Monday Morning Autograph - Brian Stokes

I own a couple of thousand autograph cards, the majority have never appeared on my blog. Here is a random autograph that I have never posted before:

Today:2007 UD Spectrum Brian Stokes 

Why do I own this card? 

Brian Stokes was a starting pitcher on the 2006 Durham Bulls. He went 7-7 with a 4.11 ERA in 23 starts with the Bulls. The Rays called up Stokes in September 2006, he made 4 starts with the team, and went 1-0 with an ERA of 4.88.  There were better players on the 2006 Bulls, but Stokes seemed like a solid pitcher and his cards were cheap.  

You might be thinking, he had an ERA over 4 in Triple A, that does not seem solid. 

It was the Devil Rays, not the Rays.  

When did I get this card? 

I guarantee you this was an EBay dumpster dive. The Rays were still a few years away from making the World Series and being considered good. When I first started collecting Durham Bulls players in 2006 and 2007, outside of Delmon Young and BJ Upton, the majority of prospect cards were just a few dollars.

Brian Stokes Career Teams In a Haiku 

Amateur Free Agent

P-Rays, Blaze, River Dogs, O-Rays

Bulls, Rays, Angels, Mets

I really hate when the only thing on the back of the card is a "Congratulations" form letter, unless it's from Richard McWilliam, then it's alright. As the kids would say, McWilliam is the "OG" of the Congratulations form letter. Plus, when you were opening packs of Upper Deck cards, anytime you saw that signature, you knew you were about to have your day made.  

These Are All Devil Rays Cards, But....

I am still working on some Durham Bulls sets.  The last two weeks, I have been working on putting together a group of cards from the 1975 Topps Mini set featuring the players who appeared for the Durham Bulls.  I am going to walk and chew gum at the same time, and work a little bit on another group of Durham Bulls cards from a little bit newer set.  

All the cards in this post come from the 2006 Topps 52 set.  I know, Topps overuses old card designs, but this set has a good group of players from the 2006 Bulls team, which was the first one that I got to watch after moving to Durham.  All of the players in this post are pictured in a Devil Rays uniform, but all of them played the majority of the season with the Bulls.  

I think Delmon Young was in Durham the shortest time in 2006, but that was mainly because he was suspended for a huge chunk of the season.  

Since this is a modern set, there are some different challenges from the 1975 Topps Mini set.  The base cards are easy to find, but several of the cards have a red and black backs, along with one card that has an action shot variation.  Each card also has three Chrome parallels with one numbered to 1952, another numbered to 552, and the final numbered to 52.  

There is also an insert card of Elijah Dukes and Delmon Young, along with an autograph of pitcher Brian Stokes, so I am adding those to my checklist, which I broken into pieces throughout the post.  There are roughly 30 cards here, but I am treating the base cards and parallels like they are smaller sets.  I have not really touched the 2007 Topps 52 product, outside of a few Cardinals autographs, so I am starting from 0.  

Here is my first group of cards, starting with the base cards with red backs.  These are the most common cards in the set.  

There are seven total red backs, so this groups gets me about half way through this checklist. 

Base Set Cards - Red Card Backs

#53 - Shawn Riggans 

#65 - Elijah Dukes 

#70 - Delmon Young 

#80 - Andy Sonnanstine 

#81 - Brian Stokes 

#95 - Elijah Dukes 

#114 - Juan Salas 

The black backs are the most common parallel.  There are a bunch of these that are cheap on COMC, but I am a little reluctant to buy them at the moment.  I love cheap, but I have heard from several people that waiting times on COMC orders are currently several months.  

I will find them somewhere else.  In the meantime, I found Elijah Dukes.  

Only 5 cards in the black back parallels.  

Base Set Cards - Black Card Backs

#53 - Shawn Riggans 

#70 - Delmon Young 

#73 - Andy Sonnanstine 

#81 - Brian Stokes 

#95 - Elijah Dukes 

Last up are the Chrome parallels.  I feel like I actually got off to a good start with these. Of the 30 cards mentioned at the top of the post to finish all of the 2006 Durham Bulls players, half are Chrome parallels.  I picked up a pair of cards serial numbered to 1952 a pair to 552, and one card numbered to 52.  

The 1952 serial numbers first.  

The cards numbered to 552.  

Finally, one last card that is numbered to 52.  

These five cards get me roughly through one-third of the Chrome cards.  I was most worried about finding the Delmon Young serial numbered to 52, but that is one card that I have on the way.  He was high on the prospect list when this set was released, and I was worried they may all have disappeared into people's collections.  

Chrome Parallels 

#47 - Delmon Young - 1952

#47 - Delmon Young - 552 

#47 - Delmon Young - 52

#59 - Shawn Riggans - 1952

#59 - Shawn Riggans - 552 

#59 - Shawn Riggans - 52

#65 - Elijah Dukes - 1952

#65 - Elijah Dukes - 552 

#65 - Elijah Dukes - 52

#80 - Andy Sonnanstine - 1952

#80 - Andy Sonnanstine - 552 

#80 - Andy Sonnanstine - 52

#86 - Brian Stokes - 1952

#86 - Brian Stokes - 552 

#86 - Brian Stokes - 52

I also picked up one of the two insert cards from the set.   The other being an autograph, more on that in a minute.   

Dynamic Duos 

DD5 - Delmon Young/Elijah Dukes 

Base Set Cards - Action Variations

#70 - Delmon Young 

Topps 52 Signatures 

#BS - Brian Stokes 

After one post, I am at 10 out of 30 cards.  I do not think this is going to be very difficult to put together, but I am worried about whether the Brian Stokes autograph exists.  It's why I said there were roughly 30 cards in the set.  The Stokes was an exchange card, but it's not clear that he ever actually signed them.  I cannot find a single copy of the card anywhere on the internet.  However, Stokes was generally a really good signer during the mid 2000s.  He appeared in tons of different baseball card sets.  It's also hard for me to imagine he didn't sign them, since he autographed everything else around this time.