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?

Everyone Loves a Good Bat Flip / Nifty Nine #10

...except of course the opposing team. The rest of us, oh, Yeah.

The Card That Started It All

Hey that's not a Bat Flip card! Yes, I know. I have always been fascinated by this card, anyways. That's a Bat Drop card. When the Baseball bat is captured on cardboard like this, I find the image mesmerizing. It robustly reinforces the realization that this is a captured moment in time; live action, Baseball game time. An image like this can't be posed, and can't be mistaken for anything but a picture from a live action Baseball game.

So cards like that have always tended to bubble to the top of my stacks of cards, for future reference, where they say "keep me, keep me," regardless of what set they are from or what player they depict. I have another dozen & a half hypnotic Bat Drops like that one.

The Card That Really Started It All

This is a pretty famous card, of a pretty famous Bat Flip in the 2015 playoffs. Although I purchased way too much 2016 Topps Baseball Series One, I could just never pull that dang card; if I went for set completion there it would be on a very short list of singles still needed, I expect. Late in the year I did finally receive a copy from a pack in the (inaugural?) Topps Holiday release. It was nice to have and snowflakes in Canada in mid-October are far from unknown, but for an iconic Baseball Card like this one, do you really want fake snowflakes on it? (I have this exact same problem with another equally famous card, the one called "Bat Down," which has nothing to do with a Bat Flip.)

Bautista's Bat Flip is more than just an unforgettable moment of Baseball History, it actually figures in to Baseball History as it launched a bit of discussion in the sport about loosening up the "Unwritten Rules" a little bit as the game of Baseball trails into 3rd place in American public life, solidly behind Football & Basketball. 

And of course the notoriety of the incident only grew the next year, when Rougned Odor received his own 15 minutes of fame for reminding Bautista that he broke the ancient Unwritten Rule about this. Which only made the discussion spin through a few more news cycles on all the Sports Talk media everywhere. Although the Odor-Bautista bout is not memorialized on cardboard, I would imagine some collectors do hold some of their Rougned Odor cards as their own cherished memory of the whole affair.

Now Topps is not going to miss such an obvious subject for a Baseball Card, and they got right on it just a month or two after Bautista "got all of that one." 

A few years later they even began trying to memorialize the concept more explicitly -

This is a 2020 Heritage High Numbers Insert that attempts to capitalize on such an iconic event, but it has a major problem: Nobody liked Tim Anderson. Jose Ramirez is a hero in the AL Central for finally thrashing him out on the field of play, as when I say "Nobody" liked him, that doesn't mean just the fans. Other players largely despised him. That incident with J-Ram was immortalized by Cleveland's long-time radio voice Tom Hamilton, who called the action as it unfolded: "Down goes Anderson!" That one has not just plenty of YouTube coverage, but also one of the more epic Wikipedia pages you will ever read.

So a bit of a swing & a miss there by Topps, though they could hardly have known how annoying Tim Anderson would become when they created that card. A subsequent attempt to attach Baseball Cards to Bat Flip glory that same year also fizzled completely:

These inserts appeared in 2020 Big League, which was a fine set of Baseball Cards that few could ever purchase without buying them from a pointless flipper middleman. One who had bribed a retail distributor employee, as Stimulus cash drowned the Hobby in annoyances for people stupidly just wanting to buy Baseball Cards, rather than be selling them as fast as possible at probably all-time market peaks. 

Anyhow those inserts lead off with another Tim Anderson card actually, and it does depict a Tim Anderson Bat Flip adequately enough, in that there is a substantially complete bat shown on the card. 

The problem with the rest of the checklist is an all too commonly repeated one on Topps cards: the cards don't bother using images matching the theme of the insert. Some of them don't even include the bat in the image at all, while one even shows a bat clearly not being flipped. Topps being Topps, again. What good is a Bat Flip card without a Bat on it? This ain't Rocket Appliances.

Fortunately, I have been able to find some plenty good Bat Flip cards in the years since Bautista broke that old unwritten rule for good. These are just, Baseball Cards, i.e. "base" cards, rather than specially titled inserts. It would surprise me not at all to see this insert theme attempted again, hopefully with better results next time. And hopefully without being the province solely of limited edition cards such as the Topps Now line, Golden Mirrors, even deeper SSPs, Throwback Tuesday, etc. Such classic Baseball imagery would be best delivered to all collectors, not just those willing to spend an Andrew Jackson or several, per card, to relive an often iconic moment. One can dream. 

Let's check out some Bat Flips -

On this Bat Flip, Odubel Herrara has "caught the most air" of about any Bat Flip card you can find this side of the Bautista card. There is no doubt this is a Bat Flip. 

I don't actually think that fabulous Victor Martinez card at the top of this post is a Bat Flip card, either. It might be, but it is not quite a 100% definitive example of the genre. The best such cards just scream: Bat Flip!

Also a good amount of air caught on this one; as with the Herrara card it clearly shows off another key feature: the slugger admiring the Moon Shot, too.

As near perfect as those two Bat Flip cards are, they have one key problem for my Personal Collecting system: they are just normal "vertical" Baseball Cards. The most epic Bat Flip card, the Bautista, is a horizontal card. I no longer tolerate swiveling my neck this way and that way attempting to enjoy horizontal Baseball Cards mixed with vertical ones. I hope to find more vertical Bat Flips, they can certainly work well. But for now, those two are back in their cardboard holding cell, awaiting new amigos to be found in new packs of cards.

For a good Bat Flip card, ya gotta go Horizontal, all the way:

2019 Big League

This is perhaps my most surprising Bat Flip, but also one of the most endearing, as it lets a player renowned for Defense, not Power, get in on the fun. Normally, Bat Flippers are pretty famous -

2023 Stadium Club

I'm not 100% positive on this one. But, Kirby Puckett gonna Kirby Pickett, so, probably.

2018 Big League

2019 Topps

I'll bet Topps was stoked to discover a serial Bat Flipper they could spotlight in their sets. Naturally, they forgot all about Encarnacion for the attempt at those Bat Flip inserts in 2020 Big League.

2021 Stadium Club

This card includes another excellent photo feature for this: the reaction from everyone watching.

2023 Topps

At first I thought a best Bat Flip card must show the entire Baseball bat. I softened my stance here as the crowd reaction confirms it all. It appears there is even someone taking a picture, without a phone (!), like we have gone back in time.

2023 Stadium Club

Getting the team and the fans altogether on one of these is The Way.

2008 Upper Deck

Finally on this glorious day known as, "Today," I received my very own copy of the necessary keystone here:

2016 Topps

Ironically, the 2016 Topps Holiday design might be one of the best for not intrusively adding the snowflakes, etc. — because the original base design pointlessly "smokes" out the corners anyway. 

But that card there is the Real Deal. There is a strong chance that card is the single most valuable non-Rookie base Topps Baseball set card created in the 21st Century.

Card Most on the Bubble: I do look forward to assembling more pages of Bat Flip cards; I do have a few more of these that can't quite match the epic-ness of the Starting Nine I selected here, though some are close.

However if & when I can find a qualified replacement, maybe someday I will switch out the Devers card, which after all does largely omit the bat from a Bat Flip card, something I was just nagging on Topps about. I might need it for an even bettter theme, we'll see.

The Result

Sometime in the near or far-away future, I will be starting what I call my "Stadium Club Project." Instead of buying random boxes of SC, old or new, and enjoying what comes out of them essentially randomly, I will be shopping each set, visually, one card at a time. I recently discovered that a big healthy % of the cards are available on Sportlots for just 20¢ each in most cases. Though not for "Inner Circle" GOATs or famous Rookies, naturally. I expect that might turn up a few more of these.

Meanwhile, I recently pulled a card of an ultra-famous Baseball player who is not shown flipping a bat. If this guy were to do so I think the highlight reel would reach epic levels of views on Social Media, forever and ever. The card creates a new genre/theme for Baseball Cards in my bemused mind at least, one that may never yield 9 cards but is a just exactly perfect Baseball Card look:

mic drop