30 Year Top 50: 2001 Bowman Heritage

#5- First of the Top 5 sets, in my opinion, tonight starts with the 2001 Bowman Heritage set.  The Bowman Heritage line started in 2001 and ran until 2007 when it was discontinued.  If there is one set I miss putting together every year it's this one.  The set had a similar concept to Topps Heritage and I know that many collectors felt like two Heritage sets was too many, but they had entirely different aims.  The Topps Heritage set used a previous Topps card design and focused on established players.  The Bowman Heritage set used a previous Bowman card design and focused on prospects and draft picks.

2001 Bowman Heritage Derek Jeter

This set is winner all around and it starts out with the design.  The 2001 Bowman Heritage set borrowed its design from the 1948 Bowman set.  The black and white photography with the white border is a great look and these cards do a great job of imitating the original classic Bowman set.  Topps, which produced this set, did change the size of the cards to the standard card size from the undersized original set.  

2001 Bowman Heritage Albert Pujols

The 2001 Bowman Heritage set had a total of 440 cards with the high numbered cards being short printed, just like the 1948 Bowman set.  The high numbered cards included a few important rookies including my favorite of Cardinals great Albert Pujols.  I've always thought this Pujols rookie was classy looking and I've managed to stash away a couple of nice copies of the years.  As a Cardinals fan, I unloaded parts of my Pujols collection after he signed with the Angels, but held on to my Bowman Heritage cards.  If you do not own a Pujols rookie and are thinking of adding one, this would be my first choice hands down.  

2001 Bowman Heritage Ichiro Suzuki

Of course, if it's a 2001 baseball card set, it would not be complete without an Ichiro rookie too.  This, again, is my favorite rookie of Ichiro.  I believe he might have a few more to choose from than Pujols, but I love the black and white look.  Add in the fact that this card is also apart of the high printed short prints and you've got a great card worth owning.  

2001 Bowman Heritage Chase Utley 

2001 Topps Heritage Miguel Cabrera

Beyond the typical Pujols and Ichiro rookie cards which were common in the 2001 baseball card sets, the Bowman Heritage set also put out the first cards of Chase Utley and an early card of Miguel Cabrera.  The Cabrera card is not a true rookie card, but it's a popular find among his card collectors.  The Utley card features him wearing a Futures Game jersey, Topps did not airbrush this product, and is one of a few rookie cards he had in 2001.  

2001 Topps Heritage Barry Bonds Autograph

Beyond the base set the 2001 Bowman Heritage set has a great run of insert cards.  They include a set of 1948 reprints featuring some of the era greats.  You can also find the reprints with stadium seat relics.  Sorry, no scan of Ferris Fain.  My favorite insert in this set is the run of autographs.  First, since the cards are black and white they offer a great background to sign over.  There are many collectors who assembled the base set just simply to use the cards for autographs.  The actual certified autographs from the set are low in number.  Topps only placed three modern and four 1948 era players in the autograph line.  The cards all ran at over 1:1000 odds except the ARod autograph which ran slightly below 1000. The fourth vintage autograph, a Ralph Kiner, is not officially listed on the checklist.  However, I assure you that it exists, is very difficult to find, and quite pricey.  

Two Giants Autographed Rookies

I've slowed down a little bit on trading during the past few months in terms of quantity, but I am still finding many great quality pieces for my collection.  Earlier in this weekend, I set a goal to post a few  sets here and there and try to finish them off in a reasonable amount of time.  In fact, I should have a few updates on my Topps Tek post coming in the next few days along with another post on a set I am going to complete.  However, this past week I had time to complete a few trades with a few different traders.

My first trade for this week was for a pair of Giants cards.  I have been slowly working on assembling the Donruss Elite College Patches sets from the past several years and have had several posted in this space over the past few months.  The common cards really aren't very difficult to find, but some of the better players from the set can be challenging to find, or can be fairly pricey.  For the past year I have had my eyes open for a copy of the Buster Posey autographed patch, but have been unable to track one down until now.

2008 Donruss Elite College Patches Buster Posey Autograph 

The Posey autographed patch is one of the real highlight cards from the run of Donruss Elite College Patch cards.  I am not sure if this card is technically listed as his rookie, or not, but it often trades and sells like one.  Sure, there are other 2008 Buster Posey cards, but this card frequently approaches $100, or exceeds, $100 on the secondary market.  This card has also generally "dried up".  Meaning that it is difficult to find copies in the secondary market.  I was ecstatic to find this copy.  

2006 Topps 52 Matt Cain Autograph 

I was also able to pick up a copy of a Matt Cain Topps 52 autograph in the same trade as the Posey.  The Cain autograph is an on-card autograph, which is a plus, an hails from a really underrated set.  While there were huge quantities, four per box, of autographs signed for this set there are some really good early autographs in the set.  Some of my favorites include Matt Kemp, Ben Zobrist, and Justin Verlander. 

30 Year Top 50: 1993 SP

#6- This set makes my top ten as the home to an important rookie card of the past 30 years and also as a key innovative set.  The rookie card is the second Derek Jeter rookie to make my countdown, along with the Stadium Club Murphy, and is a hotly pursued card on the secondary market.  The 1993 SP set also made a key contribution to the style element of modern baseball cards.  Search Ebay, or any secondary card market site for die cut baseball cards from 1992 or earlier and you will get nothing.  Search die cut cards from 1993 and later and you will see how many card companies, sets, and cards have used this design feature.

1993 SP Derek Jeter

I'll start with the simple part.  The 1993 SP set is home to one of the most important Derek Jeter cards.  Personally, I am big fan of the Stadium Club Murphy card, but this one always seems to get a little bit more attention from collectors.  Raw copies of this card actually are cheaper and easier to find than the Stadium Club Murphy card, but it seems like there are a ton of graded copies of this card that are floating around that always sell for hundreds of dollars.  The 1993 SP Derek Jeter card is also one of those safe bets in baseball cards.  Jeter is always going to be a popular player, and unlike some other modern players like Ken Griffey Jr., there doesn't seem to be a downward trend on the value of his cards as he gets late in his career.  

1993 SP Platinum Power Mark McGwire

The 1993 SP set also featured one insert set, Platinum Power, which was a twenty card set.  Collectors would usually see about two or three of these cards per box and were pretty popular at the time of the sets release.  They are still fairly popular, but they don't enjoy the level of popularity that some of the other dried up mid 90s chase cards enjoy, such as the 1993 Topps Finest refractors.  All of the cards in the set generally sell for less than $5 and are easy to find on the secondary market.  

1993 SP Platinum Power Ken Griffey Jr. 

The most important aspect of the Platinum Power set was that it was the first die cut card produced by a major card company.  The concept of die cut cards is pretty commonplace now and there are new die cut cards available every year.  However, this insert set in the 1993 SP set kicked off the whole fad.  If you are a modern collector take a few minutes at some point during the next week, flip through a few boxes of your cards and see how many cards you have in your collection that are die cut.  Or if you are a vintage collector, take a trip over to Ebay and type in 2012 die cut and see how many different Topps products last year used die cutting.  

Set In Progress: 1998 Topps Tek

In the next few days the card calendar for 2013 will officially kick off and I will start my 30th year in the card collecting hobby.  I have had a bit of vacation time recently around the holidays and spent some quality time hanging out with my cards.  After thirty years of collecting I am really happy with my collection, but there is always room for improvement.  This year I have decided that I am going to focus on tying up some loose ends with different card sets that I have collected during my time in the hobby, but have been unable to complete for various reasons.

Thinking about launching a massive search for numerous sets and numerous amounts of cards might be overwhelming, so I am going to work on putting together two or three at a time.  I will start simple and go with two.  My first set up is going to be the 1998 Topps Tek set.  I wrote a post back in September about the set and my pursuit of all the Ray Lankford cards in the set and a brief background explaining the concept behind the set.

Note, I am not assembling the complete set of 8,100 cards by taking on this set.  I am merely going to continue to look for my Ray Lankford variations while actually find one copy of all 90 cards in the set. Currently, I sit at 58 of the 90 cards in set.  I am not sure how long it will take, but if I am not choosy about the pattern I think I could find the remaining cards in two months.  

The cards that I need:

2 Kerry Wood, 3 Barry Bonds, 6 Frank Thomas, 7 Bernie Williams, 8 Dante Bichette, 16 Brady Anderson, 17 Vladimir Guerrero, 18 Dave Justice, 19 Chipper Jones, 21 Roger Clemens, 22 Mark Kotsay, 23 Tony Gwynn, 25 Tino Martinez, 26 Andruw Jones, 27 Sandy Alomar, 29 Gary Sheffield, 32 Curt Schilling, 33 Robin Ventura, 34 Larry Walker, 37 Paul O'Neill, 41 Pedro Martinez, 42 Derek Bell, 45 Kenny Lofton, 51 Cal Ripken, 52 Jason Kendall, 60 Juan Gonzalez, 62 Jose Cruz, 64 Edgar Martinez, 70 Chuck Knoblauch, 72 Tim Salmon, 73 Orlando Hernandez, 76 Derrek Lee, 79 Jeff King, 80 Mike Mussina, 82 Quinton McCracken, 84 Richard Hidalgo, 86 Mike Piazza

30 Year Top 50: 2001 Topps and Topps Traded & Rookies

#7- This was a hard set for me to rank on my countdown and I am actually going to spend a little bit of time talking about the both the 2001 Topps base set  and the Traded set together on this post.  The base set of the 2001 Topps set is 790 cards.  Last week, I posted the 1983 Topps set as the 15th best set of the past 50 years.  At the end of the post I stated that the set was the best Topps base set of the past 30 years.  Meaning if you line up the 792 cards in the 1983 Topps set, it will beat any other Topps base set over that 30 year period.  The Topps and Topps Traded & Rookie sets from 2001 aren't ranked 6 spots higher because of the base set.  Rather, they are ranked higher because of everything else that you get in the set beyond the base set.  The base set is still pretty nice.

2001 Topps Jason Isringhausen 

The same card design ran throughout the first, second, and traded sets of the 2001 Topps set.  The first two series of the set were a total of 790 and were all stamped with the 50th Anniversary stamp in the top left hand corner of the card.  The lone notable rookie card of the base set belonged to Ichiro Suzuki.  Since 2001 was Ichiro's first season in the Majors, Topps printed his full name on the card instead of the typical first name only Ichiro.  

2001 Topps Ichiro Suzuki 

Topps also issued a Traded & Rookies set that featured a stronger set of rookie cards than the base set.  First, Topps issued a second Ichiro rookie in the Traded set along with rookie cards for Jose Reyes, Justin Morneau, and Cardinals infielder Albert Pujols.

2001 Topps Traded & Rookies Albert Pujols 

In general, the rookie cards of Albert Pujols are the biggest drivers of the 2001 baseball card sets for Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, and Donruss.  Pujols had one of the greatest rookie seasons of all-time and his initial batch of cards often ranged from $50 or $60 for a simple base card from the Topps or Upper Deck card to near four digits for a copy of his autographed Topps Finest card.  Topps missed Pujols in the first two series of their base set, but managed to squeeze the future Hall of Famer into the Traded set.  In my opinion, this card greatly improved this set.  The vast majority of 2001 releases without a Pujols rookie are generally junk sets and can easily be found for $20 or less on the secondary market.  Sets with a Pujols rookie are often highly sought after, even after his career has started on a downward angle.  However, the Pujols card was not the only card to drive the 2001 Topps base sets and Traded & Rookie sets to a high perch on my countdown.  

2001 Topps Golden Anniversary Golden Greats Hank Aaron

As previosuly mentioned, the 2001 Topps set was the 50th Anniversary of Topps baseball cards.  The company went all out on every aspect of the set and really put together a fantastic product when the set is measured as a whole.  While it seems that Topps usually has a popular insert set each year, the 2001 set thrived on offering several excellent chase sets for collectors.  The vast majority of the inserts played on the tradition and history of Topps and featured both modern players and cards of the all-time greats.  For example, one of my favorite inserts from the set were the Golden Anniversary cards pictured above.  Topps used a wide variety of players with this insert set and broke the insert set down into several small subsets.  Topps also purchased cards from all 49 previous Topps sets and inserted them randomly into packs of cards along with autographs and game used cards.  

2001 Topps Combos Johnny Bench and Ivan Rodriguez 

Some of my other favorite inserts from the 2001 Topps set also include the Rookie Reprints, which ran throughout the first two series and Traded set, and the Topps Combos cards.  The Combos set, which is pictured above, borrowed a more modern tradition from the Topps Gallery issues of inserting art cards into the set as an insert.  The Topps Gallery cards were the Heritage insert set and featured mainly modern players drawn onto a classic Topps card design.  The concept transferred over to the 2001 Topps set and many collectors credit with the creation of sets like Gypsy Queen and Allen & Ginter.  

2001 Topps King of Kings Bob Gibson Jersey

The tip of the insert highlights in the 2001 Topps sets were the relic sets and autographs.  The autographs were clearly the biggest highlight, but the relic cards were great too and well done for a relic set.  While the pieces of jersey are fairly modest and ordinary, Topps did a great job of limiting the selection of players and the quantity of cards.  The relic cards were insert at a rate of close to 500:1 and were only available in hobby packs.  The relic set also only featured eight cards, all of Hall of Famers, with four cards in each series of Topps cards.  

2001 Topps Golden Anniversary Great Johnny Bench Autograph

The odds for the autographs in the Topps set were steep and many of the cards have dried up and are no longer available on the secondary market.  The few top of the line autographs that do leak out to the secondary market sell at premium prices.  Some of the best autographs in the set include Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Chipper Jones, Stan Musial, Nolan Ryan, and Mike Schmidt.  The autographs were fabulously designed and the signatures are all clean and well signed.  Fortunately, if you must add one of these cards to your collection, Topps also inserted several younger players whose autographs have remained at low prices.  

2008 Razor Letterman Justin Smoak Autograph

I have spent the first couple days of the new year trying to fill in a few holes in my collection.  One of my areas of focus has been on college baseball players.  Over the last six years I have had a chance to watch numerous college games at Duke, NC State, UNC, and the ACC Baseball Tournament in Durham.  Watching college baseball games has given me the chance to watch many professional baseball players before they reach the majors, or even the minors.  

2008 Razor Letterman Justin Smoak Autograph 

One of my favorite players that I watched, during the 2008 Super Regional, was South Carolina first baseman Justin Smoak.  South Carolina played UNC, in Chapel Hill, during the Super Regional and would end up losing allowing the Tar Heels to advance to the College World Series.  Entering the series he was a finalist for the Golden Spikes Award for the National College Player of the Year.  However, I was really impressed with Smoak's play and have picked up some of his cards over the last five years since he was drafted, eighth overall in the 2008 amateur draft, by the Texas Rangers.  Smoak has since been traded to the Seattle Mariners where he has not produced much.  Last season, Smoak has an OBP under .300 and a slugging percentage under .400.  

Despite the fact that Smoak has not produced since being drafted into the Majors, I have still enjoyed collecting some of his cards.  This is my first Smoak autograph, but he really has very few to choose from and none in a Major League uniform.  After weighing my options, I decided to go ahead and add a Smoak autograph despite not being a certified issue.  Happy addition to my collection.  

30 Year Top 50: 2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights

#8- I am generally not a huge fan of the Chrome lines that Topps rehashes out every year, but I have to tip my cap to them with the 2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights set.  The set features a brilliant list of rookie cards which have allowed this set to quietly become one of the best sets released during the past decade.

2005 Topps Update & Highlights Ryan Braun

When Topps issues a Chrome version of a set I generally yawn.  The Chrome lines of Topps cards started in 1996 with the release of the 1996 Topps Chrome set.  The Topps Chrome cards looked exactly like the regular 1996 Topps cards except they had the Chrome effect.  To show collectors who do not dabble in the world of modern cards the difference, the card above is the Topps Update & Highlights version of Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun.  This card was later placed in the Topps Chrome Update & Highlights set too which is pictured below.  

2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights Ryan Braun

I am not sure why, but collecting the same cards over again, but with different finishes never excited me.  There is generally a monetary difference between the base set and Chrome sets, but it is usually caused by a few select rookie cards.  I always managed to add the Chrome rookie cards that I wanted for my collection without opening a bunch of packs or sinking money into a box.  Instead, I could always find the cards as singles on the secondary market.  The game changer for the Topps Chrome sets started in the mid 2000's when Topps started placing autographs and a wide variety of parallels into the sets.  The changes caused collectors to flock towards the Chrome products, and in particular, the 2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights set.

2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights Jered Weaver 

As I mentioned before, the Topps Chrome Update & Highlights set started off with a set of great rookie cards.  The rookie cards included Ryan Braun, Jered Weaver, Ryan Zimmerman, Andrew McCutchen, Matt Kemp, and several others.  The Chrome single cards rookie easily surpassed the Topps Update & Highlights base set singles.  Within the Chrome Update set the different parallels then added even further value to the rookie cards.  

2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights Black Matt Kemp

There were several different variations on the rookie cards.  The most basic parallel card in the Topps Chrome Update set is the refractor card which has been a constant throughout the Chrome sets.  There were also Chrome Black and Red parallels which were limited in production to 250, for the black, and 65, for the red.  These parallels are highly coveted by collectors and they often sell for a premium.  For example, a basic Matt Kemp Topps Chrome Update card can be found for around $10 on Ebay or CheckOutMyCards.  The black parallel of the Kemp card usually reaches prices north of $100.  

2005 Topps Chrome Update Andrew McCutchen Autograph

The 2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights set also featured autographed rookie cards.  There are roughly 17 autographed rookies in the set and the two best cards belong to Reds outfielder Jay Bruce and Pirates star Andrew McCutchen.  While both are sticker autographs, they are in high demand and often fetch for a nice price on the secondary market.  A raw copy of the Bruce might fetch around $30 while the McCutchen card hovers just south of $100.  

Overall, this is my second favorite 2005 release.  There is one more 2005 set that ranks above this one in my opinion, but the single rookie cards in this set are a can't miss for any baseball card collector.  The fact is, that this set started strongly when it was released, but has continued to gain steam and popularity as the players have reached the majors and have played there for multiple seasons.  While some might look at the value of the cards in this set as excessive and high, the value in the case of the 2005 Topps Chrome Update & Highlights set is well worth with it.