500th Post Giveaway

My 500th Post Giveaway has ended and the drawing was held this morning.  The winner of the Roger Craig autograph is:

Congratulations to San Jose Fuji!

1999 Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion Set: Update #2

I was up to 60 cards in my quest for completing my Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion set after last week and I have quickly found another twelve cards I needed for the set Sunday night and added them to my growing stack of cards.  I am know at 72 cards for a grand total of 48% of the set.  I still have a long way to go in completing this set, but I feel like I am off to a great start and I am being pretty aggressive about looking.  I have got a few leads on another dozen or so cards which could get me over the half way point in the set by the end of the week.

Here's a look at the newest additions:

Buy Local, Buy Cardinals

It's fun to watch the college baseball teams around North Carolina, but the Cardinals always seem to pick up players from all the other ACC schools besides the big four North Carolina schools.  Currently there are two Cardinals who graduated from the ACC with Shane Robinson coming out of Florida State and Jon Jay coming off of Miami.  Seth Maness went to East Carolina, but nobody is quite sure what conference ECU is even in anymore.  

The Cardinals also have a few ACC grads progressing through their minor league system.  James Ramsey from Florida State is probably the best known of the bunch.  However, throughout the summer I was surprised to see a name pop up on a Cardinals minor league roster and then later in the summer on a FanGraphs countdown list celebrating the best fringe prospects.  Is that even an honor to be the best fringe prospect? 

 I am counting it as a positive at this point.  Meet former Wake Forest Demon Deacon pitcher, and current Springfield Cardinal, Tim Cooney:  

You know you are under the radar when the only actual video of you pitching on YouTube is posted to your own account.  Is he even throwing on a baseball field?  Not clear.  What is clear is that Tim Cooney was an award winning pitcher this summer.  In fact, he was on the Fringe list a grand total of four times this summer and on the next best five (honorable fringness) another time.  

Cooney was a pretty good college pitcher too, but I am not sure that he was on the best of college teams.  He was ACC pitcher of the week several times during his junior year, but we only went 6-7 with an ERA close to 4.  However, when you take a look at some of his game logs he really had some great outings.  For example, in the ACC Championship he struck a total of 10 in 6 innings against College World Series qualifier North Carolina.  However, Wake Forest got shut out in that game.

So, the real question is does Tim Cooney have anything in the way of baseball cards?  Would he have a blog post on my page if he didn't?

2012 Panini Elite Extra Edition Tim Cooney Autograph 

Cooney only has one baseball card, a 2012 Panini Elite, but the card has an autographed version on top of the regular base card.  The autograph is even on-card to make up for the fact that Panini does not have an NCAA license and airbrushed over the WF on the top of Cooney's cap.  The low print versions of this card can be pretty competitive, but the base red autograph is dirt cheap.  I picked up the card above for four dollars and the seller threw in a second card:

2012 Panini Elite Extra Edition Tim Cooney Autograph 

at the same price.  Now, I am not guaranteeing that Tim Cooney makes it to the Majors, but he ended up making the Texas League All-Star team and I have a feeling that the Cardinals will put him in Memphis next year.  Meaning he is one step, or one injury, away from being added to the roster and making his Cardinals debut.  $4 is a small gamble and if nothing else I now own the baseball card of a pretty good ACC pitcher.  Too bad he played for Wake and not State.  

1999 Pacific Private Stock Set

I have started working on a new project already this week, so this post is not going to inspire anything new project wise, but this is one of my favorite late 90s set.  I found the cards about two weeks ago while working on organizing my cards and have not been able to set them down the past few days.  Critics of the Pacific cards will often cite the same boring format, similar styles and designs, and cheap card stock.  Love them, or hate them, the Private Stock set release was a unique release for Pacific because it ditched a lot of what traditionally made up a Pacific baseball card set.

1999 Pacific Private Stock Roger Clemens 

The design and style of the card is not too far of a stretch for Pacific and might be about the only thing that was somewhat normal about this set from the now defunct card brand.  All of the pictures are actually game action shots with the backgrounds blurred out with some sort of pixalated effect behind the player.  I believe that is an Office Max sign behind Roger Clemens, but it looks like an Office Max sign painted by Georges Seurat and you are standing a little too close to the picture (that's two Seurat references this month).  For me it was enough of a departure from the normal Pacific product, which I am a fan of, to catch me attention and peak my interest in this set.

The design of the back further added to the variance in the design from traditional baseball card sets.  Rather than doing stats, or a biographical section, Pacific posted a box score on the back of each card in the Private Stock set.  

It was always really cool to see what Pacific put on the back with the box scores.  Some of the cards, like this Clemens were really obvious and easy to pick out.  A 15 strikeout game is a no-brainer and probably took someone at Pacific a matter of seconds to pick that game out from a page of Clemens game logs.  I thought there would be players with ho-hum box scores on the back, like Bob went 1-4 with a single in a 4-3 loss against the Phillies, but there are not really any cards like that.  Even Brant Brown had a really good line on his card.

Of course the base set featured several different rookie cards and the majority of them had a small variation with a red rookie stamp up in the top left-hand corner of the card.  Most of the names of the rookies in the set are missable, but there are a few interesting cards.  Ryan Minor was a two-sports star in basketball and baseball, but did not really make it in either the NBA or MLB.  Other names are a little bit more recognizable and of course there was the one rookie card which Pacific decided to add a stamp onto in addition to the red rookie typing.

1999 Pacific Private Stock J.D. Drew 

Sometime after the 1997 amateur draft Scott Boras and J.D. Drew convinced the entire baseball world, that includes the baseball card world, that Drew was worth a small fortune because he was the next Mickey Mantle.  Complete with the #7 jersey number.  The Phillies drafted Drew and he did not sign.  The Cardinals drafted Drew in the 1998 amateur draft, signed him, and called him up in September.  Drew hit everything and people were sold.  Every card company had a J.D. Drew card.  Well, the really good ones came out in 1998, like the Fleer Update.  The 1999 Pacific Private Stock was a few months short.  Gold star for effort on the part of Pacific and cool little stamp on the right side of the card declaring this as some sort of exclusive card.

The really odd part about this set came from the actually physical ordering of the cards.  Every single Pacific set I have ever collected has always started with the Angels and worked it's way through the team alphabetically from Anaheim to Toronto.  However, the Private Stock set broke that long held tradition with Pacific baseball card sets.  Below are cards 7, 8, and 9 front and back.

The whole set is ordered more along the lines of a small Topps set with the players arranged randomly between the beginning and ending of the set.  Even the rookies are mixed in with the regular cards and not given a special place in the set which was very common at the time, especially with the Upper Deck sets.

If you cannot find anything redeeming about the cards above, there were also a mini-206 card inserted in every pack of Private Stock.  The cards have a 206 back and are the same size, but the design is just a copy of the regular base from Private Stock with an added white border.

1999 Pacific Private Stock PS-206 Nomar Garciaparra

I know there are a lot of minis fans out there and this is a really good full set of minis to try to put together.

Co-Signers Oddball

I had the chance to pick up a cool card with the signature of two former Cardinals on it this week in the form of a 1999 Topps Stadium Club Co-Signers Scott Spiezio/Tony Womack autograph.  I really love some of these Co-Signers cards and have a bunch in my collection, but scratch my head at times over the combination of players Topps put together on some of the cards.  This card is one of them. 

1999 Topps Stadium Club Co-Signers Scott Spiezio/Tony Womack Autograph

At the time the card was issued Spiezio was a utility infielder for A's at the time with a little bit of pop.  Nothing to write home about and I am a little surprised at the time that Topps would even put him on an autographed card.  Womack was the real star of this card which might be hard for some to believe.  At the time of the cards issue, Womack had just been traded to the Diamondbacks and was on his way to his third stolen base crown in a row.  More importantly, Womack would play a few seasons in Arizona and pick up two huge hits which helped the Diamondbacks win the World Series in 2001. 

The first came in the tight NLDS series against the Cardinals.  The Diamondbacks and Cardinals went to a decisive five game in the first round and were tied at 1 in the ninth when Tony Womack came up against Steve Kline.



Womack had an even bigger hit in game 7 of the World Series that year.  Most people remember the Luis Gonzalez blooper which won the game for the Diamondbacks, but the Yankees actually entered the ninth inning of that game ahead by a run.  Before Gonzo could win, Womack tied the game up of off Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera.



Womack would go on to win the National League crown with the Cardinals in 2004 before bouncing around to the Yankees, Reds, and Cubs his last couple of years in the league.  Womack had a really good year for the Cardinals in 2004 posting a .307 batting average and a career high .349 on-base percentage, but it's hard to top the contributions he made for the Diamondbacks in 2001.

Spiezio helped the Angels win the World Series in 2002 with this huge home run:

and later helped the Cardinals win the 2006 World Series.  The times before and after each World Series appearance for Spiezio were very forgettable and riddled with poor play and bad behavior away from the field.  His career ended after he drank himself off the Cardinals in 2007.  

1999 Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion Set: Update #1

I am going to stay aggressive, yet smart, on picking up the cards that I need to complete my 1999 Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion set.  I am going to try to pick up at least one card every week.  So, here we go with this week's update:

Entering the week I had a total of 39 out 150 cards for a total of 26% of the set.  This week I managed to add a total of 21 new cards.  One came from a small pick up on Ebay that cost me a few cents which netted me a copy of the Travis Lee card from the set.

The other twenty cards from the set I picked up were generously sent to me from Tony Burrell, he's a Facebook trader with the greatest and largest Pat Burrell collection anywhere.  Very generous and I am grateful to get off to a great start on this project.  Here's a look at the twenty cards I received from Tony.

The 21 new cards bring my total for the set up to 60 cards, or 40% of the set.  I am hoping that with a few days off next week for Thanksgiving break I can cross the 50% mark.  I need 15 cards to do it.  Go team.

My Top 50 On Cardboard- #23 Kirby Puckett

My Top 50 On Cardboard
#23
Kirby Puckett

1985 Topps Kirby Puckett RC

Kirby Puckett was one of the great players of my childhood.  He was an enemy of sorts in 1987 for me when the Twins defeated my Cardinals in the World Series, but he never got to the point of being the Mets or Cubs.  I think I really first started to like Puckett during the 1991 World Series.  Unfortunately, Puckett's career only lasted a few years beyond that ending in 1995 after he was diagnosed with Glaucoma.  Puckett still managed to win a pair of World Series rings and be elected to the Hall of Fame despite only playing twelve seasons.  

Hobby Impact-

Puckett had a huge impact in the hobby starting with his rookie card in the 1984 Fleer Update set.  The set is one of the iconic sets of the 80s and features, not only Puckett's rookie card, but also the rookie card of pitcher Roger Clemens.  The Clemens gets most of the attention, but the Puckett card is just as important in my opinion.  

1984 Fleer Update Kirby Puckett RC

 

Raw copies of the 1984 Fleer Update Puckett rookie card can usually be had for $35 to $40 on Ebay, but the price can be steep for high graded copies.  Puckett's impact in the baseball card hobby extended far beyond his rookie card though.  Kirby was a staple in baseball card throughout his playing career and usually had pretty cool cards.  He's one of my favorite 80s and 90s players to flip through and just look at the pictures on the cards.

Common cards of Puckett are dirt cheap since he was an 80s player.  His relics and autographs are a little bit different.  Since Puckett only played twelve years, and is a Hall of Famer, there is a slight premium with his relics at times.  I have never really found a bargin Puckett relic and have often found the most common of common ones still often push five or six bucks with shipping.  Minimum.  Relics from premium sets are downright pricey.

Of course, like his playing career ended a little too early, Kirby died in 2006 at the age of 45.  He was not a huge signer, so his autograph prices have remained really high over the last two decades since he retired.  Outside of his awesome Fleer rookie card that is one of his greatest current impacts on the hobby.  If you are looking for a challenging autograph to track down for your collection Kirby Puckett might be for you. 

I managed to track down one of the few certified Puckett autographs out there for my collection a few years back.  The vast majority of Puckett autographs are Upper Deck or Donruss autographs.  There are a few sticker autographs floating around, but it's not too difficult to find a few on-card autographs around at a slight premium.  I picked my autograph up from the Upper Deck Retro set.  

While the Retro set is not the best Puckett autograph in the world, I am just happy to say that I have one in my collection.  Again, fun card project for 80s baseball card fans.

On The Field Impact-
Puckett's value on the field is hard to judge because he did not play for very long.  He only had 2,300 hits and 200 home runs when he retired from baseball in 1995, but he called it quits at only the age of 35 because of health concerns.  Clearly if Puckett had played another 4 or 5 years and extended his career closer to the age of 40, he would have reached 3000 hits and approached 300 home runs.  Both extremely good numbers for a center fielder.

Puckett also won a batting title in 1989, but posted a batting average over .300 in every Major League season except for two.  Four times he posted the high hit total in the American League.  Puckett also posted more than 400 career doubles.  So, while Puckett's career picture still looks good, even with the shortened career, it looks even better when he look at some other statistics that are not cumulative. 

While Puckett's career WAR is about 20 points lower than the average Hall of Fame center fielder (50 WAR for Puckett vs 70 WAR average for HOF center fielder), his 7 year peak WAR as measured by the JAWS rating system has Puckett rated at 37 compared to 44 for the average.  The numbers are slightly below average, but I can handle a big Hall of Famer, and Puckett certainly belongs.

Outside of the big numbers, one of the first seasons I really enjoyed watching Puckett play was the 1991 postseason.  Puckett's overall postseason numbers were not great, and he did not take home any hardware, but he had a pretty impact on helping the Twins capture the team's, and Puckett's, second World Series ring.

While many people remember the Puckett home run that ended Game 6 of that World Series I always liked the potentially game saving catch that Puckett made on Ron Gant better:

Great catch!

Favorite Card-
So many good Puckett cards to choose from.  I already picked two of his rookies, so I will go with his 1993 Topps giant bat card.  Posted is the Topps Gold Variation.