Famous Last Words

I stopped by my local card shop a few days back. The shop had moved across the parking lot to a larger storefront a few weeks back and I was excited to see the new digs. Needless to say, it did not disappoint. I probably should have taken some photos inside the shop, but my mind was on cards.  

Here are the latest pickups at Triangle Area Trading Cards.  

First up......

You see a great card from your childhood and it's cheap, it's really hard to pass up. The card is off center and there is some chipping on the edges, but this is a great card. Could not pass it up.  I need to post my first Rickey Henderson rookie on here one of these days, because it's a really good story from my childhood.  

Luken Baker has hit a ton of home runs the last two years with the Cardinals Triple A team. They've left him in the Minors most of the time, given the Cardinals track record, it's only a matter of time until Baker is a really good player on some other team.  Decent autograph, cheap card. Go team.  

I spent some time in Michigan this summer, which included watching a decent number of Tigers games. I had been meaning to pick up a Reese Olson card all summer long, but never got around to it.  He's a really impressive young pitcher, think this will be a good pickup in the long-term.  

An old Archives autograph for cheap. Yes, please.  

A newer Archives autograph for cheap. Yes, please.  

Esteban played for the Durham Bulls a few years back.  He's spent most of his career playing in Mexico, but spent time in the Minors with the Red Sox, Rays, and Phillies with a cup of coffee in the Majors with the Cubs. Lovable player, spark plug type. I am glad that someone gave him a baseball card and had him sign a few autographs.  

Zack Gelof is having a terrible year, but I still like him. I saw him play in college while he was at the University of Virginia. He was also on my fantasy baseball team last year. Let's hope for a better 2025.  

Next up, Luis Arraez. I loved the Silver Slugger cards when Topps made them back in the early 2010s, this one is not as thick, but still a really nice card. Serial numbered to just 10 copies, but it's on the back.  Sorry, no back scans today.  

A little bit quicker......

Masyn Winn, Junior Caminero Finest RC, and a cool Taj Bradley Chrome parallel.  

Cal Raleigh RC, Willy Adames RC, and another Masyn Winn.  

Shiny Big Mac, Xavier Issac should be the Durham Bulls first baseman next year, and a Jordan Walker.  

Shiny cards of Yordan Alvarez, Willson Contreras, and a Satchell Paige with the Browns.  

Last, let me tell you about the blaster box I bought. I saw the 2024 Donruss packs and boxes at the counter, decided why not. Let's try a few packs. Ninety-nine percent of the box was terrible and I am not going to waste my time scanning the cards, nor waste your time reading about the terrible cards. 

It was the last thing I said as I was checking out. "Let me get a box of 2024 Donurss"

Famous last words and it turns out that 1% of the box was pretty spectacular.  

Not $400.

I am old enough to remember when boxes of Topps Finest Baseball cards were not $400.

Looks like I am also now old enough to remember when they were $400.

Greedflation at its finest.  

Luckily, for us collectors on a budget, there are people who buy $400 boxes and sell the single cards on Ebay. Finest comes with two autographs per $400 box, so I started out trying to find a nice pair of autographs for less than $400.  I ended up find 3 autographs rather than two. The total cost of the three cards was less than $20 after shipping. All three cards fit perfectly into my little collection of baseball cards.  

First, an autograph of Giants catcher Patrick Bailey. 

I have several other cards of Bailey in my collection from his time playing at NC State and USA Baseball, but this is my first autograph of him since he turned pro a few years back. Patrick has shortened his signature down considerable over the years.......

but I still love this Finest autograph. Beyond attending NC State, Patrick Bailey also was the Giants catcher for Blake Snell's no-hitter. I really need to post some more Patrick Bailey autographs. Maybe next Monday......

The Bailey autograph was the majority of the not-quite-$20 I spent on these three cards.  

Next up is a pair of Durham Bulls players, one current and one former.  

Curtis Mead is a consensus Top 100 prospect with Baseball Prospectus ranking him highest at 42. Mead actually spent several weeks up with the Rays, but struggled with his bat before being demoted back to Durham. I am a big fan of the Australian third baseman and think he has a bright future somewhere. 

Last card. 

Tristan Gray was on the Durham Bulls the past three seasons. He hit a ton of home runs for them, but never got much of a chance with the Rays. Gray is an older prospect at this point, late twenties, and was traded to the Marlins in the off-season.  I am kind of surprised that he is not on the Marlins on all of his 2024 cards, although I think it's a bit of a surprise that Topps included him in any of their products. 

Anywho, his cards are very inexpensive and I enjoyed watching him play for the Bulls. 

Set Appreciation Post #21 - 2000 Pacific Aurora

Pacific Aurora has a mundane base set with a few incredible inserts, which makes it a pretty awesome product. You've got to take the boring with the exciting with this product.  

2000 Pacific Aurora was also the first card to feature a Hall of Famer in his new uniform and they did it in a creative way. Overall, this is one of the worst products that Pacific Trading cards made in the late 1990s and early 2000s and it is still probably middle of the pack in terms of overall quality. They were a high floor, high ceiling type of card company that is sadly lacking in the current baseball card market. 

I miss Pacific. 

Shall we look at the 2000 Autora set?  

Here is the base design......

Pacific started the Aurora product in 1998 and it basically had the same design concept all three years it was produced. Two photos on the front, one action and one posed, along with a solid colored background. The design in decent. I know the teal colored background is a little weird on this Darin Erstad card, but this is one of the few teams where that statement is true.

Pacific was consistent with their brands and the products tended to run true to that branding from year to year. While this is not the most exciting design concept, you knew exactly what you were getting when you bought these cards. The original Aurora was also a per-pack-insert product released in 1998 that was sold at retail stores. The 2000 set was a Hobby issued product with no per-pack insert guarantee.     

Back of the card. 

I like the sepia photo with the gold and maroon colored writing and trim. Really good look. The stats are basic, but the large photo and readable card numbers in the bottom right-hand corner more than make-up for anything left off the card by Pacific. Solid effort here. 

Let's get one highlight out of the way.  

Best Base Card 

The off-season proceeding the 2000 baseball season featured the high drama of Ken Griffey Jr. demanding a trade off the Mariners. He had a no-trade clause and was essentially only willing to accept a trade that put him on his hometown Cincinnati Reds. The trade ended up happening in early February after teams had made their way to Spring Training and the early 2000 baseball card products had already hit the shelves. 

Griffey getting traded to the Reds was huge news. The trade put the three best home runs hitters of the day, Griffey, McGwire, and Sosa, all in the same division for the foreseeable future, or Mark McGwire got gimpy knees in the middle of the 2000 season. Pacific capitalized on the excitement by producing the first Ken Griffey Jr. card with him in a Cincinnati uniform, making half his cards Mariners and the other half Reds. 

Great card, one of my favorite Griffey cards. 

On to the other things I cover in my set posts........

Favorite Cardinals Card 

It's really hard to pick out the "best" cards from this set. They are slightly devoid of personality, but I decided to go with Fernando Tatis. He had a short window of success with the Cardinals and 1999 was his best season. Fernando Sr. went 30 plus home runs, 30 plus doubles, 20 stolen bases, and nearly hit .300 come in with a .298 average. He also walked more than 80 times. It was a really unique stat line, especially for a third baseman and I love seeing those numbers on the back of the card.  

Favorite Former Durham Bulls Player 

McGriff played on the Durham Bulls at the end of his career in 2004. He's one of the few players who is smiling on his posed photograph for this set. I like the happy vibe on this card. I also like that you get McGriff's batting stance in the top right corner. He's got one of the more unique and identifiable stances from the 1990s.  

One more card and we will talk about inserts......

While the 2000 Pacific Aurora set did not have inserts in every pack, they did offer a parallel card per pack. The majority of parallel cards were pinstriped. I know there are people who enjoy these parallel cards, but I am not a huge fan. 

Perhaps if my favorite team wore pinstripes, I would feel differently. Looks kind of weird on a Cardinals card, but it makes sense and looks good on a Yankees card.......

Inserts 

Now we get to the good stuff with Pacific Aurora. The inserts.  

The most basic insert was the "Pennant Fever". When the Aurora product first started in 1998, these were the inserts that generally came as the per-pack. Pacific continued this insert again in 1999 and 2000. Based on the number in my collection, I would guess that a box typically came with 3 or 4 of these cards. The foil along the bottom of the card is nice, but this isn't even the close to the best thing in this set.  

Let's get serious.  

Pacific made some great cards involving nets in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Yes, nets. You'd think that might not work for baseball, but sounds like a great concept for a basketball insert. What has nets on a baseball diamond? Dugouts and foul poles. The good people at Pacific employed some creative people who made great cards like this Shawn Green, which is a Dugout Net card.....

It's not a game-used card or anything, just a die-cut card with the cut-out section being filled in with netting. I am not sure the scan does the card justice, but these are some of the best inserts from this era. The one draw back for these cards is that they were thicker and would chip along the bottom. Check out the white around the bottom of the net.  

Most of the cards in this insert set are available online for less than $5, which reminds me that I have not done a set project in a long time. More of these might be making an appearance in this space in the near future.  

Last one for this set.  

I love that Dugout set with the die-cut space for the netting, but the Styroteach insert with these batting helmets might be even better. These remind me of the Donruss Hard Hats inserts that came out in the mid 1990s. Just a really nice insert card, again I am not sure the scan does this justice. 

Unlike the Dugout set though, these are really pricy on Ebay and COMC. The cheapest cards are around $10 with many being closer to $30 or $40. Not sure I can put together this complete set those prices given the quantity of cards. For now, I am happy with this Barry Bonds card.  

So, how does the 2000 Pacific Aurora set rate?  

I think it's biggest positives are that it has great insert cards and a solid base set. Having the first Reds Griffey cards pumps up the nostalgia factor for me and I am sure others who collected during this time.  When you add in the fact that these were $60 a box for 24 packs, there is a lot of upside here. Obviously, the base card design could be much better, but it's also not horrible. Aurora also has a small checklist with only 150 cards. That means you're only getting 4 to 5 cards of your favorite team.  

I ended up giving the set three Wool E. Bulls for the checklist and set design, everything else was above average with the final rating coming in at 3 1/2 Wool E Bulls.  

You can still find boxes of these cards for less than $100 on Ebay, if you're interested. Given the recent interest in opening old packs of cards and boxes, that's not much of a mark up from the original price. 

I Don't Care That These Are For Kids.......

The 2023 baseball cards feel a little slow. It's the middle of April and all we've got so far is Topps Series  1 and Bowman Heritage from 2 years ago. Maybe some delayed 2022 products too. Where is Topps Heritage and Bowman?  

Anyway, strep has been making its way through my house this week. I have avoided it so far, but I spent my Friday hanging out with my middle schooler who felt miserable. Lots of rest, fluids, and some amoxicillin and we are feeling better today. Still, I needed a little entertainment to keep myself going yesterday, so I picked up a few packs of Topps Big League.  

I don't care that Topps Big League is made for kids, it provided a little bit of entertainment on a long day at home with a sick kid. 

Here's what I pulled out of the packs.  

The base cards are missable, but I picked out my favorite three........  

This Molina card is actually a foil parallel, hard to tell from the scan, but it has a silver finish. I did not pull a Pujols base card, which was a little disappointing, but it's a 300 card set and I opened a Blaster box with roughly 100 cards.  

My two other favorites were former Durham Bull Blake Snell and current Durham Bull Jonathan Aranda.  

I am honestly surprised that Aranda has appeared in both 2023 Topps products. I think he's a Major League player, but he's not high up on the Rays prospect list and he is buried in Triple A at the moment.  

Can I bring up the most annoying base card?  

Topps airbrushed a bunch of the players who were traded or switched teams with free agency this offseason.  Several are really bad, but Andrew McCutchen is easily the worst. It's really obvious that the photo on this card was airbrushed.  

Remember when Andrew McCutchen was on the Pirates for 9 years at the beginning of his career? You're telling me that Topps could not have used one of those photos?  I would rather see a dated photo than one where he in on the Brewers and Topps airbrushed him into a Pirates uniform.  

The insert cards are much more kid-friendly.

We've got graffiti name tag.  

Babe Ruth and graffiti. Peanut butter and jelly.  

I did pull an Albert Pujols card. Nice looking insert.    

Yes, it's a video game reference, which seems kid-friendly, but most current kids also think 8-bit games are really lame. My fifth graders talk about NBA 2K. I talk about NBA 96. They don't care about Reggie Miller or Charles Barkley. Not truly kid-friendly. Really, this card appeals to the average Topps customer. Middle-aged, white guy who collects cards and owned a Nintendo, Sega, or PlayStation at some point between elementary school and college.  

I am more of a 16-bit guy.  

These are "Fun Box" inserts.  

These two cards made me think that this insert set was somehow an ode to ballpark food or Lunchables, Ballpark food is okay, Lunchables are gross. I ended up with a few other Fun Box cards that had different backgrounds without the food.  

These feel like leftover Topps Project 2020 or Project 70 leftover cards. The Alonso card with the cartoon is goofy, but I like the Willie Mays with the swirled colors. Might be amongst my favorite cards out of these Big League packs. I guess someone at Topps was not able to quite pull this insert set together, but something decent came out of the effort.  

There are also City Slickers inserts, which are just advertisements for the Nike City Connect jerseys, which are available now at your team's store or at Nike dot com. There are a lot of base cards with City Connect jerseys as well including several Rockies players, which is why I included C.J. Cron in the scan.  

Although, those Rockies jerseys feel like an advertisement for the Colorado DMV.  

Don't forget to renew your license plates.  

Last two cards are the best two cards.  

I love the mascot cards.  

These are just incredible cards. I don't think I have a Rally Monkey card in my collection and that Fredbird card is one of the better ones out there.  There is no Opening Day set this year, so these are going to have to tide everyone over on mascot cards for the year.  

The Never-Ending School Year and Retail Baseball Cards

My last school year ended midday on a Thursday afternoon last month. It was my last day at the school I have worked at for the past ten years. It was time for something different and new challenges. More importantly, something a little closer to my house. 

After moving a minivan load of books over to my new school, I went home to start my summer vacation. I was really tired at the end of the day, so I think I ended up going to bed around 9. A few hours later my alarm went off. I woke up, took a shower and got dressed, and drove into work. 

It was Friday. The first day of my new school year and my new school.  

My summer vacation was measured in hours this year rather than days or weeks. My last actual vacation day was on April 14th, which is a long time ago for someone who has worked the same schedule for the past 15 years. I teach for roughly nine weeks starting at the end of July and take three weeks off at the end. Multiply the schedule times four and you've got a complete school year.  

I am about to enter my fifth straight month of teaching with no significant break, which is a lot in my world. Even if you are on a traditional calendar, it's only four months between the beginning of the first day and Thanksgiving break.  

It has been a long time.    

There are a lot of little things I have been doing to cope with the extended workload. I have been trying to get more sleep, packing some good lunches, and getting extra fresh air. In addition, I have also been trying to be intentional about setting aside time to work on my baseball cards. Some of that time has been spent sorting out cards......

I am mostly trying to organize my single cards that are not attached to a set, or find the last few cards needed to complete some of the more recent near-sets that I have assembled. I have also been working on building a few new sets, and also opening up some retail packs. My most recent goal has been to complete the Topps Series 2 set.  It feels like a throwback to childhood when I bought a few packs of cards and spent a chunk of the spring and summer trying to assemble a complete set of Topps cards. 

I have been helped out along the way by a few Target gift cards which I received at the end of last year. It also doesn't hurt that my new school is located in the middle of a large retail area. Think of a large box store and there is probably one within five to ten minutes of my classroom.  

Here are two of the retail blaster boxes that I have picked up over the past few months.  

 

I thought I would share out a few of my favorite cards I picked up along the way.  

I had originally set out to collect Topps Series 2 with retail packs slowly over the first quarter of the year. I reached the goal in half a quarter, but was greatly aided by having two students at my previous school gift me retail blasters on the way out the door.  I used my gift certificates to buy two more Series 2 retail boxes. I have purchased one Topps Series 2 Blaster with my own money.  

Five boxes of Topps Series 2, one small COMC order, and I am done.  

My favorite card out of the base set is the Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina combo card. 

They have only been playing together since 2006. Not sure why it took this long for Wainwright and Molina to appear on a baseball card together before this year. I know I am really bias, but I hate that there is a checklist on the back. 

Yes, Blake Snell is card 414, but give me some information about Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright. If nothing else, just give me a photo of the Carlos Beltran strikeout at the end of the 2006 National League Championship Series.  

Moving on.

The Topps Series 2 boxes all come with a batting helmet card. They look a lot like the 2007 Sweet Spot autograph cards, but the helmet is made out of metal rather than plastic.  I pulled two different Cubs batting helmets.  

These are actually really nice for manufactured relics. There is a Goldschmidt and Arenado card in this set, so I am going to go ahead and add those to my Ebay watch list. They will be sitting there until I can find them for a few dollars.  

I also pulled a Joey Votto Home Field Advantage card.  

I love the plate of chili in the bottom corner. I don't eat chili, but it's the sort of local food reference that Topps should have put onto the Yadier Molina card. I needed some toasted raviolis or cans of mass-produced beer.  

More cards, but only the highlights.    

I bought a few packs of Donruss. Please, do not repeat my mistake. They are terrible, but I did get a Matt Manning autograph. If Matt Manning's arm does not fall off, I think he will be a good pitcher. Unfortunately, Matt Manning's arm is half-way off already.  

That's quite the signature.  

I also bought a few packs of Topps Gallery.  

This set is not nearly as good as it was in the 1990s, but I did land an autograph of Giants catching prospect Joey Bart. Pretty good pull for a retail pack of cards.  

Next up, a box of USA Baseball cards. I do not love the regular MLB cards of Panini, but ruining the USA Baseball card set is too far.  

Athlete Development Program?

National Team Development Program?  

What happened to the College National Team?  

According to the internet, the guy on the left is a freshman in high school. Not college, high school. Pretty wild having baseball cards, but not being able to drive.  The guy on the right is a senior in high school and committed to play college baseball at Alabama. At least he can drive himself to school.  

My two relic cards.

Yes, they are both in high school as well. 

The player on the left is a sophomore in high school.  

The player on the right is a junior in high school and committed to play at UCLA in college.  

Still wild to think that Panini is making baseball cards of high school kids.  

In ten years, one of these guys is going to be working an office job and give out his Panini baseball cards rather than a business card. 

Did I mention that my new classroom has a view of a Walgreens?

It came in handy the one day. Horrible headache. I just walked across the street and picked up some Advil and a few packs of Gypsy Queen. Felt much better afterwards.  

Gypsy Queen was decent. Similar to Gallery, this product has seen better days. I pulled a Jose Devers autograph out of a pack. Any retail autograph is a win.  

That brings me to my last retail product, which is easily the best.  

This is from the 2021 Topps Chrome Anniversary set. Which was it released in the middle of 2022?  I don't know. Do we need another set that borrows the design from the 1952 Topps set? Yes, we do if this is what the cards are going to look like.  

Here are my shiny, wavy, and colored cards I pulled out of my box.  

This is where my post veers from a bunch of cards that I pulled out of retail packs and into a future project.  

I really like this set and had contemplated printing off a checklist and tracking down all the cards. However, it has 700 cards and feels like it would take a ton of time and money to assemble. Instead, I am going to track down some of the Cardinals and Durham Bulls players in the set.  

My first former Bulls player arrived in the mail a few days back...... 

The autographs are not exactly cheap, but there are only three Cardinals and three Rays autographs. Well, I am now down to two Rays autographs. I think that Dylan Carlson and Scott Rolen are the two most difficult and expensive.  

Anyway, that was a fun post on retail baseball cards. I still have a few more weeks until I get a few weeks off. Maybe there will be another retail baseball card post or two along the way.