Set Appreciation Post #19- 1995 Select Certified

 This week's Set Appreciation Post has a special guest, my six year-old daughter.  

She is a kindergartener who has some strong opinions on life and a love of art work.  Parts of our house are frequently converted into art galleries for whatever art she is working on at the moment. Her art does not always stay on paper though. Sometimes, it appears in other forms.  

For example, after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C. this spring my computer was covered in sticky notes. Each sticky note was its own piece of art work, but it also somehow formed a larger work.  

The explanation would take several minutes and there would be no baseball cards in this post if I wrote everything she said about the sticky note art work.

She already has some opinions about my baseball cards.  

For example, according to her, my baseball card boxes are all pretty boring because they are plain white. She thinks that I should have the outside of the boxes match the baseball cards that are on the inside. At some point last year, she attempted to decorate the boxes for my autographed cards, which all have the letter "N" scribbled on the outside of them. She had bigger plans that her stopped. According to her, someone wrote on the cards inside the box, so she wrote the first letter of her name on the outside of the box.  

They match and she is willing to add more art to the outside of the boxes.  

I have not allowed her to continue to do her art work on my baseball card boxes, but that did not stop her from doing one final piece of art work on my box holding my copy of the 1995 Select Certified set. The cards are bright and shiny, so the box should match, right?  

Here is the top.  

Here is the front.  

Her median was 1990 Upper Deck team logo stickers.  

Let's talk about the cards. 

Each of us will provide a take on the 1995 Select Certified set.

Here is the basic design of the 1995 Select Certified cards.  

I really like the dark greyscale background behind the color photos, which is something different. I also like the card stock and texture. It's not exactly a thick paper stock, but definitely has a sturdy feel to the card. There is a glossy finish, which I think is interesting on a card that uses a greyscale background. 

My daughter does not like this design and wants to know why a brighter color like purple was not used in the background. She suggests a pattern that you could color in like a coloring book.  

That's actually not a bad idea.  

I love the breakdown of the stats by team on the back of the card. It's like the Bowman cards, but with more color and better graphics. Sure, you get less numbers, but you still get a good sense of how the player faired against each team. Bonds torched the Expos in 1994, which is saying something because they were easily the best team in the National League.  

My daughter likes that Barry Bonds is willing to wear earrings on his baseball card, but thinks at least one team should use a pony or hearts as their logo.  

My favorite card of a former Durham Bulls player in this set is Chipper Jones. His early cards are always fun, looks a little silly here with the huge swing. I will add that the number of former Bulls players in this set is fairly small and the other choices had rather blah looking pictures.

The card did not scan well, but Chipper is actually apart of the Rookie subset in Select Certified and the background of the card is half grey and half gold. That stamp does not exactly show a ton of creativity.  

My daughter also picked out this card for her favorite Durham Bulls player in the set, although her explanation started out with, "Have you ever ate lunch with boys at school?" and ended with "making farting noises".  It took her about two minutes to explain the whole thing, I will let your imagination fill in the middle of the conversation.  

My favorite Cardinals card in the set......

is Bernard Gilkey.  

Several of the Cardinals players are pictured in road uniforms, which are nice, but are also a gray uniform on a dark gray background. I do like the action shot on the front of this card, but also really like the way that the white home uniform with the red helmet and uniform accessories pop on the dark background.

My daughter did not pick a favorite Cardinals card, because "none of them are very nice looking" and added a "No, thank you" when I told her that she needed to pick a Cardinals card. Later in the post she does pick a former Cardinals player card for her favorite overall card from the set.  

Let me off-road a few other things I like about this set, but the little one rejoins the conversation.  

One of the best parts of Select Certified is the Gold Mirror parallels.  

I am generally not a parallel person, but this one is well done. There were a few Gold cards in every box, no serial numbers, and it's the only parallel that came in the product.  Over the years, I have put together the complete set of Cardinals and I am close to having all the former Durham Bulls players. Good looking set of cards.  

If you don't dig the dark background of the base cards, these are a really nice option and they are generally not that expensive compared to the price of other popular 1990s parallels at the moment.  

Moving on.  

Select Certified is a small set with only 135 cards in the set. There were 28 Major League teams in 1995, so there are roughly 4 to 5 cards for each team. Small sets generally tend to stick to the big names on rosters and not stray into many subsets or special cards. Select Certified has a bit of both.  

The Dodgers got a special card for having three players win the Rookie of the Year in a row.  

Eddie Murray also got a special card for collecting his 3,000 hit in 1994.  

Always cool to see these kinds of cards to mark special accomplishments, especially on a small checklist like Select Certified. There are also Rookie Subset cards. I posted one at the top of the post with the Chipper Jones card, but the scan did not do a good job of showing the card.  

Here is another Rookie subset with a picture taken using my phone's camera.  

There are actually some pretty big names in the Rookie subset with Jeter and ARod. A few others including one later in the post.  The Jeter and ARod are not actually rookie cards, but still early cards that are fun to own. You can see the two-toned background a little better on photograph. 

Let's bring the little one back in to finish up the post and talk about our favorite cards.  

My daughter is up first with Mark McGwire.  

She picked this card, because Mark McGwire is the only player in the set with long hair.  

That's it, her whole reason for picking the card. I will add for context that her favorite Disney Princess is Rapunzel, and that she keeps her hair long and it must be styled everyday before she goes to school. I would like to see Mark McGwire rock some bubble braids.  

I went a little different direction for my favorite non-Cardinal, non-Durham Bulls card from this set.  I decided to pick the Hideo Nomo rookie card.  

  

Every year the baseball card world goes crazy of a certain player or two. In 1995, there was Nonomania. Everyone wanted a Hideo Nomo card and this was one of my favorites. A great card from the mid 1990s, I think if I made a list of the best cards from my time in high school, this card would be on the list.  

How does it rank on my list?  

It has been a hot minute since I have done a set appreciation post. The last set I added to my list was the 2001 Donruss set last November. The set was terrible. The 1995 Select Certified set is definitely not terrible. In fact, it's a pretty good set of baseball cards. 

Narrow it down.  Looking at the top half of the sets I have posted, I think it's better than Emotion XL (they are kind of similar though) and the 2017 Heritage Minor League set. Topps TEK feels like the right neighborhood.  I am actually going to give Select Certified the slight nod given its a set that you can actually complete, unlike Topps Tek's 8,100 card craziness.  

19. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

18. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

17. 2001 Donruss 

16. 2000 Topps 

15. 2012 Bowman Platinum 

14. 2000 UD Ionix

13. Topps Lineage   

12. 2002 Bowman 

11. 1988 Donruss 

10. 1995 Emotion XL 

9. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

8. 1998 Topps TEK 

7. 1995 Select Certified 

6. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

5. 2001 Fleer EX 

4. 1979 Kellogg's 

3. 1998 Metal Universe 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 42 - Bernard Gilkey

No pictures of Bernard from Men In Black. 

Bernard Gilkey was in the wave of prospects that the Cardinals called up in 1990 to replace the WhiteyBall Era players.  Willie McGee was traded towards the end of the season, still won the National League batting title, and Vince Coleman was not going to re-sign with the team.  The Cardinals reconstituted their outfield with Felix Jose, who came over in the trade for Willie McGee, along with Ray Lankford and Bernard Gilkey. 

According to Baseball America, Lankford was the 19th best prospect entering the 1990 season, Felix Jose was the 51st best prospect, and Bernard Gilkey was not on the radar for whatever reason.  Admittedly, he showed little power in the Minors and mainly just stole a bunch of bases every year.  Gilkey did have good discipline at the plate, so he at least drew a lot of walks.  His career Minor League on-base percentage was .361. 

In 1991, Lankford and Jose both established themselves as everyday Major League players.  Gilkey hit .216/.316/.313, which earned him a spot on the bench and only slightly more than 250 at bats.  It didn't help that Milt Thompson had a career year of sorts. 

Baseball card wise, I am not sure that any Gilkey rookie card was highly desired enough to be considered valuable.  There are a bunch of them, they have never had any value, and can be found for pennies all over the internet, or in the cheapy boxes at card shows. 

I am partial to his 1990 Leaf card. 

Gilkey had a really unique stance, video in a few minutes, but I am not sure he had it when he first got called up to the Cardinals.  

Not a rookie card, but an early card and one of my favorite all-time Gilkey cards is his 1992 Upper Deck.  He's running over the bullpen mound in Busch II catching a ball.  

The picture is everything on this card.  Great action shot.  

After a shaky first season, Gilkey turned around his performance and became a good player for the Cardinals, save for a down year in 1994.  He ended up surpassing Felix Jose and Mark Whiten as the complementary piece to Ray Lankford in the Cardinals outfield.  Gilkey had OPS+ of 127 in 1992, 129 in 1993, 85 in 1994, and 124 in 1995.  100 is an average player.  The Cardinals ended up settling on an outfield with Gilkey in left, Lankford in center, and Brian Jordan in right.  

After the 1995 season the Cardinals traded Gilkey away to the Mets after signing away Ron Gant from the Reds.  The Cardinals were looking for offense and more power, Gilkey offered the least of the three outfielders prior to Gant's signing.  Gilkey went on to have a career year with the Mets in 1996.  He hit .317/.393/.562 with 30 home runs, 117 RBIs, and 33 doubles.  

Some say the season got Bernard an acting gig in a Will Smith movie.  Something about aliens running around New York City.  It would be funny to see a UFO flying over Shea.  

Gilkey had some off the field issues, which hurt his on field performance.  He bounced around between the Diamondbacks, Red Sox, and Braves for a few years.  Gilkey was out of professional baseball by the end of 2001.  

A few more cards.  

I have always been a huge fan of this card.  It's a 1993 Upper Deck.  Gilkey and Lankford are on the sides of Ozzie Smith and Geronimo Pena is in the back.  These were the three young players who eventually stood out amongst the group of players that were promoted to replace the WhiteyBall Era players.  Pena is the least recognizable of the group, good player when he was healthy.  He was never healthy.  Kind of a good passing of the torch card from Ozzie, the best player on the 1980s Cardinals, to Lankford and Gilkey.    

Two more.  This is a great picture of the old Busch Stadium on this 1995 Upper Deck.  I would recognize that blue color on the dugout walls and the outfield walls in the background anywhere.  If you go back up to the Upper Deck card where Gilkey is running over the mound, the wall behind him in left field is that same color.  The blue went away in 1996 when the team switched over to a grass field.   The walls turned green.  I also like that you can see the arches on the top of the stadium.  Great still shot that does a great job of capturing some of the signature elements of the stadium.  

 Last card for this post.  This is also from 1995, it's a Flair.  Really nice set from the mid 1990s.  The design from this era is a little bit more gaudy than the designs from the 2000s, but I dig the sparkly stuff in the background.  The card stock on these are really nice too.  One of Gilkey's last cards as a Cardinal, this is my favorite from the tail end of his run in his hometown.  

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 90s Cardinals #1 - Milt Thompson

Why I am making this post?  

I have always tried to do themed posts on Mondays.  I think it started out two or three years ago when I did posts about a recently purchased/traded for card, but I quit doing those since I make those types of posts all of the time.  I still do, they just aren't forced into a theme.  Plus, I borrowed the idea from a group of local Raleigh-Durham collectors on Facebook who would make a similar post on Mondays.  I scratched that idea at some point a year and a half ago and went to the Venerable Old Card posts about cards pre-2000s.  These were fun posts, but the vast majority of them ended up being about Cardinals players from the 1980s and 1990s whom I grew up watching. 

My two main collecting interest at this point in my life are Durham Bulls and Cardinals cards.  I have been making some themed Durham Bulls posts for awhile now, I figured it would be fun to make a series of posts about some Cardinals cards.  More specifically I am going to go with the Cardinals players from the 1990s.  I know it was a really rough decade for the team, but those years in my life were the end of middle school through my college graduation.  I cannot even tell you how many Cardinals game I went to during that time, but it was a large number.  Excited to share out a few cards of the players I grew up watching, at least until I run out of players.  

For the first post I am going to kind of combine the whole Durham Bulls thing with the 1990s Cardinals.  There aren't too many players who have appeared for both teams, but this guy is one of them.  
_________________________________________________________________________________

Milt Thompson was sort of the prototypical 1990s Cardinals player.  He had spent a few years with the Braves and Phillies before the Cardinals traded Steve Lake for him.  I'm not sure the Cardinals had intended to use him as starter since they also had Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, and Tom Brunansky.  However, Willie McGee ended up only playing 58 games in 1989 which meant that Milt Thompson ended up with almost 600 plate appearances.

The 1990 Cardinals were just terrible, not Milt's fault at all, but he ended up getting a little more than 450 plate appearances that summer.  The team had gone cheap around this time when Gussie Busch died and his son August IV took over.  So, they traded away Tom Brunansky in April and Willie McGee towards the end of the summer.

Willie McGee gave us Cardinals fans a batting title that year, which was something.  Except McGee was playing in Oakland when we won it.  Still kind of an odd little moment in baseball history.  Eddie Murray was leading the NL in batting when McGee got traded and then went cold at the end of the season.

I am pretty sure that Milt would have made the 600 number on plate appearances if he had not found the bench for chunks of time during August and September.  Remember cheap.  The Cardinals had three young outfielders, all making the Major League minimum, start games at the end of the season.  Cheap yes, but the trio of Ray Lankford, Bernard Gilkey, and Felix Jose were at least talented.

I always post Ray Lankford cards, so you get Bernard.  Plus Bernard was an all around talent since he was in Men In Black for all of 30 seconds getting hit in the head with a baseball.

Back to Milt.  He actually became a bat off the bench his last two years with the Cardinals.  Pretty sure that was supposed to be his original role on the team when they traded for him.  Maybe not, I was in seventh grade when this happened. What do I know?  He was basically between 200 and 300 plate appearances during those years.

Milt left after 1992 just in time to rejoin the Phillies in 1993.  Again, bat off the bench, but he helped that team a lot.  Like this.....

He also batted .294 in the World Series that year against the Blue Jays.  He hit a home run in Game 3 off of Duane Ward and ended the Series with 6 RBIs.  Not his fault that Joe Carter walked off Mitch Williams.  

A Milt Thompson card, or two, for my post.  I am going to go with my most recent card of him first.  You might be thinking, "Who knows their most recent Milt Thompson card?" Well, at some point back in April I made some posts about finishing off my 1990 Upper Deck set.  I was successful, at finishing the set, but opening 1990s wax (foil since it was Upper Deck) means lots of doubles.  In my doubles pile....

Typical Upper Deck from the time.  Nice picture on the front of the card, kind of looks like it was taken in Wrigley Field prior to a game.  The red pullovers were the Cardinals batting practice jerseys during the 1980s and 1990s.  The background looks like it's the ivy wall with the brick top.  Can't see the basket, but the back of the card confirms what the front of the card hints at in terms of location....

with the brick wall behind him in the picture.  

Surprisingly, Milt actually had some nice cards with the Cardinals.  At least I think so, especially a pair of his 1991 Topps issued cards.  His base Topps card, great photography that year, has a cool action shot of him ducking on inside pitch during a Spring Training game.....

Crooked scan, apologies.  His Stadium Club card from that same year also had an action shot of him.  On this card he's running in to catch a fly ball in Wrigley.  The ivy always makes for a nice background on baseball cards.  I approve of card photos there.  

Overall, Milt was a much better player for the Cardinals than I remembered.  He also played for the team during a real point in the franchise's history.  His final Cardinals line, in a little more than 500 games, was .274/.334/.387 with 20 home runs, 21 triples, and 67 doubles.  Milt also stole 86 bases and ended three of his four seasons with an OPS+ over 100 (average player is 100) with marks of 107 in 1989, 127 in 1991, and 116 in 1992.  His 1990 was a little rough with an OPS+ of 71, or a little bit lower than Jason Heyward. 

A random 1990 song from my Ipod.  

#MyCardMonday

A really cool old school card for this week's #MyCardMonday.  The 1990s were a difficult times for Cardinals fans and it was hard to always remain interested in baseball cards when your favorite team had few star players showing up on cardboard.  In 1993 I did not even work on an Upper Deck set.  I just skipped right over it.  The only time in between 1989 and 2010 that I did not touch the Upper Deck set the year it was released.

Fast forward to college and I had to rely on the card scene around Cape Girardeau, Missouri during the school year.  Let's keep it real: There was no card scene.  The town did have a card shop for awhile, but the owner was not one of those friendly and honest card shop owners.  There was a Venture in the mall for a year or two and then there was a Target.

What the hell happened to the Target card aisle?  Now it is populated by boxes from recent releases, but fifteen years ago you could also find cool old boxes in the store.  I found boxes of 1995 Flair, old boxes of 1987 Topps, and one night I found a few boxes of 1993 Upper Deck cards.

I picked up a box of series one and series two and went back to my place to open up the box.  There were so many cool things about the set and so many cards that I loved in the set.  Besides asking what the hell happened to the Target card aisle, I should probably also be asking what happened to cards like the first few Upper Deck sets.

Onto the card.  I thought about doing a Now & Then card, but I like these team cards too.....

The Cardinals team card in 1993 featured Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith, but also young upcoming stars Geronimo Pena, Ray Lankford, and Bernard Gilkey.  There were a lot of young players with the Cardinals back in the early 90s.  I am not sure why they did not put Brian Jordan or Todd Zeile on this card, but these three are pretty cool choices.  Lankford turned out to be a pretty good player.  Gilkey was traded to the Mets after the team signed Ron Gant.  After one good year with the Mets Gilkey had some issues with injuries and alcohol.  Geronimo was injured all the time too.  

The back of these cards were pretty cool featuring fun little facts about the players on the card.  We have cool plays on words like "Wizard of Ahs" and great player facts like Bernard Gilkey being a St. Louis native.  The whole card is just incredible.  Upper Deck put a card for each of the teams in the set.  If you don't own anything from the 1993 Upper Deck set you should go and check out these cards.