Set Appreciation Post #15 - 2012 Bowman Platinum

It's been awhile since I have made a post about a set.  

I am kind of a softie for some of these products that came out around the time I started blogging.  Bowman Platinum has now been out for 10 years and has gone stale in recent editions.  I think the same can be said for other Bowman spin-off products that Topps created in the early 2010s.  Inception would be in that same boat. Started off great, but its fizzled in recent years.  

Let's go. 

 

Base Set 

The design on this set is decent.  I always worried that Topps would start blending the different Bowman product designs together and make them indistinguishable.  This design has some similarities to the first two Bowman Platinum sets, but I think it has a unique look compared to other Bowman products from 2012.  I like the frames around the picture and the player names.  The Bowman Platinum logo in the middle is not my favorite, but I guess it does make the set more identifiable.  

The majority of cards in this set have more of a blurred out background than the Pineda card.  Not sure why Topps left more of the picture visible on this card.  

The back of the card.  

There is a lot of other "stuff" on the back, which makes the area for stats and the write-up fairly small.  Topps still did a decent job here, especially with the write-up.  It's small, but I like the information that is provided on the cards.  I never love "busy" card backs that are cluttered with junk, but I do appreciate the large card number and player name at the top.  

Maybe I am just saying that because I was sorting out some 2021 Topps cards yesterday.  

Michael Pineda was a really big prospect in 2012.  He's had some decent seasons when he has stayed healthy, but his career highlight has to be the time he was using pine tar during a game and just slathered a bunch of it on this neck.  

This was a few years ago before the crack down on "sticky stuff"  

Pineda was ejected from the game.  

I'm Really Here For The Autographs 

The set design for the 2012 Bowman Platinum is decent, but I didn't buy these cards so I could get a Michael Pineda base card.  I bought these cards for the autographs.  Do people buy Bowman Platinum cards for another reason?  

Yes, the majority of autographs are on stickers, which kind of stinks for this product, but at least they are well blended in most cases.  There were plenty of former Durham Bulls players, some current at the time, who appeared on the autograph checklist.  That made me pretty excited to buy some of Bowman Platinum cards back in the day.    

I parsed it down to two favorite Durham Bulls autographs.  There are more.  

First up is outfielder Mikie Mahtook.  He is still in Triple-A with Charlotte at the moment, which is the White Sox affiliate.  While he has had some good years in the Minors, Mahtook has never been able to do much in the Majors.  Hence, a decade in Triple A.   He had a decent year with the Tigers in 2017, but nothing beyond that.  I think he is best known for losing a home run to a spectacular Alex Gordon catch, but not before high-fiving the first base coach.  

That Royals player in the background is awesome.  

Matt Moore was a great prospect coming up for the Rays and pitched really well in Durham.  In 2013, he won 17 games and finished in the Top 10 in Cy Young voting.  Two Tommy John surgeries later, Matt Moore is 2-4 this season with an ERA over 6 for the Phillies.  Still love his baseball cards.  One of those "what could have been" players. 

One last autograph that I picked up back in the day was a young Rockies third base prospect.

This has always been a nice card, but I was really happy to have it during the past year.  Saved me a little time, probably a little money too.  

Best Non-Cardinal/Non-Durham Bulls Card 

During the pandemic, I learned that people are also crazy for second year Mike Trout cards.  They are actually expensive in some cases.  Pretty wild.  When did this happen?  I feel like I need to put all of my early Mike Trout cards into sleeves and top loaders.  I don't really collect Mike Trout cards, but I have a ton of them from 2011 and 2012.  I could probably sell them all and pay off my car loan.  

This is a nice card, but it's my second best Bowman Platinum card of Mike Trout.  

This one is nice too.  

Best Durham Bulls Card

This was a really hard decision.  If I had to rank sets based on Durham Bulls content, this set would likely be a strong contender for the Top 10.  It's not just the cards, but also the names.  I loved the Bulls teams between the 2009 Triple A National Championship team and the 2013 International League Championship team.  Some of my favorite players.  

It's really hard to decide, so I am going to choose two cards.  

Hellickson is one of the most decorated Minor League pitchers in recent history.  He won the USA Today Minor League Player of the Year Award in 2010, International League Pitcher of the Year in 2010, Triple-A National Championship Game MVP in 2009, and was the starting pitcher in the 2010 Futures All-Star Game.  

In 2011, he pitched for the Rays.  Hellickson had a sub-3 ERA and won the American League Rookie of the Year.  Similar to Moore, Hellickson had a lot of arm problems and ended up being an end of rotation pitcher for a bunch of different teams.  

Next.  

Archer was on the Durham Bulls in 2012.  He's also from Raleigh, which makes him pretty popular in these parts.  This is actually from the short-printed prospects section of the set and would have been a favorite card of mine back in 2012.  Archer is still playing, but his career has really been set back by arm injuries.  Seems to be a theme here.  

In recent years, Archer has given the baseball world the fight between the Pirates and Reds where Yasiel Puig tried to fight the entire Pirates team.  Archer actually threw a pitch at Derek Dietrich, but somehow Puig was the angriest guy on the field.  I love Tucker Barnhardt holding on to Puig's shoe while he is trying to punch five different Pirates players at the same time.  

There are a bunch of people on the internet who love this picture and have turned it into art work.  

Wil Myers could have been a possible third, but he is on the Royals in this set.  Meh.  

Best Cardinals Card 

The Cardinals had a heavy presence in this set.  They were coming off a World Series win and had a lot of name prospects at this point.  Oscar Taveras, Carlos Martinez, and Matt Adams all had autographs in the set.  There were also cards of Matt Holliday, Lance Berkman, Allen Craig, and David Freese.  

I am going to choose none of those players and go with a role player from the 2011 World Series team instead.  Bench player the first half of the year, starter after the Cardinals ditched Colby Rasmus in the middle of the season.  

Underrated Cardinal, Jon Jay.  

Topps always made really good cards of Jon Jay early in his career.  The balanced it out by ignoring him the second half of his career.  

How Does It Compare? 

At the beginning of the post when I said, "I am kind of a softie for some of these products that came out when I first started blogging", what I meant to say is that I am a softie for the autographed cards.  I have done 14 of these posts over the last year, there is no way that a generic-looking Bowman spin off can be in the top half of the sets.

Right?  

What's it better than?  It's clearly not the worst set I have reviewed.  It's more exciting than the 2000 Topps set, but those cards are only interesting when compared to watching an episode of the Pat Boone show.  The 2000 UD Ionix set seems like a good neighborhood.  

The Ionix set had better inserts.  While the quantity of autographs offered by Upper Deck was smaller, the players were actual Major Leaguers.  I love Jon Jay and all the other Cardinals players mentioned as signers in the 2012 Bowman Platinum set, but was an autograph of Scott Rolen in Ionix.  There were also no sticker autographs.  

I am going to place this set 12 after Ionix, but before the boring 2000 Topps set.  

15. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

14. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

13. 2000 Topps 

12. Bowman Platinum 

11. 2000 UD Ionix  

10. 2002 Bowman 

9. 1988 Donruss 

8. 1995 Emotion XL 

7. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

6. 1998 Topps TEK 

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3. 1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Project Durham Bulls Part #40 - Jeremy Hellickson

2009-2010, 2014 Durham Bulls 

Background-

Hellickson was a very important member of the Durham Bulls during the 2009 and 2010 seasons.  He pitched part of a season in Durham in 2009, helped the team win the Triple A National Championship, and took home the MVP in the final game against the Memphis Redbirds.  The following season, Hellickson played roughly 20 games with the Bulls and ended up winning the Baseball America and USA Today Minor League Player of the Year Award.  Hellickson also took home the International League MVP.  One of the more impressive resumes while playing for the Bulls.  Hellickson ended up playing on the 2014 team as well on an injury rehab.

Hellickson's Major League career has not been as spectacular as his time in Durham, but he's still been a nice pitcher.  During his first full season with the Rays, Hellickson won 13 games and took home the 2011 American League Rookie of the Year Award.  He played on the Rays until 2014, but has bounced around since playing for the Diamondbacks, Phillies, Orioles, and and Nationals.  

Card- 

I wanted to go with something early in Hellickson's career.  He had cards out earlier than this 2011 Bowman Chrome, but nothing that was a quality autograph.  After this Bowman card, the flood gates sort of opened for awhile and Hellickson appeared in a bunch of different Topps products.  He has always had a little bit of an odd signature, but he is very consistent with it.  Especially the earlier cards.  Price was never a huge deal with Hellickson cards, but they have certainly become much more affordable since he started bouncing around the last few years.  

Island of the Misfit Toys

Over the past month I have managed to add two different cool Durham Bulls giveaways to my collection.  I picked up both items at a significant discount due to the fact that both items had some imperfections.  They arrived at my house and were set on the coffee table in my baseball card room away from the rest of my bobbleheads which are displayed on shelves.  My kindergarten son was playing in my baseball card room the one morning and equated the two broken items with the Island of Misfit Toys from the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer movie.

Seems about right.  First, here is what I started out with when the Bill Evers statue and Jeremy Hellickson bobble head arrived at my house.  Let's start with the Bill Evers.  

The Bulls have been fortunate with their leadership on the field and Evers was a huge part of their success.  This item was a giveaway to celebrate the team's back to back International League titles in 2002 and 2003.  Those teams were anchored by players like Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, Johnny Gomes, and current Bulls manager Jared Sandberg.  The statue part of Evers was actually in pretty good shape.  All the body parts are attached and there were no major flaws with the paint or finish being scrapped off.  Here's a glance at the back of the statue.   

The real problem with the Bill Evers giveaway was the statue.  Their is a little guy who sits on top of the trophy.  It came in the packaging, but was just not attached.  It is a small piece, so I had my doubts that this could be repaired.  For the price I paid for the item is was a good gamble.

The Hellickson bobble was just simply missing it's head.  While I was not a resident of Durham at the time of the Evers statue, I did live here during at the time the Hellickson was given away.  I even had a ticket plan with the Bulls that summer, so I should have ended up with this item.  My son arrived a little earlier than expected that summer, so Bulls tickets kind of went by the wayside.  Friends enjoyed the ticket and the bobblehead, but I knew I would end up stumbling across one sooner or later.  

Both the head and body of the Hellickson are in really good shape, but they are just separated.  I was pretty sure that I could figure out a way to repair both items.  I was patient, found collectors who had some experience collecting and fixing bobbleheads, and finally took action this weekend.  While Sally Strouthers once offered people a way to get a degree in gun repair, there is apparently no bobblehead repair program.  

Here was my final product.  Hellickson first with his head attached.  Looks like a really nice item.  

I also managed to put the Bill Evers statue together, but there was a little bit of a complication with that item.  Nothing that is making me regret it's presence in my house, but it has a design flaw.  The statue is still the same and I managed to fix up the Governors Cup trophy.    

Okay, so here's the problem with this statue.  First, the statue weighs less than the trophy which makes the item really top heavy and unstable.  The other problem is the hands of Evers on the statue....

The hands on the statue slant downward which makes it really hard to get the trophy to rest in his hands.  I could super glue the statue to the figurine, but I am not going to go there.  For the moment I will find I nice spot for them on my shelf.  

A Trip To Big D's Card Shop Part 1

My trips into my favorite local card shop tend to focus on adding some cool Cardinals or Rays cards to my collection.  Actually this trip was for a box of cards, but in the meantime, the owner of Big D's Jimmy had his eyes open looking for some cool cards for my collection.  We will get to the box in Part 2 of this post, but first let's look at some cool single cards.  Lot's of cool things here, the Rays are up first....


Both Rays items I picked up yesterday were signed items from players who had stopped in Durham on their way to the Majors.  Really cool items that Jimmy found from a great local autograph collector.

This is a Jeremy Hellickson autograph on a ticket stub from his first Major League victory.  Really cool and unique item of one of my favorite Durham Bulls.  I love collecting autographs and the vast majority of my autograph collection is in card form, but I love finding unique items like this.  Who has a ticket stub from Jeremy Hellickson's Major League Debut hanging out in their house?  I do not know, but I am really happy to own this piece.  Here's a look at Hellickson during the game.  John Jaso is catching....

I also landed a nice ball from pitcher Matt Moore.  Moore spent a good deal of time in Durham before landed a job in the starting rotation of the Rays.  The ball is from the Southern League and features a nice signature of Moore on the sweet spot of the ball.  

Two really nice Rays autographs and both are on unique pieces.  On to the Cardinals half of the post. All my Cardinals additions are in baseball card form.  First up are a few Yadis.

Starting simple, this is a Molina short print from this year's Topps Heritage set.  Not many cards show off Yadi's cool neck tattoos.  One more Yadi short print.....

I posted one or two of these variations before with my box breaks.  This is the Stats variation which features the Sabermetric stats on the back of the card instead of the traditional stats that Topps has put on their cards for years and years.  Topps has already added the WAR stat to the back of the regular cards, but think a few of these stats could find their way onto the regular issue of Topps cards.  I'd love to see the OPS+ stat there.  

Still staying pretty simple, this is a pair of rookie cards from new Cardinals pitcher Sam Tuivailala.  I have a good feeling about Tuivailala and could see him moving into a prominent role in the Cardinals bullpen in the near future.  I had posted a pair of his autographs a few weeks back.  Nice player, give him a look.

On to things that are a little bit harder to find...This is a nice copy of a 2013 Bowman Platinum Blue parallel.  The card is numbered to 40/199.  Taveras cards still seem to be selling low even though he has started to pick it up at the plate in recent weeks.  Hoping that Matheny can find him some at-bats on a regular basis next season.  Next Taveras card.......

I have always love the Bowman Inception cards.  Last year the set was my favorite product of the year.  It was a nice product again this year, and I have added a few autographs from the set, but not quite as gaga over this year's issue.  Still I love this Taveras.  He's got a great signature and the card has a nice on-card autograph.  This is the green version of the card and is serial numbered to just 75 copies.  

Jimmy picked this card up for me this past week.  I pulled a copy of the Hank Aaron card like this and was more than happy to pick up a Wacha card numbered to just 25 copies.  Have you looked at the Wacha card from Allen & Ginter and compared it to the Trevor Rosenthal?  They could be brothers.  

On to my favorite.  I LOVE THESE.....

Topps puts out all kinds of parallels.  Pink, camo, etc, etc, etc.  The best of them all have been the Acetate parallels numbered to just 10 copies.  I have picked up a few Cardinals cards.  Love this card and the set.

Overall, the single cards and items I picked up from Big D's today were all really awesome adds.  I am not sure how I would ever find half of the cards I pick up for my collection if it were not for the owner, Jimmy, keeping his eyes open for all of these cool cards.  If you live around Raleigh-Durham, or are visiting, a trip to Big D's is well worth your time.  If you can't make it into the store, you can also check out the shop on Facebook and Twitter.  

A Blogger Walks Into A Card Store....

I am prepping for school to start back up in the next two weeks which is always a little bit stressful, but I found a little bit of down town this week to stop by Big D's Card Shop in Raleigh.  I will have another post about my favorite local card shop again at some point tomorrow.  My post this evening is going to focus a bunch of cards that the owner of Big D's, Jimmy, has found and set aside for me over the past month or so.  

Three of the cards I picked up today are really nice autographs from one of my favorite former Durham Bulls Evan Longoria.  Each card is a pretty low print run and not the easiest of finds.  Let's start with a Topps Unique autograph.  

I do not recall ever seeing this card before Jimmy showed it to me and I am a pretty big Longoria fan.    I also really like the Topps Unique set.  It's numbered to just 25 copies and there has not been a copy of this card sold on Ebay recently.  In fact, there is not one of COMC, Collector Revolution, or Amazon.  Nowhere.  I had to pick up this card.  With none around and a print run of just 25, it's likely not around because the other copies of this card are in collections and they are not going anywhere.  

Next up is a nice copy of a Tribute Longoria autograph which is just serial numbered to 20.  I have seen plenty of Longoria autographs from the Tribute sets, but I have never seen this gold card.  I love the gold color, the two bat pieces, and the Longo autograph.  Next...

The highest numbered card here, but still just 99 copies and a rookie card to boot.  This is the blue edition of the Rays third baseman's rookie card.  The scan is a little blurry and scratchy because it's in a screw down holder.  This might be my favorite card out of the lot.  Yes, I know Longoria is wearing the old style Rays uniform, but I used to love these old Bowman's Best set.  This is a great card.  I might have to take it out of the screw down and rescan it.  

While I was at Big D's I also picked up a few other items.  I had two other cards that Jimmy had set aside for me at the store.  The first was a Matt Adams Jumbo Bat/Autograph card from the 2012 Topps Finest Set.  

I have a copy of this card, but it has a jersey relic instead of a bat relic.  I think I bought the jersey relic version of this card the first week the set was out and gave up on even looking for the bat relic or just did not look for it at all.  Either way, this card has found a happy home in my collection.  

Lastly, I picked up this nice in-person autograph of Cardinals prospect Stephen Piscotty.  He played here this week during the Triple A All-Star game.  The Durham Bulls had an autograph meet and greet on Tuesday, but I did not get to attend.  This Piscotty was in the shop and too hard for me to pass on.  Really cool picture and a nice autograph.  

Bonus items?  Yes.  

I picked up a card from a customer in the store.  Sent over a little bit of Paypal and landed this cool looking Longoria autograph.  You can't have too many.....

Jimmy also had a cool Jeremy Hellickson Durham Bulls program he had in the back of his shop.  Pretty sweet item.  

2012 Topps Tier One Jeremy Hellickson and Cal Ripken Jersey Cards

Tier One is exactly the kind of high end product I cringe.  The cards are cool and there are lots of good autographs, but I always seem to turn up the duds on high end products.  Minus my Matt Kemp pull from Topps Tribute.  This year I am putting together a few Tier One jerseys, bats, and autographs through trades.  First up this year are these cool Jeremy Hellickson and Cal Ripken jersey cards.   I have a few autographs on the way over the next few days, but I am happy with my start.  Off to put away a few cards around my house.

2012 Topps Tier One Cal Ripken Jersey Card

2012 Topps Tier One Jeremy Hellickson Jersey Card

New Gypsy Queen Cards

I've been working on putting together a set of Gypsy Queen, but I actually didn't buy a box.  I've been trading for lots and I've opened some retail packs, but those routes generally don't land you any autographs or materials cards from the set.  Since I am putting together the set through trades, I have had my eyes open for some cool autographs or materials cards to put together with the set.  Busting open wax is always fun, but it is also nice to have some control over what extra inserts, materials, and autographs.  I got my two primary autograph targets from the set in a trade last week.  I received a Jon Jay and Allen Craig autograph.  I particularly like the Craig autograph since the picture is from the last out of the 2011 World Series.  Craig caught the last out in left field.  I also picked up a Jeremy Hellickson jersey card from Gypsy Queen and a 2012 Museum Collection Longoria jumbo jersey card.  I have a few more cool Gypsy Queen materials cards coming later this week.

2012 Topps Gypsy Queen Allen Craig Autograph 

2012 Topps Gypsy Queen Jon Jay Autograph

2012 Topps Gypsy Queen Jeremy Hellickson Jersey Card

2012 Topps Museum Evan Longoria Jumbo Jersey