Still Bullish

My Taj Bradley collection started two years back after the impressive right-handed pitching prospect appeared on the Durham Bulls roster. I have quietly posted a few of his cards on here during that time, two to be exact, but stayed relatively under the radar with my Taj fandom.  However, with his performance with the Rays this season, I am going to be a little more aggressive with collecting his cards.  

In case you have been sleeping on the Rays mediocre season, I will admit they're not very exciting, Taj is posting more than a strikeout an inning and had a first-half ERA under 3. He's run into a bit of a rough patch after the All-Star Break, but at just 23 years old, I think the future is really bright for this pitcher.  

I have added 4 new Taj Bradley autographed cards in the past month and not spent more than $10 on any single signature. Quite the bargain for an All-Star caliber pitcher.  

Here are the four cards: 

This is a 2023 Donruss card. Yes, it's unlicensed and seems rather self-explanatory why nobody would spend much money on this card. However, if you look closely, this is actually a picture of Bradley in a Durham Bulls uniform.  Note the orange sleeve trim and the Rawlings patch on the sleeve. While the Major League Uniforms are made by Nike, the Minor Leagues jersey tops are made by an assortment of different manufacturers. The Bulls jersey tops are Rawlings.  

Love this card and was happy to see Bradley on what is essentially a Durham Bulls card.

Next.   

Another "2023" card, even though these were released in 2024.

This is from the Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary set.  It's another rehash, but it's got on-card autographs, so I am going to spare you the snarky comments about Topps reusing their previous card designs excessively.  I will just tell you that I like the card and was happy to add it to the collection of Taj Bradley cards.  

Next.  

Tier One is a $300 box of cards.  Imagine opening a box and getting a Taj Bradley autograph.  You know I am always here to soften collector's financial missteps by purchasing their $10 autographed cards. Now, someone is only out $290 and I have a high-end card with a Taj Bradley autograph.  

Print run of 99, that's a lot of buyers regret.  

Last one.  

This is from last year's Topps update set. I had to get the rookie autographed card before working on his cards in this year's set, but that's next.  

More Taj cards coming soon.  

Monday Morning Autograph - Victor Scott II

There are thousands of autographs in my collection, the majority have never appeared on my blog. Here is a random autograph that I have never posted.  

Today: 2023 Donruss Victor Scott Autograph 

Why Do I Own This Card? 

Panini included Ray Lankford in many of their 2023 baseball products. While I was not delusional enough to think that I could pull a Lankford autograph out of a box of Donruss, I knew that pulling a Lankford base card out of a blaster box was more than realistic.  

I have not pulled a current year Ray Lankford issued card out of a pack of cards since 2002. The local Target stores did not carry packs of Donruss last year, so I had to venture to the Wally World in Morrisville (it's in between Raleigh and Durham) to find a blaster box. I ended up with my Lankford, but also an autograph of Cardinals prospect Victor Scott. The product checklist for 2023 Donruss was really weird to say the least. 

When Did I Get This Card? 

It would have been roughly a year ago.  

Back of The Card 

Victor Scott Highlight 

Victor Scott nearly stole 100 bases in the Minors last year, which is his claim to fame at the moment. However, I have really enjoyed watching him play defense during the first week of the season.  Here is a Victor Scott catch from this past weekend.  

It was hard to fully appreciate the degree of difficulty on this catch by #STLCards CF Victor Scott II in real time, but watching it back gives a real appreciation.

Avisail Garcia exit velocity: 104.1 mph
Distance: 390 feet
Hit probability: 81%
Scott's distance covered: 78 feet pic.twitter.com/ItYrwGbacR

— John Denton (@JohnDenton555) April 6, 2024

Random Ray- 2023 Donruss

I am surprised to be here writing about a brand new Ray Lankford card from a Donruss set.  

I thought Ray might get a Topps Archives card at some point, but Donruss?  

Here is the card.  

The front is really busy, but it does a great job of distracting me from the fact that the Cardinals logo has been airbrushed off the front of Ray's jersey and hat on the front of this card. The photo is obviously from Wrigley Field and was taken during the 2004 season, as Lankford is wearing 12 on his uniform. He wore 16 the rest of his career, but Reggie Sanders was wearing 16 for the Cardinals in 2004.  

Ray Lankford was a bench player in 2004, so I thought I might be able to narrow the photograph down to a single game. However, the 2004 Chicago Cubs had zero left-handed starting pitchers, so Ray played a lot of games against the Cubs that season. Many of those games were day games at Wrigley Field.  

Back of the card.  

A little less busy than the front of the card and I like the green color.  

The write-up on this card is also really nice. It would be really easy to write up something about one of Lankford's seasons from the late 1990s when he was batting behind Mark McGwire. He had some good stat lines, but I like that Donruss went with numbers from early in his career, little bit more challenging, and made a good connection with another player from St. Louis.  

Very well done, Panini.  

Excellent card.  

Set Appreciation Post #18 - 2001 Donruss

Donruss. 

What is the first thing that comes to mind?

I bet most collectors would go with Rated Rookies......

or Diamond Kings......

Maybe if you're under 30, the answer is unlicensed baseball cards. 

After Pinnacle went bankrupt in 1999, there were no Donruss sets for two years. In 2001, Playoff attempted to revive the brand, plus do some revisionist history and create Donruss sets for both the 1999 and 2000 calendar years. It was interesting to say the least, but ultimately not very satisfying in large part due to the fact that Playoff messed up the two must-haves in any Donruss set. 

See above.   

The 2001 Donruss boxes included a graded card as a box topper. I believe Beckett was launching their grading service and Playoff was relaunching Donruss. The graded cards were largely late 1980s Donruss issues that included the likes of Devon White and B.J. Surhoff. Nothing wrong with either player, but not many collectors want one of their graded rookie cards as a box topper.  

What did I pull?  

 

Gary Sheffield was a good player, but what is the value of a 7.5 grade Gary Sheffield 1989 Donruss? Didn't Beckett originally charge $10 when they first started grading cards?  There is zero chance that this card is worth $10.  

Let's check out the back for the breakdowns on that 7.5 grade.

I am going to issue a spoiler here and let you know that Playoff went bankrupt too, which is why we have the unlicensed Donruss set produced by Panini. It took four years, but in retrospect it should have been four months.  

Here is the base card design.  

I honestly like the appearance of these cards. The colored borders are nice with the star background fading out from top to bottom. Simple player name bar with the player position and team logo on each side. I even like the 20th Anniversary logo that Playoff stamped on each card. Donruss was not a very expensive set either ($1.99 per pack), getting this across the finish line should have been as simple as Playoff providing a decent ser of Diamond King and Rated Rookie cards.

Here is the back of the card..... 

Again, it's simple, but it does the job for a base Donruss set. If Playoff really wanted to win me over, they would have gone landscape and used the standard 1980s Donruss card back. That's probably asking too much.  This is fine though. Plus, these cards have on-base percentage. We can't replace Barry Bonds if he leaves as a free agent, but we maybe (not) able to recreate him through the aggregate. 

Almost sure Billy Beane said that once.  

One of the things that stands out to me as I flipped through the cards in this set was the number of established, veteran players who were in odd places during 2001. I picked seven that stood out to me and got lazy with the scanning.  

All seven in one scan.....

So, that is Eric Davis on the Giants, Rickey Henderson on the Mariners, Jose Canseco on the Angels, Andres Galarraga on the Rangers, David Cone on the Red Sox, David Wells on the White Sox, and Hideo Nomo on the Red Sox. Nomo actually threw a no-hitter on the Red Sox, so maybe that one is not quite as jarring as the rest.

My favorite Cardinals card is Rick Ankiel.  

This was after his yips had started. His cards dried up by the end of 2001 and did not reappear until he came back as an outfielder. I like that you can see the pitch grip in the picture, which appears to be a change-up. The rest of the Cardinals in this set are the standard from the time, McGwire, Edmonds, Kile, Matt Morris, etc. No Pujols even though it was a 2001 product. 

Favorite former Durham Bulls player is Ryan Klesko, largely because he has the lamb chop sideburns on the back photograph. If you are not going to picture him on a surf board for his baseball card, highlighting his sideburns is the next best move.  

Which brings me to the weirdness of Playoff trying to recreate Donruss sets for both 1999 and 2000. This nonsense had never been tried before the 2001 Donruss set and has not been attempted since either. Well, at least I don't think it has been tried again. We are all lucky that everyone learned their lesson with this set.  

I cannot place my hands on many of my imaginary 2000 Donruss cards, which were sold in retail packs, so I will focus my energy on the 1999s, which were sold in hobby packs.  

Players were shown on their 1999 teams on a design that was not nearly as good as the one Playoff used for the 2001 cards. The 2000 cards are not great either.  Although, these do feel really similar to the set designs that Pinnacle was using for Donruss right before they went bankrupt.  

I personally like the back of the 1999 Donruss Jim Edmonds card. The design is nothing great, but Jimmy Edmonds lost his half-shirt Cardinals windbreaker and reverted to back to "Anaheim Jimmy" complete with frosted hair and designer, colored-lens sunglasses.  

Gripes about Yankees fans going to DisneyLand and then filling up Angel Stadium were not included on the back, which is really too bad. If you are going to make up cards from previous years, you might as well do some pre-trade foreshadowing.  

I am not saying Ray Lankford is going to find his own doctor if his knees ever need to be cleaned up, but he's not using the team doctors....

Finding your own doctor. That's not the type of thing that would cause hurt feelings and a trade, right?

Let's get down to business.

This is a Donruss set and we all want to see the Diamond King cards and the Rated Rookies. For me as a long-time collector, I have a really hard time with the 2001 Donruss set because of these two long running brand staples having huge flaws.  

This is the design for the Diamond Kings set.  

The artwork of Sosa is fine, but the giant border stinks. The Diamond Kings logo at the bottom also stinks. Playoff bought all the brand name and imaging rights for all of Pinnacle's old brands, why not use them? I did not scan the back, but the write-up falls short in comparison to previous Diamond Kings sets.  The checklist is also terrible. 

Traditionally, every team got a Diamond Kings card in every Donruss set regardless of where they finished in the standings. When I was in middle school and the Cardinals were medicore at best, I still got a Diamond Kings card of Felix Jose. For 2001, Playoff only included 20 players, which included multiple Braves and Yankees.  

Some players on the checklist were not even deserving of Diamond Kings card.  

Mark McGwire was oft-injured during the 2000 and 2001, but still ended up with a Diamond Kings card. There were plenty of other good choices on those Cardinals teams with Jim Edmonds, Darryl Kile, Matt Morris, and J.D. Drew.  

The 2001 Diamond Kings are a definite negative when grading this set, but nothing compared to the disappointment I have towards the Rated Rookies. Again, Playoff owned the name and branding rights for all of the Pinnacle brands. 

Rated Rookie cards should have the logo. This is the only acceptable answer.  

This is ugly.  

White border, black name bar, Anniversary logo.  Whatever.  I don't card about any of it, because some designer working for Playoff murdered this card by using some middle school quality Microsoft Word Word Art "Rated Rookie" logo. Worse, beyond using the logo at the bottom of the card in color form, they repeated the logo in the background of the border.

How much better does this card look with the standard Rated Rookie logo?  

So, how does it rank?

This set has been out 21 years and I have not forgotten the fact that Playoff screwed up the Rated Rookies and Diamond Kings.

No mercy.  

18. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

17. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

16. 2001 Donruss 

15. 2000 Topps 

14. 2012 Bowman Platinum 

13. 2000 UD Ionix

12. Topps Lineage   

11. 2002 Bowman 

10. 1988 Donruss 

9. 1995 Emotion XL 

8. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

7. 1998 Topps TEK 

6. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

5. 2001 Fleer EX 

4. 1979 Kellogg's 

3. 1998 Metal Universe 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Bear With Me

I found more retail baseball cards this past weekend. 

I think we have officially moved past the pandemic retail card craze. 

The Target next to my house had physical fights over sports cards that required police intervention during the pandemic. They pulled them from the shelves and they have not returned.  

Fighting. Over. Cards. 

So, the cards from this post came from my local Wal-Mart, which is low on my list of places to shop. I recently wrote about the Wal-Mart that is halfway between the Duke and UNC campuses. The Wal-Mart near my house is interesting for different reasons. It's the cultural intersection of suburban-dwelling transplants and old farmers who can tell you what kind tobacco was grown in your neighborhood before it was developed.  

That's for a different post.  

Unfortunately, I bought a box of Donruss, but bear with me, it does get better at some point. 

I was intrigued since the last few packs of Panini cards I opened were not actually all that bad. Baseball card money is finite, so I am usually carefully and picky about what I buy and how much I spend. I should have looked up the cards online before I handed over money for these cards.  

Here is the basic design.  

There are a lot of cubes and rectangles with different depths. Maybe it's my ADD, but I feel like my eyes are drawn away from the picture of the player and onto the design of the card. Catchy designs are good, but not when they are overwhelming and busy.  

The back is the same.  

The write-up is terrible.  

It's hard to make an argument about someone being the best in baseball history when the stat involves getting hit by pitches. Do people at Donruss know how many times the Marlins have thrown at Ronald Acuna? I bet they account for at least half the total.  

There are other disappointing aspects to this year's Donruss set beyond the base cards. The Diamond Kings cards, long-time personal favorites, now feature a background that looks like a floral sofa pattern from some 1980s living room. 

The inspiration for the background of this Jose Ramirez card?  

There are plenty of other half-assed cards also appeared in the box.  

There is some sort of 1988 Donruss redux.  

Where is the rest of the border?

Why is half of it whited-out?  

Why is the colored pattern on the border on the adjacent corners from the original?  

GET. THE. LITTLE. DETAILS. RIGHT. 

I am not even a details person and it bothers me. 

 

I saved this for last.  

Donruss included some retired Hall of Famers on their checklist, but they could not just airbrush out the logos on their uniforms. They had to take it an extra step and add trim to their jerseys. The Brooks Robinson card leaves me speechless. Ozzie?  The red trim is terrible.  

At least Panini still includes the Rated Rookie cards in Donruss.  

I managed to pull Rated Rookie cards of Vidal Brujan and Juan Yepez. I am still not sure what the Rays are going to do with Brujan. He's played well with Durham this year, but he's played all over the field. I am not sure if they are trying to turn him into a super-utility type or the Rays just do not know what to do with him. Shortstop is obviously taken for the next decade. Yepez has been excellent for the Cardinals. One of the few players who has hit well.  

Then there is this.....

Rated Prospects?  

This feels like New Coke or M&Ms filled with pretzels.  

Okay, so bear with me for a few more cards.  

As bad as the base cards are in the 2022 Donruss set, the inserts are actually pretty nice.  

I pulled two Diamond Marvel cards. I am not a comic book collector, but I like the design here merging them with a baseball card. The cards have a nice finish too. Not sure if it comes through on the scan.  

The other pleasant surprise with 2022 Donruss was the quality of Stan Musial cards. 

Who saw that coming?  

For a card with the logos airbrushed off, this is really nice. I also like the choice of using a black and white photograph versus the red, gray, and black boxes around the edge of the card. Perhaps, Panini should have used black and white photos for more cards.  

The last card is just incredible.  

Growing up in St. Louis, I have spent my whole life listening to stories about Stan Musial. I am not sure that any of them made me think of Stan as being ferocious. What attributes does Stan share with a bear?  

I am not sure, but this is pretty awesome.  

Random Ray - 1995 Donruss

If you feed different design elements and characteristics of 1990s base sets into a computer, ran an AI program to design a set of cards based on the input, the result would be the 1995 Donruss set.   

Here is the front of the card. 

What generic 1990s design elements are here? I feel like this is one of those Highlights magazine hidden picture pages. Those were always fun.  

-Shiny, redesigned Donruss logo at the top of the card.  

-A home plate cut out on the front of a baseball card.

-A banner with the team and player name. 

-Random Stars!!! 

-Multiple color photos on the front of the card. 

The overall result of merging all of these design elements onto one card? This is a card that I could really take or leave. To be honest, I picked it out of a box with a large quantity of Ray Lankford cards. Whatever I picked out, I was going to scan and write about.  

It's odd that Ray Lankford has a sliding glove or wrist brace in his back pocket. He usually kept his batting gloves on while he was running the bases, none of those extra base running gizmos. Wonder what is going on there? 

No, idea.  

Back of the card.  

How did Donruss do on the back of the card?  

-Giant team logo. 

-Color photo of player. 

-More banners.  

-More home plate shaped boxes.  

-The stat box is made up of other small boxes.  

My. mind. is. blown.  

Completely amazed.  

I have to work tomorrow, otherwise I would keep typing.  

Random Ray - 1998 Donruss Collections Donruss

In the late 1990s, many large hobby companies were really big into repeatedly reprinting cards with minor aesthetic changes and hyping the rehashed cards up as some great new product. This phenomenon still exists within the world of baseball cards today. If I had been blogging about cards in the late 1990s, this topic would have received a lot of attention.  I guess it still could, but I have just given up on complaining about redundant and repetitive baseball cards anymore.  

Perhaps, I will take back up the cause.  

Here is an example of the redundant world of late 1990s baseball cards, if you were not collecting at the time.  Three Ray Lankford cards.  They look the same, but they are not the same.  

Yes, I made the pictures really small.  You are not missing much, because they are the same damn card over and over again.  On the left, we have Topps Chrome.  It's a photo of Ray Lankford hitting, which looks similar to the regular Topps card in the middle.  What is different?  The "Chromium" finish*. The card on the right is the Topps Opening Day, which also features the same picture of Ray Lankford hitting.  The Opening Day card does have a silver frame, rather than gold, and Topps made a cool little logo for the bottom left corner of the card.

*Patent pending for the last 20 years.  

Have you ever seen the movie Zoolander?  

At the end Will Ferrell's character, mean fashion designer, questions the talents of Ben Stiller's character, a really good-looking male model, because he only has one look he can use while he is modeling. The scene has been turned into a meme that could be easily manipulated to describe late 1990s baseball cards.  

I am going to put that on my list of things to do.  

What does this have to do with this week's Random Ray post?  

Here is the card from the 1998 Donruss Collections Donruss set.  

If you did not collect cards at this time and are thinking, "Is that a fancy way for saying this card is in the Donruss set?", the answer is complicated and involves redundancy at its finest. 

Yes, in 1998 there was a Ray Lankford card in the Donruss set.  It looked like this.....

Pinnacle also produced the Leaf, Donruss Elite, and Donruss Preferred baseball card sets. Obviously, everyone loved them, which is why the company decided to produce all the cards from all four sets over again, but they threw some foil finishes on top of the cards and merged them all into one set.

The Donruss Collections set was born. A grand total of 750 cards that were all reprinted from another set from the same year. Even better, you had to put the set together by purchasing packs with 5 cards. The quick math tells me that's 150 packs of cards assuming you do not get any duplicates.  

The scan above really did not do the shiny surface justice. Here is another look at the front.  

Did I mention that Pinnacle went bankrupt after releasing this product?

Back of the card.  

We get another photograph of Lankford, a decent little write-up about him setting a personal-best in home runs, and then the standard Donruss stat line from this era. The Cardinals logo in the background makes the back seem a little busy. 

Also note that there is a "Donruss Collections" logo and the number 13 underneath the stat box. This is the card number for the Donruss Collections set.  The 13 from the top of the card is from the original Donruss set. It just so happened that when Pinnacle merged the four sets into one set, the Donruss cards all kept their original card number.  

That "Four Sets In One" thing is borrowed from an Ebay seller.  

$109 for this box?  

It's got Travis Lee on the front. 

Obviously the "4 SETS IN ONE!" selling point got one person to bid on this item. If you bought this and you are reading my blog post, please email me.  I have cards to sell you.  

I really want to like this Ray Lankford card, so I take it out and look at it's shiny surface and ignore the fact that it is from a horribly conceived product that had a picture of Travis Lee on the box.