Around The Card Room, Take 16

I typically do not collect items from fast food restaurants, but I made an exception in 2002 when the St. Louis area McDonald's started selling Cardinals bobbleheads. Sadly, I do not remember many of the details surrounding these, nor could I find them online. I do not know how much the cost or when during the season they were released, but I have always liked them and these are an item that has a connection to my kids.  

Here is what I do remember.  The set was comprised of J.D. Drew, Albert Pujols, Fernando Vina, and Jim Edmonds.  A new bobblehead was sold each week at McDonald's and the base and autographed baseball were sold during the last week. I think. 

"I will take a J.D. Drew and an orange soda"

Here is the back of the bobbleheads, which are made from hard plastic and are not ceramic.  

Beyond housing all of my baseball cards and memorabilia, the card room is also a second floor family room for my kids. They have spent countless hours playing in the room and also use the television to watch movies. Playing usually means making sure they do not knock over piles of baseball cards, nor touch any of the things hanging on the wall. 

However, my daughter in particular has always been a huge fan of action figures and took an early interest in the bobbleheads that are in the card room. Since most are ceramic they are less than ideal action figures for the average toddler. However, the plastic Cardinals bobbleheads were a part of her play schemes for years, making them one of the few pieces of baseball memorabilia that I allowed to double as a play toy for my kids.  

Here are J.D. Drew and Jim Edmonds at the vintage Little Tikes Doll House.  

J.D. Drew enjoying snack time. 

She has moved onto American Girl Dolls and other toys, so I have reclaimed my McDonald's Cardinals bobblehead set and placed them back on a shelf in the card room.  They held up really well through years of toddler use.  

Hardly a scratch.  

Back home in their spot on a shelf of bobbleheads.  

Cards I Love Part 7- 1998 Fleer Tradition Update J.D. Drew

I was positive that J.D. Drew was going to be a great baseball player.  He was incredible in college, and I thought that would carry over to professional baseball.  When the Cardinals drafted him out of Florida State in 1998, I got really excited to see him on a baseball card.  Drew got through the Cardinals Minor League system in half of a season, and made his Major League debut the same night Mark McGwire hit his 62 home run.  

He pinch hit for Kent Merker in the 6th inning, and then stayed in the game in place of Ron Gant in left field.  

There were three early J.D. Drew cards that I loved at the time, and that I thought would be a good start to a collection of his cards.  I still love all three of them to this day.  Obviously my favorite is the 1998 Fleer Update, which I will talk more about in a minute.  The other two were 1999 cards.  

One is the 1999 Pacific Private Stock card.  

I like the design of these cards.  They were released early in the 1999 card calendar, so probably one of my first J.D. Drew cards after his 1998 Fleer Update.  I think it was pretty highly sought after at the time, but you can find it for little to nothing now.  A dollar might be too much for this card.  

I also liked his SPx card, which was autographed.  

Lastly, there was the 1998 Fleer Update card.  You could only get the card in a box set, and I went to college in a town without a real baseball card store.  Technically, there was one there, but the guy who ran it was a jerk.  I did not really like to go in there if at all possible.  So, I had to acquaint myself with a little website known as Ebay.  

It looked awesome in those days.  

I don't remember what the boxed update sets cost at that time, maybe $20 or so.  PayPal was not a thing at that point that I was aware of, so I had to find a place to buy a money order in the little town I was living, and send off to get my Fleer Update set.  It was my first ever Ebay transaction, so it was kind of a big deal.  

The closet place to campus to get a money order was a hole in the wall store front that also offered notary service, P.O. boxes, and all sorts of odds and ends.  Basically a ma and pa UPS store with an old guy smoking cigars.  I put my money order in the mail, and a week or two later I had a package slip in my mailbox at college.   

(Glowing sound) 

You can find these sets for so little now.  A couple of bucks max.  

There are other good players in the set, but all I really cared about was the J.D. Drew rookie card.  It was a thing of beauty in my opinion.  

Here is the front of the card.  

and the back of the card.  

Drew never lived up to his hype, but at the same time he was not really as big of a bust as people some times make him out to be.  He was an above average for the majority of his career and had some healthy career numbers by the time he retired at the end of the 2011 season.  

If nothing else, he was the reason the Cardinals ended up with Adam Wainwright.  

The 1998 Fleer Update card is still sorted in with all of my really good rookie cards.  Plenty of reason to still love this card.  

Mailday From The Mitten

I received a nice envelope of cards a week and a half ago from Julie over at A Cracked Bat.   I will run through the cards in a minute, but I really need to get a business card or something catchy to stick into packages.  This is nice.....

My eight year old son was initially really excited about this package of cards.  He checks our mail as part of chores around the house.  If it is mail for me then it is a baseball card, and there is not much excitement over the mail for the day.  However, this package threw him off because the return address was from Michigan.  He was jumping up and down. 

My wife is from Michigan, so there are grandparents, aunts and uncles who live there are mail him stuff.  

Her hometown is actually on this map.  It's right there, next to one of the lakes.  It's a nice place.

So naturally, he opened the envelope and was a little disappointed to see that it was baseball cards, but I was pretty excited.  So, here's what I got:

First off, this was a card from a set that Julie had posted on Twitter, and we had spent some time talking about it one day.  I had never seen anything out of this Church's Chicken card set before.  Are there Church's Chickens in Missouri?  According to Google there are a dozen of them around St. Louis.  I just missed out on these back in the day.  There are even Cardinals players in the set. 

Love the design on these cards, they look like something from the mid 1990s too.  I am going to have to find more of these.  I appreciate that Julie introduced me to these cards.

More cards.

These three Cardinals are out of the 2003 EX set.  Always one of my favorite products from the late 1990s and early 2000s.  These are from the 2003.  Great looking cards.  

Next.  

I know that the Action Packed cards were an oddball set from the early 1990s that featured older players, but I do not know much about them.  I actually have two other Action Packed cards in my collection, a Bob Gibson and a Jerome Bettis, but I am a little fuzzy on how they got here.  Never really got into collecting Rams cards.  I love the photograph on the card.  Nice action shot of Lou Brock running the bases is always a winner. 

 I do not do much with Furcal, but he was on the 2011 Cardinals World Series winner.  Kind of easy to forget he was there.  This is a gold sparkle variation of his 2012 Topps base card.  Not sure the scan really did it justice, sometimes shiny and bright does not scan well, but it's a sharp card. 

This is a really sharp looking card of Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong.  Love the die cut.  

Last.  

There are not many Ray Lankford cards in this world that I do not own.  However, he is one of the few players whom I actively welcome duplicates of in my collection.  This is a 1998 Donruss Preferred card, which was not only a great set, but also a card from Lankford's prime years as a player.  The years where card companies sort of paid interest in him. 

A great package of cards.  Thank you Julie, I will get you a return package at some point in the near future. 

I Love The 1990s Cardinals Part 33 - J.D. Drew

The NCAA Baseball tournament is firing up this week, so I thought it would be a good week to cover one of the all-time great college baseball players who also happened to be a member of the 1998 and 1999 Cardinals teams.  His career with the Cardinals actually extended a few years into the early 2000s, but for the sake of these 1990s themed posts, I am going to mainly focus on his time with the team during those two seasons.

Prior to playing professional baseball, J.D. was one of the greatest college baseball players ever.  He won awards, he won championships, he set records that still stand today.  Having listened to a few Florida State fans talk about his playing days in Tallahassee, I am not sure that I can sum up his college career, do it justice, and not make it a stand alone blog post.  I leave you with this.....

Maybe some day Panini will get off their duff and make a card of J.D. in his college uniform.  Seems like a shame that he does not have a card in his college uniform.  I know a few Florida State people who would be more than interested in getting a copy of the card.  

Drew entered the 1997 MLB Draft considered one of the best players at the top of the draft.  His agent Scott Boras told teams that Drew would not sign for a dime less than $10 million dollars.  The Phillies selected Drew second overall and then offered him $2.6 million dollars to sign.  He refused the offer and spent the summer playing for the St. Paul Saints in the Northern Independent League.  He re-entered the 1998 MLB Draft and was selected by the Cardinals with the fifth overall pick.  They paid him $7 million dollars and he signed.  

The incident made him less than popular with Phillies fans throughout his time in the Majors.  

I think there were some battery and beer bottle throwing incidents along the way too, but I try to keep things PG around these parts.  

It took Drew part of a summer to advance all the way through the Cardinals Minor League system.  He made his debut with the team on September 8, 1998.  It was the same night that Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run of the season, breaking the single season home run record.  

As a Ray Lankford fan, it should be pointed out that this game was won by the Cardinals, who sealed the victory after the Cubs pitched around Mark McGwire and then gave up back to back home runs to Ray Lankford (3 run) and Ron Gant (solo).  

By the end of the 1998 season, had played in 14 games and made 41 plate appearances.  He made the most of it, hitting .417/.463/.972 with 5 home runs, and 13 RBIs.  Not a bad little line for a two week cup of coffee.  

The baseball card world was already a little Cardinal crazy with Mark McGwire at that time.  The arrival of J.D. Drew sort of sent some people over the edge.  He was not quite Mickey Mantle, but the way that some people went after his baseball cards, you'd swear he was a slam dunk Hall of Famer.  Yes, people literally walked around comparing him to Mickey Mantle.  His first cards started popping up in the fall of 1998.  

My favorite was his 1998 Fleer Update card.  

This was a really simply designed card, but I really liked the edge to edge picture.  The card back also has also full color photo.  

You could only get the card by buying the complete Update set, which was not horribly expensive in the grand scheme of things, but finding one could be a challenge.  Maybe, I just went to college in the middle of nowhere with a really terrible card shop.  Drew also had cards in Leaf Stars & Rookie, Donruss Signature, and a whole bunch of different Minor League products.  

Drew's cards are obviously really easy, and inexpensive, at this point.  I know that those other two cards are also considered rookie cards, but the Fleer Update is the best of the bunch.  As a Cardinals collector, this card is borderline iconic as a modern must have card from that era.  

His 1999 cards were also really popular for much of that calendar year despite the fact that it was literally the worst full season of his Major League career.  In many circles, the expectations for Drew were still through the roof.  It was one of those moments in my collecting career where I had serious doubts that a certain segment of the baseball card collecting population actually watch the games and follow the sport.  

I am going to narrow the bloat of cards from 1999 down to my two favorites.  

First up.  

One of his first 1999 cards was in the Pacific Private Stock set.  This actually came out really early in the card calendar.  Since the Topps base set used to come out right after Thanksgiving in the late 1990s, this might have even been out before the end of 1998.  Regardless, it was a favorite set of mine from that year, I miss the Pacific brand, and one of the earliest Drew cards I remember owning.  If you do not own any of these cards, they are not hard to find in boxes and packs, the quality of the cards is excellent.  Nice stock, although they stick together in the packs now after they have been in there for 20 years.  

Last.  

I think this came out later in the summer and people were crazy about it while J.D. Drew was batting .240.  It took me several years to actually get a copy of this card.  I refused to pay whatever ridiculous price this cost back in 1999.  The other autographed card in this set, Gabe Kapler, was even pretty pricey.  I should have gone back and found an old Beckett and scanned the price listings for this set.  

As for the rest of J.D. Drew's career, I am not sure that he is ever going to receive the due that he probably deserves.  He's not a Hall of Famer, but he still had a very good career.  The Cardinals ended up trading to the Braves at the end of the 2003 season.  The trade netted the team Jason Marquis and Ray King, who were both contributors on the 2004 National League Championship team, but the real prize was Double A pitcher Adam Wainwright.  

The Braves got one really good year of Drew, while the Cardinals got a few Cy Young worthy seasons out of Wainwright and a World Series winner in 2006.  Drew eventually ended up in Boston after the Red Sox finally helped him cash in with a large contract.  He got 5 years and 70 million dollars out of Boston, not sure that Sox fans really loved Drew, but he hit .360 in the American League Championship Series that year against the Indians, and .300 against the Rockies in the World Series.  

I Love The 90s Cardinals #2- Placido Polanco

Skipping to the other end of the decade for my second 1990s Cardinals post to write up one of my favorite players from that era.  The late 1990s were not kind to the Cardinals after the 1996 trip to the National League Championship Series.  The pitching thinned out and the team had a hard time cracking the top half of the league.  Still, a lineup featuring Mark McGwire always made things entertaining.

McGwire was the most popular Cardinals player on the field for good reason at this point for good reason.  Home runs.

As a baseball card collector, 1999 was sort of a golden year to be a Cardinals collector.  There was the huge enormous glut of McGwire cards.  They were everywhere.  So much shine and gloss.  Too many expensive cards.  Looking back on it now it's fun to go to card shows now to pick up his cards that were $10 and $15 inserts twenty years ago from the dollar card bins.  

Loved the Gold Label cards from the late 1990s.  Probably one of my favorite products of that era, the rehash job Topps has done doesn't compare to the original.  

The Cardinals had some pretty popular players around the baseball card hobby beyond Big Mac.  Two of the more highly sought after prospects around the hobby at the time were J.D. Drew and Rick Ankiel.  Drew's first cards actually came out in 1998, loved his Fleer Update card, but the craze spilled over into 1999.  He had a terrible year, baseball card collectors still were all over him.

I stopped going out of my way for J.D. Drew cards at some point in the middle of the summer.  I moved on to being an Ankiel collector.  Seemed like a solid pitching prospect.  He had a bunch of Minor League stuff throughout the summer in products like Best and Just Minors.  His first "real" card was his Fleer Update.  

I am 99.9% certain that I ended up with a copy of this card the first day that the Fleer Update set was available for sale.  There were some other young players beyond Drew and Ankiel that were worthy of my time back then.  I dabbled in Fernando Tatis and Edgar Renteria cards.  Of course there were always Ray Lankford cards.  

My favorite Lankford card from 1999 was his Essential Credentials card out the Skybox EX-Century product.  Tough card to find at the time.  

I haven't seen a copy of this card in forever.  Happy that I have it in my collection.  It's one of my favorite Lankford cards.  

There were plenty of scrubby players that filled the rest of the roster, I will get to them at some point in the near future.  For now, I want to focus in on the young players on the Cardinals roster.  There was one other really popular Cardinals player with a rookie card that year, rookie second baseman Joe McEwing.  Super Joe really deserves his own post.  

Which brings me to Placido Polanco.  Not sure anyone really cared about his cards at the time he came up with the Cardinals at the end of 1998, he didn't really hit.  He reappeared in 1999 and did a little bit better, but if you've ever spent anytime watching Tony LaRussa teams you know that he likes the utility players.  Can't have a LaRussa roster until you have a light hitting infielder who can play everywhere.  

Sort of think it's Tony giving himself a chance long after he finished playing....

The Cardinals had McEwing play great for a half a year, they dumped him for Jesse Orosco.  Polanco stayed on the Cardinals.  The Cardinals had Adam Kennedy, who was a highly thought of 1st round draft pick, they dumped him for Jim Edmonds.  Polanco stayed on the Cardinals. 

During his time on the Cardinals, LaRussa played Placido at every single infield spot which is probably a huge reason he stuck around as long as he did.  He also eventually started to hit, but that was more in the 2000s, this is a 1990s post.   

What about the baseball cards?  Placido Polanco actually first showed up on a baseball card in 1998 in the Leaf Stars set.  I don't actually own a copy of that card.  I know it is surprising.  One day I will fix this problem.  He did have a few 1999 cards, but it's not like he popped up in a ton of sets.  There was one in the Sports Illustrated set, pictured above with J.D. Drew.  That was a nice looking set, but my favorite 1999 Polanco card was probably his Pacific base card.  

It's a really simple card, but I like that it's got a frameless action shot of Placido.  The little rookie diamond on the bottom is a little bit busy, but the rest of the card is quality.  He has another Pacific card in the Crown Collection set which is an action shot from, going out on a limb, the same at bat.  I will put that card up in a minute.  Meanwhile, here is the back of the Pacific base....

I am not saying that this is somehow a great looking card back, but Pacific always had a nice blurb about the players.  I'm surprised that Polanco stole 19 bases in a season.  Not really a fast player, so kind of interesting fact. 

Last card.  Here is the Crown Collection card.  Again, same at-bat as the Pacific base card.  

I really do like this card, it's one of those really simple card products that has some good photography.  However, I think it might be a little overly simple, especially for Pacific.  Come on, I went die-cut cards and foil.  Serial numbers too.  

I have a lot of favorite Cardinals.  I feel like I probably put that in half of my posts every month, and with Placido it was a short run with the Cardinals, but he was an enjoyable player to watch.  I'm glad that the Cardinals got Rolen, was a little bummed out that they included Polanco in the deal, but you have to give something up to get something back.  

Always kind of enjoyed the few years that he played with the Tigers.  My father in-law and brother in-law are both big Tigers fans and I felt like Polanco gave us a common player to root for back in the day.  Even if he beat the Cardinals every once in awhile....

We all know that the Cardinals got along just fine in the end.  

and a song from 1999 on my IPod.  

Postcards From The Target Card Aisle

Dear Readers,

I was recently back in Target to fetch a black ink cartridge for my printer.  We all have my appliances/devices in our lives, my printer might be my least favorite.  In my recent past many of my printers have broken suddenly.  I blame it on the fact that I probably abused the printer I owned during grad school, which died the final week before I graduated.  I have literally gone through a printer a year.  My latest printer is finicky.

However, seeing how my printer is also a scanner it is a necessary evil in my life if I wish to continue to write about baseball cards.  Sure, I could just take a picture of the cards and post them into my ramblings, but I do not really like the way that looks.

Feeling a little disgruntled at the idea of having a buy a cartridge, then wrestle it into the printer when I got home, I decided to make a quick trip to the Target card aisle.  I had actually visited about two weeks back and done fairly well with some Bowman cards.  I decided to try again.

My initial back in my blaster of Bowman landed me a J.D. Drew buyback......

Pretty happy to land a card of a former Cardinals player, even if he is wearing a BoSox jersey on the card.  I feel like I always get Buybacks, but never Cardinals one, or even former Cardinals.  As I kept opening backs the two other cool cards I pulled were both part of the Chrome remake/rehash inserts.

The first was a 1948 Bowman Warren Spahn card.  I kind of dig some of these types of cards that Topps has put into Bowman products in the past.  I really like the minis that Topps put into the first Bowman Heritage set back in 2001, these have a totally different flavor, but I still like them a lot.

The other rehash card was a Noah Syndergaard from the 1992 set.  This card is much more my generation, but I felt like the whole suit thing is off a bit.  The 1992 Bowman set did have players wearing street clothes, but I feel like if you are going to remake the set, put them in something from that time.  Cavaricci's, Skidz, Jamz, something 90s.  

Which brings me to my last pack in the box.  Always the last pack.  Right?  

A Leody Tavernas autograph seems like pretty good find in a retail box of Bowman.  He is regarded as a Top 100 Prospect by several baseball publications.  I am not sure I am sold on him, looking at some of his numbers, but than again I do not know much about him beyond the stat page.  Whether Leody is traded or sold or kept this was a pretty good buy...even feeling pretty good about putting the ink cartridge in my printer....

Have a great Sunday afternoon.


                                                                                     Sincerely,
                                                                                          S.B.

A Venerable Old Card Part 38

In June of 1998 the Cardinals made Florida State outfielder J.D. Drew their first round pick.  The guy had been drafted by the Phillies the previous summer, but refused to sign because the team would not give him some ridiculous amount of money to sign.  He re-entered the draft and he fell to the Cardinals with the fifth pick behind Pat Burrell, Mark Mulder, Corey Patterson, and Jeff Austin.  It took Drew half of a summer to blow through the Cardinals Minor League system and reach the Majors.

Drew was supposed to be the next Micky Mantle or something like that.  In 36 at bats with the Cardinals in 1998 he had a slash line of .417/.463/.972 with 5 home runs, a triple, and 3 doubles.  The hype heading into the 1999 season was unreal.  Drew also started to appear on baseball cards during the fall of 1998.  They were slightly crazy.

There were several popular cards, but my favorite was his 1998 Fleer Update.

Loved the 1990s Fleer cards.  Borderless, nice pictures, etc.  The Fleer Update set was only sold as a complete set.  I bought my first copy of the set at some point during the fall of 1998 at a small card show at the mall in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.  It was kind of a small pathetic show, but it was really about all that little town had in the way of decent baseball cards.  There was a card shop in the town, but the owner was an ass.  I don't remember how much I paid for the set at the time, but I am pretty sure it's way more than what it sells for now.....

Shipping costs more than the set....

Anyway, I was pretty sure that J.D. Drew was going to be awesome so at some point that fall I decided to try to find another copy of the set.  Probably not a great idea around St. Louis since half of the collectors in town wanted a copy of the set and I am sure most of the card shops in the area added a little bit extra onto the price.

Here's a look at the back of the card before I tell you what became of my two 1998 Fleer Update sets....

I have always loved the backs of the 1998 Fleer cards.  Stats and the little bio line is cool, but I like the jersey background and color picture of the player on the side.  Nice touch.  

So, out of the two sets I originally owned, I trade one to a junior high kid I used to mentor in the summers back in college.  He had a few cool Ray Lankford cards, so what equals a bunch of quarter box cards?  A set filled with quarter box cards.  The second set, maybe the first, stayed in my collection and is still there today.  At some point about ten years ago, I decided to open the box.  Usually a huge sealed set no no, but at this point it's not like the set is ever going to be worth anything.  

While J.D. Drew just went on to be a decent right fielder who made a few fan bases angry, he was never Mickey Mantle.  Might as well take the cards out and enjoy looking at them.  

#MyCardMonday

I picked up this J.D. Drew card sometime during August of 1999 after I started my first "real" job as a fifth grade teacher outside of St. Louis.  New jobs are a good reason to celebrate and new baseball cards are always a really good way to celebrate victories in life.  I really liked the 1999 SPx set, tons of McGwire cards, and it also had two autographs in the base set.

One of the autographs belonged to Tigers prospect Gabe Kapler, while the other belonged to Cardinals uber prospect J.D. Drew.  The luster had started to wear off of J.D. Drew's uber prospect status after a sluggish 1999 season, most of which had been played by the time this product had been released, but I still loved the card and had to have it in my collection.

There are 1999 copies of this J.D. Drew card, and the price has gone down significantly since the product was released, but it is still a favorite for many collectors.  Especially those of us who were around opening packs of cards back in the 1990s.

Here's to new beginnings......

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets from 1999

1999 was a really great year for baseball cards.  I remember buying a box of Topps cards right after Thanksgiving that year and being happy and entertained with cards the entire year.  I feel like I could right a book about the card sets from 1999, but instead I have narrowed the list down to just five sets. My five favorites:

5. Skybox Molten Metal- This reminds of this project I started awhile back...I got sidetracked.  That is going to be one of my summer projects.  Back to the set.  I split my first box of these cards with a kid I mentored during the summer while I was waiting to start teaching.  I loved the look and feel of the cards and the inserts were incredible.  There were the Pointillism insert set.....

and of course my favorite cards in the set were the metal parallel cards......

I know the late 90s and early 2000s were filled with tons of 100-200 card, premium such and such, base sets with some cool gimmicky insert sets that were cool for a month or two and are now forgettable.  Molten Metal was a little bit different/cooler than the others.  Other card companies had made insert cards with the pointilism pictures and metal cards, but something about this product clicked with me as a collector.  Cool set and boxes can still be found pretty cheap.  

4. Crown Royale- Pacific was a really important card company for me around this time.  They thought outside the box and had some truly unique looking card products.  I think I did more of their products in 2000, but for me the Crown Royale set was a huge starting point for me in collecting their cards.  Before Crown Royal I tended to think of Pacific as "that other" card company, not Topps or Upper Deck, Pinnacle, or Fleer.  The die cut cards featured the Pacific brand logo crown with a player photo over the top.  The set also featured all of the usual Pacific set trappings with colored parallels and cool looking inserts.  I don't see many boxes of this product anymore, nor do I see many sets.  There are a bunch of the singles up on Ebay and COMC.  There were also a few other cool Pacific products sets from 1999 that are probably a fun project too.   I ended up also putting together an Aurora and Paramount set that summer.

3. SP Signature- This was Upper Deck's answer to the Donruss and Leaf Signature mega-autograph sets.  Packs of this product cost $20 and contained a few base cards and an autograph.  I don't remember pulling anyone too cool out of this product, but I have picked up a whole bunch of these cards over the years, especially the Cardinals.  SP Signature cards are all on card autographs, the set features tons of Hall of Famers, and they are pretty readily available.  Some of the cards can be pretty pricey obviously if you are trying to track down a copy of the Maddux or other short printed star.  Still there are plenty of good players with inexpensive, on-card signatures in this product.  

2.  Sports Illustrated Greats of the Game- Another per pack autograph product that roughly had the same cost as the SP Signature product.  This also had on-card autographs (no stickers in 1999) and featured older players including a bunch of Hall of Famers.  The boxes run hot and cold, but I have already told that story on here before.  Like the SP Signature set there are loads of singles floating around of some pretty good players that can be had for less than an arm and a leg.  This set is definitely worth a little bit of your time and money.  Most year's this set could have easily been the best set of the year, but in 1999 there was this gem......

1999 Century Legends- I like the base set, but this set is here strictly for the autographs.  Unlike SP Signature and Greats of the Game, this was not a per pack autograph set, but this is one of the best autograph sets of all-time.  Black and white backgrounds, color player picture on the side, and clean crisp on card signatures of some of the greatest baseball players of all-time on cardboard.  I own a slew of these and would not trade them.  In fact, I have upgraded several of the cards I owned searching for better copies or nicer signatures.  If you love baseball cards owning at least one autograph from this set should be a must for your collection.  If you are looking for someone inexpensive for the sake of owning one there is Bobby Thomson or Bucky Dent.  from there the price of the cards goes up.  Anyone own a Barry Bonds?