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: