Not Just Any Team Set

I have been on a roll with finding some tough Durham Bulls team sets and cards during the past year.  My best find up to this point was the first half of the 1997 BellSouth Bulls to Braves set, which celebrated the team's long-running affiliation with the Atlanta Braves.  The cards have proved nearly impossible to find over the years as single cards, and I had never seen them together in any sort of a set before them last fall.  

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I was able to find another really tough team set two weeks ago.  I had been looking for a team-issued Durham Bulls from 2001, but could not even find evidence that such a set existed until 2015 when the set was finally added to the Trading Card Database.  To this day, there are only pictures of a few cards from the set. 

First edit date on Trading Card Database was May of 2015.  

Even though the set first appeared on TCDB in 2015, it has not shown up on Ebay until this year.  

There are always a lot of Major League players who appear in Triple-A baseball card sets, but this set feels like it's above average in terms of quantity.  Here are the cards, starting with the team checklist.  

The front of the card has the team logo.  The back of the card has the team checklist.  

Out of the players with cards in the set, only Norm Hutchins did not appears in the Majors.  The set has a few players with World Series rings, including a World Series MVP.  Also included is a guy who is now a pharmacist, a one-time billionaire who is now bankrupt, a future Durham Bulls manager, and an International League Hall of Famer.  

Here is the basic design of the cards using Brent Abernathy.  

I like that the team put the "Acquired" information on the back of the card.  Feels a little bit like the old Donruss cards.  Plus with Minor Leaguers, you know half of them were traded for Major Leaguers.  Always fun to see some of those names, like Steve Trachsel.  

Here are the rest of the player, coach, and manager cards.  Also Wool E. Bull, the mascot.  

I am not going to talk about every player.  

Two notable names in this group of cards.  

Pat Borders was at the end of his career at this point.  He was nearly 40 years old.  Borders was on the two Blue Jays World Series winners in the early 1990s and won the World Series MVP in 1992 against the Braves.  He played until 2005, retiring at the age of 42.  

Lee Gardner was in Triple-A for 8 years, 5 of those seasons were with the Durham Bulls.  He is in the International League Hall of Fame and I believe he is the Durham Bulls all-time saves leader.  

Two more notable players in this group.  Huff won two World Series with the Giants.  Toby Hall was in the Majors for a few years but was a really good Minor League player.  He was in Durham for roughly 3 years and is considered one of the best catchers to have come through town.  Strictly talking about Minor League numbers with Hall.  

Jared Sandberg is Ryne's nephew and he managed the Bulls for four years.  In his last two years as the manager of the Bulls the team won the International League Championship.  

Now, this is a good group.  

First, we got Jason Tyner.  Jason Tyner was a fan favorite in Tampa.  Scrappy player.  He ended up getting his own bobblehead day with the Rays.  The problem is that he was demoted back down to the Bulls before it was given out.  

Is it too late to get your money back? 

Matt White owned a couple billion dollars worth of Goshen Stone at one point.  Goshen stone is used for swimming pools, kitchen counters, and landscaping.  It currently costs $75 to $150 per ton.  

How did this happen?  

White had an elderly aunt who lived in Massachusetts and needed $50,000 to get into a nursing home.  She sold White some land she owned in a rural part of the state.  White wanted to build a house on the property, but after checking with a builder, the land was too hard.  He called a surveyor who found 24 million tons of Goshen rock on the property.  Rather than settling for part of 2 billion dollars by selling the land to a company that could process the rock, Matt White tried to start his own company.  The company went bankrupt.  He was forced to sell the land for a fraction of its value.  

Ron Wright played in one Major League for the Seattle Mariners in 2005.  He retired and went back to college.  Wright studied pharmacology and now works as a pharmacist in Portacello, Idaho.  

Bill Evers is the second-winningest manager in team history.  For a long time, he held the record but was passed by current Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo.  

I have wanted to write about Mako Oliveras for a while.  I have several of his cards, low-key really important player and coach.  

Last group of cards.  

Joe Coleman was a pitching coach forever, including for the Cardinals while Joe Torre was managing the team.  Mickey Callaway was the Mets manager and the pitching coach for the Indians and Angels.  He is currently unemployed for good reason. 

Wool E. Bull.  What would he say about this card?  

Things I Am Sorting Part 9

A whole bunch of things to run through and catch up tonight, so let's start out with a card connected to yesterday's post.  I was hoping this card would arrive in time to put together with the Carlos Martinez and Blake Snell card, but it was a few steps too slow.  So, here is one more Holiday Relic from the Big Blue Box Store......

Archer is one of my favorite Durham Bulls, out of the Rays relics on the checklist, this one was a must have if I am going to put these into the collection.  The snowflakes in the corners of the card are a little bit more visible on this card than the two yesterday.  Cool picture of Archer too.

Next up is a card from my latest set project.  I am working on the 2002 Bowman Futures Games Autographed Relics.  Nice looking set that I am piecing together.  First addition to the set since I announced the project is kind of the oddball of the set....

The set is a relic set, like the vast majority of Topps cards produced from All-Star Game related events, the cards contain pieces of jersey.  For whatever reason Toby Hall is a game used base card.  I have no idea why and I am sure that I will never know.  It's still a really cool card and added bonus, Hall was on the Durham Bulls at the time of the Futures Games and the production of these cards.  He was a serviceable Major League catcher, but has a career OPS of .899 and a batting average of .326 as a member of the Bulls.  

I will cross this card off of the checklist.  One third of the set is done.  

Next is another set, but this one is a new release and it's already completely put together.  We are going to do a little compare and contrast with the cards.  

I picked up a copy of the much ballyhooed Gold Label set.  If you really like this set, hear me through until the end.  It starts out rough.  First, this set is not nearly the quality of the original Gold Label sets.  I love the design, on first glance I loved these, but then I held one in my hand.  The card stock the cards is printed on is cheap and the edges of the cards are chippy.

The original Gold Label cards, or any of the original run through the early 2000s, blow these cards away in terms of quality.  The card stock is thick, the edges are not chipped, and the gloss finish is much nicer.  This is a card from the original.....

If there was a way for me to allow each of the readers of this blog to reach out and touch these two baseball cards you would feel the difference immediately. Unfortunately that sort of technology does not exist, so you are going to have to take my word for it, or go get your own Gold Label cards.

The backs of the cards are quite different too.  I do not talk a lot about card backs, but I always enjoyed the backs of some of the late 1990s and early 2000s set.  Many of them had nice finishes, color photos, and interesting designs.  The original Gold Label back.....

Very well done 1998 Topps card designers.  A little busy, but overall I like that the stats are a little different and you have the nice color picture of the player.  Not sure what I would get rid of, maybe the factoid or the name at the top (I didn't know BJ worked out with JJK, but I did know his name was Brian Jordan), but the card seems a little busy. Again, I really like these backs though....

and the Gold Label.  It's not bad, but this is supposed to be a nice product.  Where is the effort?  This is a passable card back, but I want another picture of Manny Machado.  I want some cool stats, like his average exit velocity on extra base hits.  Give me something.  Anything.

Sigh.  Let's talk about one more thing.  This can be applied across the board to all Topps products, I just had never expressed this opinion before.  It's been lingering in my head....

This is a 1990s remake set.  There are current players in the set and then there are older players in the set who have retired.  I get the modern players, while the original Gold Label did not have retired players in the set, I am accepting of the concept of having older players.  However.....

lets look at two Braves cards.  I like Hank Aaron.  I like Greg Maddux.  Not really.  One of the players would seem to fit a little bit better into a 1990s remake set than the other.  Again, I like Hank, but you are not a 1990s player.   The set has Randy Johnson in a Mariners uniform and Mike Piazza in a Mets uni which I really like a lot.  It has Cal Ripken in an Orioles uni, but it's an 80s Orioles uni.  cartoon bird, not the black hats with the serious orange bird.  

Just my two cents, but I would love to see remake sets with past players match up a little bit better.  As a 1990s collector I think I would have enjoyed the checklist a little better if I had been able to see some good players from that decade.  Give me Albert Belle, Sammy Sosa, Brady Anderson with sideburns.  

Really, the design of the cards in Gold Label is nice and I think this is a set that is worth owning if you can find a copy of the set on the cheap.  The boxes are not too bad as far as cost goes, but a few autographs and a copy of the set can be had for roughly the same amount of money.  

Really, the back of the card design is probably me just being nit picky and the card stock thing is just kind of how cards are nowadays.  Some of the recent Five Star sets had some nice thick card stock, but even that has thinned out over the last year or two.