Set Appreciation Post #4 - 2001 Fleer EX

Basic Design 

The EX sets were some of my favorite products in the late 1990s.  Good designs.  Innovative product.  There wasn't much not to love about the first two designs that Skybox used for this product. 

The 1998 set is my favorite of the two.  I will have to do a write up on this set one week down the road.   

The 1999 EX set is also very good, but a notch down from the original in my opinion.  

Same basic formula and format for both the 1998 and 1999 sets.  Transparent plastic cards with a raised photo of the player.  Unfortunately, someone at Skybox went and did something really dumb the year after.  They changed the product in 2000.  

It was terrible.  

The card stock was thin and the front of the cards were actually stickers that placed on the cardboard.  Over time the adhesive lost its stick, and you had these catastrophes.  Note the peeling at the bottom of the card.  

I had some really low expectations for the 2001 E-X set when it came out.  In fact, when it was first released I did not touch it until I saw someone else open a pack.  The cards were re-branded to Fleer and the were much better quality.  Thick card stock (The 100 card base set fits nicely into a 300 count box) and the printing was directly on the card were good repairs from the 2000 set.    

The base has some of the same design elements as the 1998 and 1999 sets, minus the transparent plastic section on the side.  While the design shifted back towards the first two sets, the player picture is not raised on the card like the originals.  

Here is the back of the card.  

The stats are a little weird.  The players performance against their division is included on the back, along with the playoff teams from their League and Interleague play. The bottom features some really generic stat line of their best game of the 2000 season.  

I think that they could have made the backs a little more streamlined and simple.  It would have worked just fine in this set. 

Best Former Durham Player 

The answer is Chipper Jones.  

I feel like that is going to be the answer whenever I write about a 1990s or 2000s set on my Set Appreciation posts.  I have done four of these Set Appreciation Posts, and the answer has been Chipper Jones twice.  

Shall we look at the back?  

The Cardinals did a pretty good job of keeping Chipper in check during the 2000 season.  Although, the 1 home run he hit against the Cardinals was a game winner off of Mike Timlin.  

I might have to select my best Durham Bulls card on the picture after this post, which means that 50% of these posts will still have a Chipper Jones card.  

Favorite Cardinals Card(s) 

One of the best parts of writing these set posts is that it gives me a chance to dig through my card closet and find some cool cards that I have not shared yet.  It forces me to look in boxes where I normally do not venture.  

Two months ago, I spent an hour digging through my 2001 sets pulling out Albert Pujols rookies for this post.  I thought I had them all, but I missed this one.  Find this missing one also led me to look in another box, where I found another.  That's two new Albert Pujols rookie cards from writing this post.  

This was really a no-brainer once I saw it in the box.  However, there is also another Cardinals rookie card in this set that is a little bit of an early 2000s cult classic.  I am going to split the best Cardinals card between Albert Pujols, and the guy below.  

Meet long-time Triple A catcher Keith McDonald. 

The Cardinals called him up in early July 2000 to backup catcher Mike Matheny while Eli Marrero was on the disabled list for a short stint.  His first at bat came towards the end of a July 4th blowout against the Reds.  He hit a home run.  

Plenty of players hit home runs in their first at-bat.  Not anything too extraordinary, right?  McDonald also managed to hit a home run the next night in his first at-bat to become the second Major League player to hit a home run in his first two at-bats.  The other was outfielder Bob Nieman, who actually played a few seasons with the Cardinals in the early 1960s.  

To make the story even more bizarre, McDonald ends up getting a few pinch hitting opportunities over the next week, but he doesn't get any hits.  Last weekend he was in the Majors in 2000, he gets to pinch hit late in a game and hits a home run.  Three hits while he was up, all home runs.  The Cardinals send McDonald back down to the Minors, but call him up in 2001 for a few games.  Bounces around in the Minors a few more years, never gets called up.  Never gets another hit in the Majors.   

Keith McDonald is the only Major League player to have one than one home run, but no other types of hits.  He has an autographed card in this set too, but I do not own it.  Yet.  

Favorite Non-Cardinals Cards 

These were fairly easy choices this week.  

First up is Vladimir Guerrero.  

If you ever watched Vladimir Guerrero in person, you know that pitchers really had to work hard to walk him.  He was not going up there to take a bunch of pitches.  The crazy thing was that he hit balls most players would take, and hit them hard.  

The ball actually looks like it's at his knee in this picture, but his swing looks really odd here.  Bet this ended up being a hit. A few years back, someone made a mash-up video of 50 Cent's first pitch for the Mets and Vladimir Guerrero hitting a double.  The 50 Cent first pitch missed home plate by 10 feet, it's always on those terrible first pitch blooper videos.  

I also have another favorite rookie card in this set, but I own the autographed copy of this one.....

Juan Pierre was always a fun player to watch.  One of the last players, might be the last, to wear his fielding hat underneath his batting helmet.  Always one of my favorites.  In some ways, Juan Pierre was a 2000s player who probably would have fit in well with the 1980s Cardinals.  

How Does It Rank?  

The 2001 Fleer EX is much better than Ionix, but not nearly as good as the Super Teams set.  I spent a few minutes thinking about this in comparison to the 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders.  I like the Mini League Leader set, but this has some nicer bells and whistles.  Also Keith McDonald.  I am going to place this set second on my list.  

4. 2000 U.D. Ionix 

3. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

2. 2001 Fleer EX 

1. 2002 Topps Super Teams 

That's a lot of early 2000s sets.  I am going to do something from the 70s next week.  

Cards I Love Part 11 - 1998 Skybox EX 2001 Essential Credentials Ray Lankford

There are writers who have those blogs that are only about one set.  I do not think I could do that.  It's hard enough for me to stick to a consistent theme, like Cards That I Love, for month let alone do it for a longer period of time.  The Night Owl 1985 Topps Blog is a masterpiece.  If you have not read it, you are missing out.  Went all out and even did the Traded set too.

If there were ever going to be a set that I could turn into its own blog, it would probably be some modern small set like the 1998 Skybox EX 2001 set.  That was one of my favorite sets from the late 1990s.  Twenty some years later, it is still one of my favorite sets from that era.

Not the Ray Lankford card mentioned in the title, but this is the base card.  Half acetate, half foil.  It is the quintessential modern baseball card.  If you do not own any of these cards, I suggest you find a few for your collection.

Now for Ray.

I did not do parallel sets in the late 1990s.  If I pulled one from a pack that was fine, otherwise I was not going to go chase down a bunch of serial numbered cards with different colored foil or the whatnot.  However, I really liked the 1998 Skybox EX set, and I decided to venture out on a limb with this set by finding a few Essential Credentials cards.

There are not many Cardinals in the set, and a hard to find McGwire parallel in the late 1990s has outrageous written all over it.  So, instead I went after the Ray Lankford cards.  There are two parallel sets in the 1998 Skybox EX set.  There is a Essential Credentials Now and Essential Credentials Future.  There is some formula to how they are serial numbered, but that's a long story.  I like to think of them as a pinkish serial numbered set, and a gold colored parallel set.

I ended up with the Essential Credentials Future card, which is the pink parallel, as my big find from this product. 

I have the Essential Credentials Now card too, but I am sticking with the Futures card for this post.  

This is a card that I love for several reasons.  

First, it is just a great looking card.  Who collected in the late 1990s, and wouldn't want to own a card like this of their favorite player?  I ended up with several of these cards that are not Lankfords, and I love those too.  Maybe not as much.  I also own the 1999 Skybox EX Lankfords, which look a little different.  

Second, I had always collected Ray Lankford cards, but this card tilted me into doing more with finding some of his good cards.  It is tough to collect cards of some of the late 1990s players, their parallels are expensive and hard to track down.  By no means do I have a great Lankford collection, but I do consider it very nice.  This is my favorite of his tough parallel cards that I own.  

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 11- Dennis Eckersley

If you really like Dennis Eckerlsey this might hurt just a little bit.  I have no problem with Eck being in the Hall of Fame and can say that he was truly a great pitcher throughout most of his career.  As a person who grew up in the 1980s/1990s I remember him best as a starting pitcher for the Cubs and a relief pitcher for the A's.

Those A's teams were always entertaining and won a lot of games, even if they only managed to win a single World Series.

Eck was brought over to the Cardinals before the 1996 season along with half a dozen other former A's players.  It wasn't one of his better efforts, but it sort of all got swept under the rug.  The Cardinals ended up making the National League Championship Series that season and Eck saved 30 games.  He was good when it counted....

but the next season was a different story.  The Cardinals were not very good in 1997 and Eckersley was part of the problem.  The fans, often portrayed as "the best", booed Eckersley after he blew saves.  The Cardinal years were basically the end of his career.  Eckersley returned to the Red Sox for a season in 1998, but he was not their closer.  

Lets talk about Eckersley cards.  First up, why have card companies made baseball cards of Eckersley as a Cardinals player since he retired?  I'd love to own a nice Eckersley card with him on the A's, Indians, Red Sox, maybe even the Cubs.  The Cardinals?  

Say it ain't so.  Let's look at some 1997 Cardinals Eckersley cards.  I am going to go with three different cards for this post. 

First up is a 1997 Bowman card.  I have posted other cards from this set in other posts in this series.  More or less, I love the black border on these cards.  I know these are not the best Bowman cards from this decade, but I just love the way that these cards look.  Plus, I love the picture of Eck on this card.  One eye closed and his hair blowing in the wind.  Sweet picture.  

This is a really good picture too.  The Flair Showcase cards were high gloss, great card stock, and high end for the late 1990s.  I really like the contrast on these cards with the color picture in the front and the black and white picture in the background.  

This is another favorite from 1997.  The first year that Skybox issued the EX product.  It didn't have too long of a run, but there are a lot of 1990s cards collectors who love these translucent cards.  The sky in the background with the purple and pink frame are an unusual combination, but they work.  I also like the picture of Eckersley pointing.  That was sort of his signature move at the end of a game.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 46

It's February and I live in North Carolina.  Not only do I live in North Carolina, but I can drive thirty minutes from my house and be on the campuses of three schools that have won a combined 12 National Championships in basketball.  Yet, I am not really feeling the whole basketball thing right now.  My team is having a disastrous season with no chance of making the NCAA tournament, although they could win the ACC Tournament, but that is just not going to happen.....

I have started to dig deep into the card collection.  Namely, I have been sorting out all sorts of late 1980s and 1990s baseball card sets.  The whole decade of the 1990s, not really just the later parts.  It's amazing how many cards I amassed during this time.  There are sets that I thought were surely complete in my collection, but after further review they are missing cards.  There are other sets that are complete and after sorting out the boxes of cards I have found that I have several copies of certain sets.  

The most ridiculous thing that I found in this sorting was the fact that I owned something like 30 copies of a certain Edgar Renteria card.  I have no idea how all of these cards got into my collection.  I hate these types of Ebay listing and avoid them like the plague.....

Hate it, hate it, hate it.  What does someone do with 50 copies of one card?  I give cards away to kids at work and I also wallpaper the door of my classroom with duplicate baseball cards.....

If you have never figured out what I do for a living, here it is......

So, what card do I have 30 copies of?  This card is cool, but not 30 copies cool....

I am a huge fan of this set, so my first thought is that I might have opened that many packs of these cards back when I was in college.  However, after checking out the rest of the box that I had this card in, I have one other complete set of Skybox EX-2001 cards, but I do not have more than 5 of any other card.  Seems doubtful that I pulled these out of packs, even with some sort of odd poor packaging, not buying it.  

At this point I have I have moved on from where these came from and shifted to what should happen to this stack of Edgar cards. One thought is to re-wallpaper my door with baseball cards using Edgar.  Currently it is covered in basketball players who are having a bad season...

revisit the first paragraph of this post to review my thoughts on the matter....

I am not sure if 30 cards is enough Edgars to cover the space on the door.  Thinking of someway to also feature the back of the card as well as the front of the card.....

Pretty sure that my co-workers and students would love to check out Edgar's stats from 1997 while walking through my door.  The Marlins did win the World Series that year and Edgar did have a walk off Series winning hit.  Perhaps I could fit a small video screen into one of the windows on my door to provide this video......

playing on a loop.  Would it be distracting?  Yes.  Would everyone stop and stare at the door?  Yes.  At this point I am going to get a roll of Scotch tape, my stack of Skybox EX Edgar cards I try to do something cool with them.  I will let you know how it turns out, maybe it will work, or maybe I will just hand each one of my students an Edgar card and tell them to use it as a backmark.  After all, these cards are plastic....kind of old school too to use baseball cards as bookmarks.  

Things I Am Sorting Part 8

It's been about a month and a half since I posted my newest set project trying to complete the 1999 Skybox E-X Quisite set.  This was actually an insert set for the 1999 Skybox EX Century set, but I liked the cards, there were a limited number of cards in the set, and I thought it would be cool to possible put together a bunch of insert sets from one particular set.  Dare I say Master Set.  I said, not sure I will follow through.

In the meantime, I was short eight cards to finish the set when I last posted on the set.  I am happy to say that I have been able to track down all eight cards relatively quickly.

I picked up three of the cards in a trade with a fellow collector for some set needs that they were looking to fill and the other five cards were all less than a dollar on COMC.  I love COMC.  I have updated my completed set tab up at the top of the page to show this set as completed and will be posting a new set project or two in the next few days.....

The Completed Projects Tab at the top of the page has also been updated....

Set Project Number 3: 1999 Skybox Century E-X Quisite

Since the first project is finished up and posted under my Completed Projects tab at the top of the page, it's time to go ahead and start on another set.  I am going to choose an insert set this time, but it's one from one of my favorite 1990s.  I should probably do something with the 1998 Skybox E-X inserts, I think I already have to copies of the set, but I am going to start off with an insert from the 1999 Skybox E-X set instead.

I plan on doing a lot of these set projects.  Plenty of time to work on the 1998 inserts.

Here is a look at the insert set I am going to be working on.....

 
I really like the look of these E-X-Quisite cards.  The fronts have a nice look with the black background, smoke or a cloud, and the player standing in front.  The backs look pretty nice too, but this was also a somewhat of a bad phase for Skybox card backs......

I like how the design is sort of a silhouette of the front of the card, the cheesy little write ups on these cards are horrendous.  Skybox used these on a lot of their sets around this time.  I mean, they could have just written up a little snippet on J.D. Drew being a promising young player at the time this card was produced, but nope.

I suppose they could have come up with a good writer to make up these card backs, but they seem more like something that Shaq made while he was trying to rap instead of playing basketball.

There are fifteen cards in the set, I have eight of them, so I am looking for a little more than half of the set.  Eight cards is not too challenging, hopefully I can knock this one out fast.

Friday Five: Best Five Sets From 1998

I have a lot of different sets from 1998 in my collection.  There are a bunch of duds, some that are perfectly mediocre, but a few have some real standout qualities.  I almost thought about doing a honorable mention section on this post, but I did not have enough time to work on this week.  Next week I am thinking that I will have a best of the rest from 1998.  In the meantime,  I have narrowed down to my favorite five sets.

5. Metal Universe- This was a fun set in 1998.  The first issues of Metal Universe featured players being grabbed by tentacles, players in outer space, and all kinds of other interesting backgrounds.  The 1998 set also featured interesting backgrounds, but they were a little bit more focused on the card's subject.  Ryne Sandberg in front of a rhinoceros, Cardinals players in front of the Gateway Arch, and Yankees players with the Statue of Liberty.  This was the best Metal Universe set in my opinion and a fun set to assemble.  The boxes are still available on Ebay, not too expensive, and are a fun open.  I remember buying a box of these from 1,000,000 Baseball Cards outside of St Louis and buying a second box a few weeks later to finish off the set.

4. Upper Deck Retro- Really cool packaging, old players, cool autographs.  Upper Deck made a lot of sets using that formula over the years and this one was a really good set.  Let me be more specific, the base set is rather meh, but the autographs are really what you want here.  I have the base set in my collection, but I also have a bunch of the autographs.   I always thought about this set as a precursor to the Upper Deck Legends set which will be on my list in a Friday or two....

The autographs in this product are on-card with tons of Hall of Famers.  I am a huge fan of the Upper Deck Legends sets as a great source for on-card Hall of Fame autographs, but this set is not bad either.  In fact, I think some of these are a tougher find than the Upper Deck Legends cards.  The best card in the set, in my opinion, is Kirby Puckett.  

3. 1998 Donruss Signature- This was one of my favorite per pack autographed products from the late 1990s.  Unfortunately this was the end of the line for the original Donruss Signature line.  Playoff bought the Donruss name and relaunched the product, with sticker autographs, in in the early 2000s.  This release of this product was highly anticipated in the fall of 1998, but due to financial problems with Pinnacle, the company that originally produced the Donruss products, the release was a bit of a debacle.  The product was delayed and there were problems with players getting paid for signing in the product.  In the end, this product was the swan song for Pinnacle.  Still the set featured more than 100 autographs including the diverse base set and inserts like Significant Signatures.

The cards in the set all feature on card autographs.  Over the years I have picked up dozens of these cards.  There are some great names that fly under the radar.  My personal favorites include any of the Significant Signatures cards and the Mariano Rivera.  Plenty of other good veteran autographs in there too.  

2. Topps Tek- This is one of the more unique sets that was ever put out.  90 cards with 90 variations of each cards means that this set is a grand total of 8100 cards.  A lot of collectors love these cards and have tried to collect either a player, or a pattern, or something in between.  I picked up the cards I needed to complete this set a year or two ago.  The cards are acetate with the patterns printed over color pictures of the players.  Topps simplified this product in subsequent years after this version of the set, but the ceased making the Tek product after 2000 until a relaunch last year.  The original product had no inserts and no autographs.  Just 90 cards with 90 variations.  Not sure something that sounds that simple could be so complex.  Still, a great product.  

1.  Skybox EX-2001- One of my favorite all-time 90s sets.  This product actually started in 1997, but I never touched it that year.  I have gone back and put together the set, but this was the first EX set that I put together.  Half acetate and half textured pictured with some sort of reflective surface thing going on over on the side of the card.  These were awesome.  I started out with a pack or two, picked up a box somewhere along the way, then some lots.  I have a ton of these and have not missed on issue of these cards since.  

Damn I Am Old

One of my favorite 1990s sets of all-time is the 1998 Skybox EX-2001 set.  I have done a few little write ups on the card set over the past two or three years of blogging, but I am always looking for new cards and new ways to enjoy some of my old favorites from yesteryear.  The old boxes of the cards are often outrageously priced, otherwise I would buy one and do a cool box break.  Mainly I just dabble with single cards from the set.  

I have already assembled the set, so I am mainly just picking up inserts and parallels.  A few days back while I was in school one of my trade partners, who dabbles in basketball started to blow up my Twitter messages.  I could feel my IPhone buzzing and when I got to lunch I had pictures and trade offers to look at and review.  I couple of words stuck out in the messages....

"look at this old guy"

"I am not sure what this guy did in college"

"this card is from one of those retro sets"

"when is last time NC State won something"

"TJ Warren and this other guy"

This is a really cool trade partner, but that last one stung.  As I sat in my classroom playing checkers with a group of my students, eating a PB&J sandwich and apple slices (I swear I am a 30 something) I suddenly felt really old that all of these words could be used to describe a card set that I loved collecting while I was in college.  He was not even sure how to respond other than to make a quick trade and question my age quietly to myself.  Note: Later in the day I fell in a mud puddle playing kickball at recess adding to my wonderment.  

Here are my two awesome new basketball cards starting off with a great looking David Thompson card which was pulled from a box of 2011-2012 Fleer Retro. 

I could see where you might think David Thompson is old, but if you are not sure what he did you need to spend a little bit of time on Google.  He has the only retired jersey at NC State and was the inspiration for Michael Jordan.  Even gave his introduction speech at his induction into the basketball Hall of Fame.  I hear David Thompson made it into the Hall first though.  Thompson also helped NC State win the 1974 National Championship.  I got a cool bonus card thrown in with the David Thompson of 2013-2014 ACC Player of the Year T.J. Warren.  

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.  

Quite Possibly The Worst Set Ever

Still working on sorting out my cards sets.  I am spending a little bit of time each night putting one big set together or several smaller sets together.  Last night I ran into a small set from 2000 and almost ended up putting the entire into the infamous Cooper pile.  The Cooper pile of cards is a four-hundred count box of cards that have been "claimed" by my two year old.  The cards in the box have been chewed, folded, and all kinds of other acts of destruction.  Here's an example of one of his favorite baseball cards.    

2009 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Ubaldo Jimenez

So, after pulling a set 2000 Skybox EX cards from a box a few years back, the cards went from mint condition to something like the card above.  Maybe less crinkles, bends, and tears, but still damaged enough to turn into the same collection that claims the fabulous Ubaldo Jimenez card pictured above.  The cards in their pack fresh form originally looked something like this:

2000 Skybox EX Alex Rodriguez 

The 2000 Skybox EX set was the only EX set that I did not open between 1997 and 2003.  The set was one of the best Fleer products put out every summer and I always made sure that I took time to bust some wax and put together a set and a good collection of inserts.  I found a cheap box on Ebay and was able to put together a set from one box (only a 60 card set) and even pulled a few cool inserts.  Most of the EX cards are heavy cardboard stock or plastic.  However, the 2000 set is regular card stock with a thin foil overlay on top of the cardboard.  This Alex Rodriguez is one of the few cards from my set that is actually still in mint condition.  The rest of the cards have literally fallen apart over a short period of time.  

The two cards above show the typical pattern of damage on the 2000 Skybox EX cards.  Note that the foil picture on the front of the card has rolled from both the top and bottom of the cards.  No doubt that Fleer just simply glued the foil onto the card stock, or printed the cards as stickers and applied them to the stock.  Either which way, clearly the cards did not hold together well and have aged poorly over a short period of time.  A side look at the cards:  

Note the thin piece of foil curling up near my finger tip.  Interestingly the front and back of the cards are made from the same material, but only the front part of the card is curling off.  Reflecting back on this box of cards, this was clearly not a good investment and I will be sure to steer clear from now on.  In the meantime, my son just added a big stack of cards to his box.  

30 Year Top 50: 1998 Skybox EX-2001

#39-I fully appreciate vintage baseball cards and have plenty of cards that predate 1983.  The next set on my countdown of cool sets is the antithesis of vintage baseball cards.  I know many vintage collectors who look at some of the modern cards and cringe especially sets like the 1998 Skybox EX-2001.

Before I get rolling on this set: If this were a set name list, this card set would be in the bottom ten.  Easily.  The name is ridiculous and was a follow up to the 1997 Skybox EX-2000 set.  Also a terrible name.  The set line continued through 2003 with equally troubling and ridiculous names.

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Mark McGwire

There were several other plastic like cards issued sometime in the late 90s and early 2000s, but this set was always the best of them in my opinion.  One argument against plastic cards is the fact that you can have any imperfections with plastic cards.  Very true of card sets such as Topps Tek were the picture and design were printed directly onto the card surface.  However, the Skybox EX cards always had a raised surface around the player picture that make it subject to the same imperfections as other cards.  In fact, take a quick scan of secondary sales sites and you will see that there are graded cards from this set there are clearly imperfect.

The set itself was a 100 card set with an exchange card of Kerry Wood available for a total of 101 base cards.  The Wood card might be the best card in this set.  Since it was an exchange card and short printed there are obviously fewer cards available, but it also seems to be one of those cards that was an early release of a player, not a true rookie card, that people treat the same as a rookie card issue.  The set and base cards can be difficult to locate and the boxes that are stilling floating around are often not cheap.

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Kerry Wood Exchange

The Skybox EX-2001 set did have insert sets and even some autographs.  However, the real chase cards in this set were the Essential Credentials cards.  I have had a few write ups about these cards in the past featured in a highlight about my Ray Lankford collection.  The Essential Credentials were a double parallel set.  The Essential Credentials Now and Essential Credentials Futures sets were serial numbered to different numbers with one set having an ascending run with the card numbers and one have a descending run with the card numbers.  Complicated I know.  There are several up on Ebay write now for triple digits, or close.  The last completed sale was a Larry Walker out of 22 for more than $200.

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Craig Biggio Essential Credentials Now

Overall, this set was among the first plastic card sets out on the market and the best of the bunch in my opinion.  The fad surrounding these cards has faded and there hasn't been a similar card release in a very long time.  Since the set is fairly small it is not very difficult to assemble in a short time.  It's a fun set build too.

Like the 1998 Skybox EX-2001 set?  Not in my Top 50 for the past 30 years is the 1999 Skybox EX-Century set.  I had thought long and hard about putting the 2003 Skybox EX set here, but I think the 1999 model edges it out.  The 1999 issue of the Skybox EX set featured a similar design as the 1998 set, but I feel like Skybox did a good job of cleaning up the design a little bit. 

1999 Skybox EX-Century Barry Larkin

Mainly, I like how the player name is written going down the side of the card and the team logo has been incorporated into the side of the card.  Also similar to the 1998 set, the 1999 set was really about the chase for the Essential Credentials cards.  The parallel sets were again set up the same way with the dual sets with varying numbers.

1999 Skybox EX-Century Essential Credentials

The other factor that made the 1999 Skybox EX issue was the insert sets.  The earlier sets featured inserts, but they didn't fit the overall feel of the set at times.  Later sets started to dabble with autographs and jersey pieces.  The 1999 inserts I felt fit the feel of the set very well and were still in the mode of cool 90s inserts too.  One of my favorite inserts was the Favorites for Fenway set which somehow tried to predict the All-Star teams for 1999.  I guess they missed with J.D. Drew.  

1999 Skybox EX-Century J.D. Drew Favorites for Fenway

First Player Collection

It has been a crazy week and I have not had much time for cards this week, but I am through one crazy week at work and ready for some down time.  I am going to start my weekend with my original player collection: Ray Lankford.  Mark McGwire once said that he was the best protection that he ever had in the lineup.  He actually hit fourth behind McGwire during most of the 1998 season.  I would like to think that my Ray Lankford collection started way back in 1991 when I spent my Sunday afternoons watching the Cardinals in old Busch Stadium with my father where I witnessed Ray Lankford, as a rookie, hit for the cycle.  Still have my scorecard.  Six years later I took up collecting Ray Lankford cards.  Fifteen years later I have hundreds of Ray Lankford cards and am always on the lookout for rare cards.  It's a fun collection still since he played a long time ago and the majority of his cards were made in an era when there were few parallels and printing plates.    For this blog entry I have selected my ten favorite Ray Lankford cards.

1.  1998 Skybox EX-2001 Essential Credentials 50/52

2.  1998 Donruss Crusade 75/250

3.1999 SP Signature Autograph 

4. 1998 SP Chirography Autograph

5.  Fleer Gamers Lumber Ray Lankford Bat Card

1999 Skybox EX-Century Essential Credentials 38/75

1999 Flair Showcase Legacy Collection 58/99

1999 Fleer Ultra Platinum Medallion 55/99

1999 Pacific Crown Royale Red 69/99

I have also included the 1991 box score from the September 15th Mets-Cardinals game.  You will also note that Rheal Cormier pitched the game of his life that afternoon.  

Ray Lankford Cycle Game