Complete Set: 2013 Topps Pro Debut

I am behind on my sets, so I will catch up a little bit today.  I also finished Topps 2 the other day, but that's even older news than this set.  Besides the Pro Debut set is fast becoming one of my favorite annual releases that Topps puts out on the market.  The line started in 2010 and has come along way since it's original release, so here's my take on this really cool and affordable product.

2013 Topps Pro Debut Kyle Parker

Staying true to form the base set of 2013 Topps Pro Debut uses the same design as the the base Topps set, but modified to fit the minor league teams.  So, unlike the Bowman cards, the minor league prospects in the set are all shown in the minor league uniforms.  I will admit that some of the Minor League masots and logos are goofy and a bit ridiculous, but I am still happy to have them in my collection. 

The base set consists of 220 cards and features a wide variety of players.  There are plenty of top tier prospects included in the set, such as Oscar Taveras, Carlos Correa, and Xander Bogaerts, but Topps also did a great job of including some cool fan favorites and veteran minor leaguers.  Although there is no Mike Hessmann card featured in this years set, there are plenty of other cool cards to collect from Pro Debut outside of the base set.  

2013 Topps Pro Debut Mascots Muddy the Mudcat

One of the most popular popular features of this year's Pro Debut set is the inclusion of the Mascot cards.  I've already showcased my Wool E. Bull card earlier in the week, but also managed to add a copy of Muddy the Mudcat to my collection.  Muddy is the odd looking mascot for Carolina Mudcats, who play outside of Raleigh in Zebulon, North Carolina.  They are currently the Indians high A team, but have also been the Marlins and Reds AA team within the past five years.  The mascot cards are very similar to the Upper Deck College Mascot cards with a cloth/fabric middle.  Pretty neat looking cards..

2013 Topps Pro Debut Hat Logo Patch Travis D'Arnaud

The Hat Logo Patch cards are also back into the Pro Debut set this year.  I've already picked up my copy of the the Durham Bulls card featuring pitcher Alex Colome, but I am also working on picking up a few of the other International League teams.  The hat logos cards were in high demand last year and I had to wait a long time to finally pick up one copy of a Tim Beckham card, but this seat of great looking cards is a little bit more reasonable in price this time around.  

2013 Topps Pro Debut Enny Romero Jersey Card

This most disappointing aspect of the Pro Debut set is the relic and autographed cards.  While the whole concept of jersey/bat/relic cards went stale long ago, the Topps Debut line has really made some nice jersey cards especially the jumbo jersey and patch pieces in the 2010 release.  Topps has scaled down the relic cards every year since, which leads to this year.  The jersey pieces are small, tend to all be blue, and are limited to a few players.  They are really inexpensive finds on Ebay if you have a favorite player featured in the set.  

2013 Topps Pro Debut Bralin Jackson Autograph 

The autographs are slightly better than the relic cards, but still leave a lot to be desired.  There are some good names in the autograph line, namely Oscar Taveras.  However, given that most of the autographs can be found for less than $5 on Ebay, there might be some good gambles here.  I have been going through and cleaning up some of the Rays prospects.  Maybe someday they will reach Durham, or better.  

Overall, this is a great product filled with some really good base cards and plenty of other goodies given the price of the box is only around $60.  The previous Pro Debut sets have held their value well and the hat logo cards and jumbo relics from previous years have thrived to the point where they can be difficult to find.  For example, I have spent the past three months trying to find a copy of the Hak Ju Lee hat logo card from 2012, but have only found one copy, which is selling for $25, on Check Out My Cards.  Pricy for a AAA shortstop.  

Complete Set: 2013 Topps Archives

I am amazed at how quickly I can assemble a set sometimes without busting open a pack of cards or winning a single Ebay auction.  I managed a few trades with a couple of friends that like to participate in case busts and put together my very own 2013 Topps Archives set.  I put this set together last year and really enjoyed see all of the designs of the past Topps sets.  While I wonder at times if Topps rehashes some of their old designs a little too often, I like that the Archives set uses a few of the less used card designs in this years issue of Archives.  So, let me tell you a little bit about the set and show off the card designs in this years set.

2013 Topps Archives Mike Trout 

The most recent of the four reused designs in this year's set comes from the 1990 set.  While the actual 1990 set is generally missable, I do kind of dig the design used on the cards.  I am not not sure why I like the style of these cards, but I do.  I guess it is not a black or white border, which is hard for Topps to see beyond sometimes when they issue their base sets.  Of all the 1990 cards issued in the Archives set this year I kind of dig the Trout card the best.  

2013 Topps Archives Robin Yount

The Topps Archives set also features several players from the past throughout the set.  Names like Musial, Ted Williams, and Jackie Robinson are common historical cards in Topps sets and again make appearances in this new release.  While I like that Topps incorporates a little bit of history into the base set of Archives I really like the cards that fit the original era of the cards.  For example, as a Cardinals fan I love that Musial is in the set and featured in the 1990 designed part of the set.  However, cards like this Robin Yount and the Reggie Jackson below seem to fit the card design a little better since the players where active during the actual release of the original set.  

2013 Topps Archives Reggie Jackson 

Overall, I think that the 1982 design is my favorite in the set.  While I started collecting cards in 1983 and missed the 1982 cards as a kid, I have assembled the set (several times) as an adult collector and I really enjoy the cards.  My favorite two cards in the 1982 design are the Shelby Miller "rookie card" and this cool Reggie Jackson which is actually similar to the 1982 Topps Traded Reggie Jackson card.  Mr. October actually is pictured on the Yankees in the base set, but the traded set featured Jackson in his Angels digs sporting his tinted glasses.  

2013 Topps Archives Chris Davis 

Lastly there is the 1972 designed cards.  I am kind of indifferent about this set.  I think I have picked up a bunch of the Cardinals cards from this set, but I do not go out of my way for them.  I guess a lot of people like it for the Fisk rookie, but I like the 1971s better for my fun 70s card set. 

Overall, the 2013 Topps Archives base set is a pretty nice looking product.  I like the set designs that Topps put in the product and I like the selection of players they used filling the set with a good mix of current and vintage players.  My one improvement would be to have the vintage players match up a little bit better with the card designs, but I understand that Topps also wants to fit some of classic players into the set that do not necessarily fit into the same time period of as the card designs.  I will be making a follow up post for the Archives set to show of my favorite part of the Archives release.   

Complete Set: 2000 Fleer Gamers

There is a reason that several of the card companies from the card boom of the late 90s and early 2000s are bankrupt and out of business.  The main reason was probably the fact that the companies competed with each other, but also with themselves.  There is only so much money that collectors spend on cards each year, as much as we would all love an unlimited budget, and Fleer, Donruss, Upper Deck, and Topps pumped out an overabundance of products.  There were products that were definite hits and a few flops along the way too.  There were also a few card products that flew under the radar.  The Fleer Gamers set is one of those sets that has gotten a little bit better and stronger with age.

2000 Fleer Gamers Jose Canseco 

First, the base set is nothing that great.  It's pretty typical of a Fleer release from this era and that is all I can really say about the design.  There are 120 total cards in the set, so it's not too difficult to track down the complete set with a box and a little help.  In fact, the box prices are one of the best things about this set.  Back in 2000, this set was one of way too many released by Fleer.  Of course, it was deemed a flop and many shops and Ebay sellers have boxes of Fleer Gamers on the cheap.  With a mediocre base set why would one care to roll the dice on a $30-$40 box of wax?  Inserts, Relics, and Autographs. 

2000 Fleer Gamers Cal Ripken Cal To Greatness 

Let's start with the inserts.  They are not very Fleer like in some regards.  There are die-cuts that look more like something that Pacific would put out on the market, but if nothing else there is the stand-by Cal Ripken insert set which yields two to three cards per box.  The Cal to Greatness set is pretty popular and the cards in the set hover around $5 on Ebay.  Three of these cards alone can pay for half of your box before you pull anything else.

2000 Fleer Gamers Lumber Ray Lankford Bat Card

The relic cards look like your typical late 90s relic set, small relic, not so great player card that would sell on Ebay for $2.  Almost not worth buying when you include shipping, except Fleer actually did a few things right with this relic set that most sets in the card boom era failed miserably with.  First, the list of players included in the relic set (all bat pieces) includes plenty of Hall of Famers, but also a lot of solid players with little to no relic exposure.  I could use Ray Lankford as my example, of a player with no relic cards outside of this set, and an above average Major League resume.  There is also a relic card for ESPN announcer Chris Singleton which is also his only relic card.  Of course there are the usual suspects of good players, average players, with a few Hall of Famers sprinkled into the mix.  Which leads me to my second point.  

The set is named Lumbers, the relic cards are all bats (notice a theme) and yet the relic cards are only planted two per case, or one every box and a half.  If Topps put out a set like this there would be a bat card in every pack.  The result of short-printing unique relic cards is directly reflected by the price that collectors pay for these cards on the secondary market.  Excluding a $0.99 bat card of Royals prospect-flop Carlos Febles, almost every bat card from this set is over $5 on Ebay with star players over $10 and Hall of Famers north of that point.  But wait, there's more....

2000 Fleer Gamers Lumber Shawn Green Bat/Auto 

To make this set a little bit sweeter Fleer also put in signed (on-card) versions of the bat cards.  The autographs were seeded at about one per ten boxes, or one per case and a half.  Long odds for an autograph.  The checklist includes Derek Jeter and Robert Alomar as the Hall of Famers included, but also features Rafael Palmeiro, Paul Konerko, Sean Casey, and ARod.  The autographs tend to fetch a pretty good price with most commons reach at least $20 on the secondary market.

Overall, I am aware that the base set is not that appealing, but if you are looking to pick up a cheap box and find something cool (and enjoy opening some wax) then this is a great product to look into picking up.  Boxes are easy to find on Ebay and the right hit could add a great card to your collection, or give you a nice trade chip to pick up something else for your collection.

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.  

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.  

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.  

My Great Reorganizing Project

I have now been collecting baseball cards for thirty years and over that time accumulated a pretty large collection.  I've posted a few pictures here and there of large groupings of cards on my Facebook and Twitter pages, but not really done very much of that on my blog page.  Instead, I have mainly focused on nice single cards, mainly autographs and relics, that are drifting into my collection.  I also spend a pretty good amount of time collecting sets.  I've alluded to that several times over my past year of blogging in my both 30 Year Top 50 posts, and more recently I started a thread of posts about sets I am completing.  Note that there are only two completed sets.  Not doing so well on that goal, which is why we are here today.  

I am not much to sit back and not take action when action is needed.  I started collecting baseball cards when I was 6 years old.  Thirty years later my collection has changed greatly in size and quality, but there is one thing that still remains the same: how I sort out my cards.  I dabbled with going alphabetically by player sometime in middle school, but that was a short lived experiment.  After college, I also dabbled with creating notebooks of star players and keeping their cards separated out from the rest of my cards.

So, here's how the system works.  I sort the cards into teams.  Within each team the cards are sorted out into year, then into sets.  If you asked me to go find a specific card I could do it in a few minutes which is pretty cool considering I am pretty close to 300,000 cards in my collection.  However, I feel like I've lost touch with some of my sets and I have so much volume at this point I am not going to complain if my collection loses a few dupes.  Here's what my collection generally looks like in it's home:

So, in going through my cards to figure out which sets I have completed and not completed I am literally having to go through thirty different boxes to figure out that I am missing five cards from a set.  That's a lot of work for five cards.  That's where the change is coming into place.  I have decided to take my cards and break them back into their set form.  I can still have easy access to cards and quickly reference to see what is, and what is not, in my collection.  The task is going to be daunting considering that there are thirty years of cards and a few hundred thousand cards in this closet.  I started two weeks ago and decided to just work with my 2001 cards.  

It took about an hour to go through all thirty teams and pull out my cards from 2001.  Since they are sorted into sets within the teams the process of stacking up each set was not very difficult.  The hardest part was going through the sets and sorting them into numerical order to figure out which sets are complete and which sets are short.  In some cases I had sets that I opened two or three packs of and never bothered to go any further.  In all, I spent time in 2001 collecting about 35 different sets.  Most were put together through wax boxes that I busted.  Here's a closer look at the sets from above.  

I now have a few sets that I can post as being completed, not sure if I will or not, but more importantly this gave me a chance to find a couple of good projects to work on and complete for my sets project that I have been talking about the past few months.  Many of the sets that are close to complete are only missing ten or less cards.  In fact, I counted five sets out of the thirty-five that fit that description.  Tomorrow, I am going to take a little bit of time to share my first project out of this group of cards.  I am also going to have to find something to do with all of the dupes that I have pulled out of my cards collection while putting together all of these sets.  For 2001, I am up to a few thousand dupes.  Any ideas?  

  

Complete Set: 1998 Topps Tek

I started my work on this set about three months ago needing 25 cards to complete the set.  I quickly started picking up single cards and lots and ended up getting down to needing one card within three weeks of starting off on my work to complete the 1998 Topps Tek set.  I was ecstatic to be down to just one card.  One measly Jason Kendall card.  I trolled Ebay, COMC, and trade pages in search of the card.  After one week of looking for the card I was not even sure that the card existed.  I had serious doubts.  If you Google Search Jason Kendall Topps Tek an image of a 1998 Topps Tek card does not appear anywhere.  Further, after several weeks there was not a scent of the card anywhere.  Finally, last week I found a copy of the card on Ebay with a Buy It Now of $1.00.  Well worth the dollar and my set is finally complete.

1998 Topps Tek Jason Kendall

I did a write up on this set awhile ago and got into the specifics of trying to assemble the actual complete set.  To summarize, the set has 90 different players and each player has 90 different pattern variations meaning that assembling the master complete set of the 1998 Topps Tek set would require finding a total of 8100 cards.  The fact that it took me three months to find a Jason Kendall card, let alone 89 more, tells me that I am going to stop right here with one card of each player.  90 cards in all was hard enough to do without needing to track down a full 89 more sets.  I actually started collecting this set to put together as many variations of the Ray Lankford card.  Currently I am about half way there on that goal and will continue to work on adding new patterns.  

Favorite Card from the Set:

1998 Topps Tek Randy Johnson

I like this card for several reasons.  First, Topps did not airbrush this card.  Randy Johnson started the 1998 season pitching for the Mariners, but was traded to the Astros at the trading deadline.  The classic Topps move would have been to airbrush him into late year releases wearing an Astros uniform.  However, it appears that they actual went out and got a photo of the Big Unit in a Houston uni.  To that end, Randy Johnson was only on the Astros for half a season and the list of Johnson cards appearing in an Astros uniform are relatively small.  Not like Mike Piazza on the Marlins, but still not a long list.  

Second, living in a National League city I never had a chance to watch Randy Johnson pitch in person before 1998.  I watched him in All-Star games and a few Mariners games on TV, but never in person.  The first game I saw him pitch was a game against the Cardinals at the end of the 1998 season.  I was really impressed.  Needless to say, I picked up a few Randy Johnson cards that fall including the one above making it the first Topps Tek card in my collection.  

Complete Set: 2013 Topps Gypsy Queen

At some point at the beginning of the year I made a promise to focus on and show more completed sets on this space.  I started off great with my pursuit of a few cards for my 1998 Topps Tek set, but quickly got stuck on a Jason Kendall card.  Funny how one card got me side-tracked, but I recently landed the card which quickly reminded me of my goal.  No ADD or anything to see here.  In the meantime, I have actually finished a few sets, but have not posted the results on here yet.  Today is my first, in what should be, a long line of posts this year showing off a completed set.

2013 Topps Gypsy Queen Adam Jones

This is actually the third completed set I have finished from the 2013 baseball card releases behind the Topps base set and Topps Heritage.  Gypsy Queen is a 330 card set with 250 base cards and 50 short prints.  There are variations among the base set cards, but I did not get into finding all of the variations and super short print variations.  Not this year.  I actually did not open a hobby box of Gypsy Queen, but started out with a pair of Blasters I bought myself for Easter and then traded for one large lot of cards and bought a few smaller lots.  In the end, it is a nice looking set and a welcome addition to my big closet of cards.  Here are a few highlights from the set:

2013 Topps Gypsy Queen Lou Gehrig Mini 

The mini cards have been a big hit for Topps over the years and the Gypsy Queen set is full of minis.  I did not actually complete all of the minis yet, so I do not truly have a master set, but I am not gaga over miniature cards.  I always like picking up a few of these for every set, but the only mini set I ever finish every year is the Topps base set minis.  There are a few other insert sets in Gypsy Queen that I like besides the minis.  

2013 Topps Gypsy Queen Sandy Koufax No-Hitters 

My favorite overall insert set in Gypsy Queen is the No-Hitters insert.  The cards have a nice design and they highlight different no-hitters thrown over the years by pitchers from yesteryear and current Major Leaguers.  The backs of the cards feature the details surrounding the no-hitters.  I was a little bit disappointed that the Jose Jimenez no-hitter against the Diamondbacks in 1999 was not featured, but Sandy Koufax is cool too.  I would also recommend the Glove Works, Collisions at the Plate, and Sliding Stars inserts sets too.  Really well done.  

So what's my favorite card from the entire Gypsy Queen set: 

2013 Topps Gypsy Queen Collisions At The Plate Yadier Molina 

This Yadier Molina card is really sweet and I was excited that Topps gave him an insert card.  Look around, they are seriously lacking.  Anyway, at first glance I thought this card might be from last season when Molina has quite the collision at the plate with the Pirates Josh Harrison.  However, that collision took place in Pittsburgh.  The card shows Molina wearing red catchers gear, which he wears at home, and the Pittsburgh player has a road uniform and is wearing the jersey number 19 and not Harrison's 5. After doing some research into the collisions of Yadier Molina I found this picture:  

The card fits the picture to a tee and actually took place during Molina's rookie season of 2005.  The Pirates player is current Cardinal (my least favorite one) Ty Wigginton who was tagged out on the play.  I am happy that Topps gave Molina an insert card, finally, and showed a cool play.  Glad a stumbled across this card and helped me finish up the Collisions at the Plate insert set.