A Venerable Old Card Part 50

Laster this afternoon I am going to make the trek from my house to downtown Durham to watch the first Bulls game of the season at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  I usually make it to Opening Night for the Durham Bulls, but have missed a few over the years.  Last year's Opening Night was cold and it rained through the first few innings, still a fun night though.  

My most memorable Opening Night with the Durham Bulls took place in 2006 when top prospect B.J. Upton hit a walk off grand slam against the Toledo Mud Hens.  I have looked high and low for video, or photographic proof of the home run, and have only found a grainy video from the Durham Bulls MySpace page.  

BJ Upton's Grand Slam on Opening Night from Durham Bulls on Myspace.

Got to love MySpace.  

The home run propelled me into giving B.J. Upton cards a spot in my collection.  Even to this day I still dabble a little bit with his cards as long as I can find them on the cheap.  Sometimes you run into people who insist that his cards were pretty valuable in the past, so they still have quite a bit of value today.  

No.  

One of the greatest of all B.J. Upton rookie cards is his 2002 Upper Deck Prospect Premiers card.  These were really popular in the early 2000s and ran for several years.  At the time of their release, several of the rookie autographs in these sets were quite pricy including the Upton card.  B.J., or Melvin as he is now known, never quite panned out, and his cards have become very affordable.  

I am not sure what this card cost at its peak, but today it can be yours for a few dollars....

There are some great names in this set if you ever feel like reliving the "top" prospects from this era.  Khalil Greene, Prince Fielder, Jeremy Hermida, Jeff Francis, and Zach Greinke are some of the highlights.  Some of those are actually cool....

The Upton card, the other card in the set do too, has one of those weird Upper Deck signed index card looking things.  I like to think of it as the forerunner to the sticker autograph, but I think it actually looks a lot better than some foiling sticker with a bunch of holograms in the background.   

Overall, a great card.  Frankly, it's hard to believe that this is now 15 years old.  I feel old now.  

Classic Cubs Cardboard

I remember when the 2001 Upper Deck Prospect Premiers set first released in the fall of 2001.  There were so many good autographed cards in the set at the time of its release, but one stood out head and shoulders above the rest.  The autograph of one Chicago Cubs pitching phenom: Mark Prior.  At a print of 1000 (go ahead and laugh) it was a hot and expensive commodity on the card market.  

Prior was viewed as a "can't miss prospect" and for awhile looked like he was going to live up to the billing.  In 2003 Prior helped the Cubs to a near World Series appearance before an infamous incident was a certain fan and Moises Alou.  I bet you are expecting a video of Bartman?  No, but I do like the word infamous.  Love it.  

Eventually Prior got hurt, bounced around the minors, and has appeared here and there in a few independent leagues over the past half a decade or so.  Ever spring it seems that there is a rumbling about Prior catching on with a minor league team, or something to that effect, but the man has not appeared in a Major League Baseball game since 2006.  During that time he has signed with the Padres twice, Reds, Yankees, Red Sox, and Rangers.  He also pitched in the Golden Baseball League too.  Despite all the bouncing around the 2001 Upper Deck Prospect Premiers card of Mark Prior still remains a pretty popular card.

2001 Upper Deck Prospect Premiers 

I have owned several copies of this card over the years and always seem to walk into new copies every few years.  Surprisingly it's a pretty difficult card to find at times and outpaces the other autographed Prior rookie cards from 2001.  His Leaf Limited and SPx autograph are both easy to find for less than $5, but for whatever reason the Prospect Premier card seems to break the mold.  The card often drifts north of $20, and for high graded versions, can go as high as $50.  Shocking for a player who not only did not live up to his career hype and expectations, but cannot even be described as very memorable.  Maybe I am being hard on Mr. Prior.  Nice player, great card.