Complete Set: 2009 Topps All-Star Fan Fest Patches

The All-Star Fan Fest provides card collectors the chance to pick up some unique items for their collections.  One of the biggest draws at recent All-Star Games has been the annual release of a patch set which usually recognizes notable players in the game, or local legends recognized by the team hosting the All-Star game.  The sets started during the 2007 All-Star Game in San Francisco when Upper Deck released a set of cards only available at the Fan Fest event.  Since the Yankees, Cardinals, Royals, and Mets have all worked with Topps to put out a patch set.  

This years set looks really tough with a limited print run of 150 copies per card.  Oddly, this years set is half Mets and half Yankees.  Needless to say, the price tag on some of the cards from this year's set has been quite high.  Last year's Royals issue was also limited and featured Yu Darvish and Bryce Harper.  Those two cards are nearly impossible to find for less than $50.  However, somewhere in the not to distant past the All-Star Fan Fest patch cards were not serial numbered and the teams attempted to make more of a connection with their hometown crowd, rather than with the card collecting crowd.  

In 2009 the All-Star Game was played in my hometown of St. Louis where Topps made three Fan Fest Patches available to fans: Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols, and Ichiro.  The Pujols card has an obvious St. Louis connection as the star player of the Cardinals at the time of the game.  The Howard card was put in the set since he is a St. Louis native, attended the same high school as David Freese, and still has a residence in the area.  Ichiro is a little bit more of a stretch, but a cool story and good connection to St. Louis and the baseball history of the town.  At the time of the All-Star game, which I did not attend, I was able to track down and trade for two of the three cards:  

2009 Topps All-Star Fan Fest Albert Pujols Patch 

2009 Topps All-Star Fan Fest Ryan Howard Patch

I was pretty content at the time with the two patches, but I have actually become a little bit of a closet Ichiro fan in recent years.  The Ichiro connection to St. Louis actually started in 2004 while he was chasing down the single season hits record in 2004.  The record had belonged to St. Louis Browns star George Sisler.  During the 2004 season the Mariners played an interleague series in St. Louis against the Cardinals and had the chance to meet Sisler's family.  The family took interest in Ichiro's pursuit of the hits record and flew all the way to Seattle to attend the game where Ichiro passed Sisler's old hits mark of 257.  

When the Cardinals were awarded the 2009 All-Star game Ichiro actually made plans to take the chance to meet up with Sisler's family again and even visited the grave site of the Browns Hall of Famer.  The attention that Ichiro brought Sisler's career and achievements was pretty cool and certainly well deserved since not many people spend time catching up on their St. Louis Browns history.  The Cardinals gave a tip of the cap to Ichiro by making sure he was included in the All-Star patch set.  

2009 Topps All-Star Fan Fest Ichiro Patch 

I was missing the Ichiro for the past several years and actually have seen the card numerous times, but just had never closed the deal, or won the auction, to add this to my collection.  Last week, I was able to spot one in the lead up to the All-Star game and quickly snatched it up helping me complete my Fan Fest All-Star Patch Set.  The set as a whole is not serial numbered and is actually not difficult to find.  The individual cards usually run less than $10 and the set can be had for between $20 and $30.  Great find considering that most of the more recent All-Star patch sets run more than $50 for a single card.  

30 Year Top 50: 2001 Bowman Heritage

#5- First of the Top 5 sets, in my opinion, tonight starts with the 2001 Bowman Heritage set.  The Bowman Heritage line started in 2001 and ran until 2007 when it was discontinued.  If there is one set I miss putting together every year it's this one.  The set had a similar concept to Topps Heritage and I know that many collectors felt like two Heritage sets was too many, but they had entirely different aims.  The Topps Heritage set used a previous Topps card design and focused on established players.  The Bowman Heritage set used a previous Bowman card design and focused on prospects and draft picks.

2001 Bowman Heritage Derek Jeter

This set is winner all around and it starts out with the design.  The 2001 Bowman Heritage set borrowed its design from the 1948 Bowman set.  The black and white photography with the white border is a great look and these cards do a great job of imitating the original classic Bowman set.  Topps, which produced this set, did change the size of the cards to the standard card size from the undersized original set.  

2001 Bowman Heritage Albert Pujols

The 2001 Bowman Heritage set had a total of 440 cards with the high numbered cards being short printed, just like the 1948 Bowman set.  The high numbered cards included a few important rookies including my favorite of Cardinals great Albert Pujols.  I've always thought this Pujols rookie was classy looking and I've managed to stash away a couple of nice copies of the years.  As a Cardinals fan, I unloaded parts of my Pujols collection after he signed with the Angels, but held on to my Bowman Heritage cards.  If you do not own a Pujols rookie and are thinking of adding one, this would be my first choice hands down.  

2001 Bowman Heritage Ichiro Suzuki

Of course, if it's a 2001 baseball card set, it would not be complete without an Ichiro rookie too.  This, again, is my favorite rookie of Ichiro.  I believe he might have a few more to choose from than Pujols, but I love the black and white look.  Add in the fact that this card is also apart of the high printed short prints and you've got a great card worth owning.  

2001 Bowman Heritage Chase Utley 

2001 Topps Heritage Miguel Cabrera

Beyond the typical Pujols and Ichiro rookie cards which were common in the 2001 baseball card sets, the Bowman Heritage set also put out the first cards of Chase Utley and an early card of Miguel Cabrera.  The Cabrera card is not a true rookie card, but it's a popular find among his card collectors.  The Utley card features him wearing a Futures Game jersey, Topps did not airbrush this product, and is one of a few rookie cards he had in 2001.  

2001 Topps Heritage Barry Bonds Autograph

Beyond the base set the 2001 Bowman Heritage set has a great run of insert cards.  They include a set of 1948 reprints featuring some of the era greats.  You can also find the reprints with stadium seat relics.  Sorry, no scan of Ferris Fain.  My favorite insert in this set is the run of autographs.  First, since the cards are black and white they offer a great background to sign over.  There are many collectors who assembled the base set just simply to use the cards for autographs.  The actual certified autographs from the set are low in number.  Topps only placed three modern and four 1948 era players in the autograph line.  The cards all ran at over 1:1000 odds except the ARod autograph which ran slightly below 1000. The fourth vintage autograph, a Ralph Kiner, is not officially listed on the checklist.  However, I assure you that it exists, is very difficult to find, and quite pricey.  

30 Year Top 50: 2001 Topps and Topps Traded & Rookies

#7- This was a hard set for me to rank on my countdown and I am actually going to spend a little bit of time talking about the both the 2001 Topps base set  and the Traded set together on this post.  The base set of the 2001 Topps set is 790 cards.  Last week, I posted the 1983 Topps set as the 15th best set of the past 50 years.  At the end of the post I stated that the set was the best Topps base set of the past 30 years.  Meaning if you line up the 792 cards in the 1983 Topps set, it will beat any other Topps base set over that 30 year period.  The Topps and Topps Traded & Rookie sets from 2001 aren't ranked 6 spots higher because of the base set.  Rather, they are ranked higher because of everything else that you get in the set beyond the base set.  The base set is still pretty nice.

2001 Topps Jason Isringhausen 

The same card design ran throughout the first, second, and traded sets of the 2001 Topps set.  The first two series of the set were a total of 790 and were all stamped with the 50th Anniversary stamp in the top left hand corner of the card.  The lone notable rookie card of the base set belonged to Ichiro Suzuki.  Since 2001 was Ichiro's first season in the Majors, Topps printed his full name on the card instead of the typical first name only Ichiro.  

2001 Topps Ichiro Suzuki 

Topps also issued a Traded & Rookies set that featured a stronger set of rookie cards than the base set.  First, Topps issued a second Ichiro rookie in the Traded set along with rookie cards for Jose Reyes, Justin Morneau, and Cardinals infielder Albert Pujols.

2001 Topps Traded & Rookies Albert Pujols 

In general, the rookie cards of Albert Pujols are the biggest drivers of the 2001 baseball card sets for Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, and Donruss.  Pujols had one of the greatest rookie seasons of all-time and his initial batch of cards often ranged from $50 or $60 for a simple base card from the Topps or Upper Deck card to near four digits for a copy of his autographed Topps Finest card.  Topps missed Pujols in the first two series of their base set, but managed to squeeze the future Hall of Famer into the Traded set.  In my opinion, this card greatly improved this set.  The vast majority of 2001 releases without a Pujols rookie are generally junk sets and can easily be found for $20 or less on the secondary market.  Sets with a Pujols rookie are often highly sought after, even after his career has started on a downward angle.  However, the Pujols card was not the only card to drive the 2001 Topps base sets and Traded & Rookie sets to a high perch on my countdown.  

2001 Topps Golden Anniversary Golden Greats Hank Aaron

As previosuly mentioned, the 2001 Topps set was the 50th Anniversary of Topps baseball cards.  The company went all out on every aspect of the set and really put together a fantastic product when the set is measured as a whole.  While it seems that Topps usually has a popular insert set each year, the 2001 set thrived on offering several excellent chase sets for collectors.  The vast majority of the inserts played on the tradition and history of Topps and featured both modern players and cards of the all-time greats.  For example, one of my favorite inserts from the set were the Golden Anniversary cards pictured above.  Topps used a wide variety of players with this insert set and broke the insert set down into several small subsets.  Topps also purchased cards from all 49 previous Topps sets and inserted them randomly into packs of cards along with autographs and game used cards.  

2001 Topps Combos Johnny Bench and Ivan Rodriguez 

Some of my other favorite inserts from the 2001 Topps set also include the Rookie Reprints, which ran throughout the first two series and Traded set, and the Topps Combos cards.  The Combos set, which is pictured above, borrowed a more modern tradition from the Topps Gallery issues of inserting art cards into the set as an insert.  The Topps Gallery cards were the Heritage insert set and featured mainly modern players drawn onto a classic Topps card design.  The concept transferred over to the 2001 Topps set and many collectors credit with the creation of sets like Gypsy Queen and Allen & Ginter.  

2001 Topps King of Kings Bob Gibson Jersey

The tip of the insert highlights in the 2001 Topps sets were the relic sets and autographs.  The autographs were clearly the biggest highlight, but the relic cards were great too and well done for a relic set.  While the pieces of jersey are fairly modest and ordinary, Topps did a great job of limiting the selection of players and the quantity of cards.  The relic cards were insert at a rate of close to 500:1 and were only available in hobby packs.  The relic set also only featured eight cards, all of Hall of Famers, with four cards in each series of Topps cards.  

2001 Topps Golden Anniversary Great Johnny Bench Autograph

The odds for the autographs in the Topps set were steep and many of the cards have dried up and are no longer available on the secondary market.  The few top of the line autographs that do leak out to the secondary market sell at premium prices.  Some of the best autographs in the set include Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Chipper Jones, Stan Musial, Nolan Ryan, and Mike Schmidt.  The autographs were fabulously designed and the signatures are all clean and well signed.  Fortunately, if you must add one of these cards to your collection, Topps also inserted several younger players whose autographs have remained at low prices.  

2011 Topps Triple Threads Ichiro Suzuki Jersey

I spent my childhood watching the 1980's Cardinals and appreciate the toll that speed puts on another team's defense.  The Cardinals ran their way to a World Series title in 1982 and also appeared in the 1985 and 1987 Series.  The majority of the players, not named Jack Clark, hit few homers and were either defensive stars or a major threat to steal a few bases.  There are a few documented videos of the 1985 team here and here complete with 1980's music.  

The 80's came to an end and so did the Cardinals era of small ball.  The style of play the Cardinals used hasn't really been duplicated by an entire team, but there are players that I occasionally see whom I think could fit.  

Ichiro could have definitely fit in as an 80's Cardinals players.  Fast, good hitter, and good fielder.  Whitey Herzog would have had him running all over the astroturf.  It's hard to follow a West Coast player while living on the East Coast, but Ichiro is a player I always look for in the box scores.  

He even has a cool connection to St. Louis. 

Anyway, I was trading a few Tigers cards last weekend and ran into this gem from the 2011 Triple Threads set.  It's a pretty sweet card, but I wish the jersey pieces had more contrast with the card.  Can't win them all and it's a great add to the collection.  

2011 Topps Triple Threads Ichiro Suzuki Jersey