Cardinals From COMC

I have very specific places that I try to find my baseball cards.  New releases, autographs that are $5 or more, higher end singles are usually off of Ebay.  Almost all of my lower end cards come off COMC.  I usually add cards to my cart for a few weeks, usually as I am sorting out cards, and check out every couple of weeks.  COMC has flat rate shipping, which keeps cards that cost fifty cents really close to that price after shipping is factor into the overall cost.  Ebay, not so much.  

I find some really great looking cards on there, brings back a lot of good memories from long ago.  The brands and sets are fun to look at, as well as the different players.  

I made a post on the last day of 2017 about what I wanted to accomplish this year in terms of my collection and the different posts that I make in this space.  My goals were simple.  I had four of them, so let's run through them really fast, and then get to some baseball cards.  

1. I wanted to assemble fewer current year sets.  I have done really well with this goal.  So far, I have put together a Topps Series 1 base set and a Topps Heritage set.  There was also the 1983 inserts from the Topps base set, but I considered that a set project.  I am not sure how many sets have been put out between Topps and Panini, but I have missed a lot of them.  Verdict: Thumbs up  
2. More single cards. Just scrolling through my past months posts, I would say that this has also been fairly successful.  Some of my 1990s Cardinals posts are more player focused posts, but my last few posts, minus those Cardinals posts, include a single card of an NC State player, a single card of a Durham Bulls player, an Evan Longoria relic card, a Madison Bumgarner autograph, and a pair of posts about some new Rays prospects/players who have appeared for the Durham Bulls this year.  Verdict:  Thumbs up 
3. More projects.  I have posted one, granted I completed that one project, but I can still do better here.  I have wondered if this isn't a great topic to write about as this year has gone on.  At different points I have averaged a post per day in this space.  In recent year, I have been posting two to three times a week.  Roughly a dozen posts per month.  Makes it hard to squeeze in the other posts about single cards.  I feel like those posts take longer to write, so they get squeezed in the whole time management thing.  You know, wife, kids, and work all come before writing about baseball cards under the guise of a giant wooden bull landmark in a nearby baseball stadium.  Verdict: Thumbs down 
4. More Durham Bulls and Cardinals posts:  I have done well with making my 1990s Cardinals posts and Project Durham Bulls posts.  Throw in plenty of other posts about other Cardinals cards that I have traded, or bought, same with the Bulls.  Verdict: Thumbs up 

Which brings me to this post.  I feel like this post fits with several of these goals: more single cards, along with more Cardinals cards.  I would love to turn some of those single cards posts and Cardinals posts into some time for older sets and players.  I know the 1990s Cardinals posts cover that to some extent, but those 1990s cards are some of my favorite sets in my collection.  

Enough talk.  Let's look at some cards.  

My first card is from the 1998 Donruss Preferred set.  I don't have this entire set, not really close, but I have plenty of single base and insert cards.  This is from the Great X-Pectations insert set, which paired veteran players and young players based on their position, or some sort of similar playing attribute.  The front of this card features Rangers Hall of Famer Ivan Rodriguez.  The back has a younger Cardinals player.....

catcher Eli Marrero.  I generally really liked this set, I just always wished that there had been a little cleaner look to the back of the card than what is actually there.  The placement of the brand logo, MLB logo, and Players Association logo, along with the Copyright information give it that back of the card feel.  The brand logo is repetitive from the front of the card, and I think the could have used space towards the bottom of the card for the copyright, MLB logo, and Players Association logo.  The younger player side would have had a smaller scale picture and design, but I think it would have been a cleaner look.  

Serial number has to go somewhere.  If you didn't collect cards in the 1990s, don't laugh at the print run of 3,000, that was a serious number back in those days.  

Next card is also a Marrero.  

This is from the Leaf Rookie & Stars set, also a 1998 product.  I never put this set together solely based on the ridiculous price of the Troy Glaus rookie.  Nice player, even was a Cardinal for a few years, but not worth whatever his card in this set sells for, or sold for when it was released.  

Next, also an Eli Marrero.

or as Topps listed him on their cards Elieser Marrero.  All of these Marrero cards are prospect cards, yet he turned into a utility player.  He really was a good prospect and ranked as a top 100 prospect at the time he reached the Majors at the end of the 1997 season.  Two different events really wrecked his career.  First, he missed most of a season towards the beginning of his career with thyroid cancer.  The Cardinals ended up signing Mike Matheny, who then became the full time catcher.  

Marrero did return and was used as a utility player by Tony LaRussa.  He was actually he useful part and good player in that role, but he tore up his knee in a game at Wrigley Field in 2002.  The game probably should not have been played, as the weather conditions were horrendous and both teams were upset about playing.  Marrero played a few more years after the knee injury, had one good year with the Braves, but the rest of his career saw him limited to 50 games, or less per season, and he did not hit above .220.  

Next.  

Not a rookie card, but this is early, or late depending on how you are looking at it, in the career of Alan Benes.  He was better than Andy, at least prior to his shoulder injuries, he just did not play a very long time.  

Last one for today.  

Not a Cardinals card, but a card of a long time Cardinals player who also happens to be from the St. Louis area.  Bernard Gilkey was part of the wave of young players who replaced the 1980s Whiteyball Cardinals along with Ray Lankford, Todd Zeile, Felix Jose, and others.  Gilkey had some good years with the Cardinals, but was traded to the Mets in January of 1996 after the team signed Ron Gant.  

Gilkey's best season was 1996 with the Mets.  

He hit more than 30 home runs, drove in more than 100 runs, hit over .300, and had an on base percentage near .400.  He also landed a role in Men in Black missing a fly ball in Shea Stadium when he sees a UFO flying over New York.  Unfortunately Bernard had some problems with substance abuse, a bunch of DUIs, his stats dropped off, and he found his way out baseball.  

This is a nice card from one of my favorite sets, Flair Showcase, which was around for a fairly long time.  I think I might actually have something close to a complete set of these cards.  Even so, I know that I do not have this Row 0 card, which is serial numbered out of 2000.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 27 - Alan Benes

The better of the two Benes brothers who pitched in the Majors.  Well, it was shaping up that way until his shoulder fell off.  His first full season in 1996 was fairly ho hum with 13 wins and an ERA of nearly 5.  Then there was 1997.  His record was only 9-9 through the beginning of July, with ERA of 2.89, and 3.5 WAR.  At the time he went on the disabled list, he never returned that season, his numbers were right in line with pitchers like Kevin Brown, Curt Schilling, and Tom Glavine.

Not the top tier with Maddux and Pedro during that 1997 season, but a very very good pitcher.  Mind you he was only 25 and his numbers had been trending up to this point in his career prior to the injury.  Could the first half of the 1997 season have been a complete fluke?  Sure, but I tend to think that he was headed that direction.  Not a stretch to say that the numbers put up by Alan Benes in 1997 were better than anything posted by Andy in his 14 years in the Majors.

The Cardinals drafted Alan Benes out of Creighton in the first round of the 1993 Draft.  He was a pretty highly regarded draft pick and immediately made his way through the Minor Leagues.

He had baseball cards almost right away too.  Like all mid 1990s prospects, he had a bunch of cards in Bowman products, but I actually liked his Upper Deck cards from that era better.  Benes was in both the 1994 and 1995 Upper Deck base sets.

He was in the 1994 set as a Top Prospect.

A lot of these cards were draft picks from 1993, it might have been all, did not do that much homework on the checklist.  When I think of these Upper Deck prospect cards, I always remember the Billy Wagner rookie.  He was taken a few picks in front of Benes in that draft.  The Benes card kind of sticks out because of the uniform.  I was never quite sure where the good people at Upper Deck took this photo, but that Cardinals uniform is straight out of the 1980s.

It could be that this card was made at some sort of photo shoot, or if they took it while he playing for a Minor League team that wore the old polyester Cardinals uniforms.  I found a Dmitri Young card from 1994 where he is playing for the St. Petersburg Cardinals.....

and wearing an old polyester style Cardinals uniform.  Young played for the Cardinals A Ball team in 1993, Benes played there in the early parts of 1994.  The Benes card is a high number, second series later release, so it would have given Upper Deck time to have taken the picture after the season started.  I would lean that direction for the picture.  

Benes was also in the 1995 Upper Deck set as a top prospect.  

They use pictures of him in the polyester uniform again, even though he was in Double A and Triple A during the first parts of the 1995 season.  He actually pitched a few games for the Cardinals towards the end of that season.  I hate recycled pictures, and the effort on this card seems really low when you take into account that his 1995 Upper Deck Minor League card had an updated photo of Benes playing for the Arkansas Travelers.  They would have been the Cardinals Double A team at that point.

I still like the blue background on the 1995 Upper Deck card.  I always prefer to see what is actually happening in the picture when it's an action shot, but this backdrop seems like a good Upper Deck card design element from the mid 1990s.  

Is this a game shot, or is he throwing in the bullpen?  You will never know.  

Before we get to the Major League cards of Benes, I would like to put up one more Minor League card of sorts.  Upper Deck had some Arizona Fall League cards in their Collectors Choice product in 1996.....

which had an Alan Benes card.  There are some other Arizona Fall League cards which have been floating around in more recent sets, but the Minor League players in that league now just wear their team's Major League uniform with a Fall League hat.  I like these mid 1990s cards when the Fall League teams had there own uniforms.  

Not sure when the unis switched over, but I am sure it was some cost saving move.

Benes did not have a ton of cards once he reached the Majors, mainly because he had a major shoulder injury towards the end of the 1997 season and was never quite the same pitcher after that year.  I have it narrowed it down to three or four cards.  

First up is my favorite card of Benes, which is 1997 Topps base card.

Speaking of recycled pictures, if you look up the other Alan Benes cards that Topps made in 1997 they are either this picture, or a photo that was taken from this moment in whatever game he is pitching in here.  Why do I like this picture?

I like the background of the picture.  It's a nice action shot too, but the Cardinals had spent the first half of the 1990s with an astroturf field and blue walls in Busch Stadium.

It's how Busch Stadium looked during my childhood through my years in high school.  After the Rams played a few games there during the fall of 1995, the playing surface was changed over to grass and the outfield walls were painted green.  

I have good memories of the blue walled, astroturfed field of the 1980s and early 1990s, but the green grass and green walls were a nicer place to watch baseball.  The 1997 baseball cards were the first year where you could find a plentiful number of Cardinals with the green fixings of Busch Stadium in the background.  I like that on this Benes card.

A few more classics from the mid 1990s....

The Emotion XL cards were always pretty cool cards.  Sometimes I could clearly see why the cards had a certain emotion printed on the side, other times not.  Alan Benes is excited?  He looked this way.....

almost every time that he threw......

a pitch.  

Good effort though and I still like these cards.  You cannot get them all right, but I am just excited that a smaller set from the mid 1990s had a Cardinals player in it outside of Ray Lankford, Ron Gant, or Dennis Eckersley.  Did not get many Alan Benes cards in these types of sets.  

Next.  

Another classic 1990s set.  Still trying to figure out what the Crusades have to do with baseball cards, but the design is really nice.  Sad story behind this card.  A few years ago this guy with basically everyone of these Crusade cards, all of the color variations, was dumping them all on Ebay.  I tried buying the Lankford red variation, a print run of just 25 cards, but the card ended at almost $200.  I lost, but I won this Alan Benes card.  

Last one.  

Alan Benes does have an autographed card in the 1997 Donruss Signature set.  It's not very hard to find and is also very affordable.  For whatever reason, Benes signed all of his cards across his picture rather than the space for the autograph that was provided at the bottom of the card.  There were not many players who missed the memo on where to sign these cards, but curiously three of them were on the Cardinals at some point during their career.  Benes from above.  

Edagr Renteria also signed his picture, as did Larry Walker.  

Benes did pitch after sitting out the 1998 season recovering from his shoulder injury.  Between 1999 and 2003 he only managed to pitch in roughly 60 games.  He was on the Cardinals until the 2001 season when he became a free agent and signed with the Cubs.  Benes would also pitch briefly with the Rangers and tried a comeback with the Cardinals in both 2004 and 2005.  Neither was successful.  

You can find an occasional Benes card from the later years of his career, but they are rather sparse,

although its nice that Topps made a few cards of a player who could have been great, minus the injuries, even though he did not ever live up to his potential.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 24

I did a little bit of work on a few 1996 sets late last week.  Always a good year for the Cardinals cards.  It was the first year that LaRussa managed the team and the cheap August Busch IV sold the team to current owner Bill DeWitt.  The Cardinals made it all the way to the seventh game of the National League Championship Series before losing to the Braves.  It was the real standout season, as far as team success went, for the Cardinals during the 1990s.

So many different players and different cards to pick from, I decided to go with a player who hasn't gotten many posts on my blog, but also has a cool card.

I went with an Emotion XL of pitcher Alan Benes.

Player first.

There were two Benes brothers who made the Major Leagues.  A third was a Minor Leaguer with the Cardinals, but never cracked the big squad.  Many 1990s baseball fans know Andy who was a big innings eater who pitched for the Padres, Cardinals, and Diamondbacks.  I actually think Alan was better, but his career was derailed by shoulder problems.

1996 was the first full season for Alan Benes.  He started 32 games and won 13 for the National League Central Champions.  Not his best year though, which came a year later when he went just 9-9, but had a 2.89 ERA and 144 ERA+.  He missed about 10 starts that year, but if he had pitched enough innings to qualify for the league leaders that ERA+ would have placed him fifth in the NL ahead of pitchers like Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Curt Schilling.

The younger Benes came back with the Cardinals as a relief pitcher, but was not ever really effective again.  He bounced around for a few years in the early 2000s with the Cubs and Rangers.

Now the card.

The Emotion cards ran for a few years in the mid 1990s.  Small sets, but the cards were generally pretty nice.  Some could even be classified in the cool category.  Since the Cardinals lacked big hobby names for the years these were put out, most of their cards in these sets are pretty ho hum.  Like Alan Benes is excited.  Tom Pagnozzi was gritty, Royce Clayton was concentrating, John Mabry adroit (I shit you not), Brian Jordan was patient, and Ozzie was the Wizard.

The Emotion cards are pretty easy to find and fairly inexpensive.  I've even seem some boxes around at card shows and on Ebay for less than $40.  Pretty fun box to open too.

1998 Donruss Crusade Alan Benes

Long ago in the 1990's card companies started making parallel cards.  Most sets by the late 90s had at least one such insert set.  Notice I said one parallel set and not the five or six that often appear in the sets of today.  Last week's Topps release of Gypsy Queen contained at least that many if not more.  Sure, the numbers on the backs of the cards today actually appear to be smaller and many of the parallel sets frequently run a one out of one and several other versions up to 100.  At the end of the day, there are plenty of collectors chasing the modern parallel sets, but when you look at the price of some of the parallels on Ebay and COMC some are disappointed at the return on their cards that are limited.  I attribute the low prices on parallels to the fact that multiple parallel sets actually mean that the number of parallels available on the secondary market is higher than in the past.

One of my favorite parallel, or chase sets of all-time is the Donruss Crusade set.  Specifically the 1998 version.  Last week I had the chance to add a nice Alan Benes card from this set which helped me close out my Cardinals set I was putting together over the past few months.

1998 Donruss Crusade Alan Benes

I paid less than $5 to buy this card and have it shipped to me on Ebay, but always enjoy closing out a set I am trying to put together.  While I was assembling the set it was clear that some of the high end players featured in this set, which again is printed to /250 or /100 for the purple version, carry far more value than the parallel cards of today.  A parallel print run card of a star player with that print run would be easy to find for less than $5.  However, the star players and high grade cards in set frequently sell for more than $50.  For example, three cards from this set that I looked into were a Cal Ripken, Bernie Williams, and Randy Johnson.  All three cards ended north of $50.  Imagine if you could sell you cards with a print run of 100 or 250 for that much.