Devout / Nifty Nine #8

I am not an overtly, actively religious person. Most specifically and crucially, in the minds of many, I do not attend Church any more. But I did grow up attending regularly and I do try to apply the lessons I learned from that, routinely. I am talking about the Christian Church; classical Scandinavian & German Lutheran denominations in my family. I also enjoy reading thoughts from other religions occasionally.

Many years ago now, I put a pair of quarters in a "gumball" machine though one seemingly full of small plastic toys. These machines amuse me and always make my head turn while on the way out the doors of my local grocery store. That particular day, out popped a simple string necklace holding a small metal Cross, which was quite a surprise. Lacking any better idea of what to do with this new object I owned, I hung it from the rearview mirror in my truck, where it still hangs today. Every so often it brings the key expression "WWJD" to mind when I am thinking about some decision. And that, is a Good Thing.

No one has ever commented on that quite small Cross hanging in my truck. Most people would not associate my sarcastic, sometimes-swearing-like-a-sailor daily pitter-patter with most Christians. I do believe Jesus would be solidly in the "DGAF" camp on oh so many absurdities of daily life and trivialities like a cuss word or wearing "Sunday-go-to-meeting" attire to impress people. I am also quite sure Jesus would not collect Baseball Cards, and his instructions are pretty clear on that. Sorry, Jesus, I am not perfect.

Still, the Cross is not often seen in daily life these days, especially when compared to life in our previous century. And when this does happen in 3D, actual daily "offline" life, it can be a little striking at this point. Some time ago, I noticed this was particularly true on Baseball Cards.

The Card That Started It All

I bet you're not surprised it is a 2013 card. (Update)

On this Ryan Raburn card the Cross is exceptionally noticeable. Although it too is part of the general downward flow of the whole image. That's not a particularly great thing about this somewhat odd card, where it appears Raburn is giving props to Chief Wahoo for some reason. I would expect he was (initially) quite pleased to be playing in Cleveland, as the Detroit fans had turned on him quickly during a down year, after several quite productive ones. It can't be any fun to be a scuffling player on a team full of big Stars like the 2012 Tigers.

I did not set this card aside immediately upon finding it pack fresh in the fall of 2013. But I certainly didn't forget it. I unfortunately can't recall precisely which other Cross card may have finally made me think to start making a little pile of Cross cards. I suspect it may have been one (2012 Update Hanley Ramirez, wherein the Cross is quite difficult to pick out) that didn't get drafted for this page of cards, which I made from a best-9 effort with these.

1990 Donruss

This card definitely makes me wonder when the first Cross was first seen on a Baseball Card. I would expect Topps may have been a bit reticent to depict one on a card, even decades ago when Christianity was a much larger religion in our country. It was considered a bit impolite, in my memory, to discuss one's religion, publicly, as there are many religions in our country. But somewhere in the vast oeuvre of Baseball Cards there has to be a First Card showing a Cross on it. This Benito Santiago card is the closest I can get to that card, for now.

1992 Stadium Club

A primary thought I have about this card is that I know it will be difficult for me to find more cards like it; by that I mean cards from the 1990s and early 2000s. I used to see/obtain them on the regular via simple cheap "re-packs" of randomly assembled 20-ish year old cards. These no longer seem available to me, easily at least. Instead shelves are now offering endless formats of "Mystery Boxes" full of unsold packs only a few years old — I already saw most of those sets, so they don't interest me. I might go deliberately looking for a new fix of those older styles of repack product, via this ever helpful Internet deal we all stare at too much. Those wonderful cheap repacks are where I found this card, and probably the Santiago card too, as each set was previously represented in my younger days collection by just a few sample packs.

This Joe Slusarski card is #782 in that Stadium Club set. Could you imagine such a yuge SC set today? I certainly could, and it would somewhat be wonderful. It would also be not somewhat, but quite certainly, hella expensive. 92 SC also has that wonderful feature of depicting the player's Rookie Card on the back, in those ancient times when a player only had a single digit quantity, or really a single hand quantity, of Rookie Card cards. I would love to see that back-of-card feature return to a modern SC set, mostly to laugh at all the whining that would result if Topps were to anoint one Rookie Card card over another as the "official" Rookie Card card. Oh, the humanity.

2014 Opening Day

Here, the in-action Cross is contributing to the upward flow of the image, which seems quite a bit more apropos than the image composition+cropping on the Raburn card.

2014 was one of those years where Topps printed the player name in the Topps Baseball set in foil, but printed the name in the Opening Day product in normal ink. Unfortunately, they used a light grey ink which is functional enough, but not nearly as functional as regular ole black ink would've been.

2018 Update

This card is my most pleasing find, because although McCutchen might be wearing a Cross, it is instead seen elsewhere on his "work clothes" and is the only Baseball Card I have yet found with a Cross not on a necklace. There are likely other Cutch cards sharing this trait, but I don't expect to find one like this for another player, any time soon. I am also quite pleased where this card ends up by simply collating this page in chronological order.

2018 Archives

This is actually one of 3 Lindor cards I have that reveal his Christian affinities, but picking just this one was an easy choice as the other two feature a less easily visible Cross. However those cards reveal the Cross by live game action / hustle, as with the Raburn and Prado cards. Knowing that this is a posed portait card with the Cross displayed illustrates Lindor's convictions much more strongly than more accidental glimpses.

2019 Big League

I was a definite fan of the new Big League product when it debuted, but the sophomore effort disappointed me, despite the nifty use of wood grain in the design. How did Topps manage to make the term "dark pastels" necessary to describe it? Who does dark pastels? Plus the images are routinely rather dim on the cards, as if a large % of them were taken from games being played under imminent threat of a Rain Delay. It shoulda-beena-contender, but at least it did contribute a few cards to my collections, such as this one.

2020 Opening Day

A pleasing card, despite its plain-ness. Or really, because of that. In an all-action, all-the-time set, "candid" cards are a big help in keeping things interesting. Which is something the normally grey paneled 2020 design needs help with in a big way. Color parallels were an even bigger help, that year.

2021 Topps

I don't think this far too busy set design will ever really grow on me in the way Topps Baseball designs should, over time, like the 2017 design has, for example. But as always, every Topps Baseball Card design can be of secondary importance to the photo selected for the card. This basically happy Baseball Card is, natch, a nifty conclusion to these 9 cards. When I get around to putting my 2021 collecting efforts into a last-call-for-binder-page-slots, I will need to do something to memorialize the day the White Sox started the "all-Garcia" outfield. So maybe I will find more Leury Garcia cards with a Cross shown on them; we shall see.

Card Most On The Bubble: None of them, really. I might experiment with the even plainer, basic base version of the Vogelbach card as the Cross should be the bling, not the Baseball Card. Ditto for the Prado card as the Opening Day logo doesn't generally add much to the cards including it.

And this is not a final collection of Cross cards, by any means. I have the two additional Lindor cards, and the Hanley Ramirez card in-hand already. Also I expect these will both continue to be issued occasionally, and I hope to just find them at random on older cards, too. But that is much more difficult now without occasional $5 stacks of 100 random junk wax cards. Additionally with this theme I have no plans to scroll through the assemblages of every Baseball Card, ever, for a player I now know to be wearing a Cross, just to assemble quantities of them. That would be a bit humbling for these cards in particular and it might be wise to have more of these around when I am looking at tempting $300 cards. But I have mostly avoided doing that so far in these Nifty Nine collections, though will have to begin such a technique for a lot of them stalled at 7 or 8 cards. That should be fun, eventually.

For now however, I will simply let the Cross find me, as it has throughout my life.

The Result

10 Cards from the Dollar Box #2

 

Well Winter has certainly arrived where I live; instead of a classic Great Lakes "3 Day Blow" (a common expression here, immortalized in the title of a Hemingway short story), I have a a 5 day blow in my weather forecast - 5 days of lake effect snows and wind speeds above 10mph, straight off the Lake - for 5 days, straight.

For me, this means: Baseball Cards. November was already a good Baseball Card month for me but I am still some distance away from taming the Card Desk into a clean, usable surface. One of the projects cluttering the desk is an intriguing stack of, yup, cards from the $1 box at my LCS. I love stopping in there on a crappy winter morning and just shopping Baseball Cards, drinking a truly quality cup of coffee from the shop next door. Although I still dream of the majesty of some day seeing an actual Baseball Card Show, my wonderful LCS just keeps chugging right along in about its 7th year of operations, and that is perhaps better than the next best thing to an actual festival like meet-up of multiple card dealers.

But these delightful objects, which typically clock in at 75¢ or less in reality, need to finally reach their permanent bindered-up, 9 cell homes now. It's a lot of fun finding what randomly appears in the boxes otherwise not-organized by team, player, or set. And now some of the loot from such expeditions has sat on the desk for nigh of a year or so, so....I don't always remember what's in this stack of treasure. Thus I will be re-discovering the cards as I scan them, starting at the bottom of the stack. I'll start with the Kaline card...

Why I selected it: I have fond memories of listening to Al Kaline for many years, -after- his playing days when he was the Tigers TV announcer, along with George Kell. Back then, the Tigers appeared on my television set 100% for free, without even cable. Imagine that.

I don't often pick up Al Kaline cards deliberately, because Topps never seems to tire of printing up new ones and then delivering them to me. And that's just fine. As is owning a re-print of his true 1954 Rookie Card, from some sort of effort described on the back as "* Topps Baseball Archives * The Ultimate 1954 Series *" - it will look mighty fine as the lead-off card on a page, or likely 2, of random Kaline cards acquired over many years.

Why I selected it: This card has appeared on the blog before, though I wish I would have remembered that before I scanned it again. I already own a copy of this card, which I luckily pulled from a blaster of 2021 Stadium Club. But I knew I will need an extra copy for a possibly challenging effort to obtain 9 different Shohei-Ohtani-on-the-basepaths cards; I think that is already up to 4 cards however. This was a few years before Baseball's new rules made base stealing a little easier, but also before Ohtani's new 2024 Manager really turned him loose. I expect the dramatic 50/50 season will lead to at least a few new Base-Running cards for Ohtani in 2025, but his imminent return to the mound will likely lead to a new set of Pitching cards, too, in late-season products. This card will likely anchor the key center slot of a 9 card page of those run, Shohei, run cards, but it will also look great on a page of my 9 favorite 2021 Stadium Club cards...

Why I selected it: ...this card will not appear on the same page as the Ohtani card despite being from the same set, because I now assemble a separate page of my 9 favorite horizontal Stadium Club cards. SC is the perfect set to supply cards to my All-Horizontal binder, and this card could well win out in the selection process, we'll see. It would almost certainly cost me more than 75¢, anywhere else.

Why I selected it: I like these now standard components of the Topps Baseball set packs every year. I have always liked 1986 Topps but have no desire to ever finish and "binder" up a complete set beyond the 3-400 cards I already have, as the atrocious printing quality back then would lead me to shopping the cards all over again, looking not for high grade cards, but simply well printed ones, which is completely ignored by the grading ecosystem. So when 1986 cards appear in Archives, I am a fan of 21st century 86s. And then also with these 2021 versions. Mountcastle appears to be just a solid Major Leaguer and thus no longer of interest to the financially obsessed collectors. But I do know that the Orioles are the perfect team for the 1986 design, along with any other that incorporates black as one of their "team colors." This portrait card will also fit nice in a 9 best-of-2021-86s when mixed in with some action shots on the rest of the cards - a set design concept seemingly now abandoned after many decades of pleasing use.

Why I selected it: I collect Hank Aaron cards. I will go a little further out of my way to pick up cheap examples of such, as compared to say Al Kaline cards. But not all that far, in actual dollars. Topps serves these up routinely with no additional hard work required on my part. Making "Debut" cards for players was a thing for Topps in the later 2010s; I think these appeared in packs for at least two years. The simple design more befits an All-Timer than making futuristic cosmic-sonic-lava-wave bling-bling cards, and this will look great with some other Hammerin' Hank cards I have been setting aside for many years now.

Why I selected it: For modern players I sometimes like the bling-bling. But, only sometimes. Overall I am not much of a fan of the "mojo" pattern that now is a routine inclusion in the "Silver Packs" that arrive inside each Hobby Box of lottery tickets these days. However I collect both Salvador Perez cards, and Powder Blue cards. This card then creates a bit of a dilemma - which collection keeps this one, forever and ever? Two copies? No, the "mojo" is just not the bling-bling for me. But a set of Powder Blue catcher's gear, PLUS the team name in Powder Blue - how cool is that? No dilemma, at all.

Why I selected it: I collect Miggy cards. I have no desire to chase thousands of such cards, so I keep things to manageable small efforts of, you guessed it, 9 cards. One such theme is any and all "duals" I can assemble featuring Miggy and another player; these are usually other Tigers players. So to stumble across one of another star was a helpful future slot-filler. The back of this card surprised me in noting that Mike Trout is only 9 years younger than Cabrera, a bit of trivia probably not easily guessed/remembered.

Why I selected it: I am not very familiar with Miggy's years in Miami. So another 9 card theme will certainly be Marlins Miggy cards. I was also intrigued by the printing of "20Cabrera" on the card, which is repeated on the back. Was that his uni # in Miami? Seems likely, but the back of the card doesn't answer that question. If this Upper Deck set, which I am completely unfamiliar with, prints the player uniform # on the front like that on every card, I will definitely be hunting up some more of these. Cabrera will always be #24 to Tigers fans of course, but I like the (possible) concept here, for some other players that would be in a ... 2004? set, too.

Why I selected it: I ultimately chose not to complete the 2023 Topps Baseball set, though I really really wanted to, due to its on-point re-use of the bonus head-shot photo on the correct 10th anniversary of such a set design component. I never like "squashed" team iconography; nor did I care for all the distractingly-not-particularly-baseball-esque geometry on what I call the "Parallelogram" set. Plus most cards have that odd wasted space that is here actually an exception-proves-rule deal with the placement of the Rookie Cup, which neatly uses up that space. And I do collect a set of Rookie Cup cards each year, because I am still a part of the Youth of America which is wowed by this annual effort by Topps. Although since I was only medium-sure I did not pull one of these from packs back in '23, maybe that means I am not quite "youth" any more, as young Base Set would have known within milliseconds whether this was a "got it" or a "need it." Modern Base Set felt it best to plunk down the 3 or so quarters for a copy, just in case.

Why I selected it: This is probably a "bust" of a Baseball Card investment, it now appears, much to the chagrin of Tigers fans sadly watching the slow demise of yet another 1-1 draft pick for the club (Casey Mize being the other). But it made me laugh to see Topps once again showing off the fielding of a highly anticipated Tigers rook, which in this case is just not all that great, and is something they did a decade ago with Nick Castellanos. I recently picked up a cheap copy of Castellanos' short print photo variation 2014 Topps Baseball Rookie Card card, and that one too is a Fielding card! Anyhow this Torkelson RC was giving me big flashback vibes, and not in a good way. But what I liked about it was the inclusion of the rarely-seen-on-card Tigers sorta secondary Team Color - orange. So I thought a team set of these cards from Finest might be a nice little collection.

Now cards in the $1 box are never 10-for-$10, so I'll add a bonus card just like my dealer would, if I could ever limit myself to just 10 cards from these boxes, which I can not. But the rest of the stack will await another snowy day, of which there will be plenty.

Why I selected it: I think it was in 2017 when I randomly pulled a "Rainbow Foil" parallel from a pack that was a horizontal card, and it just suddenly worked, as a pleasing Baseball Card. I generally find the rainbow foils to be an utter waste of a slot in my packs, and they have essentially neither use nor value. But I have set aside horizontal foil cards ever since. Somehow, they appeal to me sooo much more than the vertical foils. I can't explain that. Can you?

That guy

 

I just scanned a Sea Turtle card! I feel like I just climbed into the WayBack Machine. I do miss writing about the Sea Turtle cards and still think I Shall Return, often, but, Life, happens. Work on my parallel collection of the 2013 Topps Baseball set does always continue; I picked up a key "Factory Orange" card just yesterday & Black Friday Week COMC sales are rolling right now.

Meanwhile I have been also slowly chipping away at another Sea Turtle project, collecting ALL Baseball Cards with the 2013 design. That is a much tougher assignment than collecting 990 parallels, because some of them were printed in editions of only /25, it is thought, and depict some _very_ famous people.

The card shown above is from the 2013 Pro Debut set, which I quite enjoyed completing. I still like that Puig card, too, a nice simple (and, authentic, not 'shopped) Minor League Baseball Card and somehow without that weird Pro Debut stamp Topps seems so proud of for some reason. We'll see some 2024 Pro Debut here on the blog sometime this winter, I expect.

Back in that previous decade, Yasiel Puig cards were a big deal, for a few years at least. We all know how that turned out. But in the short run, back then, the To The Moon! prices of Yasiel Puig cards definitely kept me from thinking I could ever hope to complete a certain set of the 2013 design cards, even though I very much Desired to. That would be a somewhat dreaded term to hear in the universe of Baseball Cards, when you discover one of these exists for a player or team (or in my case, a design) you Desire to collect, completely. That would be the horror, the horror of the "Super" Short Prints.

Although issuing "photo variations" had been a thing for several years already before 2013, I believe it was the year that Topps added the "Super" innovation to the concept, resulting in the acronym "SSP." This was after the 2013 Baseball Card year had started simply enough, with these "Great Catch" photo variations in Series One:

These were neither all that difficult to actually see at least one example from a pack, nor were most of them that expensive to purchase, if you wished. I have a memory of reading somewhere, many years ago now, that it was thought a print run on these might be around 3,000 copies each and thus nearly 1000 more copies than a Topps Gold parallel.

But naturally a checklist of only 25 cards is going to have a high degree of variability around that word "expense" as there would be some All-Stars / obvious future Hall of Famers included, which brings set collectors additional competition from player collectors.

So I steeled myself to shop carefully for the bigger names on that checklist, which included a > $100 card for this guy named Mike Trout. 3,000 copies, & > $100 prices. Bummer. These SP photo variations are (were) probably my most expensive Baseball Card Desire, outside of finally finding a specific 1/1 from 2013 Series One.

Several years ago now I bit the bullet and handed over a Benjamin for the Mike Trout Great Catch SP. And concluded that the worst was over, as the Bryce Harper card was only a $30 card. It is becoming perhaps an Irony that in the long run, the Harper card could easily become more valuable than the Trout card, as their career arcs steadily diverge now.

At this point I still need a few more of the Great Catch cards, including David Wright and Alex Rodriguez, which each have a New York collector base value above their Hall of Very Good career pedigrees would suggest. And I still need one of the two Mike Trout SPs issued in Series Two; I have the 'autographs' card but still need the 'sunglasses' card which was also a > $100 card for many years but has now probably halved in value. A pity I didn't wait longer on the 'autographs' SP. 

Most of those struggles between Desire and Life Goals were not even yet on my radar screen when 2013 Topps Update was released. I didn't even conceive of the all-parallel 2013 project until a year later, either. So the Update Short Prints, which seemed to consist of just multi-player poses from the 2013 All-Star Game, first didn't interest me and then didn't appear difficult to acquire for a couple-3 dollars each, some day. A few of them sell for < $1 today.

And the concepts and scarcity of the "Super" Short Prints were even more fuzzy to me. All I knew was, Flaming Hot Rookie Yasiel Puig had some photo variant cards that were far more difficult to obtain than all of his other Rookie Card cards and since the last thing I wanted to collect specifically were Rookie Card cards, I basically ignored the concept quite contentedly.

Except for one card, which I can't scan for you as I don't yet own a copy. That was the Gerritt Cole SSP, a card with an RC logo, so.....

That card is often referred to as the "Black Jacket" card as it shows him leaving the bullpen still wearing a black jacket. Given the hopes for the Andrew McCutchen led Pirates right then, the arrival of their recent 1-1 pick was a big deal in Pittsburgh and that image perfectly encapsulated those feelings, giving the card great cachet not just some of the time, but, instantly. As soon as I saw an image of it, the inner-Gollum that I expect every Baseball Card collector is familiar with piped up instantly: "I wants it."

I began watching the price of that card at some point in 2014. It has only ever climbed in price and I passed on several chances to buy it at around $75. That small fact is a reason for my dislike of Gerrit Cole, which is in no way his fault. I would still like to go fishing with him, if he enjoys that hobby, something I would say about almost every human being on the planet. What I really don't like is actually the structure of the game of professional Baseball today, which is perfectly illustrated in Cole's career and is now only getting worse as TV revenues decline but player salaries can only go up, up, up, up, up — to the point that Gerrit Cole now receives $15,000, give or take, for every single Pitch he throws. And the real loser is the fans of the "have-not" teams that comprise a whole lot of Major League Baseball today.

Shelby Miller has a Super Short Print photo variation card in 2013 Topps Update as well, probably with the same print run as the Gerrit Cole card. It is an incredibly lazy effort by Topps in that it features him just wearing the Cardinals' special "Sunday Home Only" cap instead of their regular cap, in a pose that makes it look incredibly similar to his Rookie Debut card, his "Factory Set" Rookie Variation card, and also a little bit like his regular Series One Rookie Card card. That same-same -ness has probably made a few of the "Blue Cap" SSPs be lost, right from the get-go, amidst stacks of totally worthless "base" cards that not every box opener actually wants any more. A possible fate for many photo variation cards of course.

And yet despite that basic rarity being probably a touch more acute than the Gerrit Cole SSP, Cole's card now sells for $250-ish while the Shelby Miller would go for half or less of that, I would guesstimate, if one were to appear for sale, which is because only oddball set collectors such as myself would seek it as it is very unlikely Shelby Miller has any dedicated player collectors at this point. I would further wager that if every single Shelby Miller Baseball Card ever made were somehow auctioned off simultaneously, individually, the 13 Update SSP would now be his single most valuable card.

All of that is the basics of Baseball, and Baseball Cards today. Between the Puig Rookie Card card mania and the permanently rising Cole card, I tried the best I could to blot out the knowledge of those 2013 Topps Update Super Short Print photo variation$ from entering my mind at all.

But that's never going to happen in our always dynamically scrolling "feed" of Baseball Card images, particularly when routinely shopping for the things online. 

One day early last winter, this next card appeared on eBay -

This is a card I had no real desire to ever own, starting with the simple fact of it not actually being a "Baseball" card at all. But that nagging Desire to own every 2013 Topps designed card will never leave me. Whatever you do, don't ever mention the Chrome SPs in my presence.

And as you can see, I pulled the trigger. The price, was right. That made the decision rather simple as I believe it was offered for only about 20% of what it would have fetched at auction. I could barely mash the "Buy It Now" button fast enough.

#Profit ? No, I am keeping the card. This of course has now set me on a problematic course as my inner-Gollum is louder than ever about that Gerrit Cole card. And of course the rest of his checklist mates, such as the famous Teddy Kremer card, which is viewed as a great "feel good" effort by Topps, unless, that is, you are someone who wants to complete the 2013 Update SSP checklist. I, and I believe many other collectors, would be much much happier if every photo variation card came out in far more reasonable print runs. Instead, every single player card in the Topps Baseball set, and many duals, now have "Golden Mirror" SP variants in limited edition. Act Fast! Buy Now! I do my best to never see what any of those look like.

Just a short week or so before the opportunity to own the ludicrous card just shown fell on me, I had shushed Gollum on the idea of owning a copy of the Kremer card for just $200. Like oh so many decisions, I began regretting that the instant the card sold anyway. Now, another one (graded & everything!) is on-sale for a cool $1000, or 50% off, if you act fast.

Sigh. Baseball Cards are always such a great hammer driving the nail of Buddhism's 2nd "Noble Truth," the one about Attachment & Desire. There is no escape.

For now though, I will continue row, row, rowing my Baseball Card boat somewhat happily down the stream. Now that I have one of the top 3 most difficult cards on the checklist, that makes the ho-hum double digit cost cards into very easy purchase decisions, which started with this one:

That is a nice nod to amusing Baseball Card history on the part of Topps, though I have never been clear on why these gloves actually exist beyond supplying a fun image to use on a Baseball Card. I had never paid it any mind in particular beyond that basic disdain for superfluous Rookie Card cards so I don't know how expensive it might have ever become. It now sells for maybe ten bucks, probably mostly to people like me, and that is still over-priced compared to most other regular SPs on that checklist, a phenomena known as "bag holding," which is now mostly, but not completely, abating for Yasiel Puig cards. That card was not one of the "Super" Short Prints but rather was just a boring regular SP.

My next two pick-ups were originally on the 'tough' list -

For the longest time, I thought the "arms raised" image was from the SSP list, but the "sliding" card was potentially from an even-fewer-printed Super Super Short Print list. Uggh. It is a fun card though from a famous incident where Puig un-necessarily slid into the completion of a Walk-Off Home Run. He was a fun player, and I did like that, so this card is a fun "get." 

I mostly thought there may actually be 3 levels of Short Prints in 2013 Update because that Puig "sliding" card was priced higher than the "arms raised" card, when I occasionally saw a listing for them. That, and the Teddy Kremer and Prince George cards were/are rarely ever seen actually for sale. 

Now, I am doubtful of that, as I can't find any online speculation, anywhere, on that concept. I also managed to stumble across the "population report" for some of the SSP cards graded at PSA, a concept I care about not-at-all and had thought was locked away behind an "account required" rule on the PSA website. (Wrong). There, some of what I thought might be the even more limited cards just mentioned have actually been graded more times than some of the just 'super' short printed cards. So there is likely just the SPs @ > Topps Gold level, and the SSPs @ maybe /25. A conundrum on the SSP quantity calculation, something never disclosed by Topps, is the 110 card structure of the printing sheets used in 2013, as 25 checklist entries is not divisible by 110 in any way. The mysteries.

It is nice to see all 3 of the Puig variants together finally. And those were a nice lesson on the folly of paying "peak" prices for Baseball Cards, before the latest can't-miss Hot Rookie gets promoted straight to Cooperstown, as were the Trout variants in Series One & Two.

Still waiting for me up ahead are that darn Cole card, and the even tougher every-Reds-fan-wants-one Kremer card. But also, many more 2013 variants featuring genuine Hall of Famers, sometimes 2 at once. A Baseball Card depicting Willie Mays standing next to Hank Aaron is never going to be as cheap as the other cards on the same checklist, which is far more understandable than the usually temporary peak prices of limited edition Hot Rookie Card cards.

At least Hall of Fame Baseball Cards are more fun to obtain than so many of the gimcrackery, dance-junkie-dance 2.5"x3.5" creations emanating from 1 Whitehall St. these days. Even when the card isn't particularly rare, or is of a famous player who just isn't quite to Finger Lakes New York standards, like the inimitable John Kruk, or This Guy, as we know:

Expressions

Baseball action photography fascinates me. I have always enjoyed this 'stop-motion' aspect for a game normally watched in live action.

I could totally get massive quantities of these images by just wandering around on the Getty Images website in particular, or subscribing to a major newspaper, something I have planned for the start of Spring Training 2025.

Naturally you won't be surprised that instead I mostly check out Baseball action photos via Baseball Cards. Today I ripped a single retail pack (not easy to find any more, but still manufactured) of 2024 Topps Update. I quickly found myself pondering the expressions on each player's face, starting with the very first card I saw, which was technically the last card in the pack but when the card is upside down at the bottom of the pack, odds are good it will be your first impression from the pack. I will be opening my first pack of 2025 Topps Baseball about 3 months from now very carefully, I will say that.

So as these thoughts grew I decided to just write them up, regarding each card in the pack, to see what happens. Here we go -

The Card: I quite like these inserts; I haven't lined some from previous years all up together for a dance-off to see which one I like best, yet, but I think 2024 will finish very well in such a competition. I don't really care for anointing a Rookie a "Star" as this card does; perhaps that is just an automatic reflex now as Rookies are shoved in to stacks of every kind of baseball card even including so many insert checklists. I guess some Rookies are instant Stars; Cowser did just finish 3rd in AL Rookie-of-the-Year voting. Nonetheless I don't care for the practice in a general sense - is Corbin Carrol still a "Star of MLB?" I do like how just seeing Colton Cowser's name instantly makes great Colter Wall songs play in my head. Colter is a fantastic singer-songwriter from Canadia, who's music I would like to hear more of, but, so much music, so little time.

Though I like the 2024 version of these inserts so much that I might assemble 18 of them this year rather than just 9 as per usual, I knew instantly this one would never make the cut for that.

The Expression:

What particularly caught my attention on this card was not the RC logo nor the personal musical association. Rather it was the way it instantly recalled both my favorite, and least favorite recent Detroit Tigers Rookie Card, that of Riley Greene -

,

which is probably the card that really revved up my thoughts on this concept, although there have been others ever since the Topps Baseball set became the all-action, all-the-time set.

Simply put - I don't understand why Topps picks these images with some less than positive countenances on the player's faces. Particularly for a player's Rookie Card card, which will be probably the primary image of him for many collectors, forever and ever. This is less a problem on the Colton Cowser Insert Rookie Card card, but that one still has a problem in that this newly minted "Star" looks darn unhappy about what just happened on the field of play. "Stars" - are supposed to be upbeat. Who wants a frowning Star? Not me.

What is the deeper mystery, to me, is just why Topps does this. Laziness? My primary guess. I did my own research here and it took me all of 5 seconds to discover that Getty currently publishes 622 images of Riley Greene from the year 2022, which is what would be used on a 2023 Series One card. So it's not like there are too few choices for Topps here — quite the opposite.

Firing this post up I knew I would be unable to resist commenting on each card, as a Baseball Card, and will keep doing that but will (try to) tone down the tl;dr angle there. Let's recall the concept at hand before adding some more features to this post -

The Expression: Dang, grounder.

What I Think Will Happen: Out

Play Ball!

The Card: This is the actual first card in the pack. I feel like I just pulled an Ian Kennedy card. Kennedy finally retired after the 2023 season; his Final Card was in 2023 Update. I say "finally" because Kennedy, and here, Zack Littell, look one heckuva a lot like: ME. That's always been a little disconcerting in my packs of Baseball Cards, because a weird oddity of them has always been this feeling that I should have kept playing Baseball beyond Back Yard Home Run Derby, cuz What If? Dunno if y'all feel that way looking at Baseball Cards, but my Doppelgänger cards always make my thoughts go in that direction. Is there such a thing as Senior League Softball?

I do like the pure "Ray" uniform of just the rays of the Sun; I suspect, solely from my Baseball Cards, that the Tampa Bay Baseball Club has been wearing these a little more frequently of late.

The Expression:

Nerves.

What I Think Will Happen: Ball!

Thereafter -

The Card: Didja ever notice that when Topps seemingly puts a team's cap logo on the front of the card, they don't actually do that for all 30 teams? One of the most usual exceptions is those red socks that appear on Boston Red Sox cards, even though they only sometimes appear on their uniforms and very rarely on their caps, in team history. The Cubs are another routine such exception. If I had infinite amounts of time I would surely delve into this more. 

The Expression:

You so Out.

What I Think Will Happen: Out at First, not close.

Subsequently -

The Card: Is there anything more confusing than a player who gets traded from the Rays to the Marlins? There is also the long-running Prospect Triangle between Tampa, Cleveland, and San Diego but one gets the impression that San Diego finally ran out of trade pieces a few years ago. Tampa of course never will.

This card though, is letter perfect. The Marlins logo looks like it might even have been part of the inspiration for The Neon this year. It is always tough to beat a Red, White, & Blue Baseball Card, and the sweet Marlins shoulder patch is the finishing touch of perfection. Or is it the pearl necklace?

The Expression:

Seriously? That's as fast as you run?

What I Think Will Happen: Two Outs

Batter Up!

The Card: A Rookie Debut card is one where the image choice is particularly important, in my never very humble opinion, as it is ... probably? always? ... a picture from a player's, yes, debut game. I think Topps does honor that, every time; it has certainly proved true whenever I have tried to catch them being sneaky and it is certainly true on this one — I checked.

This card has some nice features. Have you noticed how willing Topps is now to move the Topps logo &/or the RC logo around the card? That is some wonderful progress on crafting quality Baseball Cards, as compared to just robotically placing those logos in the same place on every card in the set, automatically, just, because. Good, job.

Another cool deet is a sighting of the VIDA patch the A's wore for Vida Blue. I haven't finished collating / bindering the Complete Set of The Neon yet (might be a minute), so I don't know how many cards will show that patch. I am hoping there is a little better view of it than this one.

As for the feature at hand, I cheated on confirming my suspicions of what happens next; all I had to do was flip the card over as a Rookie Debut card quickly synopsizes the Debut experience on the back.

The Expression:

Well that one ain't goin' yard.

What I Think Will Happen: Centerfielder takes two steps to his left, and...

Next.

The Card: Another solid Neon, and a perfect use of the horizontal format. 

There were no Cincinnati Reds cards in this pack, but perhaps those and the Cleveland card help explain why the Chicago club gets a full logo on the Neon diamond, to not have -too- many "C" cards, dunno. This might actually be a 2nd try at a capital "C" for the Guardians, another dunno. 

The Expression:

Nailed it.

What I Think Will Happen: Strike!

3? It is very, very rare to know the pitch count on a Baseball Card, however -

The Card: Another year, another keep-on-the-sunny-side Baseball Card for Omar. I have always liked his cards the last several years but there is a strong chance this is his Sunset Card as he was released by the Mets back in June and didn't return to The Show after signing with Houston. Sigh.

The Expression:

I got this.

What I Think Will Happen: Tough, tough call...Replay Challenge incoming.

while we wait on that -

The Card: Can't open a pack of Update without Rookie Debut cards falling out of it of course. When these first started in 2012 Update, iirc, there were only 10 such cards on the checklist.

I do like this card showing off the bold move to wear #0, which is always eye catching. So it motivated me to see how many players have ever done that, and I just done forgot the total already; it was somewhere between 3 & 4 dozen. Makes for neat cards; a little collection of these - is born.

The Expression:

Locked in.

What I Think Will Happen: I will flip the card over and just wonder.

I need, like, another card -

The Card: This is a true Update card in that Wacha appears as a Padre in 2024 Topps Baseball Series 1. Even though he was released by the Padres last November 6th. That's just the way she goes, boys, that's just the way she goes.

The Expression:

I'm Back!

What I Think Will Happen: A steeee-rike. Of course.

Batter Up!

The Card:  There is a more than passing chance that this could be Ohtani's first "true" Dodgers card, i.e. where he is not Photoshopped into a Dodgers uniform. That is almost certainly the case as there is so much visual activity on his left arm that no one down in the Topps Baseball Card mine would have time to include that stuff if the photo originated in an Angels uniform. Going forward a lack of the new commercial shoulder patch almost every team has these days could be a key tell of authenticity. I just don't collect Ohtani cards quickly/fervently enough to know if some other 2024 product might have delivered such a first. Naturally I do enjoy pulling his cards every time, photoshop-or-no.

The Expression:

Oh.

Didja ever notice the first 2 letters of Shohei's last name and how that connects to Japanese Baseball history, and particularly Home Runs? You're welcome.

What I Think Will Happen: Dinger, but not a moon shot. My guess would be Topps went Rookie Debut authentic style here for a Home Run statistic checklist card. You now have your own homework assignment.

Bases cleared, now -

The Card: We have a winner. Card, anyway, as for now Verdugo's temporary lodgement in the world of baseball fan memories is as the last Yankees batter in the World Series. You could hear the cheers from Boston, where Verdugo was not liked. Nevertheless this will almost certainly be on my eventual page of best Neon horizontals, which I will still assemble even after bindering up a set of 2024 Update, also. Plus - Frame Break - Topps is getting good at this. Composition skill continues to impress lately.

I do love a Baseball card featuring a key component of the concept: the Base itself. These are actually fairly rarely seen on Baseball Cards and this card about perfectly centers one.

Given the Mets' colorful base tags which I have put to use before in deciphering the exact result of a Baseball Card action image, I decided to just fast forward my inquisitiveness about my intuition. Particularly since I continue to have minor trust issues on the photos Topps sends me, as I was just babbling about with the Ohtani card.

The Expression:

I hope the other guy made it.

What I found out happens: A curious thing about this card is the complete lack of any image of a New York Met defending the play. Which seems odd given the head-first slide.

This is indeed an authentic image of Verdugo wearing an authentic New York Yankees uniform. I initially confirmed this by checking to see if the Red Sox played at CITI Field in 2023; they did not.

I then found a possible match from a game in late June, 2024, when the Yankees did go cross-town. I was all prepared to anoint a goofy play where Verdugo started on 2nd base and advanced to 3rd, but during an inning-ending Double Play that generated Outs at 2nd & 1st. Which would possibly explain this image.

But when I went to the Getty website to confirm, I discovered I was an entire country width off-base:

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 01: Alex Verdugo #24 of the New York Yankees laying on the ground at third base celebrates after he hit an rbi triple scoring Aaron Judge #99 against the San Francisco Giants in the top of the eighth inning at Oracle Park on June 01, 2024 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

So today I learned that the Giants also use colorful orange tags on their Bases. I like that. But I expect it might be more than a few minutes before I see that on a Baseball Card again.

I am pleased by this photo selection, as the Topps Baseball Card miner almost certainly considered this image also:

(same Getty caption as above; text makes more sense on this image)

I am nowhere close to being opposed to baseball players showing some emotion during play,  and I like seeing that on my Baseball Cards, some. On cards, it long seemed that cards, too, had one of those infamous Unwritten Rules in that only The Closer was to be shown celebrating something, though sometimes a Batter could be shown giving a pointed finger salute to The Big Guy in the Sky also. Those rules are lessening some for all Pitchers, and Batters, on Topps products. Meanwhile however, many teams have really ramped up the little gestures and celebrations during a game, not just at the end of the game, with the Yankees regularly flashing their own little gang sign as seen in Getty's photo there.

Old Man Alert - Change! Run! I just said this is OK but I guess I'm just not down with the hand gestures. Perhaps Topps sees this as a tiny minefield to avoid, as a hand gesture in one city might not mean the same thing in another place, dunno. So for now, yeah, no, on the creative use of hands. 

Or, maybe the Topps Baseball Card miner just wanted to show off a perfect spot to do a Frame Break. Works for me. With Verdugo on 3rd now though, this next Pitch is important -

The Card: Just another perfect Neon. Even the outfield wall advertising graphics contribute well, and I see no laziness here in that in previous years, the Topps Card Back miner would have a 50/50 chance of simply dropping the TC logo right on tops of Jorge's foot for no good reason when just more lazily cropping images. The Neon set will have a much higher Zoom Index than many in the 2010s when I get around to calculating it in the year 2031 or so.

The Expression:

My Catcher called -that- Pitch?

What I Think Will Happen: Ball.

Hey look, a Rook -

The Card: A very happy "pull" which will certainly become a Keeper in either a page of 1989 2024 Topps, or perhaps a Jackson Chourio page of his oh-so-many Rookie Card cards shot from this exact angle. I am getting quite close to pulling a $40 trigger on his 2024 Series Two sorta "short" print card which has the best of these images, by far. And if I get that one, well, it will need some binder page mates.

But this image is perfectly matched to the colorful 1989 Topps design. I quite like all the many cards these days that feature a team's "Road Alternate" uniform so you effectively have the card say "Milwaukee Brewers" on it in actual text rather than another smooshed/hidden/slashed logo, as on last year's Topps Baseball set and too many other recent designs.

The Expression:

meh

What I Think Will Happen: Perhaps, a bit of criticism for not "hustling out of the box" although that is actually something the speedy Chourio is known for, making this particular image capture (as a whole) a tad perplexing, though his expression here is straightforward.

Maybe that's all cuz -

The Card: Another happy find, particularly as on just my 6th pack of 2024 Update, I already have both All-Star Game inserts from the Tigers. 2 Detroit Tigers All-Stars in the same year? That's been a minute. Happy Days ahead, we hope. Topps can never resist a high leg kick Pitcher; I think Skubal will have many cards like this one in the future.

The Expression:

Ima blow that speedball by ya, make ya look like a fool

What I Think Will Happen: Strike-Out, natch - imminent Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal threw just 10 pitches while striking out a side of National League batters in the 2024 All-Star Game. Tigers fans breathed a huge sigh of relief that nothing went wrong in the Part-Time Pitchers Era. 

back in the day though -

The Card: This is also my First Card from 2024 Update; now I have the "Meijers Purple" parallel, too. I quite like this card but I don't see the parallel as improving on the regular base version. Thus it will probably end up at COMC some day, well after the first purchaser shells out a buck for it and I will net a nickel on it, I expect. I do kinda look forward to seeing some of the limited/rare/still worthless "ooohhh, shiny" parallels of The Neon but doubt I will go out of my way to score any. The Neon is just exactly perfect already. And, I am a sucker for each and every Baseball Card showing off the classic MLB icon, seen on less Baseball Cards than you might think.

The Expression:

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can

What I Think Will Happen: Gibson scores in a cloud of dust, well before the throw! Epic.

That purple card is actually the 15th card in the 14 card pack as it arrives outside the pack in a special "blister" format. I was quite happy to see those appear for Update this year after a skip in 2023. Mostly because I like the concept involved here - for a Five-spot, I get a pack of Topps Baseball Cards plus one purple scratch-off lottery ticket. So whenever I buy some groceries for the next few months, I, too, just might hit one of those crazy valuable Paul Skenes Rookie Card cards. Plus it is just generally more relaxing to fully absorb 15 Baseball Cards at once rather than massive piles of them, of which I have too many already.

Thus concludes a look at 15 brand-new Baseball player expressions while they are intently playing the game. 3 of them (Vázquez, Bruján, & Wacha) make me grin a little when I see them, and that's a Good Thing. On 14 of the cards, the visage seen is perfectly understandable, which is basically what makes photo choices like the Colton Cowser and Riley Greene cards so much more noticeable. So here'e to hoping that this little detail starts trending upwards, too, as so many of the little nitpicks do on my Topps Baseball Cards. Topps has well upped their game on many of those lately; laziness is decreasing, which is great.

And now that I have all 15 cards fully absorbed, minus a few more backs to read yet, I can get on with opening pack #6, & pack #7... Hooray!