Quite Possibly The Worst Set Ever

Still working on sorting out my cards sets.  I am spending a little bit of time each night putting one big set together or several smaller sets together.  Last night I ran into a small set from 2000 and almost ended up putting the entire into the infamous Cooper pile.  The Cooper pile of cards is a four-hundred count box of cards that have been "claimed" by my two year old.  The cards in the box have been chewed, folded, and all kinds of other acts of destruction.  Here's an example of one of his favorite baseball cards.    

2009 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Ubaldo Jimenez

So, after pulling a set 2000 Skybox EX cards from a box a few years back, the cards went from mint condition to something like the card above.  Maybe less crinkles, bends, and tears, but still damaged enough to turn into the same collection that claims the fabulous Ubaldo Jimenez card pictured above.  The cards in their pack fresh form originally looked something like this:

2000 Skybox EX Alex Rodriguez 

The 2000 Skybox EX set was the only EX set that I did not open between 1997 and 2003.  The set was one of the best Fleer products put out every summer and I always made sure that I took time to bust some wax and put together a set and a good collection of inserts.  I found a cheap box on Ebay and was able to put together a set from one box (only a 60 card set) and even pulled a few cool inserts.  Most of the EX cards are heavy cardboard stock or plastic.  However, the 2000 set is regular card stock with a thin foil overlay on top of the cardboard.  This Alex Rodriguez is one of the few cards from my set that is actually still in mint condition.  The rest of the cards have literally fallen apart over a short period of time.  

The two cards above show the typical pattern of damage on the 2000 Skybox EX cards.  Note that the foil picture on the front of the card has rolled from both the top and bottom of the cards.  No doubt that Fleer just simply glued the foil onto the card stock, or printed the cards as stickers and applied them to the stock.  Either which way, clearly the cards did not hold together well and have aged poorly over a short period of time.  A side look at the cards:  

Note the thin piece of foil curling up near my finger tip.  Interestingly the front and back of the cards are made from the same material, but only the front part of the card is curling off.  Reflecting back on this box of cards, this was clearly not a good investment and I will be sure to steer clear from now on.  In the meantime, my son just added a big stack of cards to his box.  

2012 Panini Limited Greats Reggie Sanders Autograph

I picked up another cool Cardinals card from a Panini product last week.  While I do not really like the fact that the Panini cards are unlicensed products that do not feature MLB uniforms or logos, they actually have a pretty diverse group of players (former and current) sign for their various products.  While I enjoy, the Topps autographs, they really do not have a very diverse group of players signing for their products.  For example, Topps has had the same group of five or six Cardinals players signing for their products for the past two years.  During the past few weeks I have started looking into a few of the Panini products and this Reggie Sanders autograph represents my second card signed by a player with Cardinals connections.

2012 Panini Limited Greats Reggie Sanders Autograph

Sanders was the left fielder for the Cardinals during the 2004 and 2005 seasons.  Both teams made the playoffs, with the 2004 team reaching the World Series against the Red Sox and the 2005 team reaching the NLCS against the Astros.  Sanders was a nice complementary player on those teams.  He did a little bit of everything.  It was actually part of a run over a decade where Reggie Sanders made a whole lot of appearances in the playoffs and World Series.  In fact, between his first playoff appearance in 1995 with the Reds, and his last in 2005 with the Cardinals, Sanders appeared in more than 60 playoff games and took over 200 at-bats.  Curiously, Sanders hit under .200 during all of those at-bats.  Still a cool card to own and a solid addition to the collection.  I have an in person autograph of Reggie Sanders, but it looks much different than this autograph.  This signature looks a little bit like an attempt at a Jacque Jones or Drew Storen, but messier.

Complete Set Project: 2001 Topps Archives Set

A few days ago I made a post about reorganizing my cards.  After several days of hard work my 2001 sets are sorted out and I am starting to go through the sets to find cards that I am missing and sets that are already completed.  I have decided to undertake a little bit of challenge to start off my project by selecting the 2001 Topps Archives set as my first set to complete.

2001 Topps Archives Ernie Banks 

The 450 card set was released in two different series with the main attraction of the set being the autographs.  The base cards are still really nice and offer a nice look into some of the better Topps cards issued between 1951 and 2001.  Basically, the reprints consist of the first year card of players and the last year issue of a player.  Every player has two cards in the set and a few also appear as highlights, league leaders, record breakers, or autographs.  I own many of the original cards in the set, but still like the looks of some of the reprints and enjoy looking at the reprints of the cards that I do not own.  The only drawback to the set in my opinion are the reprints of some of the prospect cards.

2001 Topps Archives Nolan Ryan 

For example, the Nolan Ryan rookie card in the set only appears as half of the original card and the orientation is changed.  Little bit weird to look at this card like this.  So, I have compiled a checklist for the cards that I need from the set below.  I am currently 80 cards short (17%) of completing the set.  I am also going to set the goal to add a George Hendrick autograph too.  It's the only certified autograph of the former Major League All-Star and it's the only Cardinals related autograph that I am missing out of the set.   I am not going to put a timetable on completing this set, but I will keep everyone up to date within my posts.  

Series One

52 Luis Tiant 6575 Dennis Eckersley 7686 Joe Adcock 52103 Dom DiMaggio 53117 Jim Wynn 77119 Gus Bell 64122 Bobby Richardson 66132 Eddie Mathews 68133 Joe Pepitone 73137 Bob Gibson 75139 Frank Robinson 75147 Dick Allen 76155 Willie Horton 80156 Mickey Lolich 80162 Reggie Smith 83171 Vida Blue 87173 Reggie Jackson 87174 Hal McRae 87175 Carl Yastrzemski 83187 Jim Kaat 83189 Gary Carter 93192 Dave Winfield 95197 Don Mattingly 96198 Joe Carter 98201 Walter Alston MGR 56203 Sparky Anderson MGR 71209 AL Batting Leaders LL 65220 "Pride of the NL" 63221 Whitey Ford WS 63 Series Two236 Johnny Sain 52247 Tug McGraw 65248 Don Newcombe 56249 Herb Score 56250 Clete Boyer 57254 Larry Bowa 70262 Dean Chance 62264 Whitey Ford 53267 Rico Carty 64268 Tommy John 64269 Phil Niekro 64275 Fergie Jenkins 66286 Bert Blyleven 71287 George Foster 71288 Al Hrabosky 71289 Cecil Cooper 72290 Carlton Fisk 72301 Jack Clark 77302 Mark Fidrych 77306 Kirk Gibson 81318 Satchel Paige 53320 Carl Furillo 56326 Ralph Branca 52330 Pee Wee Reese 58335 Richie Ashburn 63338 Early Wynn 62344 Jim Bouton 68346 Don Drysdale 69362 Al Kaline 74363 Lindy McDaniel 75365 Jim Perry 75370 Ralph Kiner 53372 Larry Bowa 85381 Willie Stargell 82382 Johnny Bench 83387 Whitey Ford 67388 Tony Perez 86395 Maury Wills 72399 Phil Niekro 81400 Red Schoendienst 62404 Gil Hodges 63405 Bucky Dent 84407 Dan Quisenberry 90409 Rick Reuschel 91413 Jack Clark 93428 Chuck Tanner MGR 72429 Earl Weaver MGR 71431 AL HR Leaders LL 66432 NL HR Leaders LL 60441 Baltimore Orioles TC 70446 Whitey Ford WS 62

George Hendrick Autograph 

My Great Reorganizing Project

I have now been collecting baseball cards for thirty years and over that time accumulated a pretty large collection.  I've posted a few pictures here and there of large groupings of cards on my Facebook and Twitter pages, but not really done very much of that on my blog page.  Instead, I have mainly focused on nice single cards, mainly autographs and relics, that are drifting into my collection.  I also spend a pretty good amount of time collecting sets.  I've alluded to that several times over my past year of blogging in my both 30 Year Top 50 posts, and more recently I started a thread of posts about sets I am completing.  Note that there are only two completed sets.  Not doing so well on that goal, which is why we are here today.  

I am not much to sit back and not take action when action is needed.  I started collecting baseball cards when I was 6 years old.  Thirty years later my collection has changed greatly in size and quality, but there is one thing that still remains the same: how I sort out my cards.  I dabbled with going alphabetically by player sometime in middle school, but that was a short lived experiment.  After college, I also dabbled with creating notebooks of star players and keeping their cards separated out from the rest of my cards.

So, here's how the system works.  I sort the cards into teams.  Within each team the cards are sorted out into year, then into sets.  If you asked me to go find a specific card I could do it in a few minutes which is pretty cool considering I am pretty close to 300,000 cards in my collection.  However, I feel like I've lost touch with some of my sets and I have so much volume at this point I am not going to complain if my collection loses a few dupes.  Here's what my collection generally looks like in it's home:

So, in going through my cards to figure out which sets I have completed and not completed I am literally having to go through thirty different boxes to figure out that I am missing five cards from a set.  That's a lot of work for five cards.  That's where the change is coming into place.  I have decided to take my cards and break them back into their set form.  I can still have easy access to cards and quickly reference to see what is, and what is not, in my collection.  The task is going to be daunting considering that there are thirty years of cards and a few hundred thousand cards in this closet.  I started two weeks ago and decided to just work with my 2001 cards.  

It took about an hour to go through all thirty teams and pull out my cards from 2001.  Since they are sorted into sets within the teams the process of stacking up each set was not very difficult.  The hardest part was going through the sets and sorting them into numerical order to figure out which sets are complete and which sets are short.  In some cases I had sets that I opened two or three packs of and never bothered to go any further.  In all, I spent time in 2001 collecting about 35 different sets.  Most were put together through wax boxes that I busted.  Here's a closer look at the sets from above.  

I now have a few sets that I can post as being completed, not sure if I will or not, but more importantly this gave me a chance to find a couple of good projects to work on and complete for my sets project that I have been talking about the past few months.  Many of the sets that are close to complete are only missing ten or less cards.  In fact, I counted five sets out of the thirty-five that fit that description.  Tomorrow, I am going to take a little bit of time to share my first project out of this group of cards.  I am also going to have to find something to do with all of the dupes that I have pulled out of my cards collection while putting together all of these sets.  For 2001, I am up to a few thousand dupes.  Any ideas?  

  

2012 Topps Heritage Minor League Mike Montgomery Autograph

2012 Topps Heritage Minor League Mike Montgomery Autograph 

The Durham Bulls are a month into the season and I think that I might have traded and bought more Bulls cards during that time then all of last year.  During the 2012 season the Bulls had an off year and finished outside of the International League playoffs.  Further, the team lacked the quality prospects to the Bulls fans have been spoiled with during the past decade of serving as the AAA affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays.  Sure there were other seasons that the team missed the playoffs, but there was always some wonderful talent on the field somewhere.  Last season, not so much.

This summer the Bulls are more than making up for a one year absence from the playoffs and a lack of quality players last season.  Currently the Bulls are sitting at 18-9 and are in the lead of the Southern Division in the International League.  The team is loaded with stars too.  Recently I was able to pick up cards of Wil Myers, Hak Ju Lee, and Jake Odorizzi.  Luckily for fans of the team those three players are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of talent.

Today, I added a nice autograph from last year's Topps Heritage Minor League set of left-handed starting pitcher Mike Montgomery.  The Rays traded for Montgomery this past off-season in part of the James Shields, Wil Myers, and Jake Odorizzi deal.  Montgomery is the lesser of the three prospects the Rays picked up in the trade, but he's still been a Baseball America Top 50 Prospect three times during his minor league career.

2000 Pacific Crown Royale Jeff Weaver Autograph

There is not much of a Jeff Weaver market these days, but I am always willing to pick up his cards when I see them on the cheap.  He spent half a summer with the Cardinals, but was a major contributor to the team's World Series Championship during the 2006 season.  Weaver started the season with the Los Angeles Angels (of Anaheim), lost his job to his brother Jered, and was traded to the Cardinals for a minor leaguer.  A few months later Weaver won the fifth game of the World Series defeating his former team the Detroit Tigers.  World Series winning pitchers are always worth a few dollars.  Even Anthony Reyes.

2000 Pacific Crown Royale Jeff Weaver Autograph

Besides offering me a chance to own a new Jeff Weaver card, I was also happy to pick up a cool autographed card from an old Pacific set.  Pacific put out quite a few autographs during the 2000 card calendar and they are all on-card signatures with several of the different lines featuring different die-cuts.  The Pacific autographs can be a little bit tricky to find at times, and since they were die-cuts, they tend to be condition sensitive.  There are some good names in the autograph lines too.  This Weaver card hails from the Crown Royale set which also features autographs of Lance Berkman, Trot Nixon, Alfonso Soriano, Brian Giles, and Eric Gagne.  I think I might actually be a Peter Bergeron away from this set.

2011 Leaf Valiant Hak Ju Lee Autograph

The first of many Hak Ju Lee cards to appear on my blog I am guessing.  Lee was acquired by the Rays in the Matt Garza trade and has been slowly working his way up through their minor league system.  Along the way, Hak Ju Lee has developed a reputation for his excellent glove work, but has been held back at times by his offensive production.  Last season while playing for the AA Montgomery Biscuits Lee posted a line of .261/.336/.360 with 4 homers, 37 RBIs, and 37 steals.  Not very good production from the plate.  Still the Korean born prospect is considered by most following the Rays to be the shortstop of the future.  I was curious to see how Lee would fair playing up a level at AAA this year and have quickly become convinced that now is the time to pick up a few of his cards.  So, here is my first.

2011 Leaf Valiant Hak Ju Lee Autograph

This card is from the 2011 Leaf Valiant set which means I have now posted several unlicensed cards during the past week.  It may get worse over the next few days.  Hak Ju Lee has several cards in Topps products, but they have yet to put the shortstop in any autographed lines.  There are a few relics cards floating around from Topps Pro Debut and Bowman, but Leaf has cornered the market on Lee autographs for the time being.  If you were looking for a good card to buy for the future I have a good feeling about Lee's playing career on the next level.

In following the Durham Bulls this season,  I have been thoroughly impressed by the defense displayed by Lee.  He seems to have a very good range and a strong arm.  Lee makes all the plays that you would expect and more in the field.  More impressive has been his offense.  Lee is atop the International League Leader Board with a .422 average and an On-Base Percentage of .536.  He's also walked more than he has struck out.  Currently Lee is on the 7-Day DL, but he should be back next week.  I will be curious to see how he fairs against some of the AAA teams the second time around the league.