Friday Five: My Favorite 1988 Topps and Topps Traded Cards

I got a copy of the 1988 Topps set from my parents for Christmas that year. I was excited about getting a complete set, so I opened the set box and sorted out all of the cards. Everyone from the 1980s knows you are supposed to leave your complete Topps sets sealed, right? I was in fifth grade and baseball cards are fun, of course I opened the box. Also, it's the 1988 Topps set.  You can probably find a copy of the set at your local thrift shop for $5.  

There are probably multiple copies for less than $5 at your thrift shop.  

Is the 1988 Topps set unpopular because it's really that bad, or because it lacks a signature rookie card Truth be told, I kind of dig the 1988 Topps set. The design is underrated.  

Topps is using the 1988 design as an insert set with the 2023 Topps set. Many have not liked the 1988 Topps set for the past thirty years, but you're going to love it now and buy all the retail packs from Target and Wal-Mart.  

I personally like the Nolan Arenado card.  

Now, let me get to the countdown. I am going to include cards from the 1988 Topps Traded set in this post, because there are some good cards in there and it is also a $5 set.  

Shall we?  

5T. 1988 Topps Traded Andy Benes #14T 

5T. 1988 Topps Traded Ron Gant #39T 

I did not touch the 1988 Topps Traded set until the Cardinals signed Andy Benes and Ron Gant as a free agents before the 1996 season. There was a high-end card store that was a few minutes from my house back in the 1990s. When the Cardinals signed Benes and Gant, they set out a huge stack of 1988 Topps Traded sets on one of their counters with all the sets costing $10. I bought the set expecting it to have a Ron Gant rookie and a bunch of junky cards. 

Not the case.  

As a Cardinals fan, I got cards of Jose DeLeon, Luis Alicea, and Tom Brunansky on top of Gant and Andy Benes. There was also David Wells, Jim Abbott, and Roberto Alomar amongst others. It's a pretty good set and I have no idea how it is only crispy Alexander Hamilton.  

4. 1988 Topps Traded Robin Ventura #124T

Robin Ventura is not quite a Hall of Famer. One of the best third baseman from the 1990s and early 2000s, just a step below players like Scott Rolen. In the aftermath of the 1982 Topps Traded set, every Topps Traded set had a potential Cal Ripken waiting to rising from the checklist. This was the "it" card from the 1988 Topps Traded set. Not sure it was every really all that expensive at any point, but the fact that the card costs less than a dollar is insanity.  

This card should cost at least a dollar at a minimum.  

3. 1988 Topps Vince Coleman #1 

I loved the design of the Record Breakers cards in the 1988 Topps set. That red background really pops and it was great to see a Cardinals player on the first card of a Topps set.  The Record Breaker was for Coleman's third consecutive season with more than 100 stolen bases. I believe that Topps has reused this design in one of their Throwback/Customer Direct products.  

Here is the moment.......

The previous record was held by Rickey Henderson.  

2. 1988 Topps Mark McGwire #580 

Mark McGwire with a Topps All-Star Rookie logo in the corner. It was a no-brainer. No goatee or crazy muscles, just skinny Mark McGwire holding a bat and posing for a picture. This is one of my favorite early McGwire cards. Topps also used a picture from this same photo shoot on McGwire's 1988 Glossy Mail-In card and the A's Team Leaders card.  

I am sure if I looked hard enough, Topps has probably recycled these photos on modern McGwire cards as well. It would be borderline shocking if they have not.  

1. 1988 Cardinals Leaders #351 

Great picture here with long-time Cardinals player, manager, and coach Red Schoendienst standing next to catcher Tony Pena. Most coaches do not get cards, so it was nice to see someone as high-profile as Red get the nod from Topps. It is somewhat surprising that Pena appeared on this card over some of the more popular 1980s Cardinals players like Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, or Vince Coleman. 

Still, not a complete reach.  

If you weren't around for 1980s baseball, Pena was the premier defensive catcher in the league and the Cardinals were loaded with Gold Glovers. The Cardinals had outfielders to spare, but no catcher. Prior to the 1987 season, the Cardinals traded Andy Van Slyke to the Pirates for Pena. The Cardinals ended up winning the National League that season, but injuries caught up with them in the World Series and they lost in seven games. 

A card back.  

Solid numbers on the Cardinals Team Leaders. I am sure Red helped somehow, someway. 

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 45 - Andy Benes

I already covered Alan Benes, so I am out of Benes posts after this one.

The Cardinals signed Andy Benes as a free agent prior to the 1996 season.  He had ended the 1995 season with the Mariners, but had previous played seven seasons with the Padres after they selected him first overall in the 1988 MLB Draft.  Benes was decent with the Padres.  He threw hard, ate up a lot of innings, and got a decent number of strikeouts.  The Cardinals signed him for two years as a part of their team makeover, which included hiring Tony LaRussa, and trading for half of the Oakland A's.

For the first two months of the 1996 season Benes was a bust.  He went 1-7 and was not making it deep into games.  Then just like John Tudor in 1985.....

Benes was unbeatable the last few months of the season, ending the year with a 18-10 mark.  Just to put to rest some of the comparisons between the two, a few numbers.....

-Tudor went 1-7 too, but ended up 21-8.  

-Benes had an ERA of 5.92 and a record of 1-7.  Not very good.  

-Tudor had an ERA of 3.74 and a record of 1-7.  He was always a pretty good pitcher.  

-Benes had 8 games where he pitched into the 8th inning or later after his 1-7 start 

-Tudor had 18 games where he pitched into the 8th inning or later after his 1-7 start 

-Benes lowered his ERA from 5.92 to 3.74 

-Tudor lowered his ERA from 3.74 to 1.93 

-Benes had 17 games after a 1-7 start where he gave up 2 runs or fewer.  

-Tudor had 20 games after a 1-7 start where he gave up 2 runs or fewer.  

Again, Benes had a good run the second half of the 1996 season, but still not the same as Tudor had in 1985.  Both pitchers did manage to get their teams into the Postseason.  Tudor got the Cardinals into the World Series against the Royals, the team lost in seven games, while Benes got the Cardinals to the National League Championship Series.  The Cardinals lost that to the Braves in seven games.  

Benes had some nice cards during his first season on the Cardinals.  My favorite card is his 1996 Leaf Signature autograph.  

There were a good deal of Cardinals in this set.  A few were a little odd, like Rick Honeycutt and Mike Gallego.  I thought of Benes as being more of an actual Cardinals player with a card in that product.  I am not going to be saying much about his second run with the team, which was in the early 2000s, but I think that it contributed to this being a card that I enjoyed having in my collection.  My favorite Cardinals card in the Leaf Signature set is still either Pagnozzi or Brian Jordan.  

Next. 

Alan Benes was a pretty big prospect for the Cardinals in the mid 1990s.  The team brought him up at the end of the 1995 season and stuck him into the rotation at the beginning of the 1996 season.  I am not sure how many dual cards there were of Andy and Alan, but this one is pretty nice.

Last one for 1996.

The Fleer set from 1996 is one of my favorite.  Not flashy, not expensive, or limited in anyway.  It's a really simple design with some really good pictures.  I like this picture of Benes.  It is a really good representation of what he was as a pitcher.  He was big, much more of a thrower than a pitcher, and there were always a ton of sliders. 

The 1997 season was not kind to the Cardinals, but Benes had one of the better years of his career.  In all, he went 10-7 on a really mediocre team and averaged almost a strikeout per inning.  At the end of the season, the Cardinals and Benes tried to work out a new contract, but missed the signing deadline which used to exist for players to return to their current team.  His contract was voided.

A newspaper snippet.....

Many Cardinals fans were upset that Bud Selig voided the contract in light of his team, the Brewers, moving into the National League Central with the Cardinals that offseason.  Benes ended up signing with the Diamondbacks.  Over his final season with the Cardinals, there were a few more nice Benes cards. 

Some of my favorites.....

His 1997 Topps, or Topps Chrome.  Same card, different finishing touches.  

His 1997 Upper Deck card.  Pretty intense look on his face, the Wrigley back drop helps, and every body a card where there is a pitcher hitting.  

Last 1997 card....

is a Flair Showcase.  A high end card is always nice.  I really like the color photo overlaid on top of the black and white photos on these cards.  Really nice look.  

Last card for the post comes from 1998.  He did have a few and most were really ordinary looking, but his 1998 Pacific Crown Royale card was a really good card.  Flying under the radar.......

Anytime you can find a piece of cardboard with a player in a throwback uniform of any kind, it is usually a really card.  This Benes card is no different.  The lines around his name sort of block out the socks, but they are the real baseball socks with stirrups.  Pacific made half of their Cardinals sets in 1998 from whatever game they wore these St. Louis Starts uniforms.

Cardinals From COMC Part 2

A few more random Cardinals cards from my latest COMC run.  I made my first post about this batch of cards last week, which were all filling various holes in my collection, whether they be apart of a complete set, team set, or just cool card of a favorite Cardinals player.  A few more cards in this post, which is more heavy with veteran players.

The cards in this post span a decade, from 1997 through 2007, so I am going to post them in sequential order by year.  First up.....

Three Cardinals cards out of the Pinnacle Totally Certified set.  The set ran off of colored parallels, with each color having a different print run.  This is still a really popular set, a sure fire favorite of collectors from the late 1990s.  I already have the complete run of Lankford's out of this set, along with one or two different colors from the three players shown above.  I should probably try to assemble a complete set of these cards, but for the moment I am sticking with putting together the Cardinals cards.  These are three sharp looking cards.  

Next up, a card from a set that I am trying to put together.  I have a ton of 1997 Topps and Topps Chrome cards.  The base sets are both complete and I am deep on several of the insert sets.  Working on finishing out those missing cards, I actually got some non-Cardinals cards in this lot, but Andy Benes was the only Cardinals insert that I was missing.

This Eckersley is here for the same reasons as the Andy Benes card, but it's from the 1998 Topps set.  This scan really mangled his hat for some reason.  Looks like one of those old man baseball hats with the rope looking piece going between the bill and body of the hat.  Eck is old on this card, but not that old.  Plus, nobody with hair like Eckersley would ever wear a hat like that, way too cool.  

This Cliff Politte card is a spillover from the first post.  I had several of the Cardinals from the 1998 Leaf Stars & Rookie set in that post, but somehow I missed this card.  My bad.  

This is a set that I own,  Always liked the Black Diamond sets.  I have several of the parallels from the Cardinals players, just trying to finish out the team set of parallel cards.  I will have to double check my accounting, but I believe this is the last card I was missing.  

Non-Cardinal card of a former Cardinals player, Preston Wilson was on the 2006 World Series winning team.  Not specifically collecting Preston Wilson, never minded him as a player and I like him on television, but I actually really liked the Fleer Mystique set back when it came out.  I have the base set assembled, but I am missing a few of the short printed rookie cards which are all serial numbered.  

I am actually a little disappointed by the printing around the serial numbers on this card.  They looked scratched, or something happened to them.  I looked at a few other cards that I have from this set, none of them.  I am going to overlook the scratching for the moment, maybe I will go back later and get a different copy.  

I am not a big fan of the Donruss Fan Club set.  It was a pretty cheap box back in 2002 and the cards seemed somewhat repetitive from the Donruss base set.  If you cut off the words Fan Club, this feels like the runner up design for the Donruss base set.  I do like So Taguchi however, so this was sort of a necessary evil.  2002 had a lot of serial numbered rookie cards, at the time I skipped a ton of them. Slight case of fatigue from chasing down Pujols rookie cards from the previous year combined with the fact that Taguchi spent his first year with the Cardinals in Triple A.  

So turned it around and eventually became a pretty useful player for the Cardinals in the mid 2000s.  He hit an important playoff home run off of Billy Wagner in the 2006 NLCS and also was always brutally honest about the mosquito problems at Busch Stadium.  

It's a serial numbered Ray Lankford, and it's not a difficult one to find.  This is not already in my collection?  Well, it was, but child #2 somehow get her hands on this card.  I still have it, but it's in pretty poor condition at this point.  

Two more.  

I did work on the 2005 Upper Deck Reflections set back in the day, but did not touch the 2004 product.  Both were generally the standard mid 2000s Upper Deck product, but the 2005 set had some really distinctive dual signature cards.  The 2004 set was rather boring autograph wise, mainly just a few rookies, not sure any of them are really highly sought after, or worth much.  

Back to the card.  I liked Renteria a lot in the mid 2000s, but I really slowed down on collecting his cards once he left the Cardinals for the Red Sox at the end of the 2004 season.  There are quite a few serial numbered cards from his later years in St. Louis that I just never took the time to find, they are all very affordable now.  

I really like the looks of this card.  An obvious Upper Deck card.  

Last one.  I did not touch the 2007 Topps Rookie 52 set.  Seemed repetitive.  I think I have an Edward Muijica autograph, since he was on the Cardinals, but that's about it.  Did you know that it has a Jim Edmonds card in it?  I didn't either, now I own one.  

An Archived Friar

Rewinding a bit with this post to a card that has been sitting on my desk for the past two months.  I think I actually already took a picture of it and put it on my Instagram feed over there on the left side of the page.  Always some good retired players in the Topps Archives set and this year was no different.  I opened some packs, pulled a few autographs, but I missed out on the former Cardinals players.

I don't even remember if I traded for this card or bought it, but one of the former Cardinals in the set is pitcher Andy Benes.  He was actually on the team twice.....

Bones actually started out with the Padres who took him with the first overall pick in the 1988 draft.  The Evansville native spent the first few years of his career with the Friars, before moving on to the Mariners for the end of the 1995 season, and then landing with the Cardinals in 1996.  After two years with the Cardinals, Benes tried to re-sign with the team, but some technicality took place between the Cardinals, Scott Boras, and Bud Selig.

Benes ended up with the Diamondbacks.  Then back with the Cardinals.

For those who missed out on watching Benes pitch let me summarize briefly.  He threw hard, he won 155 games, but had an ERA+ of 104.  What I remember about Andy Benes, besides the fact that young Alan Benes was a lot better pitcher?


Here is Barry Bonds 100th career home run.  The pitcher???

A Mike Piazza Grand Slam.  The pitcher???

Ken Griffey Jr. Walk Off Inside the Park Style.... The pitcher???

That Griffey is a classic. 

Benes has actually taken residence in St. Louis and is pretty active around the town.  He does some work with the Cardinals as the host of their Kids Club show.  There are clips of the show floating around the internet including one where Fredbird spits sunflower seeds into his mouth.  

Friday 5: Top 5 Sets From 1996

I was in college at this point in my life and my interest in baseball cards at this point in my life was much more focused on the fun aspect, not necessarily the serious collecting aspect.  There was a card shop in the small Missouri town where I attended college, but it was not a great shopping experience by any means.  I did get some card shop time for a few months during the summer, but some of that time was spent chasing around a nine and seven year old I spent my summers mentoring during college.  

I shunned some of the high end stuff at this point in my life and went for packs of things that looked cool or unique.  Sure, there are some really nice cards in my collection from this year, but most of those cards were bought, or traded for, as singles and not pulled.  Looking back through my boxes of cards from this year, the emphasis was on new.......

5. Leaf Preferred- So, Leaf put out the Leaf Preferred set this summer and the cards generally looked like a rehash of lots of other Pinnacle/Leaf/Donruss sets from this era.  Blah design, 100-200 cards, and the usual assortment of players.  Not terribly exciting, but they did have these Leaf Steel cards in the set.....The Steel cards are really the star of the product and make this appear on my list.  Collectors got one Steel card per pack, some collectors might have been tempted to throw away the other five or six cards that came in packs.....Leaf did not produce a Steel card for every player in the base set, but there are 77 of the cards which is roughly half of the set.  At some point I owned all of these, but I am not sure where they have run off to in the year's since.  It appears that I have 63 of the 77....Hello SportsLots!! (maybe COMC).  If you do not own one of these Leaf Steel cards you are missing out on one of the true gems of the 90s.  

4. Topps Laser-  I remember buying a box of these and think that they were cooler than sliced bread.  Once you break them out of the packs and actually have to sort them the challenges begin.  They stick together and catch all kinds of things, but just take a step back and look at the cards.  Is there anything else in my collection that looks anything like this?  No.  Sure I have tons of die-cuts and cool shaped cardboard, but these were really unique cards.  I know a lot of collectors who start rolling eyes and look annoyed when you bring up Topps Laser cards.....Is it the ridiculous stat projections on the back of the Bright Spots inserts?  

Yes, they missed on the Jimmy Haynes projections, but they made a cool Jimmy Haynes cards.  Someone is happy about that.  Seriously, these boxes are still floating around out there and they are dirt cheap.  If you want a first hand brush with the coolness of baseball cards in the mid 90s this might be a good way to relive that experience.  

3.  Metal Universe- This is the third set on my list and the third product that was new to the baseball card world in 1996.  The difference between Metal Universe and the other two?  This set had a nice run for a few years that produced some really unique looking sets.  You've never seen Ken Griffey Jr. chasing a fly ball through (what appears to be) space?  Here's your chance.  This was a pretty simple and easy set to assemble.  All of the Metal Universe sets are cheap and easy to find.  This one has one of the simpler designs and textures, but was a really cool product at the time of it's release.   

2. SPx- We had several years of SP, but in 1996 Upper Deck introduced collectors to this brand new product.  One pack contained one holographic card.  The idea of only getting one card in a pack was a bit of bummer, but it looked cool.  The base cards look similar to the card pictured above, which is a Ken Griffey Jr. Commemorative, which is actually my favorite card in the product.  There were also two pretty nice autographs in the set.  The Griffey card above has an autographed version and this Piazza........

There are still inexpensive boxes of this floating around too, but if you like the looks of the cards, you can buy the base set cheap on Ebay and sink some dollars into finding the Piazza autograph.  It's easily his best autograph, in my opinion, and has gradually come down in price over the past decade after being sky high for years.

1.  Leaf Signature- One of the best sets from the 1990s and the best set from 1996.  There are years that I am willing to listen to some to debate, but not here.  This was one of the earliest per pack autograph sets out there, first mainstream one by a big card manufacturer, and it got a lot of the details right.  This product is really deep with lots of star power, but it also has plenty of autographs from a variety of different players.  Everyone who played that year seemed to sign for this product (slight exaggeration), but seriously there is something for everyone.  I have assembled the Cardinals set which features really nice 1990s players like Brian Jordan and Andy Benes, but also has signatures from dozens of other players on the team ranging from veteran backstop Tom Pagnozzi to veteran free agent pick ups like Mike Gallego and Rick Honeycutt, to young players like John Mabry who were just starting their career.   Really, I should probably just give this set it's own post one of these days and cannot give this set its full due in one paragraph.  This is a classic.  

30 Year Top 50: 1998 Donruss Signature Series

#24-Picking out which Donruss Signature Series set to post on my countdown was a difficult task.  I actually considered a few different sets that were similar, but luckily I always find space for those sets below.  The concept for this set was actually started in 1996 with the Leaf Signature Set.  The Donruss Signature cards were a per pack autograph set with the packs running around $15.  The cards are really easy to find on the secondary market and are generally really inexpensive, so lets look at the reasons this set is a good addition to the collection.

1998 Donruss Signature Series Andy Benes Autograph

First, despite there literally being thousands of copies of some of these cards there are some very tough autographs in the set which make it a tough to collect.  Some of the cards were purposely short-printed, but others were short-printed because of the financial difficulties of Pinnalce, the card company that printed the Donruss sets, and the fact that they did not pay the players who signed the cards until after the sets release.  Some players did not sign their cards, some players signed their cards erratically, and some distribution was botched after the bankruptcy.

1998 Donruss Signature Joe Carter Autograph

The other reason I love this set is the number of different players that signed for the set.  There are some great names in the set with on-card autographs that are difficult to find in other sets.  For example, the Joe Carter card above is one of two on-card autographs that can be found of the long time Major League player.  While Carter is not a Hall of Fame player, he is definitely a very good player who hit a World Series winning home run.  It's a nice autograph to own.  There are several other players similar to Joe Carter, who were solid to above average Major League players, with few on-card autographs available.  Mariano Rivera might be the best one out there.  

1998 Donruss Signature Significant Signatures George Brett Autograph

The last reason is the inclusion of the Significant Signature autographs in the set.  This insert is chalked full of Hall of Famers with on-card autographs.  Most of the Hall of Fame autographs are also signed in large quantities and can be easily found at a reasonable price.  While they are not the best looking autograph set, they are great to look out for if you are looking to add a few Hall of Fame autographs to your collection.  

Like the 1998 Donruss Signature Set?  There are several great other alternatives to find some great autographs in from the mid to late 90s.  

1996 Leaf Signature Andy Benes Autograph

Like I mentioned above, the 1996 Leaf Signature Set started the run of autograph sets for Pinnacle.  Just like the 1998 Donruss Signature set, the autographs in this set were one per pack and featured a high number of both common and star players.  A lot of collectors love the white design of this set with the black ink autographs.  Some players signed over dark patches in their background pictures, but most are clean autographs.  There are several short-printed autographs in the set which are highly desired cards.  

1997 Donruss Signature Jim Edmonds Autographs

The 1997 Donruss Signature autographs followed the Leaf Signature Series.  The cards provided a nice area for the players to sign at the bottom of the card, but this set was the most over produced Pinnacle autograph set.  The cards are easy to find, low in price, and this set lacks some of the star power of the 1996 Leaf Signature and 1998 Donruss Signature sets.  

1999 Fleer Mystique Fresh Ink Kris Benson Autograph

After Pinnacle folded in 1998 Fleer took up there slack with producing a big line of autographs, but they didn't produce a per-pack autograph set.  Instead, they created a cross set autograph set with different players appearing in different sets.  The autograph lines varied between the Fresh Ink line and the Autographics line.  The Fresh Ink sets ran in 1999 and 2000, while the Autographics line ran in 1999, 2000, and 2001.  My favorites were the 2000 and 2001 Autographics sets.  Both were on-card autographs with loads of stars, short-prints, but also a good mixture of young and everyday players.  

2000 Skybox Autographics Chris Carpenter Autograph

2001 Fleer Autographics Jim Edmonds Autograph