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
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