Cards I Love Part 20 - 2001 Topps Update Chrome Albert Pujols

I have never really loved the design of the 2001 Topps set.  Green borders?  There are other years with worse designs, but it is definitely in the bottom half of my favorite Topps sets of all-time.  I am willing to overlook the green border in the case of an Albert Pujols card that was included in the Topps Update set in 2001. That would be the Chrome parallel card.  The Chrome cards were two or three per pack, not sure about the exact ratio, but I pulled this card in 2001.  

Shout out to the Sports Card Dugout in Webster Groves, Missouri for selling me the box. 

The green on the Chrome cards looks a little different, and the shine on the finish of the cards makes the gold printing pop a little more.  Here is the regular Topps Update Pujols rookie card.  

You can see the differences in the green and gold coloring on the card.  I know a lot of people who like the regular Topps Update card, but for me the darker green and gold looks a little sharper.  

The Topps Update Chrome is a pretty easy choice as my favorite Topps rookie card of Pujols, and my second favorite overall behind his Bowman Heritage card.  I know they are really the same company, different brands though.  I also really like the picture showing Pujols batting.  His stance is really easy to recognize, and Topps did a good job of capturing it on his rookie card.  

The coloring on the regular Update card bothers me enough that I actually put his eTopps card ahead of it as my second favorite Topps Pujols rookie card.  

More Pujols cards this weekend.  

A Bulls Card I Missed

Topps does not make many Durham Bulls cards.  There are only two products that show Minor League players in their Minor League uniforms.  There is Pro Debut.....

and Heritage Minors......

and that is seemingly the end of the list.  Almost.  

There is actually another Topps card, outside of Pro Debut and Heritage, with a Durham Bulls card on the checklist.  I have seen the card several times over the years, but just never taken the time to buy the card.  Just kind of floating around out there, not in my collection, but I finally ended up with the card last week.....

The scan does not do the card justice....

This is out of eTopps.  It was Topps first attempt at selling single cards directly to collectors.  I do not buy any of them from Topps, but I have picked up a few over the years from Ebay and card shows.  I have long been a fan of Desmond Jennings.  Not the best Major Leaguer, but he was a great player in the Minors for the Bulls.

Back of the card.....

Slugging percentage of almost .500 out of the leadoff spot.  Pretty impressive.  You can also see the eTopps Minor League Prospectus label under the Bulls logo.  This card was from 2010, same time Topps was rolling out with Pro Debut.  Actually a really good set, if you're into Minor League cards.  

Our Old Friend ETopps

Topps has had a few different products that have been sold directly to their customers this year.  Finest, Throwback Thursdays, Ginter X, and ToppsNow were all sold somewhere on their website to mixed reviews.  At times the quality of the cards has been poor, biased selection, terrible packaging on the cards they mail out, and a widely held feeling that Topps should not be in the business of selling directly to customers.

Back in the day Topps actually did dabble in direct sales to customers.  They did some different things with The Pit which is some sort of stock market for sports cards and they also had eTopps.  The latter worked a lot like Topps Now.

Cards were available for a limited amount of time online, customers could buy the cards, and then either keep them in a portfolio or pay a little extra to have them mailed out.  Some of them were even based on specific events during the season, such as the top vote getters in the All-Star Game, or Postseason games.

I have a few eTopps cards from the early 2000s, but I mainly just picked them up if they featured Albert Pujols.  I also had them mailed out, but I really abandoned that scene at some point in the mid 2000s.

I guess I could go back and fill in the Cardinals cards that I missed from that era, but I am not sure it's a real priority.  In the meantime, I picked up a copy of a former Durham Bulls who was featured in the 2007 set on a 1985 style card.  Basically cost me a whole lot of nothing, so I couldn't pass it up...

Elijah Dukes was on the Durham Bulls around the time that I first moved to North Carolina a little more than 10 years ago.  Tremendously talented player, but he had a lot of off the field issues which eventually caught up with him and basically ended his baseball career.  

I collected Elijah Dukes cards a few years back before he had run himself out of the league and had some really cool parallels of him out of sets like Finest and Triple Threads.  I missed this one back in the day, happy to add it to my collection.