Finalizing #2 (2020 Heritage)

 

My recent COMC delivery included a certain "keystone" card in that the card was the final card to place on a binder page, allowing me to declare a collecting project "complete," in a sense.

It was not the card above, which I was fortunate to pull from a pack back in the tumultuous year of 2020, when collectors in my hometown eventually had to show up on Tuesdays at 2:30 pm to line up for a chance to purchase newly arriving sports cards, limit 2 packages per customer. I will never forget that surreal experience any more than I will ever forget this very well done, excellent homage to 1971 Topps and the immortal Thurman Munson card.

Once I had the Sanchez card, I began looking forward to collecting all the new wonderful 2020 Heritage cards that were sure to show off live Baseball Action on the classic 1971 Topps design. Just as perhaps collectors were in 1971 when they first started seeing live Baseball on their cards.

Further such enjoyment didn't take long:

These are great Baseball Cards, with excellent Umpires, In Action shots flying the MLB Logoman, and I kept finding 'em -

In the long run I expect this Judge card will be the key visual take-away from the set for many collectors as Aaron Judge is famous enough to merit a look at even his non-Rookie cards while Gary Sanchez has now become a journeyman back-up Catcher; few Baseball fans (nor card collectors) can likely name his current team in any given year. And how many 21st Century collectors know who Thurman Munson is will remain an unknowable. The "buy singles" crowd will mostly connect 2020 Heritage to the Yordan Alvarez Rookie Card card &/or the $hort-Printed Ohtani base card (a nice "black bat" card which I do not own).

The Yankees horizontal action continued in the set:

...however unbeknownst to me this marks a point where things began to diverge from history, although I wonder if 1971 Topps might have also deployed the innovation of a Night Card; I suspect not.

I figured all along that 2020 Heritage would supply some wonderful cards to my wonderful new all-Horizontal binder. What I did not know is that it would supply only one such page. I would occcasionally purchase a hanger pack of the cards somewhere, and occasionally poke around the COMC listings and add a horizontal card for that anticipated beautiful page of Baseball, In Action.

What I did not know is that there could be only one such page. Which is because that is all that can be assembled from the original 1971 Topps, also. Every time I acquired a new horizontal 2020 Heritage card I would try to kick myself in to remembering to get another one to just finish what should be a simple task of assembling 9 Baseball Cards. Finally one night a few months ago I scrolled through all of the 1971 set and all of the 2020 set and got all learnt up on the concepts here.

The Result

This is quite pleasing.

In the end I did have to compromise by using a 3 way Rookie Card, though at least the 3 players did manage to appear on Major League diamonds for over 1000 At Bats and over 100 Innings Pitched, unlike seemingly so many such efforts in Heritage any more.

One reason for needing the Mariners 2020 Rookie Stars card there is that after Topps authentically issued 2 live action horizontal cards for the Mets and the Angels, and a horizontal World Series Celebration! card all just as in the 1971 set, they only produced those 3 Yankees cards rather than the 4 produced in history. Maybe they thought 4 such cards would be given a little side-eye by fans of the other 29 teams, particularly after placing Aaron Judge on one of them.

However that may have been decided, the Baseball Card history is quite intact and I will enjoy this page of Baseball Cards for many years to come.

But what about the rest of the 2020 Heritage set, you ask? I was also quite looking forward to perhaps making a go of that one, after the wonderfulness of the 65 set was followed by so many years of plain, plain. In the end I did not pull that trigger, for many reasons. I did think things improved a fair amount in set composition overall; there are several more nods to authenticity in the product than only the dramatic horizontal re-creations. However the repetition was still a bit too high for my tastes in terms of eventually flipping through page after page of the cards in a binder. Additionally reinforcing that as always with the concept of a Heritage complete set is the high bar of co$t and time to track down all the Short Prints, a significant decision point when there are always cheaper cards to collect far more easily.

But since I like 1971 Topps so much at a root level I did want to see it in my regular vertical binder of Topps cards from throughout all eras of Baseball Cards. Here's what makes the permanent starting line-up:

Not my usual go-to for collectible facial expressions but it is good to sometimes recall that professional sports are a very serious business for the participants. I liked a bunch of things on this card, starting with the perfect bright Spring sunshine, a particular, hmm, look, I guess, to sunlight that time of year and one I am very familiar with from usually working outdoors every day. Other great elements are the classic Oriole batting helmet decal, the black & white Catcher gear perfectly just exactly complementing the white & black graphic frame on the card, and of course I always love a good blurred out Empty Seats card.

Meanwhile I just realized I didn't have to scan this card tonight as I have posted it once before, as it was a runner-up to the Happiest Baseball Card of 2020, an award Dominic nailed down two years in a row here at Base Set. That's worthy of a permanent membership in my Baseball Card Hall of Fame, fer sure.

This is pretty much exactly what you want to see, looking at a Starting Pitcher, as this card seems to be saying "I got this." Quite calming, this one.

I also particularly liked another example of 2020 Heritage nailing down the little things in the service of authenticity - Sevy's sig is carefully shifted off to the right just perfectly to not disappear in the interlocking NY logo. Someone, cared, creating this Baseball Card.

1971 Heritage doesn't include only the high drama of the horizontal action cards; live game imagery was delivered on plenty of vertical cards too. Perfect composition on this one.

This is Tanaka's last Heritage card as he completed his contract with the Yankees at the end of the 2020 season, though he does have a bit of a sunset card in 2021 Topps Baseball. That card is only an American sunset card, as I read recently that Tanaka returned to Japan and kept right on pitching, which will continue into 2025.

I just never know what card will be the favorite in a set until I rip some packs of it. After all my anticipation over receiving some brand new black bordered Baseball Cards with the promise of a great mix of imagery, I would have never expected to pick out a nearly "floating heads" style dual Rookie Card as possibly my top pick.

But that's what happened. I don't know how Topps did this, but somehow they finally seem to have just nailed the look of 20th century warm analog color photography here. Although these wonderful portraits were probably created in mid-February in Arizona, they somehow look like they are from mid-summer in Chicago. And, again, somehow flat (in a good way) basic warmth shines (also in a good, non-glossy way) right off the card. Maybe printing these on the good old fashioned cardboard "vintage" stock helps achieve this, something just not seen enough in the digital Century we live in now. 

It also doesn't hurt that both of these players have become fixtures on the Cubs roster for a good run of years now, which is something almost becoming unexpected on the blizzard of Rookie Card cards continually blowing out of our packs of new Baseball Cards.

More In Action goodness. For us looking at Baseball Cards lo these many decades later, this is about as routine of an action photo as can be chosen. But for me, seeing 1971 Topps action will always make me wonder how much this was noticed, back in actual 1971. I suspect it made opening a new pack of cards a fair bit more exciting than it had been the year before.

I think I brought this card along to The Show because of a small conceit in the promo material for 2020 Heritage, which shows Max Scherzer calmly flipping a Baseball in the air above his palm. That simple image from Baseball Card history does not then appear on Scherzer's card in the set; instead it is used for an insert. And you guessed it, I never could pull that one.

So I then gravitated to this alternate old-timey Baseball Card trope I think. With Bonus Points again for a facsimile signature carefully shifted to the side to avoid it disappearing too much on Beede's black sleeve. Well, done.

Probably the stylistic "signature" pulled me in here I guess. 2020 Heritage will be occasionally represented on some other binder pages in my collection, including an eventual page or two celebrating the most dramatic "facsimiles." Otherwise, there are far too many Twins Heritage cards that look just like this one. Saved by the Sharpie.

Another happy Baseball Card, and another carefully placed signature, even if it seems to be saying something about the month of July that I just can't quite follow.

I am sure there are more than 9 more cards in 2020 Heritage worthy of my attention, including more live game action and more serendipitous Spring Training Photo Day cards where everything clicks to overcome my bitchiness about too much repetition. 

So I could see myself digitally shopping through the set once again some day, perhaps. I noticed recently that the "Actions" still exist in 2020 Heritage; those are just what are called Photo Variations in every other set, and that they aren't crazy expensive in this one, either. For now though, 2020/1971 Heritage will be just a delightful pair of pages in two different binders, one I will likely stop and gaze upon for a bit longer than pages of cards from some other sets.

The Result

10 Cards from the Dollar Box #8

Hey, look, it's turning white outside. Again. That means it's time for ... Baseball Cards. The COMC treasures continue checking off desires on checklists but a long-awaited post those cards should have completed had to be shelved, suddenly, due to Error. That's something you never see on a Baseball Card, but on a blog, well, sometimes. The Error was all too easily made on what should have been a routine play - I simply forgot to order one of the cards I wanted for that post. Doh!

Luckily, my Local Card Store always has a big box of cheap cards to randomly enjoy, so I have a little stockpile of posts written about them now. Time to hit the stash...

Why I selected it: Ahh Opening Day inserts, where Topps celebrates the simple things, like hitting Bombs. I might go for a Nifty Nine of these; they would go well with a similar effort for a run of Home Run bombers called Blast Off! from a late 10s Opening Day set, as well as a new 2024 die-cut effort called To The Moon! If I pull the trigger on these I just saved a couple quarters as Ohtani is the undisputed priced leader of 2020s Baseball Cards.

But then I don't quite care for the term Bomb Squad; not quite baseball-y enough. So if I don't pull that trigger, I can just get my quarters back on COMC anyway. It's a Shohei Ohtani insert card. Limited edition.

Art by Kris Penix

Why I selected it: A minor gamble in that a copy of this might be hiding in a box of surplus 2018 Gallery cards I want to open up and get to collectin'. Such a perfect depiction of what you expect a "fresh-faced" Rookie to look like on his Rookie Card.

Why I selected it: Probably I was thinking I would want a "Retail Royal Blue" parallel example (just one) from 2023 Topps. But I thought I had managed to pull one, so more risk taking I guess. This one seems to go very nicely with the blue&teal Catcher gear, so maybe it will be the better choice. Not sure if there is enough of the lurking Umpire to use this in the Umps collection; there are definitely better on-card examples of the Men in Black.

Why I selected it: Almost certainly because I remembered seeing it on a Baseball Card blog, a long time ago now. At quick first glance this looks like an Angels card. And the card says "Fleer" on the top - but it is a Minor League card. All irrelevant. This Baseball Card has cool shades on it, with the little pro wing on the lenses. And, it has to be the most laid back Baseball Card ever made. It just makes you wanna ... take a break down on the floor for a while. Why not? 

Why I selected it: I like the concepts of 1963 Topps a whole bunch. Colorful. Extra inset photo can be a good aid to seeing what a Baseball player looks like. But I have always felt this design gets things backwards, with a close-up portrait as the main image and a more distant shot/cropping (generally) as the inset. So I much prefer how things turned out in 1983.

Recently I was thumbing through a small stack of 2012 Heritage I have. I could not understand why so many images are, let's say, "low resolution." They just don't look crisp. I often wonder just how much Topps tries to deliberately make Heritage cards look old; 2006 Heritage with all the nauseous green cards is just nuts. Then there was the absolute fiasco of the card backs in 2024 Heritage - deliberate attempt at re-creating card back gum stains? We will never know.

This 2012 Heritage card doesn't have those problems. The main image is perfect. Which only makes its checklist mates look that much more bad. But that's OK, I won't be seeing many of those in the future.

For a long time the Tigers were photographed on "Photo Day" at the start of Spring Training while standing in front of some classic mid-Florida vegetation. You know, like a jungle. Where Tigers come from.

This is fun. Until you have 59 cards from this same vantage point. One at a time though, they are still fun. Don't keep the 59 cards all together, would be my advice.

Why I selected it: Completely a "place-holder" card in that I don't actually want an X-Fractor for a fun Powder Blue Card. There is a 3rd Powder Blue Phillie that got erased by the exes, or the fractors. So I want to see if the rest of this card might re-appear on a regular version. Unfortunately, this is from Stadium Club Chrome, so there aren't quite any regular versions to pick from. We'll see.

Why I selected it: Sigh. Once you get locked into a serious collection of useless Rookie Card cards of the Tigers' most recent useless 1-1 draft pick, the tendency is to push it just as far as you can. I do like levitating dropped bats though.

Why I selected it: In your town, this card most likely wouldn't even be for sale, individually. In my town, a Star of the 2006 World Series bound Tigers will be in the Dollar Box. I am quite looking forward to finishing out that Team Set. If Granderson is already in the stack I have then back in the Dollar Box this one will go.

Why I selected it: I like Topps Chrome Prisms. I like Horizontal cards. I needed a Horizontal Topps Chrome Prism for the 1/year page of Horizontal Topps Chrome Prisms. Except, I think this is my second one. Now what?

Why I selected it: You can't go wrong with a Bobby Baseball card. Powder Blue compression sleeves are cool, and cool inserts with a Powder Blue uni are cool, too.

Bonus Round

Why I selected it: More Bobby Baseball, with which you can't go wrong. I think. When Topps Holiday first came out there in the 2010s somewhere, I would dutifully pick up a "collector's box" or whatever they called it, and then try to find some reason to keep the cards I found inside. I liked the cards where it looked like the Baseball player was in disbelief at seeing snow flakes while playing a Baseball game, as on this card, kinda sorta. Just when I thought I was out...

For a long time I have been very skeptical anyone will be really happy to look at a set of Topps Holiday cards, 10 years later. Baseball Cards with snowflakes and Christmas decorations on them, amidst collections of every kind of goofy graphic design Topps can possibly think of. Now including Easter Bunny and Jack-O-Lantern parallels, too, because we just can't get enough. It didn't start with Topps Holiday, but it certainly didn't help. At this point Panini makes multiple Holiday sets, i.e. not just for Christmas but also for Halloween. Let's hope Topps never notices this.

And I figure once people have a great big ole collection of Baseball Cards and that inevitable time comes when a collection must be slimmed down some, one of the first things to go will be any Topps Holiday cards. Because Baseball just isn't part of Snowmen and Christmas lights.

So who would want this card? I have thought, since I purchased it 10-ish months ago, I shouldn't have pulled this trigger.

Turns out, 258 people have purchased this one on COMC and only 12 copies are left now, listing at maybe $3, each. We can't get enough.

Double Bonus Round

Why I selected it: Score!

People collect Ohtani Pitching cards, or Ohtani Hitting cards, or, amazingly, every Ohtani card ever made.

Me, Ima collectin' Ohtani Base-Running cards. There aren't many of those, or, weren't going to be until he annihilated the 20-20, 30-30, and 40-40 concepts this year, forever and ever. Soon, there will be lots and lots of Ohtani Base-Running cards. But there will never be lots of Ohtani Base-Running cards with him in an Angels uniform. So that will keep expenses low, I hope. There might not even be 9 of them, so reaching that mystical quantity will be a challenge. Now, I'm one closer.

triple-we-gotta-get-this-stack-done

Bonus Round

Why I selected it: This is almost an Ohtani Base-Running card. Not sure how the Commissioner would rule on that. But, if necessary, this might count in a pinch. 

However I already have multiple copies of this card. Which is good, because I look forward to completing the 2021 Topps Heritage 1972 In Action subset, a thoroughly classic, elegant design.

And then, I will still have multiple copies of this card left over. Wanna trade?

A Nine Card Journey / Nifty Nine #11

 

2009 Topps Update

Oh what a lovely day - a big ole box of Baseball Cards just arrived, courtesy of the "Black Friday" week of sales on COMC. That was some delightful news over this morning's coffee when I had a hunch the shipment just might be heading out the door sooner than the previously estimated day in early January. That guess proved true, and even better, today was THE day. Hooray!

This box of cards will complete several fun collecting projects I can now move from the overly well-worn "working" binder to The Show - the binders I will keep on my bookshelf, forever and ever.

Big portions of the box will make big progress on some big projects. Those won't be seen here all that soon. So before delightfully filling empty slots in those collections, I decided to go with writing up these little projects first. The one I am scanning today was conceptualized all the way back around the time of just my 14th post on this blog, some 11 & a half years ago...

The Card That Started It All

I think that is not a scan, but rather a hotel room cell phone picture from the days I was excited to be writing a card blog / diary while traveling for work, rather than only creating blog posts while at "home," wherever that is.

The scan is from a post titled "Bring Me The Arm of Octavio Dotel" which mused about the beginning of my very first Player Collection. That was inspired by reading the back of that card there and noticing how many teams Dotel had played for in his 15 year career - 13, to be exact. At the time, that was the All-Time record; it has since been tied by Rich Hill and broken by Edwin Jackson - 14 teams.

The "Journeymen" players always fascinate me, so for certain players I just put their cards in the "Players" box whenever I run across one. Two bloggers helped out with my Octavio Dotel collection fairly quickly also. 

Over time though, I realized I didn't really want every card ever made for, basically, any player. And I also had to decide just what I would be doing with the cards in that player collection box, anyway. The solution I settled on was to permanently display just, 9 of them.

But which 9 to pick? Another easy conclusion would be to include 9 different uniforms. That's generally basically do-able for most players. But as some of these collections reached 7 cards or so, I decided it would be the most interesting to see which players I could assemble 9 cards for, with 9 different uniforms, but also 9 different designs. Also quite do-able by wandering around all the many Topps & Bowman brand products. Easy, really.

But what if I tried to assemble 9 cards, 9 uniforms, of 1 player - but in just 1 set? That - is a lot more challenging than you might think.

One minor disappointment of the concept is that this is not possible for the "Most Teams" record holder - Edwin Jackson. I will eventually figure out a way to honor his achievement some other way, probably with an 18 card collection. It is possible for Dotel's career, an ongoing albeit slow-motion project. There is another famous player tied for 4th place on the All-Time list at 11 teams for whom this -might- be possible; his stash in the players box is only partway there and I haven't computed his chances yet.

Today though, COMC got-r-done for me on a player who is at the bare minimum for the concept - 9 teams:

2011 Update

That's a card I quite like for the unique background that can only be created by a camera, not a Topps Card Back miner carving yet another parallel background design down in the mines.

This project was much easier to complete than the one for Dotel as it runs through the 10s & 20s, when I have purchased a whole lot more Baseball Cards than I did in the 00s. The next card though, had to be acquired online -

2012 "Factory" Team Set

Melancon only has 4 cards with the Red Sox, in Heritage, Gypsy Queen, Opening Day, and this card from the retail blister pack Topps still issues for every team, every year. That bit of foil over his left shin is the "Fenway 100 Years" logo; Topps really put in nice bits of extra effort for casual Red Sox collectors with their 2012 products.

That card is yer average Photoshop effort as Melancon joined the Red Sox in December 2011, too late for a genuine photograph in the Team Set, or in Opening Day, where this image also appears. Perhaps the mid-summer Gypsy Queen issue features an authentic Red Sox photo, dunno. 9 uniform homages to the Journey would certainly be easier when using cards from multiple products. Be that as it may...

2013 Topps Update

With the Pirates I had multiple good card options including one with Manager Clint Hurdle, another with the Bucs always photogenic Home Alternate black Uniform, and even an All-Star Game card. But of course I was going to include a Sea Turtle, and this is one of the striking images in that set. What is Melancon doing here? Closers are supposed to be shown celebrating, we all know that. Is he arguing with an Umpire? I think so, but we'll never know.

2016 Topps Update

This card breaks my all-vertical OR all-horizontal binder page rule, but it has to be broken - because this is Melancon's only Topps Baseball card with the Washington Nationals.

2018 Topps

Over in San Francisco I also had multiple options. I would kind of lean towards 2019 Topps with its dramatic printing of the player last name. I like that design quite a bit but have ultimately chosen to complete the much brighter, 3/4 full-bleed 2018 set. There is something going on in the 2019 set with photo filters that grey out a lot of cards a bit too much for my tastes, even though I do enjoy the very memorable '19 design.

Melancon's 2019 Topps card doesn't have that filter problem, but here I had a different problem as I have 2 copies of the '18, and none of the '19.

It would also be fun to try this with a player using only Update cards; I think Melancon might be as close as one could get to the mystical total of "9" though.

2020 Topps

Speakin' of grey Baseball Cards...Melancon appears on two Topps Baseball cards with the Braves, but only one with this next team:

2021 Topps Update

Ouch, those parallelograms hurt me, too, Mark. Whaddyagonna do?

2023 Topps Update

This is Melancon's final card so it is the easy choice over the 2022 Diamondbacks card. They both feature a nice look at the Dbacks great left shoulder patch.

The Result

So there ya have it, 9 cards, 9 uniforms, 1 player, 1 set/product. Try this at home, if you'd like. Right now though, I got a whole heapin' helpin' of new-to-me Baseball Cards to sort out....cya

10 Cards from the Dollar Box #7

I have never had an easy time of "clearing the card desk." I have been hard at it lately, and for that I am thankful. I have a long ways to go, so I will keep stockpiling these posts, hopefully for your enjoyment, and definitely for mine.

Let's see what appears from the more mysterious, bottom of the stack today:

Why I selected it: The shades, man. This is a little known Check-Out-My-Badass-Shades-Man color match parallel. I would say it is every bit the equal to a super limited edition (but also super cheap) Topps Chrome Sapphire version of (possibly) this same card. Plus, those socks are cool, though you are probably still lost in those shades right now. And for another exception-proves-rule, that one cool sock perfectly fills up that space wasted by all those weird parallelograms, polygons, and triangles all over this card, which are especially prolific once the squashed Diamondbacks logo is added. So possibly I snagged this Series 2 card so I wouldn't forget those great socks on the regular base version, cuz I never seem to have as many Series 2 cards as I do of Series 1, and Update.

In-hand, this parallel has a remarkable 3D effect like you are probably familiar with from people using the 3D button on their phone just to take a picture of some boring object, just because they can. 3D lookin' cards, are good.

And, sometimes I dream of assembling not another All Parallel set, but a simple, single All Parallel page of the easy to obtain (read: cheap) versions from some sets. Looks like I am headed down that path with 2023 Topps even if I don't want a binder hogging Complete Set copy of it. There are no shortage of low leverage options on low leverage cards when it comes to 2023 Topps. Such is life in the "Junk Parallel" era. So now I have the /299 entry complete.

Why I selected it: I have begun a modest little Ohtani collection, of Shohei running the bases. This card won't qualify, because a Home Run trot is not "running." I quite like this card though, as I figure you most likely have an agreeable personality I would want to shoot the breeze with, if you smile during your Home Run trot, which you should.

But really I purchased this card because I always dutifully assemble a set of the usually 5 Checklist cards issued per Series in the Topps Baseball set, from time immemorial. I do this for a nice look at the "Highlights" from a given season, which the Checklist cards have been for a long time now. It's not always simple for Topps to assemble 15 card-worthy Highlights annually, so occasionally these "reach" a little bit. This one kinda trends that way, but overall not as bad as things like Yasiel Puig having a multi-Hit game, for example. So since I would need to buy one of these from someone, somewhere, it might as well be down at my LCS. And it ain't like Ohtani cards get cheaper as they age. So, trigger, pulled.

Why I selected it: Houston, we have a winner. That would be for the 1/year (no mas) 2023 Topps Chrome Prism refractor, Horizontal division entry. This is one of my favorite cards from 2023 Topps. Prisms seem the perfect way to forget about all the parallelograms, once the card is completely covered in uncountable quantities of them.

Why I selected it: I kinda forgot why. I don't collect Opening Day Blue parallels, per se, nor the Texas Rangers. I always like appearances by their red Home Alternate uniform though. Maybe that had something to do with it. Red, White, & Blue. Almost like their almost-Racing-Stripe, still-kinda-Pin-Stripe pants. Hmmm.

Why I selected it: Was 1981 Pete Rose's final All-Star game? I don't think so, but maybe. I do still need a few more Pete Rose cards to put a page in the binder for him. This edition with it's "candid" (read: unposed) photograph displays some great foreshadowing pathos of how his life would begin to change, for us, out in the public, later that decade. It will be a perfect addition to that page of Baseball Cards.

Why I selected it: Oops, I did it again. Meanwhile this scan deepens a small worry I have now: I have discovered the perfect kind of Baseball Card to collect, digitally, as in, on-screen only. I am afraid now that I will want to scan every "Rainbow Foil" card I currently have, which is way too many but also not quite terribly enough of them to resist that basic waste-of-time. Kinda.

I think now I have remembered why I picked up those two Adolis Garcia cards. As much as I routinely mock the concept of buying Baseball Cards solely for their potential future value, I do have to confess: I am unable to resist doing that every once in a very great while, too, when the inve$stment in question is just a few quarters. And that's probably what happened here. "Rookie Cup" parallels can be surprisingly valuable later in a player's career; something I learned from 2013 Topps card #27, when I needed to purchase colorful copies of it. That took forever to accomplish at a reasonable price.

So I have a feeling about Adolis Garcia, let's just say. He will be a Free Agent in a couple-three more years in there somewhere, and he hits a lot of dingers, some years. Now, where am I going to keep those 2 cards until he hits a bunch more dingers? Ai-yi-yi.

Why I selected it: Another Oops. This, is a "dup." I have even already posted it before, in this 'series' of blog archetype posts. So, at least I didn't have to scan it again. It won't hurt me to have a couple extra Riley Greene base Rookies laying around, in the years to come, I expect. Err, hope. Errr, expect.

Along the way to posting this one again I discovered a fun thing in our thankfully free-thanks-to-Google Blogger software. That is that we can add photos already part of a previous post in our blog, to a new post. So, what? Nothing important really, but when you attempt this option, Blogger begins dutifully loading thumbnails of every image you have ever included on your blog. This takes way too long to ever use one from the middle, or worse, end, of; in my case that is several thousand such images. But it is an enjoyable little thumbnail gallery to gaze upon as it steadily loads up.

Why I selected it: A perfect pair to the 1979 Pete Rose Record Breaker I posted recently and probably purchased on the same day.

Might be kind of nice to keep the 2 cards together. But the Racing Stripe page wants this one, too. But a lurking Hall of Famer and just more general Powder Blue goodness than one can shake a baseball bat at? This card has "Powder Blue Collection" written all over it.

Why I selected it: I love Willie Stargell. Simple as that.

A nicely off-centered 1980 Topps is fine by me. I like how the facsimile signature was placed with care, parallel with the team name design element, rather than automatically deposited on a certain coordinate on the card by the computer software, regardless of what's happening in the overall composition. Hand-made Baseball Cards are often superior to software-made Baseball Cards in this way.

Plus it's always nice to see a signature you can read.

Why I selected it: I like Baseball Cards photographed in basically completely wrong indoor spaces. They make me laugh. Particularly with what's happening on this card, where Anthony Reyes looks a little less-than-pleased about this. "You want to take my Baseball Card picture, right here?" Seems to be the obvious photo conclusion. Dressing the card up as the classy Gold parallel makes it that tiny bit more amusing. Sorry, Anthony.

Also, 2006 Topps is growing on me and I find it likely I will begin to increase my modest collection of it, once I get through so much decision making on so many other sets, first. So that might be a minute, or two. 2006 Topps are particularly good cards to include in pretty much any Player Collection, given the dramatic declaration at the top of the card. But then most player collectors collect pretty much every card ever issued for a player anyway.

Bonus Round

Why I selected it: This card will look great on a page of horizontal Miggy cards. I don't usually give "keeper" status to a card that doesn't show a player's face, even with an overall great Baseball photo effort. This late-era Upper Deck card solves that dilemma perfectly.

Extra Good Bonus Round

Why I selected it: Oooohhh, how I have been looking forward to scanning this one. In-scan just, meh, turns out. 3D cards are meant to be enjoyed, in-hand. Not, in-vault. 

Topps routinely creates them now in limited edition, "online sales only" releases. Whereas formerly in the 21st they did so as part of Opening Day for a good run of years, and a pair of re-runs in Lineage and then its subsequent iteration as Archives.

None of those cards are worth hardly anything, despite many of them featuring Hall of Fame bound Superstars.

But slap an RC logo on one and limit production to just a thousand copies or whatever, and suddenly the money will roll right in.

Of course, I couldn't resist adding a 3D card to the Powder Blue Collection. Powder Blue Rookie Card cards are already the best-est, and this one is bester, even with all those parallelograms.

And should Alec Bohm hit a big peak in his imminently arriving peak career years, maybe my retirement is now all set? Isn't that what Baseball Cards are all about?