A Venerable Old Card Part 24

I did a little bit of work on a few 1996 sets late last week.  Always a good year for the Cardinals cards.  It was the first year that LaRussa managed the team and the cheap August Busch IV sold the team to current owner Bill DeWitt.  The Cardinals made it all the way to the seventh game of the National League Championship Series before losing to the Braves.  It was the real standout season, as far as team success went, for the Cardinals during the 1990s.

So many different players and different cards to pick from, I decided to go with a player who hasn't gotten many posts on my blog, but also has a cool card.

I went with an Emotion XL of pitcher Alan Benes.

Player first.

There were two Benes brothers who made the Major Leagues.  A third was a Minor Leaguer with the Cardinals, but never cracked the big squad.  Many 1990s baseball fans know Andy who was a big innings eater who pitched for the Padres, Cardinals, and Diamondbacks.  I actually think Alan was better, but his career was derailed by shoulder problems.

1996 was the first full season for Alan Benes.  He started 32 games and won 13 for the National League Central Champions.  Not his best year though, which came a year later when he went just 9-9, but had a 2.89 ERA and 144 ERA+.  He missed about 10 starts that year, but if he had pitched enough innings to qualify for the league leaders that ERA+ would have placed him fifth in the NL ahead of pitchers like Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Curt Schilling.

The younger Benes came back with the Cardinals as a relief pitcher, but was not ever really effective again.  He bounced around for a few years in the early 2000s with the Cubs and Rangers.

Now the card.

The Emotion cards ran for a few years in the mid 1990s.  Small sets, but the cards were generally pretty nice.  Some could even be classified in the cool category.  Since the Cardinals lacked big hobby names for the years these were put out, most of their cards in these sets are pretty ho hum.  Like Alan Benes is excited.  Tom Pagnozzi was gritty, Royce Clayton was concentrating, John Mabry adroit (I shit you not), Brian Jordan was patient, and Ozzie was the Wizard.

The Emotion cards are pretty easy to find and fairly inexpensive.  I've even seem some boxes around at card shows and on Ebay for less than $40.  Pretty fun box to open too.

National Baseball Card Day

I am not sure when National Baseball Card Day got started, but I had to look back a little while ago to see if I had ever posted or mentioned this day before.  I had not.  I did flip through my cards and found that I had a bunch of cards from National Trading Card Day back in 2004.  I am going to have to make a post out of those cards someday soon.

In the meantime, I decided that it would be cool to share out my first card and most recent card to celebrate National Baseball Card Day.  I have now been collecting for 33 years and have two to three hundred thousand cards.  Hard to narrow it down.

My first card....

I think I have posted pictures of this card before on this blog.  I am not quite sure of all the details on the card other than I pulled the card out of a pack of 1983 Fleer cards sometime during the fall of 1983 after my father bought me a pack of baseball cards from a convenience store in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.  I didn't live there long, but I managed to pick up some packs of 1983 Fleer and Topps cards while I was there along with some old singles from the early 1980s and late 1970s from a Flea Market my brother used to get cards from on Sundays.  

I have a few boxes of cool rookie cards in my baseball card room.  It's filled with all of my iconic rookie cards.  This Jim Smith card sits right in front of my Ozzie Smith rookie card.  Jim Smith is easily the worst player in the box, but I love this card.  I even love the fact that it is crinkled and has all sorts of creases.  

My latest card...

After receiving a copy of Aledmys Diaz's Throwback Thursday rookie card in less than mint condition, I have made the decision to avoid buying directly from them for awhile.  Not going to rehash the entire incident, but lets just say that Topps Customer Service agents don't seem to really care about whether they piss off customers or not.

The incident recently forced me to find a different spot to buy a copy of a Topps Now card of the Cardinals rookie shortstop.  Sometimes different is better.  Branching out away from buying directly from Topps helped me find a seller with Topps Now cards on Ebay who is selling for less than the cards go for on their website.  At least, if you are buying single cards like I am.

This Topps Now card celebrates a walk off single Aledmys had against the Padres a few weeks back...

Definitely the route to go from now on with the Topps Now cards, or anything else that Topps sells on their website.  

Farewell Prince

I was a little surprised to see Prince Fielder call it quits this week, but after two serious neck operations I cannot really blame him for walking away.  During his career Prince almost made $130 million dollars, plus insurance and the Detroit Tigers are going to pay him a whole lot more money over the coming years.

The last few years have been rough for Prince since he left the Brewers to sign with the Tigers after the 2011 season.  My in-laws are from Michigan and big Tigers fans, so I took a little more favorable interest in Prince the last few years of his career and managed to pick up a sweet cards of his along the way.

This Five Star Autograph might be my favorite recent card of Prince....

In my mind, my best memories of Prince will always be as a Brewer.  I didn't mind him as a player, I know a lot of Cardinals fans knock on the Brewers players, but Prince was always worthy of respect in my opinion.  Sure, he did things that my fellow Cardinals fans stupidly complained about like the year Mike Cameron all had them untuck their shirts after they won a game.....

but Prince hit a lot of home runs for the Brewers during his time in the National League Central.  Honestly, as a Cardinals fan I have always felt a little bit grateful for Prince Fielder the past few years.  Really, the team should have probably given him a World Series ring, or a share of the team's bonus money after he hit a go ahead home run for the National League in the All-Star Game to give the Cardinals home field advantage for games 6 and 7.

Without this.....

It's probably a little bit doubtful that Cardinals fans would have experienced this home run hit by David Freese to win Game 6 of the World Series.....

or David Murphy's fly out to Allen Craig to end Game 7 giving the Cardinals their 11th World Series title.....

Prince was a fun baseball player.  There were aspects of his game that were imperfect, but he always looked like he enjoyed playing the game.  This often translated into him having some really cool cards, especially while he was on the Brewers.  The best of them all is somewhat predictable, but it has to be one of the better first cards in the history of the Topps sets.....

Just an awesome card.  Call him whatever you want, again, the guy had fun playing the game.  A tip of the cap and a thank you.  It was a good ride Prince.  

Things I Am Sorting Part 4

A few months back I started a pair of set projects and added a new tab to the top of my blog.  I have been really good about finding cards on the list, but have yet to post an update on my progress towards completing the two projects.  I am going to do a little update on one of the sets in this post.

Over the past several months I have made a few trades, bought a few singles off of private collectors, and also made a few purchases off of Sports Lots and COMC to make progress towards completing the 1999 Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion cards.  Most of the time I have picked up a few at time to save on shipping costs and I have tried to keep the cost in trade, or dollars to less than $2 max for a card.  There were several on COMC for example that were listed above $2, I made an offer below, and if they did not except it I walked away.

Here is one lot of cards that I picked up two weeks ago:

Three pretty fair players.  I paid $4.00 for the lot, and since the cards are metal, the seller sent them in a plain white envelope.  Not much worry with these cards bending or having the corners dinged going through the mail.

Here is what the stack of cards I have picked up over the last two months looks like compared to the cards that I started the project with....

The stack I started with has Edgar Renteria on the top, new cards have Larry Walker on the top.  Looking at the checklist of cards I needed I was at 55% completion at the beginning of the project.  In all, I have added a total of 56 cards to the set and jumped the completion rate all the way up to 92%.  Just 12 more cards to add to finish this one up.

Here's what it looks like all sorted out.....

I feel like I should place them on a scale and see how much they weigh at the end of the project.  The stack looks nice, but the weight of a complete set of metal cards is pretty cool.  My projects page is updated and I will do a post on the Archives set progress soon.

A Venerable Old Card Part 23

It was a big day for two big baseball names yesterday.  Ichiro picked up his 3000th career hit when he tripled against the Rockies and Alex Rodriguez announced that he will play his last game on Friday against the Rays.  So, for this week's Venerable Old Card I am going to do a little bit of a double header showcasing a card of each player.

First Up, Ichiro.

When Ichiro showed up on baseball cards in 2001 I sort of missed out because I spent my entire year tracking down Albert Pujols cards.  I do not regret the whole Pujols thing, but I also feel bad that I missed out on some great Ichiro cards.  I have worked hard to find his cards over the years, but I am not a super-collector of his or anything close.  More of a distant admirer.

I have run into quite a few Ichiro collectors over the years and I actually have a cool card of his which is actually deemed "cool" by hardcore collectors of the Japanese superstar.  I picked up this card three years ago to finish off a set of All-Star patches given out by Topps at the All-Star Fan Festival in St Louis at the 2009 All-Star Game.

Here is my card:

Not the most expensive card, or the rarest, but just a neat card with a good story.  Not going to rehash the reasons why Ichiro has a card in the St. Louis All-Star game set in this post, but you can read more about it here.

On to ARod.

So much I could say here about ARod.  I was in high school when ARod's 1994 rookie cards came out and created one of those rookie card rushes.  I am now in my late 30s with a job, house, kids, and bills and ARod is still playing.  His career has spanned a significant amount of time I have been collecting cards and he has been an important and influential figure in the hobby almost the entire time.

Even now, his star has fallen and collectors still love his cards.  I have a bunch of favorites and will be writing about ARod more throughout the week, so I am going to go with a simple card that I picked up long ago....

Long ago these on card autographs were pretty expensive, but are much more affordable these days.  There are actually a ton of Alex Rodriguez cards from the late 90s and early 2000s that are a lot more affordable and easier to find than they were 15 years ago.  I have been working a little on ARod cards the last three years and wrote about it awhile ago.   

Durham Bulls In Frames

I did not open any boxes of Allen & Ginter.  It's always one of my favorite products every year, but I have been busy with kids and work of late.  I am still going to work on putting together a bunch of the cards out of the set starting with a few autographs.  After checking out the checklist there are a few that I am really excited about picking up.  I decided to start with a pair of former Durham Bulls players to start out my dive into this year's Allen & Ginter product.

First up is last year's Minor League Pitcher of the Year Blake Snell.  This is a beautiful card:

I feel like the frame designs are starting to run together a bit with some of the Ginter sets, but this is a great look.  Topps could use the same frame every year and change out the mini card in the middle and I would still buy these cards.

Snell's cards seem to have come down a bit in terms of price and popularity.  This is one of the most inexpensive autographs of his that I have picked up this year and it was easy to find.  Not serial numbered or anything, but a great looking card.

Next up is infielder Richie Shaffer.

This is my second Shaffer autograph I have added the past two weeks.  He's not having the best year with the Bulls, also a little time with the Rays, but I am still a fan.  I am a little surprised at the number of autographs he has had this year considering he has spent most of the year in Triple A.  Love seeing his cards though and they are always easy on the wallet.

Two Keepers

This week was sort of an unplanned vacation away from blogging and baseball cards.  Monday's post about the Derek Jeter statue from the Durham Bulls was solid, but then my daughter decided to show up a few days earlier than scheduled.  Nothing got written this week.  

It was fun to take a little bit of time away from everything and spend some time with the little one.  This is our second child, and while she showed up a week early, this has not been as much stress and drama as my son who showed up a month early and spent considerable time in the NICU.  

I wrote a post last summer about my son's stay in the NICU and the baseball card that made the trip with me everyday to go see him in the hospital.  Here's a look at the Colby Rasmus autograph....

This week I did the same thing for my daughter.  Fortunately, the trips back and forth to the hospital only last for a few days and there was no NICU stay involved this time.  She was born Wednesday, so I took the lone envelope out of the mailbox that day and stuck it in my car.  

What was in it?  It's pretty sweet.  

I picked this up really cheap a few weeks back and I guess it spent a little bit of time making its trek to my mailbox.  Colome is a former Durham Bulls player and current closer for the Rays.  I picked up a few Strata cards last year, but none of the big patch piece cards.  I like the patch piece on this card, but there are some really nice ones out there.  Probably why this card was way cheap.  Or, maybe it's the fact that the Rays are not very good and not many people know Alex Colome.  

The back of the card.....

has the standard Congratulations blurb.  I was actually wondering where the little round silver authentication sticker was that Topps supposedly put on the cards in this set.  My Stephen Souza card had one.  Sigh.  

Looks like I can file this Alex Colome card away into the keeper box.  I am sure that my daughter will be thrilled to know that she has a baseball card in my collection in a few years.  I can picture her expression.....