I picked up a jumbo box of 2015 Bowman cards last week. I landed some pretty nice cards in the box and will have a couple of posts the next few days showing off some of the highlights from this year's set. The autographs are always a fun place to start and I was more than pleased with my three signatures. Ideally I would have landed a Carlos Rodon autograph, but that might show up on here in the next week or two.
First up......
Asuaje was an All-Star in A Ball last year playing for the Red Sox Greenville Drive team. The third baseman had almost 500 at bats last year and picked up 38 doubles, 12 triples, 15 home runs while slashing .310/.393/.533. He's off to a little bit of a slow start in Double A this year for Portland, but there is still plenty of time left in the season for him to pick up the pace. Seems like it might be a good autograph to own in a few years.
Jorge Mateo is also a pretty well regarded prospect. Last season the 19 year old Yankees prospect played a total of 15 games in the Gulf Coast League after two seasons playing for the Yankees in the Dominican Summer League. In his first 23 games this season playing for Charleston (A Ball) he already has 21 stolen bases, but his on base percentage is just .319. Again, he's a really young player and he is in the lower minors, so this looks it has the potential to be a good pull, but you never know how players in the low minors will turn out. I will stick this in a box and possibly be happy about it in a few years......
This was the prize card out my box. You want the National League Rookie of the Year so far? Forget Kris Bryant, this guy is a blast to watch and is putting up some great numbers outside of strikeouts. On-base percentage over .400, 7 home runs early in the season, and an OPS+ of 185. I had the opportunity to see Peterson play during the Triple A All-Star game last summer. Really impressive outing for the Dodgers outfielder.
Overall, I was really happy with my Bowman autographs. The Mateo and Asuaje autographs have the potential to be pretty good autographs, while the Pederson autograph is already a really nice autograph given his performance early in the season for the Dodgers. More Bowman tomorrow.....
I found a pretty good deal on a Kolten Wong card last week that I really wanted to add to my collection. I have been slowly getting around to picking up some of the 2015 Cardinals autographs and relics after laying low for the first part of the spring. Really the Topps base set did not have much for Cardinals fans in terms of hit cards to chase down, but now that Gypsy Queen, Museum Collection, and Bowman have dropped I finally have a few things on my list of cards that I am looking to add.
This Wong card cost me a little bit more than $10. His card prices have settled down a bit after being somewhat of a roller coaster the past year and a half. Honestly, they have generally trended down since he was not given the starting job last spring and struggled to be consistent once the Cardinals brought him up for good. He's off to a pretty good start so far this season though with a couple of home runs including a walk off job Sunday against the Pirates.
We are now a month into the baseball season and the year is looking good for both the Cardinals and the Durham Bulls. I use the #MyCardMonday posts to frequently highlight a player or card from those two teams and this week is going to be no different. I spent my Sunday afternoon flipping back and forth between the Durham Bulls/Pawtucket game and the Cardinals/Pirates game. It was fun to see both games, but after watching the games the choice for this week's #MyCardMonday was really a no brainer.
Carpenter seems to be on track for an MVP season with an OPS+ of 191 with 18 extra base hits in 23 games. Those 18 extra base hits include 14 doubles, 1 triple, and 3 home runs. Carpenter is currently on pace for a ridiculous 125 doubles this season which would smash the single season record held by 1930s Red Sox outfielder Earl Webb who hit 67 in 1931. There is even a Carpenter doubles tracker floating around on Twitter showing Carpenter's pace along with Earl Webb and Joe Medwick. Medwick holds the Cardinals team record with 64 two baggers in 1936.
I am not sure what the numbers on this graph stand for, I might be doubting it's accuracy, but it's going to be a fun race to follow throughout the season. Carpenter ended the 2013 season with 55 doubles, so he has certainly been in the neighborhood of the record in prior years. Maybe I need to make an accurate graph of the doubles race. Hmmm....
If you missed the first half of this post, you can find my autographs and relics here. Again, I am a little bit behind with some of my posts, so thank you for bearing with me on these posts this weekend. Today I am going to look at the base set and parallels in this year's Gypsy Queen.
Base Set
The base set is the usual:
300 cards with 50 short prints for a total of 350 cards
There is one mini per pack which follow the same pattern as the base set.
Each box of cards has a pack of minis. They contain the variations of the minis
Base set has photo variations- We are dealing with Topps
Overall I am not a huge fan of this design. I usually like the dark colored cards, a little bit more condition sensitive since chipping shows easily, but these do not do it for me. It's an odd and unattractive color of brown. The shape of the window around the card is also odd. What in the world is that shape? What's that thing in between the Gypsy Queen label and player name at the top of the card?
It kind of looks like the Ashoka Chakra on the Indian flag......
Anyway, I am not a huge fan of the design. Topps has now made the Gypsy Queen for the last five years and has kept the design close to the initial release in 2011. Perhaps next year they will come up with something different without losing the feel of the set. I understand, it's a fine line to walk.
Parallels
The big parallel set in Gypsy Queen is still the framed cards that are numbered out of 500. These have always been popular cards with collectors. I like the looks of these and will probably try to find a few of these with Cardinals and Rays players. Nice cards.....
The minis also have parallels. The most common are the silvers which are numbered out of 199. I pulled a total of five, but they generally run about three per box. I almost like the coloring on these minis better than the base set. I did not pull a black parallel out of my box, but they are numbered to just 5 this year, instead of 25, and feature red letting. Sharp looking cards.
This red mini of former Cardinals/Angels shortstop David Eckstein was my best parallel pulled. It's a red mini numbered out of 25. Again, the coloring on this card is better than the coloring on the base set cards. I really like the looks of this card, and while it shows Eckstein on the Angels, it's still a keeper.
Inserts
Which brings us to the inserts. There are a few different in the set, but I am going to focus on my favorite two insert cards from this set: Glove Stories and Walk Off Winners.
The Glove Stories inserts feature players who made great defensive plays last year. There are some different names in the set and you don't see too many too often in inserts. Yes, there is Trout in there, but there are also cards of Dustin Ackley, Steven Souza, and Peter Bourjos. I did not get a Souza, but one is on it's way. I do like the Ackley, even though he was a Tar Heel, making this cool catch.
The Walk-Off Winners set is similar to the Glove Stories. Sure there are a few more big names thrown in there, but lots of cool cards. There are three Cardinals for me to chase down, but I did land this sweet Longoria which shows his walk off from the last day of the 2011 season.....
When did Gypsy Queen come out again? It was several weeks ago, but I am just writing a post about the two boxes I opened up now. What happened to cause this delay? The statistics of page views do not support what I am about to say, so I will first thank you for continuing to visit my page in spite of the fact that I did not post as regularly as a normally do in terms of both quantity and quality. The beginning of April started with a vacation. By the time the vacation ended and returned to work my schedule of writing and posting cards and the whatnot was completely in taters. I managed to get to the end of April and have worked my way back into shape in terms of posts.
So, to actually answer the question at the top of the post the product arrived on April 15th. I attended the Durham Bulls home opener that evening and left my boxes of Gypsy Queen in my car. The next day, after work, I opened them live on Periscope. Something I am playing with, but I need to use an Ipad instead of my phone. I also need to have the camera set up so that it is somewhat still. If you are on Periscope my user is the Snorting Bull.
After the Periscope broadcast these cards just sat on my desk. So, between a post this evening and tomorrow I am planning on catching everyone up on my Gypsy Queen cards including my two cents on the set and design this year.
Lets start off with the good stuff.....
Autographs
I opened two boxes of Gypsy Queen so I was supposed to receive a total of four autographs. I kind of made it there. I have not run into a redemption this year, but after last year I have decided to sell/trade all of my code cards this year. Probably next year and the year after that too...... Yes, I got three autographs and a redemption card.
Obviously I really like the Matt Adams autograph. It's always cool to pull an autograph from your favorite team out of a box that you open. Adams is not my favorite Cardinal, but I probably would have ended up with this card at some point, so it's all good. Someone asked me on Twitter whether Pompey was one of those guys I liked because I saw him in Triple A, but he actually was never in Buffalo before the Jays sent him down there this season. Gausman and Johnson are nice autographs too. I will let you know what the Gausman brings me when it is traded/sold.
Relics
Last year I did really well with the relics in this product pulling a button card from Greinke. I was hoping for a similar card this year, but I guess that would have been beating some pretty long odds. Here's what I did ended up landing......
Gypsy Queen can have some rather ordinary relics, so I was happy to draw out the Kolten Wong, again a Cardinal, and the low print run Miggy with the nice frame border. Honestly, as much as I was hoping for something cool, like a button card, I also feared drawing four relic cards with names like Adrian Gonzalez. Nothing against Adrian, but he's not my favorite player and that's a rather ordinary looking relic. Back me up Dodgers people....
Plates-
and here is where my box was made. I have heard different collectors say that there seemed to be a lot of plates being pulled out of Gypsy Queen this year and I have to agree. I have seen numerous box breaks and different collectors on social media open boxes/cases and post their hits. Lots of plates. My two were pretty nice, so I cannot complain.
This one was kind of a surprise to me. I am not a huge plate person and I do not actively seek them out to buy or trade. If one happens into my collection at the right price, so be it. I am not sure how many of these I have pulled over the years, but I do not think that I have ever landed a printing plate of an insert card. This seems to be a first as far as I can remember. It's a nice card.
Lastly, a Liriano plate. I like the frame around the plate. Really nice card and made for a nice finishing touch for my two boxes of Gypsy Queen.
The Rays signed Ronald Belisario this February and he has made his way onto the Durham Bulls. The hard throwing right hander has spent most of his career with the Dodgers, but has also spent time with the Marlins, Pirates, and White Sox. Between 2009 and 2014 Belisario made 335 relief appearances with an ERA of 3.75, FIP of 3.59, and an ERA+ of 102. The numbers look rather pedestrian, but two of those season were outstanding efforts by Belisario.
During his 2009 rookie season, after spending a decade in the minors, Belisario posted a 2.04 ERA, 3.51 FIP, and an ERA+ of 197. The Dodgers used him in the playoffs that year, and while he had a rough time with the Phillies in the National League Championship Series, he had a clean slate against the Cardinals in two appearances.
His 2012 season was also a bright spot in his career. Belisario went 8-1 with a 2.54 ERA, 3.10 FIP, and 150 ERA+. His two proceeding years were not so great with two seasons of sub 100 ERA+. The time was split between the Dodgers and White Sox.
Not sure if/when Belisario is going to fit into the Rays bullpen this year, but he has pitched well so far for the Bulls. In seven games (6.2 innings) he has allowed 1 run and only 3 hits. I am hoping to get a closer look at Belisario next week when the Bulls host the Buffalo Bisons.
Let's look at the cardboard......
Belisario has a lot more cards then I would have guessed. His first cards started popping up in 2004 while he was a Marlins prospect. He is a bunch of the Playoff products that year including most of the Leaf Certified, Donruss Throwbacks, Studio, Elite, and Playoff Absolute. Upper Deck also included Belisario in a few of their products. Between the Playoff and Upper Deck products he does have a few autographs out on the market. All of his rookie cards and autographs from 2004 are readily available on sites like Ebay and COMC and can all be had, with a little patience, for less than $5.
I actually do not own any of Belisario's autographs. He does not have the best signature and all of his autographs are stickers. Some of the autographs, like his UD Etchings card, are definitely missable, but if I had to pick one I'd go with his Leaf Certified. The sticker blends in with the card pretty well and I liked this set.
Plus the price seems just right.
Almost all of Belisario's other cards feature him as a member of the Dodgers. Yes, there are a few token White Sox cards floating around out there, but most of them are Dodgers cards from the last four or five years.
Being a middle relief pitcher means that Belisario has no real inserts or autographs, but if you like some of the colored parallels they are out there to chase down. If you decide to add a Belisario card or two to your collection it will not be a costly add and there are a ton of his cards floating around including some low numbered parallels and occasionally a plate or two.
This is the worst year in my collection. In 1994 I was a junior in high school and I really did not do a ton of collecting that year. I have thought about it plenty of times over the years and I am not sure exactly why this was such a low interest year for me, but I think a large part of it was the products available to collectors.
I generally plan out my posts on The Snorting Bull and usually have little scraps of paper floating around my desk with ideas for new posts, things to research for upcoming posts, or to do lists of cards that need to be scanned or pulled out of boxes. I planned most of my Top Sets from the 1990s posts over two weekends a few months back. The lists might change slightly, but I can generally name my favorite sets from a particular year off the top of my head. In a few instances I spent time going back through the sets to narrow my lists down to 5 cards or I have also gone back through to refresh memories of a sets features.
The list for 1994 was the last list that I finished in this set of blog posts and it took a lot of thought and a lot time flipping through cards. Two of these sets were slam dunks, the other three are here for a reason, but if they had been released another year they would have likely missed the list and not even been a consideration for inclusion.
5. Score Rookie Traded- As a Cardinals fan the mid 1990s were pretty painful. I used to go with my father to a lot of Sunday afternoon games around this time and they could be pretty hard to watch. The Cardinals had some talent on the field with players like Brian Jordan, Ray Lankford, and Gregg Jefferies. However, their rotation featured Rick Sutcliffe, Tom Urbani, and Omar Oliveras. Not a single starting pitcher had an ERA+ of over 100. Quiz question:
What was the hot Cardinals prospect featured in the 1994 Score Rookie Traded set?
I should probably define hot. Since the Cardinals were owned by one of Gussie Busch's cheap sons who was not going to spend any money to resign Gregg Jefferies, it was more a matter of what inexpensive Triple A player was going to be called up to fill the hole in the line up. The answer was John Mabry. Mabry is not only in the Score Rookie Traded set, he is a pretty abundant card in the set. There are all kinds of stories that I have heard over the year's about how/why Mabry's print run in the set is huge, but there are also two short printed cards to balance out the excessive amount of Mabry rookie cards. One of the short prints is Jose Lima. The rumor de jour is that the printing plate for Lima's card broke during production and that Pinnacle filled the hole with Mabry cards. There is also a short printed rookie redemption card that turned out to be ARod. I owned the ARod card at some point, but also traded it away at some point. The rest of the set is pretty missable and the red borders are trying hard to be the 1990 Donruss set, but failing miserably. I dig the Lima and dig the Mabry.
4. Signature Rookies- This set was more of a curiosity for me. It had huge production numbers, but it was the first one per autograph product out on the market. There are guys in this set like Derek Jeter and Chris Carpenter who had pretty significant impact on the sport. You can also find autographs of players like Ricky Bottalico and Jason Kendall who had solid careers in the Majors. A few of the veterans in this set, like Bottalico, have signed little else in the way of the certified autographs. There are also autographs of Matt Drews, Chad McConnell, and Robbie Beckett. Not quite household names. Did I mention the gigantic print runs? There are a ton of these floating around on Ebay, and every outside of Jeter, is super cheap. Fun cards to flip through......
3. 1994 Leaf Limited- This was another "super premium" set. At the time these cards were released I did not touch this set. At some point about a decade ago I decided these were really cool and went all in on finding these. These cards were limited to just 60,000 boxes, hence the Limited in the product name, and at the time of their release they cost $5 a pack. The high school me would probably be slightly irked that these cards on are this list, but are really nice looking. Thick card stock, foil finish. A fellow collector once told me these were the Ferrari of super premium cards from the 90s.....
I guess I have never sat down to compare this to some of the other cool high-end products from that era, but it's probably in the conversation. The important card in the set is an ARod rookie. Oi.
2. Bowman's Best- I liked these cards a lot and this set was easily one of my favorite releases every year during the 1990s. The 1994 set was the premier of this set. Yes, it's a premium version of the Bowman set. I made premium sound a little bit undesirable in that write up about the Leaf Limited set, but I did not hate them all. This product was actually at the same $5 price point as the Leaf Limited set and featured a nice mix of veteran players and prospects. Bowman had made that cross over by this point. My favorite card in the set, it's one of my iconic cards of the 90s, is the Edgar Renteria rookie. He was a pretty important 1990s/2000s player for the Cardinals and played an important role in several World Series games. I love the teal Marlins uni on this card.
1. SP- These were the cheap "premium" cards from 1994. I actually really liked this product in 1993 and had really warmed up to the Upper Deck products by this point. In fact, I think I might have polished off the Upper Deck base set in 1994 before I tackled the Topps set. I think that is the only time that has ever happened in my collection. The SP set had a nice look to it and cool foil finish, but you were not paying $5 for the use of thick card stock. It was a favorite at the time that reached some level of iconic status in the hay day of ARod cards. I still think it's an important set, it just costs a little bit less to put it together now.
