Pujols Parade - 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings

Not every Albert Pujols card is sunshine and lollipops.  

Let me tell about my Christmas gift to myself in 2005.  

I had just moved to North Carolina a few weeks earlier and decided to hang out with a few co-workers for the holiday rather than driving all the way back to Missouri. There are a lot of transplants in these parts, so it's not hard to find people who host other people who are away from family. I had a nice dinner and spent a few hours getting to know some of the people I worked with a little better. I returned home after dinner to open some presents.  

As a Christmas present to myself, I had bought two boxes of Donruss Diamond Kings the previous week from Charm City Cards. That place used to have some great deals on wax boxes. Apparently it is still a place. 

Like all Diamond Kings products, these are art cards. They are typically very well done, but not this set. 

This is one of those moments where I should have done a little more homework. I saw "2 autographs for $35" and not "These are really ugly cards". They painting of Pujols is not half bad, although the bat is wrong. The painted ring around the middle of the bat is a Rawlings, but Albert has used Marucci, Louisville Sluggers, or Sams Bats for the majority of his career. No Rawlings. 

They are also typically blonde wood with black lacquer finish on the top half of the bat.   

I am a stickler for details.  

What's with the design? What is it exactly? There are white lines around the edge for a border, black vertical lines, a wide blue textured stripe going down the middle of the card, and the grayish area that makes up the majority of the background has a different texture. Lots of colors, lines, and textures all with a tiny painting of Albert.  

Give me a simple frame and make the painting larger. 

This card is a mess.

  

The back of the card is a little bit better. Less colors, less textures. The write-up is not bad either. The bottom half of the card is a little weird. Do we really need crowns showing the sets where they included Albert Pujols? He is a player who is a no-brainer to include on the checklist, no?  

The artist bio is weird too. Name dropping your father? Listing your place of residence on the back of a mass distributed baseball card. What am I missing here? Weird bio.  

The guy is still name dropping his father.  

A 1980s Card Part 38 - 1982 Donruss Diamond Kings George Hendrick

I am making a weekly post about the 1980s Cardinals cards in my collection, and I have made it almost a year without once writing about a Diamond Kings card?  My bad.  I definitely need to improve the ratio a bit while I have some time at home.  A Diamond King heavy post is coming this weekend, but until then I have this George Hendrick card to offer you. 

Let's get a little housekeeping out of the way in regards to my copy.  It's horribly off-center.  Let's move on to some other aspects of the card. 

The best thing about this card is the fact that Dick Perez, the artist of the Diamond King series, made the picture of Hendrick wearing a jacket underneath his uniform.  George was a big fan of the red satin Cardinals jackets.  Take out your George Hendrick cards, flip through them, and there are more cards with Hendrick wearing a red jacket than those without one. 

His base card in the 1982 Donruss set?  Red jacket. 

Newer cards? Red jacket.  

Older Cards?  Red jacket. 

Game cards?  Red jacket. 

All-Star cards?  Red jacket.  

Most people who watched baseball in the 1980s probably remember George best for wearing his pants all the way down to the tops of his shoes.  That was sort of his trademark fashion statement at the time.  Here he is in the 1982 World Series, barely any sock showing in this picture.  

A rarity in those days.  The pants and socks on Hendrick are my one criticism of Perez's artwork for this Hendrick card.  Clearly too much sock in the picture.  Blown up a little bit below.  

The back of the card is typical of the Diamond Kings, which usually featured a blurb about the player rather than any sort of stats.  The back is off-center to match the front. 

Nice little run down on George Hendrick.  I thought those home run and RBI numbers looked a little low at first, but I remembered that the 1981 season was shortened due to a strike.  So, 18 home runs and 61 RBIs in just 100 games is actually a pretty good clip.  In fact, Hendrick was in the top 10 in both categories in the National League.  

Good song from 1982?  

Duran Duran.  

Durham Diamond Kings

Panini has released a bunch of products this year and I cannot tell much about any of them.  I usually wait until the fall to see what sort of college and USA Baseball products they will drop.  All of the other stuff that they put out I will dabble in, but I am done with putting their sets together after they the whole Donruss set thing back in 2014.  Long story, ask around...

That leaves me with just putting together a few autographs here and there, which is usually the extent of Panini cards in my collection.  So far this year I have done a pretty good job of completely ignoring them almost altogether until a trading partner pointed out that there is both a Blake Snell and a Richie Schaffer autograph in Diamond Kings.

Welp, I went ahead and got both cards. While they are pictured as Rays, both were Durham Bulls at the time this product was released.

 Here's a look at the Snell.

Sticker autograph, uniform logos airbrushed out.  Love those Donruss cards.  It's still a Snell autograph and he is a pretty good Durham Bulls player, so it's a good addition for my collection.  If you are not familiar with Snell, he is the top pitching prospect in the Rays organization.  Really impressive pitcher, just ask Brian McCann.

I am not sure where Shaffer ranks on the prospect lists nowadays.  He had a good season with the Durham Bulls last year, got called up to the Rays, and hit this home run with a memorable celebration. 

After hitting 26 home runs last season in the Minors, Shaffer is having a bit of a down year with the Bulls.  So far he has hit just 5 home runs.  Still, one of my favorite Durham Bulls and an enjoyable player to collect.  Here is his Diamond Kings autograph.....

Similar to the Snell card.  Sticker autograph with some art work and two average pieces of jersey swatch.  While it's clear that Snell is working his way out of Triple A, and will soon be a mainstay in the Rays rotation, it's nice to see him get a few cards before he gets to the Majors.  Same with Shaffer, but I suspect he will be in Durham a little bit longer.  

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets from 2004

5. 2004 Fleer Showcase- I bought this box for my birthday during spring of 2004.  I remember rolling into 1,000,000 Baseball Cards in Ballwin, Missouri and picking up a box of this product.  It was National Trading Card Day and I was up for some free baseball cards, but while I was there I was not going to walk out empty handed.  This product had a cool looking design, decent autographs, and some cool insert sets like the Hot Gloves.  I got in on this product towards the end of its run, but unfortunately this was the end of line for this product.  Really cool product and my favorite fleer product from their later years (I am not counting the Upper Deck rehash).  

4. 2004 Topps Cracker Jacks- I love this set.  Is it the red backgrounds?  The minis?  Autographs?  Not sure, but I put together this whole set and have a bunch of the autographs and relics out of the product too.  The design is based on the 1914 Cracker Jacks set and has a lot of little quirks that were in the original: Writing on the back of the card upside down, old time players like Nap Lajoie, and Surprise Packs inside the boxes.  Not the most expensive set, and not the nice throwback set that Topps has ever put out, but still a very good product worth checking out.  

3.  2004 Diamond Kings- I like the Diamond Kings sets.  Donruss ran them several years in the early 2000s until the company came to an end in 2005.  The boxes are fun to open and there are a lot of cool serial numbered cards in this product.  Relics, autographs, lots of possibilities for player and teams collectors.  How many parallels made up this set?  It's huge and I am not sure that I have ever seen a collector put them altogether on a player.   The autographs are sticker autographs, which is a bummer, but many are inexpensive and pretty easy to find.  

2.  2004 Topps Heritage- This one is an easy one.  Hard to believe it only came in second on my list.  The Heritage set in 2004 was based on the 1955 Topps set.  One of my favorite old time sets.  Topps threw in a handful of short prints and some old logo variations.  Like all Heritage sets there are the usual autographs, relics, and serial numbered parallels.  Really great looking set.  

1.  2004 Bowman Heritage- 1955 was a great year for baseball cards.  The Bowman Heritage set was a redo of the 1955 Bowman set.  The television framed cards are a classic.  There are also some cool variations with black and white pictures.  Again, there are autographs, but one of my favorite aspects of this set was the fact that Topps added umpire autographs.  There have been a few umpires included in sets here and there, but this set had a really good run of umps.  

#MyCardMonday

Here's a different name for this week's #MyCardMonday: Matt Morris.  Matty Mo was a stalwart in the Cardinals rotation for almost a decade start around 1997 running through 2005.  He had some good years and some mediocre years, but was the best pitcher on several of the late 90s/early 2000s Cardinals teams.  Morris was a little bit tricky to collect.  He had a few autographs and a few relic cards, but nothing too spectacular.  I think at some point I owned a patch card of his from the 2003 UD Authentics set, but sold it after he left the Cardinals for the Giants.  I still have a nice autograph of the Cardinals hurler from the 1997 Donruss Signature set and he also signed for the 2004 Upper Deck USA Baseball set.  Oh and he signed in a Stadium Club Co-Signers set.  This dual Morris relic out of the 2004 Donruss Diamond Kings set was always one of my favorite Matty Mo cards.  I loved the artwork on these cards and opened several boxes of this product.  Really fun open.