Livin 4 dimes & a nickel at a time

Looks like I stayed with that fiddy cent box for quite a while, one fine day early last summer. Treasures galore...

Why I selected it: Topps has only issued "Active Leader" cards a handful of times, appearing in the 1984, 2012, and 2020 Update sets. I'm not 100% positive on that being a complete list and would prefer to be wrong and discover some more of these.

I find them to be a fascinating snapshot not of a single year of Baseball activity, but more of a look at, say, 5-10 years of which players are really producing, every season, to climb to the top of a stat category. It is also interesting to see if a leading player can then make the major milestones such as 500 Home Runs or 3,000 Strikeouts. 

I have a long way to go on the 1984 cards, so I was happy to find this one.

Art by Mayumi Seto

Art by Mayumi Seto

Why I selected these: The captions explain it all. More progress on these; whenever I see a 2017 or 2018 Gallery card I generally already know which artist created which card, but that can always be confirmed on the back. 

Why I selected it: I'm a Tigers fan, silly. It must have been Bring-Your-Own-Can-Of-Blue-Spray-Paint Day at some unknown stadium some fine afternoon in 1978.

Why I selected it: Previously in this box of delights I had picked up the 81 Trammel, so for once I was able to keep this famous pair together. Progress.

Why I selected it: Why not? For a year+ now, I have regretted not buying an Aaron Judge KABOOM! card at my LCS, for basically cheap. Those are "case hits" and can go up into the mid 3 digits in price. I could have had Mr. #ALLRISE for just a pair of digits, and enjoyed reading KABOOM! on it whenever I wished.

This card is not a case hit and is thus not worth any money. But, it still goes Boom! Or Roar, or something.

Now I just gotta figure out what kind of cage to keep this thing in.

Why I selected these: I always notice when Topps can't get their Rookie ducks in a row on time to print a player's Rookie Card card before they go out on to the field of play and earn themselves membership on the Topps All-Star Rookie team.

Thus I had solid memories of the regular versions of these cards from 2016 Topps. So - what were these cards? Photo Variation$ ? 

Nope. Just "Factory Set" variations. I would say the Conforto is a definite improvement on his regular 2016 Topps card but the same can't be said about the Sano card.

Why I selected it: Seems to me that a collection of Baseball Cards that sometimes seeks to use them to know Baseball History could use some Tommy John cards.

Why I selected it: What a great menacing look out at the Pitcher. This recent Diamond Kings effort will be a great contrast to the other 8 regular photo-based Baseball Cards on my nifty O'Neil Cruz page. I also like that the artist & card composer managed to well obfuscate the RC logo, which is just not attractive on Panini cards.

Bonus Round

Why I selected it: I sometimes wonder if I know less about Bowman cards, or Panini cards. A moot point if I never buy actual packages of them.

I bought this one because there aren't a lot of cards with Miggy wearing sunglasses, I guess. Also another Miggy-on-the-basepaths card, which are not common.

But I also thought this is one of Bowman's Worst; using a team logo as some sort of under-image backdrop has never made for an attractive card, particularly when the ginormous ® then has to be included. Is Miggy R-rated? Probably.

This card scans up like a gumball machine; the (used to be "atomic") pattern is nowhere near that fascinating, in-hand. Ima stick with Topps, me thinks.

The last card on the Checklist

 

Have you ever needed the very last card on a Checklist - to complete that Checklist?

That's the unusual predicament I found myself in 'round about a year ago, when I set out on my way, not to Lodi, but to finally reach the summit of a long-desired collecting goal: completing the 2011 Topps Lineage '75 Minis.

That sweet Koufax card you see there is not the last card on that particular Checklist; rather it is card #1 in Lineage, a Topps product which became "Archives" in 2012. I quite like this particular Koufax card; although this particular image has possibly/probably been re-used somewhere along the 14 years of way since I obtained it, it hasn't been re-used on any Koufax cards that have appeared in any packs for me. That's something that is not true about various other Koufax cards I have randomly obtained over the years.

I also like that the Spring Training backdrop here might indicate a bit of historical accuracy in Topps long-running habit of posing 21st Century Dodgers along or in front of a vegetated area, as seen on many Heritage and Archives cards in the 2010s.

Fortunately I have owned the Koufax card perhaps ever since Lineage first appeared on shelves in front of me; a delightful discovery back in 2011, to see those oh-so-soothing 1975 Topps colors on brand new Baseball Cards, at a time when their re-appearance in Heritage was still 13 years away. As soon as I unexpectedly found one in a pack, I knew I would be collectin' em all, just as Topps has directed me to do, all my life, essentially.

However what I did not expect was just how many Baseball Cards I would discover I quite wanted to collect, from 2011 onwards. Which was a great thing — except for how difficult it then became to complete these purdy '75s. So many cards, so little time.

Thus the Lineage 'minis project sputtered along in fits and starts; eventually no more dusty blasters or hanger packs could be found with a discount sticker in various Big Box stores. I even obtained a fair amount of Lineage cards in a few different K•Marts in my travels. Rain Man would be proud. Sorta.

Once ripping packs was no longer an option I would occasionally pick up a lot of these minis on eBay, and I was able to complete one great trade for about a dozen ticks off the want list. But eventually they rarely appeared on the Bay and most people with an interest in these were far less lazy about completing this than I was being.

That left the great repository of every trading card ever issued, COMC. Or, almost every trading card. On COMC the inventory of these minis, in my memory, has been as high as 160-some cards in the 200 card Checklist. But by early 2024 that # was down to about 140-some, and I still needed a dozen of them. (It is currently down to about 130 available.)

With the imminent major Christmas Eve for 1975 Topps fans at this time last year, I thought interest in the Lineage versions would pick up noticeably during the '24 card/Baseball season, so at long last I "got going," and pulled the trigger on the dozen-ish cards still on my want list there, even paying $10-ish for one of them. Gasp!

And I promptly, missed. COMC didn't have 4 of the cards I needed.

It was time to man-up a little and tackle another long-time, and annoying, entry on the Baseball Card To Do list: navigating the buyer interface on Sportlots. Which has improved some over the years, but is still not quite there yet, particularly if you go many months between shopping expeditions on that site and forget the little tricks you figured out last time you visited.

That left just one card: #200, Tom Seaver - Mets. The very last one. A quirk of the Lineage checklist is that a few players have multiple cards on it, on different teams in Tom Terrific's case.

No problem, it's just one card. ¿Si?

Nope. Problem.

I scoured all the usual electronic exchanges, all the time. One day, I thought I had a "Eureka" moment of not going to a Baseball Card website, first, but rather simply trying a search in the ever ubiquitous Google search box. And, it worked!

Instantly, laziness returned. I simply left open the window offering me a copy for sale and got back to working all day, every day, all over the state of Michigan.

Several weeks later a little free time for Baseball Cards appeared. When I prepared my credit card for the triumphant purchase, I finally noticed the big flaw in that tab I had saved. At the bottom it said "Quantity Available: 0." Yup - Zero. Curses! (There were a lot of those.)

The card could not be found. Even worse, I read an online comment about it: "it took me over a year to track down a copy of that darn Seaver card to complete my set."

Fear - the mind killer - was setting in.

What if ... Lineage card #200 was one of those cards placed on a corner of a sheet, and then the fork lift at the printing plant hit a great big stack of the freshly printed sheets, and the vast bulk of them had to be left out of the product, creating an un-announced, un-planned but very real "Short Print." Noooooooooo!!!!

At least I had card #1 already, so there wouldn't be some ghost of Andy Pafko haunting this simple seeming collecting goal.

I tried increasingly unusual ways to look for this card, such as typing "Tom Seaber" into search windows. Nothing was working.

Finally, finally, you won't be too surprised about what happened. One day back in January after a long day at work I sat down and opened the eBay app. And there 'twas:

What a relief.

Although I like that the 2011 Topps Lineage Checklist editor neatly book-ended the set with 2 of the most famous Pitchers of the 20th Century, this isn't my favorite Tom Seaver card. That would be the 1976 Topps '75 Highlights card, surely the most intense "Look-In" card ever issued.

Now at last I can dive into a quite delightful activity:

A long-awaited sight.

Is there any set that seems more designed to be enjoyed on a 9 pocket page than 1975 Topps? Such things didn't exist, back in 1974, when the concept was created, but it sure works out niiiiiiice.

Seeing this makes me realize, some ten years later, how 2015 Topps is a sly bit of homage to the colorful king of Baseball Card design, some 40 years prior. And how much I am now looking forward to this very same task with those now ten year old cards, something which might hove into view later in 2025, I hope.

An interesting thing about this page of cards involves the two famous Yankees - Jeets, & The Mick - who wore uniforms #2, & #7, respectively. 2013 Topps is the set most known for using a player's uniform # as their card #, but the idea was planted here, two years before. Jackie Robinson is card #42 in this, for example. However there may not be more than those 3 instances of the concept.

And yeah, that page there indicates I have a stash of the 'minis sized pages, carefully held until this wonderful day. "Careful" has been a routine adjective in this too-long project, as these cards chip pretty easily if you even look at them wrong. I am the farthest thing from a condition-sensitive collector, usually. But with these, I wanted them to look as nice as possible when they finally slid into their permanent little plastic bed, forever and ever. So all handling, sorting, etc., has been done in a bit of Baseball Card slo-mo over the years.

That's a mostly respectable group of 9 Baseball players, though today I don't have the same amount of respect for Carlos Beltran as i might have back in 2011. This was the first set of Baseball Cards I had ever seen that mixed current every-day players & Hall-of-Famers with...

Who?

That's one of the "Rookie" cards in the set, although the now classic logo was left off the 'minis despite appearing on the full-sized Lineage cards.

Other notable Rookies in the set include Aroldis Chapman, Chris Sale, 

&, This Guy -

Altogether, Topps somewhat restrained themselves here by only including a dozen Rooks.

I expect there might be some checklists in the '00s decade that tried this now de rigueur mixing of GOATs and RCs, but if so they likely would have been insert checklists at the most.

This is not a practice I am a particular fan of, though it is not all that turrible, just turrible in Lineage as it can be in some more recent Checklist creations. 

So over the years since I have determined on a personal remedy for avoiding things like placing a card for Tsuyoshi Nishioka's 233 career MLB At Bats directly next to a Whitey Ford Baseball Card. Which is to just simply re-arrange the checklist on my binder pages in a certain way:

This is how the regular portion of my Lineage collection will appear, in the binder — the players actually playing in 2011 will be all together, probably with the Rookies just left in the same Checklist sequence. On such a small Checklist I would rather not see teams together when so many teams would have so few representatives, and I do otherwise enjoy the random approach to Checklist construction.

That leaves a decision to make for the retired players - randomly sequenced, or ?

If not using the Checklist order, one could go with date of Debut, or date of Last Game. I chose the latter -

This pleases me.

Still just a lil less than 2 Quarters

Sometimes, I wish I still lived about 100 yards from where my LCS is today. That was about 20 years ago now, whoa...one of the toughest things about Baseball Cards is associatin' 'em with a quantity of passed time like that. 

If I still lived 100 yards from a place with big ole boxes of Baseball Cards to purchase, one at a time, as at my LCS these days, I would probably know intimately (read: every few days) the contents of all of their boxes, even the really weird box titled "Graded Cards." That would be awkward.

Fortunately, living a few miles away, I can hardly keep up with what they keep in those boxes, which is a Very Good Thing. Because that means every time I stop by, I can look at fresh stuff in those big ole boxes of Baseball Cards...

Why I selected it: A pert-near-perfect Baseball Card, but just pert. I couldn't remember if I had pulled a Steven Kwan card from my usual purchases of just enough 2022 Topps Update to start seeing double, as in "doubles," routinely. This usually gets me most of the Tigers cards and most of the Rookie Card cards and a good look at all of the inserts and that usually satisfies me with any random new Baseball Card set.

When 2022 Topps Baseball came out I thought I would "collect" it, as in "completely." Because after 2 years of dud designs that followed a great design (2019) with a bunch of weird filters on the photos, my body was ready for a new Complete Set effort. 

I never did pull that trigger because of a slow but very steady (all through Baseball Season that year) disenchantment from the nicely flowing and classical 2022 Topps Baseball design. Which had no demerits, really except one: Topps just FUBAR'd, well, almost-all recognition, that weird little tab with the player's POS on it.

I mean, why include a design element on a card, and then decline to supply it with enough ink to be easily legible? This makes ZERO sense. If it is decided to not put a player's POSition on the front of the Baseball Card, sobeit. I do like seeing the Position - but I have to be able to actually read it. Is that too much to ask of a Baseball Card?

Fortunately, Steven Kwan is so good at Baseball I will be quite happy to have an extra copy of his Rookie Card card, if that proves to be the case when I finish sorting my 2022 Topps Update cards in the year 2029 or so.

Why I selected it: At last, the intrepid adventurer wandering around in the Baseball Card Purgatory known as the "50¢ Box" has found a sign of the Holy Grail:

The Powder Blue Parallel

Maybe, was the conclusion at the time. At least this card does clearly say "Optic" on it; otherwise I have no hope of knowing which card is just a "Donruss" and which card is a "Donruss Optic." To me, they are all "Panini," and those are cards I never usually see, because they are always still inside way too much packaging whenever I might be close to them over at the Big Box store.

But in the 50¢ Box, it can be all-Panini-all-the-time, in some rows. And that's kinda neither here-nor-there in that those rows are very quick to scroll through, in-hand; faster than on a computer screen even, most likely. But every so often...

A month or more later, now here at home and armed with the knowledge that I now owned my very first "Optic" Baseball Card, I kept up the Quest.

The results were, hmmm, a bit "challenging," let's say. The first problem was that 2021 Optic Donruss Baseball (or is it Donruss Optic? I will never, ever, know), well, it contains more different parallels than I can count completely accurately. That's because there are more than 21 of them. A lot more. 34, I believe. But don't quote me on that.

You thought parallels in Topps products were getting out of control? Panini's designers have a Beer they want you to hold.

The second problem is that there are 3 different blue based parallels in the set. Those prove to be "Blue Cracked Ice," "Blue Prizm," & the don't-confuse-this "Blue Velocity Prizm." I don't know how "Velocity" is a Baseball Card parallel pattern, but none of those seem eligible to be the rock solid simple obvious concept I created in my own mind, of the "Powder Blue Parallel" — What's Taking So Long!!!!????

I regrouped a little and tried a different tack - the card clearly says "Optic" on it — maybe that implies that Optic is some sort of deliberate Oooohhhh, Shiny set where every card is some sort of optical illusion (every card is an illusion, actually, which is that any of them will ever actually be worth actual money, the key illusion of 99.x% of all Baseball Cards) and thus this nifty sky blue upper frame just indicates a simple..."base" card.

Nope. Those are white on top, though I still don't know if they are just ordinary sorta cardboard cards, or if they all might be "Optic"al in some sort of weird way probably involving way too much gloss. Not that I really care.

Finally, a bit, or, really, a lot, of Real Life experience came to my aid here. That's because the truncated names of the parallels on the COMC card-disposal-service website named not one, but two, of the 34 parallels as "Carolina B..."

That could only reference one of the prettier sights you could ever hope to see, which is a nice clear sky on a sunny Spring-time day in "Carolina" though I have always thought it is best seen with the appellation "North" on there. "Carolina Blue" is a real thing you can actually see, there, in North Carolina, just like when you are in Montana, the sky really does look "Big."

But everybody knows "Carolina Blue" = Basketball. I mean, like, everybody. Except maybe Baseball Card designers who got transferred over from making Soccer stickers back home in Europe? Is that how Panini Baseball Cards work? I have always suspected that, anyway.

Carolina Blue parallel Baseball Cards. You can't make this stuff up, people, you can't make it up. The Quest, will continue. Meanwhile a melted blue/white candy deal will maybe go nice on a page of Empty Seats, Hitter Edition cards.

Oh and how/what/why are/is/there/was/were TWO Carolina Blue parallels? One is the Carolina Blue Prizm parallel, and the other is the Carolina Blue and White Prizm parallel. Try and keep up.

40some¢ just wasted on that one? Not completely. I learned to never, ever, never open a container of Optic Donruss / Donruss Optic "Baseball" cards. For one.

For two, my basic Pity was triggered by this sad learning experience blogging for you Baseball Card fans tonight. And that is the thought of there being "Super Collectors" who actually do attempt to own all 34 parallels of a Baseball Card of their favorite player even when that card can't even print the name of the player's team on it. 35, actually, including the base card. And that's just from one Baseball Card product. Sometimes, this whole "Hobby" just feels essentially predatory. This is one of those times. Anthony Rizzo has 542 "different" Baseball Cards from the year 2021, as per a COMC search. 542. One player. One year. Gotta catch 'em all.

Let's get back to basically worthless Topps Baseball cards, instead of that depressing topic.

Why I selected it: Just look at that Baseball bat. Just hovering there. How does it do that?

I had to have this card for the "Bat Drop" collection. That one probably won't make as an exciting of binder pages as the "Bat Flip" page, but such cards do seize one's attention.

Why I selected it: So, close. I mean, I do have some purdy darn cool 1986 style cards that print the team name in Powder Blue, but those are for the Rays. OK, granted, the Rays kept the Powder Blue flame alive in 2nd place only to the eternal Powder Blue Champions in Kansas City, and the Blue Jays came to the party a fair bit later. But, still. Couldn't the Topps Baseball Card Miner clicked a few extra clicks on his computer screen for this one? 

Why I selected it: Shoots. .  . .        SCORES!

These "All Aces" inserts are some of the best of the early 2020s in regular ole packs of Topps Baseball Cards. And clearly, the Aces of "Diamonds" are the very best of the four choices. 

And now, I have a Powder Blue Ace of Diamonds.

Why I selected it: OK, I'm not real clear on how purple/pink/fuschia connects to the "GUARDIANS" but I can handle it. Catchers get the most memorable Baseball Cards, quite often. The other day I was babbling about how they shouldn't be photographed with their glove while standing up...but what I meant to say was "with their weird glove but without their cool gear." Then, with the "tools of intelligence," standing up is A-OK.

The back of this card informs me that Bo Naylor stole 20 bases in the Minor Leagues. Nah, that doesn't mean I read the backs while thumbing through the fiddy-box. Not, usually.

I thought my 2023 Topps Baseball 1988 35th Anniversary collection was complete with 9 wonderful Baseball Cards. Looks like I will need a Page 2 for that one.

Why I selected it: I collect Christy Mathewson Baseball Cards. That flows out of picking up a copy of his biography, by Frank Deford. Which in turn flows out of owning a copy of his T206 card, from way-back-in-the-day.

I quite like that I haven't seen this image on my other Mathewson cards. Check out his easy-to-miss glove (prominently featured on the T206 also).

I am also starting to regret not keeping my various "Greatest" inserts from 2019 Topps. I don't always care for how such a checklist theme so quickly and easily summons detracting thoughts about player A being on the checklist, but not player B. Unavoidable, of course, when it comes to issuing retrospective checklists of Baseball players.

So for the 2019 "Greatest Players" and also their "Greatest Seasons" such subjective decisions kinda distracted me a bit much. Fernando Tatis Jr. is not one of the "Greatest Players" on par with his checklist mates, and I believe there are other Rookies included therein.

But for "Greatest Moments" it is a lot easier to just roll with the concept as Moments that don't make the cut aren't as easily summoned to mind. I think there are 150 "Greatest" inserts, split btw Moments/Players/Seasons. So there should be just 50 Greatest Moments. 49 to go.

Why I selected it: I automatically set aside horizontal "Rainbow Foil" cards. I never cared for this seemingly useless parallel until I stumbled across a few horizontals from 2017 Topps and I realized the horizontal format basically increases the amount of Oooohhhh, Shiny real estate. From that point I determined to keep the best horizontal Rainbow Foil I could easily obtain each year.

But then, eventually, I scanned one.

Now I want to scan every Rainbow Foil card I have. 

This one will not win the 2023 Best Horizontal Rainbow Foil contest (doesn't every card blog run that contest?), nor will it even be a keeper scan. I do need to pay more attention on buying spare change Baseball Cards, clearly.

Maybe it was the San Francisco fog that wrecked this one. One handy thing that flowed out of scanning this one is that it revealed to me that S.F.'s "City Connect" uniforms include the Bay Bridge graphic on the side of their caps, which is otherwise not all that clear on this card, or any other of their CC cards I have seen. But that will likely show up better on another future card. So, a win.

Why I selected it: Racing Stripe, 1910 style. I initially quite liked the 2020 Turkey Red inserts, an ancient Baseball Card motif Topps returns to on the regular. Which is nice and all, until you stumble across the first repetitious background, which I don't think was an issue on the original Turkey Reds, though I am a little afraid to look at tho$e much.

When the Repeat Blues hit me on these I deflated a bunch. This weird 1970s/1910s contrast will light up a binder page slot, somehow, somewhere (Powder Blue? Or Racing Stripe?) but otherwise not many of these will ever grace my Baseball Card binders. Maybe the originals have been reprinted...

Why I selected it: I love 1986 Topps. I am never going to complete that set as the non-stop 1980s printing issues endlessly distract me. So these 2021 takes on the design delight me. My first still small collection of them was destroyed in every Baseball Card collector's nightmare scenario: A Pet Incident.

So I didn't think I would return to these cards. Until my LCS started offering them up in their boxes of delights. Probably gonna need more than one page for these, or, maybe, about 9 pages, for all 150 cards. At least now I have one of the 2 most difficult cards in the set, though there are probably multiple Ohtani cards in it, most likely. I have no idea why Aaron Judge would again be in the 50¢ box, however.

Bonus Round

Why I selected it: I had to have this one as a companion card to one of my fun pages, a Nifty Nine of 9 different Jazz Chisholm Rookie Card cards on 9 different Topps Baseball designs. This one could have been included, but is (sorta) his only Chrome Rookie Card card.

So for now this one will just rest comfortably in the "Players" box until, -maybe- I assemble 9 fun Chrome cards for Jazz. 

Double Bonus Round

Why I selected it: This was a pleasing find because just a week or two before thumbing across this one, I had decided to start collecting these inserts from 2023 Topps Series Two.

I have learned a few more things since, namely that Topps has issued these inserts a number of times in the last several years. My ignorance thus likely largely traces to these being inserts only in "Hobby" editions of Topps Baseball packs, and it is not often that I purchase Topps Baseball anywhere but along with my groceries. Just, sometimes @ LCS but not all that many sometimes. And I don't think these inserts are printed in large quantities so not seen all that often in those Hobby packs, either.

So the first thing I did is peruse this checklist on COMC, where naturally there was only one of the Judge card and thus someone wanted $2.75 for it, even though it would only be about $1 on eBay, but another buck for shipping. LCS, to the rescue.

I have figured I should start trying to understand whatever the heck "xwOBA" is for a fair # of years now. So what better way to do that than on the back of a Baseball Card?

Here, let's figure it out together - I haven't flipped this card over to read it, until, now:

"Expected Weighted On-Base Average," huhh. I can't say I will be really concerned about this one, in the future. A problem for me here would start with "on certain types of batted balls" and then who is assessing "quality of contact." Let alone the idea of Yordan Alvarez and his sprint speed keeping up in the upper echelon of the best xwOBA players. Sometimes, in my opinion, the new "compound" stats just get a little too unexpectedly numbers-just-for-the-sake-of-numbers and perhaps also a bit of Baseball "gatekeeping" by the overly obsessed. Though maybe these folks churning #s together in spreadsheets all the time are a little ahead of the peeps collecting all 35 2021 Opruss Dontic Anthony Rizzo Baseball "cards." But don't make me pick which of the two people to drink some Beers with, whatever you do.

Well that was educational. Let's try it again:

"Barrels" - another one on the To Do list:

Well that sure started out more exciting, back on the front of the Baseball Card. "Barrels" - what Baseball fan can't grasp that one? 

But what is the official definition? This Baseball Card ain't tellin' for sure - "those whose comparable hit type traditionally lead to" - which just tells me that the real definition is likely too convoluted to print on the back of a Baseball Card. 

Because again, who, exactly, is it that classifies subjective things like "hit types" and what each does "traditionally" ??? After all, it sounds like a "Barrel" is only good 1/2 the time, as another whiny starting point. Just too much going on here simultaneously for me to worry about who hit how many Barrels. Did Judge hit a Home Run, or not? Home Runs count. Do Barrels?

Topps. Baseball. "Bringing you closer to the game," I think is a phrase straight off some old Topps card somewhere. These Significant Statistics cards do do that, in a round-about way; I will be on the look-out.

 

The Happy Miggy is a collectible Miggy

Now here is a little project I've been looking forward to for a while. Time is the enemy of such projects of course, and Father Time is always undefeated, as the saying goes in the sports world.

But I have been winning a few battles lately...

The Card That Started It All

2013 Topps Opening Day Ballpark Fun insert

2013 Topps Heritage

If you own a copy of this one, or the corresponding card in 2013 Topps Baseball, I suggest you "set it aside" / put it in some plastic, if it is just floating around loose, still, for some reason. This card likely depicts 3 Hall of Famers simultaneously, so it has more traction than most equally printed base cards in those 2 sets, and ultimately probably more than any of those cards outside of perhaps the Manny Machado Rookies on the same checklist. That's not to say this is even a double-digit card, but it is also a long ways from a 20¢ card like the vast majority of its checklist mates.

I have faith that the 2013 Heritage card miner did their level best to find a 2012 picture of Beltre with an actual smile and it was just a bit of misfortune that one couldn't be found to match the basic happiness of Cabrera and Trout here. Smiling Beltre cards are not unusual. One could -probably- assemble 9 cards of Mike Trout cracking a smile, since there are surely well > 1,000 different images of Mike Trout on a Baseball Card. But I expect that would take more legwork than you might expect, once you start gazing upon Mike Trout Baseball Cards, particularly the newer ones.

2014 Topps Archives

2015 Topps Gallery of Greats insert

This card confused me for a long time as it kicked around, waiting for enough page mates to hang out with. That's because in 2013 Topps, 2 checklists of very similar inserts in Hobby boxes only were called "The Greats" and another was "The Elite" but I kept thinking somehow this card was part of those small sets.

Anyhow this was still a little before the time when Topps would routinely anoint the current favored Rookie as right up there with the All-Timers as it creates a checklist. Overall a classy card, and a classy checklist. Posed Miggy is not usually this happy; that's something that generally comes out on the actual ball field.

2019 Big League

2020 Stadium Club

I always like the Logoman, even upside down.

2022 Topps STARS OF MLB insert

2022 Topps All-Star Game insert

This was the inaugural year of adding two "Honorary" All-Stars; I believe Albert Pujols was the NL selection. The only downside about that is a personal one - I already forgot who the 2 players were in 2023, and 2024. Doh! (Or was this concept already forgotten? Exhibition games are just so forgettable.)

I do like it when the All-Star Game uses never otherwise seen variations of actual team uniforms like this.

2022 Stadium Club Chrome Beam Team insert

I have never, ever, understood what the conceptual is behind the long-running "Beam Team" inserts in Stadium Club. Laser Beams? But at least I finally recently found the perfect card to anchor down this happy page of Baseball Cards. Now I can go back to not understanding these inserts again. Wave goodbye, Miggy.

The Result