A Nifty Nine (#5) from another old friend

2011 spelunking continues here in base set land; this simpler (200 card set) project was also way-overdue and long anticipated: collating my purchases of the 2011 set known as "Lineage."

I have done most of the normal collecting work with the set as I have been occasionally making progress on the parallel version of the base card checklist - the '75 minis - as well as paying attention to all the wonderful inserts in this product, and another fantastic Shiny parallel it holds, too.

What I had never done, however, is discover if I actually had a normal Complete Set of the regular base checklist. As it turns out, I am still 6 cards short, and as with my findings collecting the '75s, they are disproportionately in the last 25% of the checklist (all 6) and even the last ten cards in the 190s (2). So weird.

The Cy Young card caught my eye immediately. I have very, very few other Cy Young cards (4, I think) and I began to wonder - why not? These days, I can be scrolling through a visual example of pretty much every Cy Young baseball picture product ever created in less than a minute by merely typing his name into the COMC search engine.

That was quite interesting. This 2011 card from Topps marked the end of his appearance in Topps products for nearly ten years subsequently, after just four years of creating cards from 08-11. I'm guessing that Cy Young's descendants are tough/shrewd/smart negotiators for this perhaps. Even Panini only managed a 3 year run of Cy Young cards. Just lately, I should note, Topps has issued a few new cards.

But those are also quite interesting: they are largely repeats, in terms of photo selection. There probably just aren't that many existing photographs of Cy Young that even can be used, I assume.

Lately I have begun making little piles of cards for a new mini project: assembling a binder page (just one) of 9 different cards that all use the same image. I don't anticipate it will be difficult.

As it turns out, the image used above has appeared on so many cards, stretching back 60 years, that multiple pages of cards using just that image could be assembled. (I won't be attempting that with this photo). I have to wonder if it might somehow be in the public domain.

I also discovered why I am so drawn to this basic Cy Young card: this image was used first by Fleer in the early 60s, and then used some more in the mid-70s, when little ole Base Set was buying those oddball packs of Fleer gum that came with pretty cool MLB logo patches and these really cool cartoon baseball cards drawn by Robert Laughlin. A card he created for Cy Young is a basic sketch of this same image superimposed over a ginormous "511" - "Cy Young won 511 games" - the most ridiculously ginormous Baseball Feat I had ever heard - the whole thing is permanently etched in my brain for all eternity, though the basic sketch had faded some.

cribbed from ebay, I confess

And now here I had a true baseball picture card to match all these years later, courtesy of Topps.

The Lineage set was pretty interesting in this way - 25% Hall-of-Famers, a few Very Goods, and the balance the best contemporary players in 2011, with only 6% Rookies.

As I carefully sorted my stash of 500 or so base cards (I bought this in dusty cheap discounted blasters and hangers in closing down K-Marts all over the Midwest well into the 2010s, chasing those 75 minis and just generally enjoying every pack), I slowly realized something unfortunate: I really can't justify placing 2 copies of the set onto binder pages on my future Tiny Home bookshelf. And the beautiful '75 minis will be the first choice; totally worth 20 pages on that shelf.

But as I happily assembled the cards in their sequential order, I kept finding cards I knew I would not want to keep, only in their mini form. I knew what to do: pull out a fresh binder page.

Before I show you my picks for a 9 Best Of Lineage, I wanted to share one just regular 2011 player card from the set:

The Giants were a new team for Miguel Tejada in 2011, so Topps stepped up with a fresh Spring Training photo for his new Lineage card. I think this one will be finely represented via '75 mini style, and the full-size card will look nice with some Sunglasses buddies, too. There are a few other cards using this photo source option, which I quite like to see mixed in with action shots from regular MLB games.

Lineage is also home to one of my favorite Miguel Cabrera cards, perhaps the only player I will be collecting beyond a single 9 card page:

Did you know Miggy has a tattoo on his right arm? Now you do.

This card has a great flow to it, with lines in the image complementing lines in the design - the 3 sided design. I would like to see this concept used again in a set of baseball cards. Leaving the right side open like that is a nice way to let the viewer's imagination imagine the action continuing, off to Miggy's left, on this card, and many others in the set as well. With this one, the mini treatment is not an improvement:

I like authentic Vintage centering.

That's still a great baseball card; I enjoy both versions. Lineage will be supplying several cards to those 1 player, 1 page assemblages (Cy Young may be a challenge), as well as a few to pages like the Sunglasses pages.

Some other fine day I will crack into my box of Lineage inserts and maybe even start clicking the 'Buy Now' button on COMC for the ones I still need there. But for now let's see which cards made my

 Lineage Nifty Nine

One of the best Mantles Topps has ever sent me.

Looks like Detroit was playing in NYC that day, too.

And, yeah, card #7.

Analog film warmth is tough to beat.

Analog dirt!

I am not a fan, or collector of, Joe Morgan cards. But, this one, yah, eh? Joe just arrived in his own little cloud of dust. It's the game of "base" ball and this is Joe Morgan's base, not the runner's. Get me the ball, hurry up. This guy is gonna be OUT.

This card looks like a painting.

Not just a Night Card. A World Series Night Card.

Got racing stripe?

A great late afternoon card.

Ten year old Base Set would have loved this card. Could you imagine living in a house right behind the fence on one of the Orioles Spring Training complex "back fields" - how freaking cool would that be?

This card is a twin to the 2011 Topps Justin Duchscherer card I included in my look at 2011 Topps a few days ago. Dime Boxes reports that it is actually a Year-Zero card, i.e. he never pitched for the Orioles.

For some reason back there in Spring Training 2011, the Orioles/Topps held Photo Day back there in view of suburbia. Some of the resulting Orioles 2012 Heritage cards look like the players are getting ready to play one of the very best varieties of baseball: Back Yard Home Run Derby. Glorious. In 2012, they instead moved the Orioles to standing in front of a Borg-cube like pure black "Batter's Eye" wall elsewhere in the Spring Training complex. Turrible, just turrible. Let's get back to The Nine:

Yup, card #2.

Wait. Derek Jeter played a Bloody Sock game too?

What's up with that?

Did the Yankees win the game?

Lines, lines everywhere a line,

makin' nice scenery,

soothin' my mind

That's Yovani Gallardo there at card #9; 2011 was maybe the halfway point of the Foil printing era for Topps. Foil text only sometimes scans well but the last name on these cards sits on a field of black and that works out just fine on the cards, in-hand. I doubt you need any clarification on the other 8 cards on this page, which turned out thusly:

Another small item of note about this set: there are no horizontal cards to make you crane your neck when they get stuck in the middle of dozens of their vertical cousins.

I thought about calculating a Zoom Index for this set, but with the use of so many photographs that were anywhere from 10 to 100 years older than current day photos used, I decided it wouldn't reveal all that much anyway. 

Plus, I have so many more various baseball card projects to attend to. See y'all real soon.