Cards! (Is a "1st Refractor" a thing?)

Here are some more cards recently added to my collection that I've been meaning to show off on the blog. 

You know how The Last Dance led to a surge in demand for Michael Jordan cards? Well, on a much smaller scale, Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb compelled me to get him better represented in my collection (I talked about this more a few posts back with his '04 Retired refractor). This is his 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Chrome Refractor. I love these things and want to snag a bunch more of my PC guys, but they're numbered out of 299, so availability and price are not always in the buyer's favor.

I also got his base card from the following year's ATFF set, filling up a Sportlots order from a couple weeks ago. And I knew I needed at least one example from his would-be swan-song short-term stop with the White Sox in '93 and thought going with O-Pee-Chee Premier was a cheeky choice.

If you haven't watched the doc yet and/or don't remember much of his career, spoiler alert: Like Jordan, Stieb returned from retirement and incredibly made it back to the top level after an extended stint away. As far as MLB pitchers, only Jim Bouton's 1978 comeback with the Braves makes for much of a comparison. Bouton dusted off his knuckleball for 5 games (all starts) after being out of the league for 7 years, while Stieb normal-pitched 19 games (3 starts) after 4 full seasons away. Sadly, doesn't look like the hobby got any cardboard documentation of his 1998 comeback besides a Syracuse Skychiefs minor league card which I was compelled to overpay for. According to TCDB, it's his last card before resurfacing with post-career cards in 2003: the aforementioned ATFF and an autograph in Topps Retired (He didn't have a base card in that first Retired set, just an auto and its refractor parallel [that I'm still on the hunt for].)

Kind of a tangent, but I predict collectors are one day going to start giving more respect to a player's "first refractor". I'm specifically talking about old-timers whose careers predated the refractor era (1993-present). Like, I could see a future where the earliest refractor card/parallel for a player is considered sort of a "1st Bowman" equivalent, or 1st Prizm card in other sports, or perhaps more like a modern "key card" complement to the player's vintage rookie card.

Or maybe not, but I don't care, I like them and plan to focus on refractors when it comes to building my "fan favorite" level PCs (HOFers are probably too expensive to worry about much.)

Anyways, Stieb's last year getting into mainstream baseball card sets as a player was 1993, and he didn't make it into Finest that year, meaning the card at the top of this post is his 1st Refractor™ (--or at least his 1st non-auto refractor; I couldn't find the release date for 2003 Topps Retired, but 2003 ATFF came out that May.)

Eric Owens is the first PC guy of mine I've singled out to try to collect all of his refractors. There's only 17, and this lot gets me to almost halfway. We've got another 1st Refractor™ here with his 1996 Finest bronze refractor parallel. (I'd like to get a dupe someday to peel off the protective film.)

Full disclosure, I'm not (yet) counting stuff like 1997 Donruss Limited "Limited Exposure" parallels as refractors even though they basically are, but not legally. Like how Panini Prizm doesn't actually have "refractors" but rather "prizms". At least for now, I'm just counting Topps/Bowman refractors. But chances are I'll eventually expand into other refractor-adjacent offerings and even colorful foil cards.

And then you've got sets like Archives Reserve and the first incarnation of Gold Label where all the base cards are actually refractors but they don't get referred to as refractors that often since that's all there is for those sets so it's redundant. But Eric Owens never appeared in either of those products, so it's moot in this instance. He does have a '97 Donruss Limited - Limited Exposure card that refracts, though.

More low-key guys I like to collect. That 1994 Finest isn't just Hendu's 1st Refractor™, it's his Only Refractor®. Seriously, do a search for "Dave Henderson refractor" and see if you can find any besides that one.

Ron Gant has a bunch of refractors out there, and I'll slowly pick up a few, like this one from 2000 Topps Chrome I got for a buck.

The Rod Beck is extra neat for me because my little hometown gets namechecked on the front. And I've now completed the rainbow of this map card-- "International parallel" as they're called:

Here's the foil (standard 1998 Bowman), plus the base parallel and refractor from Bowman Chrome. It was the last time Shooter made the Bowman checklist despite playing through 2004. That foil card is an example of why I clarified my interest in colorful foil cards, because drab, aluminum foil looking cards like this don't excite me much (nor do non-refractor Chrome cards like the middle card above, which just seem incomplete to me without a rainbow sheen to them).

Oh, speaking of refractor vs. foil. I was excited to hear Topps was bringing back their classic Black Gold design from 1993, among my all-time favorite inserts, in 2021 Topps Update. I won a couple lots on eBay, but haven't gotten around to picking up the last 10 or so I need (there are 25 total). Then I found out that they put Black Gold cards in 2021 Topps Chrome Update, too (30 total), and won one lot of those. The Chrome checklist is very similar but swaps out a couple players (and has a few added to the end), leading me to believe the Chrome cards were actually printed before the flagship Update cards based upon buzz of the players involved. Cody Bellinger is in Chrome, but his spot in the checklist goes instead to Jarred Kelenic in flagship Update (Bellinger had an awful 2021 season, so you can see why Topps would swap him out for a hot rookie). Luis Robert (who missed the entire 1st half of the 2021 season with an injury before returning with a great 2nd half) is in Chrome, but is replaced by teammate Andrew Vaughn (a rookie who made the club's opening day roster) in flagship's Update. Chrome cards take longer to make, as is my understanding, so it shouldn't be surprising that they had an earlier production deadline there, but just interesting to note. In the above pic, Chrome Update cards are on top. There are also parallels and autos, but I currently don't have the interest to pony up for them.

Neither version has the same magic for me as the originals (the non-Chrome version have a blotchy shiny layer covering the entire card for some reason; I guess they couldn't match the O.G. gold effect without resorting to shenanigans), but I like them enough to probably try to finish all 3 (base) iterations of this "1993 Black Gold" design eventually (still missing a few of the originals-- specifically Gwynn, Sandberg, Eck, and Big Mac). See also the 2019 Throwback Thursday cards using this design that aren't refractors and don't feature any foil, just straight glossy cardboard.

This post is getting a bit long, so I'll wrap up with some 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors. It's crazy, but somehow this is more or less a "front burner" setbuild for me these days (As is the case for many collectors, some sets just sit on my wantlist waiting for a heroic trader to come along and help me out, but some sets I actively search out cards for). And like with the other set I've been giving priority to lately, 1972 Topps, I recently crossed the 75% complete threshold. The biggest obstacle is looking like the Yadier Molina RC, with a PSA 8, I think it was, recently selling for about twice as much as I've ever spent on a card (and brother, I've spent a lot on a card a couple times), so looks like if I'm ever to complete this parallel set, it'll take a combination of a lot of luck and/or a severely burst hobby bubble. In the meantime, I'll secretly hope for Yadier to fall from grace due to an ugly scandal or something that would help make the card affordable, lol. But if I never fully complete the project, so be it; still fun to work on.

As for these latest additions to the build, the solid action photography looks great within the black rainbows, and you also get some old fashioned patriotism thanks to the American flag behind Eric Chavez plus Carl Everett's "Uncle Sam Wants You" pose. But the biggest name I've picked up recently:

Hall of Famer Roy Halladay.

And it's fitting this post is bookended by Dave Stieb and Roy Halladay, as Roy made his debut at the end of the '98 season just as Dave was saying goodbye (for reals this time). And there's a connection from the final day of the season that the Stieb doc highlights in its opening minutes, linking the pair of standout Blue Jay hurlers in a crazy way. 

That'll do it for now. Thanks for stopping by!

Checking where I rank with some lesser-collected PC guys

Got a few more cards from my big shipment to document on the blog today. These here are non-HOF "fan favorite" type guys from the past.. Generally players that aren't chased by many collectors out there. It's fun to go after oddballs and whatnot from them, and maybe even take a run at completing their full run of cards, or at least trying to build the #1 PC for a guy on TCDB.

Starting alphabetically with Dick Allen-- not exactly an obscure name, but still-- here are a couple smaller-than-standard cards. That side-eyein' 2009 Goodwin Champions is one of my all-time favorites.. I've got at least a couple other versions of it, including the auto which had been a white whale of mine for a few years, and am happy to snag the black bordered mini of it now. 1990 Target All-Time Dodgers is a familiar set to me after seeing gcrl cover the whole thing on his blog a few years back, plus occasional appearances on Night Owl Cards. Sucks they couldn't have found a picture of Dick from this Dodger days to use on the card. That out of place White Sox uniform is worthy of young Richie's side-eye.

At the time of this post, Crash's #1 collector on TCDB is user "theFalcon" with 84, with the 2nd most being 61 cards. I haven't added up all my DA's or entered them into the site, but I'm probably somewhere between those two. TCDB lists 325 total cards for him... many of which are just from this year, with Dick being included in '21 Heritage and getting multiple Project 70 cards, too (none of which I've pulled the trigger on, though nice to see him getting some hobby love).

UPDATE: I clawed my way into 2nd place with 62 cards, though I had to resort to counting a couple Kellogg's cards that are currently stored in setbuilds not the player collection, if you wanna get technical about it-- but whatever, I own the cards. I'd probably be around 70 cards if I counted more set stuff like that. 

BTW, I already owned the above two cards, dang it! Good thing I'm trying to keep better track of my collection now. Oh well, I'll add the dupes to the "for trade/sale" inventory I've been meaning to build up on TCDB to hopefully see more trade action.

Rod Beck has 414 total cards listed. These are 3 cheap parallels I probably needed.

1995 Upper Deck - Electric Diamond Silver

1995 Score - Hall of Gold

1997 Donruss Limited - Limited Exposure (with John Wetteland on the other side)

Shooter's top collector on TCDB is user "bronnerea" with 164 cards. I can't top that, but think I'd have a shot at being in the top 10 were I to check in mine to the site.

Ken Caminiti is a guy I have a lot of cards of, but still probably wouldn't crack the top 10 on TCDB ("Expos1990" rules comfortably with 597 cards.. probably over 3 times as many as me). Ken's represented in this order by a thick, leathery insert (1997 Topps Stadium Club Patent Leather --pretty sure I saw one of these get a thumbs-up on Fuji's blog and had to grab one for myself) plus a couple $1 buybacks. And if it's buybacks of notable Padres sluggers you're into, well have I got a group of cards to show you...

A half dozen boughten-back Nate Colbert cards. Not too far from a full career Topps run of buybacks, but his high-numbered '67 rookie stars card and high-numbered '72 (and corresponding In Action) make that an unlikely project to ever complete.

And some more Colberts for my semi-supercollection. Looks like I went on a little shopping spree with Nate in mind on 4/11/2020, as all 12 of these cards were bought on the same day. Some of these weren't good deals ($5+ each for the Ty Cobb back mini and the TCMA? Geez), but just wanted to basically snag anything on the site that I didn't already have.

I think I'd have a good chance of being #1 for Nate Colbert on TCDB. Oh yeah, I just looked it up and the top spot is only 31 cards. I think I could beat that, though then again a lot of my cards of him are proof cards that wouldn't be on the TCDB checklist. But yeah, I should enter in my PC one of these days.

UPDATE: Ok, I did. 

Woo! #1 by a wide margin. Most of the above buybacks plus the APBA "card" aren't listed, so my actual number would be even greater if those were added in.

Dave Henderson is a PC I really enjoy adding to, but he's a relatively recent addition to my crew, so doubt I'd rank too highly on TCDB ("DaClyde" is first with 248 cards, followed by "bronnerea" with 175).. I still need most of his junky base cards (attn: trader buds). A pair of tiffany cards are among the parallels I grabbed this time around. I don't regard 1989 Bowman very highly.. but 1989 Bowman Tiffany? For whatever reason, I love it! Being glossy and printed on high quality cardstock somehow excuses it for the audacity of being oversized and not printing the player's name on the front. The weird by-team stats breakdown thing is still on the back, but at least it's easier to read on bright stock. lol

COMC damaged the Bill Madlock foldy, so I went ahead and folded it as intended by the design. I got it specifically because it was the only card of Mad Dog pictured on the Texas Rangers I didn't have. I might have a shot at the top 10 on TCDB for Madlock, but doubt I'd be too near the top ("bronnerea" repeats as king here with 154).

The Maas and Scioscia cards are imported from the north.

Just wanted to find a couple PC guys cheap as an excuse to add Canadian 1990 Fleer cards to my collection. ("Ptd. in Canada" on the bottom.) Feels like that's some mythic set that I hear about a lot but had never actually seen in-hand before.

Also in the photo, a look at the damage on the Madlock. It was in a long top loader, but it had been cranked pretty hard somehow in packaging and managed to damage the card within it. At least it only cost me $1 so I didn't make a stink about it. But yeah, not cool, COMC.

Mike Sharperson might be a really random player for me to collect, but I decided to build up a collection of his cards after remembering liking him back in my early days as a baseball fan and card collector circa '90-92 which really happened to be his only good seasons. Besides those 3 years, he was mostly on the roster for depth, spending the majority of his time in AAA with occasional promotions to the big league club. He was on the verge of making his Padre debut in 1996 spelling a hurt Ken Caminiti, but was fatally injured in a car wreck on the way to the airport.

TCDB lists 104 total cards with the top collector being "bronnerea" again with 70. It'll be a while till I'm anywhere near that, but enjoy picking up some oddities like these. (The '89 Bowman and middle '91 Topps are tiffany.) Still need most of his junky cards, but I'd rather get those in trade then have to buy them.

I also scored a few needs for my Dan Walters PC, mostly minor league issues. The most expensive of these was the 1989/red one ($3.20), which sadly is another victim of COMC's employee damaging the card during packaging. You can see the top left corner got jacked up. And by context of the package contents, it was clearly damaged during packaging, not already damaged before the fact nor damaged in transit. Boo. I know those guys are rushing to catch up on their backlog, but wish they'd be more careful with the cards.

Dan Walters is yet another player featured in this post whose life was cut short. I don't consciously decide to collect guys who die before reaching old age, but perhaps on some level my heart goes out to them. Collecting their cards might be like my way of paying tribute.. and/or a reminder that life is precious and I should take the time to appreciate every day I wake up in good health.

Walters has just 42 cards listed on TCDB, with ol' "bronnerea" ranked the #1 collector with 26 of them. That guy must either have a huge collection, or we just happen to share a few favorite retired players. I might be able to challenge him on this one, as I think I've got around 20-30 Dan Walters cards.

UPDATE: I've got 24 cards. So close! Good for 2nd; in striking distance of 1st.

One thing that bugs me about TCDB is the arbitrary way cards are assigned to players.

Per TCDB's checklist, the card on the left is considered a Dick Allen card, yet the card on the right isn't considered a Dan Walters card. I suppose "My collection, my rules" doesn't apply when you're using somebody else's website (and the site's many users have plenty of room to edit as they see fit).

Last guy for today is Marcus Giles...

That's an impressive page-worth of refractor goodness, eh!

As I've mentioned plenty of times on the blog, I grew up with Marcus, in the same grade as him at the same school from elementary through community college. So it's cool to collect a former classmate of mine. Like, check it out, a guy in my high school P.E. class is sharing a card with Ken Griffey Jr!-- How cool is that? Plus it's a good excuse for me to add some fun parallels from years that I wasn't actively collecting. And despite three strong seasons in his career, he was never a huge star, so his cards usually don't run me too much cash.

TCDB user "bravefan1" has a commanding lead for the top spot with 143 Marcus Giles cards, but I could probably challenge that total if I added my PC to the site. Too lazy to do that right now-- beautiful Memorial Day weekend over here-- but remind me another day. lol

Good times for this Padre fan (trades n' stuff)

Big night for my Padres the other night! I would have been ecstatic if San Diego got a no-hitter from some random call-up I never heard of, but what makes it even sweeter is that Joe Musgrove is from my hometown and I've been collecting the guy's cards for a few years already. Congrats, Joe! Making El Cajon proud.

Such a great story of a local kid rising who grew up rooting for them to achieve that elusive Padres no-hitter. Seems like a real good dude, too. Gotta bump him up into the "high priority" tier of my player wantlist.

Now to catch up on some good stuff that's come my way from trader buds over the past couple weeks.

Friend of the blog Alex T. has been incredibly generous with hooking me up with cool oddities for my collection for a few years now. I'm falling behind because I also got a great Dick Allen set from him not long ago I haven't posted about yet, but more recently was this Rod Beck postcard and a pack/set of Michael Bolton softball cards.

"The Trucker" comes from a series of Marvelous Moustaches postcards by Left Field Cards, created by French-born artist Amelie Mancini. I remember checking these out a couple years ago after hearing about them somewhere on the cardsphere. I debated purchasing a set, but ultimately didn't pull the trigger and I think they sold out shortly thereafter. So it was an awesome surprise to pull Rod Beck out of the package.

Alex reached out to Amélie about availability for an order, was able to snag this one for my Shooter PC, and he even thought to ask if Amélie would be so kind as to sign them, which she graciously did down on the back.

I had to frame it up, at least for a while, and currently have it hanging in the living room. My wife says to her it's a picture of Kenny Powers, and she's not far off.

Here are what the softball cards look like. We got to talking about these cards after Michael Bolton was featured on my 1991 MusiCards blog, and Alex happened to have an extra of this set to spare. Especially love the Yount.

Big thanks, Alex! Great stuff.

- - ---o

I did a quick PWE swap with Robert at $30 a week habit. My 2011 Topps parallel frankenset has really slowed down in recent years, but I haven't nixed the project yet. I'm nearing 700 different cards for it, but still just a little over halfway done. So yeah, these Jays needs from Robert are appreciated.

- - ---o

Night Owl struck with an expertly curated package of cards. I collect more Dodgers than I should, being a Padres fan, but yep, I'm very happy to receive Greg's dupes of Walker Buehler or Gavin Lux.

Also a pair of blue Fire Matt Chapman cards and some set needs.

And some vintage set needs! Love to see it!! Feels like this part of my collection is kinda paused waiting for the current sportscard bubble to pop and get those prices back down a notch or two.

But the real star was this well-loved 1957 Elston Howard. Solid name to check off my long-running '57 Topps setbuild. Nice!

Thanks a lot, Greg! Much appreciated! I'll return the favor pretty soon.

Thanks for reading. Go get that cardboard! :)

trade post

Lots of incoming cards this week thanks to a COMC shipment and a couple exciting eBay pickups, but also a couple trade packages. Let's check them out..

First up is a package from Jeremy at the Topps Cards That Never Were blog. Dig this shot of Rod Beck filling up his cart.

More dudes I collect.. Bill Madlock, my birthday twin Matt Ginter, and a pair of Judges.

Guys From Granite including a Brian Giles custom Jeremey must've whipped up himself. Pretty cool.

A couple Gavin needs. Gavin Lux has been tearing up the minors this year and is looking like a lock to become just the third guy named Gavin to play in the big leagues. The first MLB Gavin was Gavin Floyd.. pictured here on a minor league issue. Very cool.

Some 2019 Padres.

And a mess of Padres parallels.

I was thrilled to become trade partners with Jeremy because he's a Rays collector, so I finally had someone to thin out my Tampa Bay cards on. Looks like he had a run of Blake Snell flagship to share, a rare Ray I collect.

Thanks, Jeremy! I'll get a package out to you soon, including that contest prize I've owed you for a couple months now.

-  - - ---o

The other package to show off today is from Johnny's Trading Spot. John sent me a bunch of '72 Topps needs recently but sadly the postal service mistreated it and a team bag or two was lost to a tear in the mailer (thankfully the majority of the cards stayed in). It wasn't his fault, but being the stand-up guy he is, John took it upon himself to dig up some more 72s to replace the runaway cards.

Good stuff here. Gotta love the Bob Barton In Action.. not only is Bob's "action" standing there watching a foul ball in the stands, but the elderly security guard steals the show.

HOFer Red Schoendienst is likely the biggest name in the lot... literally.

Thought I'd highlight this terrific Mike Cuellar card. Big smile whilst playing catch (or perhaps just posing, but still.)

Cuellar was coming off 3 consecutive 20-win seasons. Bonus points for the Hoyt Wilhelm mention in the cartoon. And check out how the long, hyphenated city names in 1960 and 1961 caused Topps to add blank lines in the stats for spacing. I don't recall seeing them do that before. And I didn't realize Havana, Cuba had a minor league team back then.

Anyways, I'm now doing great for the first series of 1972 Topps, without too many low numbers left. Overall I'm at 59.25% complete.

Thanks so much, John! Now that the summer heat is on the decline, I hope to crank out some more customs-- the computer I use for making customs is in a room that gets hot in the summertime-- and eventually finish off the big list of requests. Plus I've got plenty of Braves set aside.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, everybody.

I wanna be your backdoor man

I'm back with some more "backdoored" stuff for my collection purchased from a certain eBay seller with a large selection of internal proof cards and whatnot that were never intended to make it out into the world.

These Ring Leaders inserts from 1995 Topps Stadium Club are ostentatious enough as they are-- but a slightly oversized proof?! Even more intense! I wanna make this image my desktop background. Looks even better in hand, all nice n' shiny.

For comparison, here's the packed-out version. You can see the edges have been trimmed off of the original artwork. The proof has more of the eagle wing and a bit of Crime Dog's shoe.

I also got a similar Gwynn, but this one has a color bar attached to it too. The googly-eyed Bip is there for scale (and comic relief). These are both blank-backed, btw.

My way of thinking is if you're gonna do the oversized card thing, make it a shiny card. The more shiny, the better.. right? These Power Players inserts from 2000 Topps are pretty cool looking.. and the untrimmed proofs add a little more to the story. These have standard backs. The Nomar was picked up as trade bait, so if any of my Sox-collecting trade buddies want me to set it aside for you, just let me know.

The 2009 Bowman red parallel is an unnumbered proof (regular size). The packed-out versions of this parallel are 1/1. Just a neat little addition for my Xavier Nady PC.

Basketball even got into the action, picking up a pair of shiny untrimmed Tim Duncan proofs. These look great.

Foil-less, untrimmed proofs of Dwight Evans (1992 Stadium Club) and Eric Owens (1996 Topps Gallery).

Some Fleer stuff too. More slightly oversized proofs. 2005 Fleer Classic Clippings Gavin Floyd, Khalil Greene, Brian Giles, and Adrian Beltre.

Some of the big names are priced a bit steep-- occasionally outrageous even-- but Bagwell and Thome here were just a buck each, so I added them to my cart, spicing up those little PCs with an out-of-the-ordinary item. Most of the cards in this post were a buck or two. The Gwynn Ring Leader was the priciest card at $3.

The Hoyt is a blank-back of his 1991 Archives card, a 1953 Topps reprint. Not very exciting, but happy to add another Hoyt to the collection as I work toward my goal of 100 different cards. And yes, I definitely count these backdoored cards in my PC totals, though some collectors may choose not to. Cards like this obviously aren't listed in Beckett or TCDB or whatnot, but I just consider them bonus oddballs. Maybe a step above customs and unofficial sketch cards.

Rod Beck was the star of the order with 8 different cards. As for the two cards that look like dupes, one is blank-backed and the other has a standard back. The 1995 Topps Finest refractor (bottom right) isn't a proof or anything.. just a regular card the seller had that was a good price and I needed it, so I threw it in the cart. It is possibly a backdoored card, but no real way to tell the difference with a packed-out version in this instance, I guess.

Let's close out with a Bip Roberts lot, another of my favorite under-the-radar guys to collect.

Here are the backs. Again, just some quirky PC additions.

Typically, I'm not a fan of oversized cards as they're more of a pain to store, but these cards that are only slightly oversized are still small enough to fit in boxes with the rest of my cards, so it's not too bad. I might just have to put them in team bags instead of penny sleeves.

Have a great weekend, everybody.