox EX-Century product. Tough card to find at the time.
I haven't seen a copy of this card in forever. Happy that I have it in my collection. It's one of my favorite Lankford cards.
There were plenty of scrubby players that filled the rest of the roster, I will get to them at some point in the near future. For now, I want to focus in on the young players on the Cardinals roster. There was one other really popular Cardinals player with a rookie card that year, rookie second baseman Joe McEwing. Super Joe really deserves his own post.
Which brings me to Placido Polanco. Not sure anyone really cared about his cards at the time he came up with the Cardinals at the end of 1998, he didn't really hit. He reappeared in 1999 and did a little bit better, but if you've ever spent anytime watching Tony LaRussa teams you know that he likes the utility players. Can't have a LaRussa roster until you have a light hitting infielder who can play everywhere.
Sort of think it's Tony giving himself a chance long after he finished playing....
The Cardinals had McEwing play great for a half a year, they dumped him for Jesse Orosco. Polanco stayed on the Cardinals. The Cardinals had Adam Kennedy, who was a highly thought of 1st round draft pick, they dumped him for Jim Edmonds. Polanco stayed on the Cardinals.
During his time on the Cardinals, LaRussa played Placido at every single infield spot which is probably a huge reason he stuck around as long as he did. He also eventually started to hit, but that was more in the 2000s, this is a 1990s post.
What about the baseball cards? Placido Polanco actually first showed up on a baseball card in 1998 in the Leaf Stars set. I don't actually own a copy of that card. I know it is surprising. One day I will fix this problem. He did have a few 1999 cards, but it's not like he popped up in a ton of sets. There was one in the Sports Illustrated set, pictured above with J.D. Drew. That was a nice looking set, but my favorite 1999 Polanco card was probably his Pacific base card.
It's a really simple card, but I like that it's got a frameless action shot of Placido. The little rookie diamond on the bottom is a little bit busy, but the rest of the card is quality. He has another Pacific card in the Crown Collection set which is an action shot from, going out on a limb, the same at bat. I will put that card up in a minute. Meanwhile, here is the back of the Pacific base....
I am not saying that this is somehow a great looking card back, but Pacific always had a nice blurb about the players. I'm surprised that Polanco stole 19 bases in a season. Not really a fast player, so kind of interesting fact.
Last card. Here is the Crown Collection card. Again, same at-bat as the Pacific base card.
I really do like this card, it's one of those really simple card products that has some good photography. However, I think it might be a little overly simple, especially for Pacific. Come on, I went die-cut cards and foil. Serial numbers too.
I have a lot of favorite Cardinals. I feel like I probably put that in half of my posts every month, and with Placido it was a short run with the Cardinals, but he was an enjoyable player to watch. I'm glad that the Cardinals got Rolen, was a little bummed out that they included Polanco in the deal, but you have to give something up to get something back.
Always kind of enjoyed the few years that he played with the Tigers. My father in-law and brother in-law are both big Tigers fans and I felt like Polanco gave us a common player to root for back in the day. Even if he beat the Cardinals every once in awhile....
We all know that the Cardinals got along just fine in the end.
This past week was the twentieth anniversary of Fernando Tatis hitting two grand slams in one inning. It does not feel like it has been that long, but here we are.....
Tatis has also gotten a few mentions recently too with the play of his son Fernando Tatis Jr.. Kid is off to a really good start.
Here are this week's rules:
This post is only of cards of Fernando Tatis on the Cardinals both in picture and in label. No "now with Expos" or "now with Cardinals" cards.
My actual favorite Fernando Tatis card is his 1998 Skybox EX Essential Credentials card.
The ten cards are ranked in order of how much I love them.
10. 1999 Fleer Tradition - I like the St. Louis Stars uniform on the card.
9. 1998 Fleer Update - I like the St. Louis Stars uniform on the card. This is also the first card that Fernando Tatis had in a Cardinals uniform. In fact, this is the only 1998 Cardinals card of Fernando Tatis. There were not many update sets that year, no Topps or Upper Deck. This was it. Picture looks familiar.
8. 2001 Topps - One of his last Cardinals cards. Always liked this picture with the dark background and the white home Cardinals uniform. Also like that the card is landscape.
7. 1999 SP Signature Autograph - This was a good set for Cardinals autographs. Love Fernando's signature. You can clearly read the "F. Tatis", but it has a really unique.
6. 2001 Fleer Autographics - One of Fernando's last autographs as a Cardinal. I had a ton of these cards, always sort of liked these.
5. 2016 Bowman - Remember when Fernando Tatis Jr. was a White Sox prospect. Hard to believe that the Padres got him for James Shields.
4. 2016 Topps Archives - The first year I collected was 1983. Big fan of the design. I am not sure how exactly it is connected to Fernando, but this is a great card.
3. 2000 Fleer Tradition - Great looking card. Complete rip off of the 1954 Topps set.
2. 2000 Pacific Revolution - My favorite Cardinals autograph of Fernando. I like the green background on this card. Nice look.
1. 2001 Topps Heritage - Glad that Topps found a way to squeeze Fernando into this set. This had been released after he was traded to the Expos, obviously could have easily not been a Cardinal here. Also has to be about his final Cardinals card.
