2014 Topps Stadium Club Box

Another trip into Big D's card shop and another great box.  Today I opened up a box of 2014 Stadium Club.  I'm not sure I can do this in three pictures and a video like I did the 2014 Bowman Chrome box the other day.  A few more pictures and I apologize is the video is too heavy on love for this set.  I love Stadium Club.  Great work by Topps on this product.

Autographs Under The Radar

I spend a lot of time looking for autographed cards and often make it no secret that I prefer cards with on-card signatures versus cards with sticker autographs.  There are still some really cool autographs out there that feature autographs on stickers.  One of my favorite sets of sticker autographs comes from 2007 UD Elements set.  I started out collecting the set in order to pick up two different Cardinals players in the set.

2007 UD Elements Chris Carpenter Auto/Jersey 

My first autograph was Chris Carpenter.  I loved the look of the set with both the autograph and the jersey swatch.  I picked this card up and would later add a second Cardinals with a copy of the Matt Holliday card.

2007 UD Elements Matt Holliday Auto/Jersey

Even though Holliday is a Rockie on the card I decided this card would be a great add to my collection based on how much I liked the looks of the Carpenter card. After adding the Holliday card, my collection of Elements autographs took off.  I picked up a copy of the checklist and was really impressed by the names on the list.  The most expensive card in the autographed set belongs to Derek Jeter, but after that the rest of the players can be found for pretty reasonable prices.  And the other names on the checklist?  Pretty nice group of players.  Here are three of my favorites:


An Inexpensive Player

2007 UD Elements Jake Peavy Auto/Jersey

Every once in awhile I search the term AUTO on Ebay in the Baseball Cards category.  I set my sort feature to ending soonest and get ready to type in some bids.  Sometimes I find a lot of garbage that isn't worth owning, or sometimes I find cards that are ridiculously priced that are not selling for good reason.  Then, every once in awhile you find something going off that's a great deal.  Jake Peavy for $1.25?  Yes, thank you.  I am not saying that Peavy is the best player, but he's a nice player and pretty typical of the base line autographs in the Elements autograph set.

Corey Patterson, Brian Bannister, Joel Zumaya, and Khalil Greene are also cheapies in Elements.  I own all four, but if you are going to own a Corey Patterson autograph then might as well make it count for something.  A complete set of autographs is a good something.  The set gets better.

Current Stars & Players

2007 UD Elements Justin Verlander Auto/Jersey

Verlander might be at the top of the current players within the Elements set along with Miguel Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez, and Matt Holliday.  Cabrera and Verlander are probably the most expensive of the lot, but still can be found, with some patience, for less than $30.  Other current players offer some really good value.  There is a great Francisco Liriano autograph which is a steal given his performance last season for the Pirates.  V-mart and Ryan Zimmerman are also pretty solid autographs.

Hall of Famers

2007 UD Elements Jim Thome Auto/Jersey

Thome is one of my favorite autographs I own in this set.  I always liked watching him play and do not own many cool cards of the slugging first baseman.  This might be the coolest.  There is the aforementioned Jeter, Griffey, and a Cal Ripken too.  These four autographs are four of the more expensive autographs in this set, but are inexpensive cards relative to the prices of other autographs for these future Hall of Famers.  For example, two copies of the Griffey Jr. card have sold for less than $50 on Ebay.  A graded copy of the Ripken card sold for just north of Ripken.  Not too bad for that caliber of autograph.

30 Year Top 50: 2005 Bowman Chrome

#4- The 2005 Bowman Chrome set is the best collection of rookie autographed cards produced in the last 30 years.  There were many important rookie cards issued during the 2005 baseball card calendar.  Andrew McCutchen, Justin Verlander, Matt Kemp, Jacoby Ellsbury, Ryan Bruan, Billy Butler, and Jered Weaver just to name a few. A quick glance at some of the card sets from 2005 will show that many of the important rookie card players made it into some of the sets.  There are even a few sets that included an autograph or two from the spectacular list of rookie players.  However, this set has them all on cardboard and almost all of them have an on-card autograph in this set.

2005 Bowman Chrome Justin Verlander Autograph

Like many of the chrome re-hashes of Bowman and Topps base sets, I did not initially collect this set when it was issued in 2005.  Instead, I slowly picked up the cards over a few years.  My first card that I went after was this Justin Verlander autographed rookie card.  I did not follow the Tigers too much in 2006, Verlander's first full season, until the Tigers reached the playoffs.  I was impressed by what I saw and decided that a nice Verlander rookie card would be a good addition to the collection.  

2005 Bowman Chrome Ryan Braun Autograph

About a year later I added the Ryan Braun autograph when the Brewers called him up and I decided to just pick up the rest of the set.  The set was really well thought of when it was released in 2005, but in the years since it's release the cards have really taken off in value and popularity.  In my opinion, there are seven key rookie cards in the set: Ryan Braun, Justin Verlander, Matt Kemp, Andrew McCutchen, Jered Weaver, Ryan Zimmerman, and Jacoby Ellsbury.  

2005 Topps Chrome Matt Kemp Autograph

There are other good players in set and I've heard people argue the pros and cons of the Stephen Drew, Billy Butler, and Matt Garza cards too.  However, I think that the three aforementioned players fall short of being included in my group of seven key rookies from this set.  Spend a few minutes looking them up on Baseball Reference and there is clearly a line here between the elite players and good players.

2005 Bowman Chrome Jered Weaver Autograph

One of the best ways to rate a great set is to pick out the great cards in the set and then try to determine their effect on the rest of the set.  If a set is not dynamic or spectacular the key cards will stand alone in spite of the rest of the set.  With great sets, the key cards have heavy demand and value, but also drive the popularity, price, and demand on the rest of the cards.  

2005 Bowman Chrome XFractor Jeff Niemann Autograph

For example, one of my first cards I picked up after the Verlander was this Jeff Niemann card.  He was the third overall draft pick in the 2004 draft and was a highly thought of prospect in the lower minors.  I watched him for a year in Durham playing for the Bulls and he seemed like a solid pitcher, but nothing spectacular.  His rookie cards generally reflect Niemann's level of performance on the field.  Most sell for less than $5 and are pretty easy to find.  However, Niemann has an autograph in the 2005 Bowman Chrome set which regularly fetches over $10 and often has competitive bidding on Ebay.  The only explanation for this specific card being twice as valuable as the other Niemann rookie cards is that it is valued more because of the set, rather than the player.  

2005 Bowman Chrome Jacoby Ellsbury Autograph

This set can rarely be found for sale as a whole, but collectors can assemble the set card by card.  All of the cards are still available on the secondary market and haven't really dried up.  Most of the good rookie cards in the set sell north of $100 with paralleled serial numbered versions going much higher depending upon how limited the print run.  I worry about the health of Matt Kemp and Jacoby Ellsbury, so I could see a slight slide with their cards in the future.  However, players like Justin Verlander and Ryan Bruan are not going to get any cheaper and I think as the continue to compile good career numbers these cards will be harder to find and even more expensive.  

Manu Excellence

Topps has been issuing manupatches for the past five years.  While they weren't necassarily the first company to use manupatches in their products, they have continued to evolve the products throughout the years.  Topps started off in 2008 when they issued an All-Star Patch for the members of the National and American League teams.  While the cards didn't really look like a patch, they were still really fun to collect.

2008 Topps Matt Holliday National League All-Star Patch

2008 Topps Justin Verlander American League All-Star Patch

Note the bottom corner of the Holliday Patch card differs from the Verlander patch.  The World Series logo was added to the bottom of his card since the Rockies appeared in the World Series in the fall of 2007.  Kind of unique.  Topps also issued a set of Red Sox patches commemorating their 2007 World Series Championship.  

2008 Topps Jason Varitek World Series Patch

Topps continued their venture into manupatches in 2009.  They issued two forms of patches that year in the form of letter patches and All-Star and Postseason patches.  The manupatches took on more of a patch appearance.  The letter patch sets were very similar to the By The Letter set that Upper Deck used in their SP Authentic releases.  The Topps letter patches, unsigned, featured many great Hall of Famers.  I worked on putting together a few of these sets for some different Cardinals players and Browns Hall of Famer George Sisler.  

2009 Topps Legendary Letters Commemorative Patch Rogers Hornsby

The All-Star and Postseason Patches were also pretty cool and continued into the 2010 Topps releases. I enjoyed the 2010 All-Star and Postseason patches a little bit more than the 2009 version.  The 2009 manupatches had a strong focus on the All-Star games.  For example, Topps did issue a Postseason patch for the Cardinals in 2009 that featured Stan Musial's 1942 appearance in the World Series.  The Cardinals All-Star Patch release in 2009 actually featured Frank Robinson as an Oriole and not a Cardinals player.  

The 2010 manupatches aligned the players and teams to a specific event that was likely memorable for for fans.  Willie Stargell was decked out in an all yellow Pirates polyester jersey with a 70s inspired 1979 Word Series patch.  Where there Cubs cards?  My two favorite Postseason patches were the Evan Longoria 2009 American League Championship Series patch and the 1982 World Series Patch of Ozzie Smith.  

2010 Topps Ozzie Smith 1982 World Series Patch

2010 Topps Evan Longoria 2008 ALCS Patch

Topps also release a set of hat patches in 2010, but I wasn't a huge fan of the set.  Some of the logos followed the traditional hat logos, but some of them mimicked the holiday hats that the Major League teams wear on Memorial Day, 4th of July, and Labor Day.  Pretty ridiculous when you team up a modern tradition with a player like Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson, or many other retired greats from a previous era.  

The 2010 Topps Update featured manu-bat barrels.  Really cool.  Topps also offered variations on the barrels with limited print runs.  Plain wood barrels were numbered to 99, black to 25, and pink to 1.  Excellent concept from Topps to give the patches a bit of a break.  

2010 Topps Update Alfonso Soriano ManuBat Card 

Topps returned to the patches in 2011 and went with a retro theme picking out cool logos from the past and pairing them with a current player on the franchise.  There were many cool patches issued throughout the set and were really fun to collect not only across a favorite team, but also remembering some of the cool logos in other teams pasts.  Thought about going with the Mariners pitchfork, but here are two equally cool examples:

2011 Topps Evan Longoria 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays Patch

2011 Topps Andrew McCutchen 1984 Pittsburgh Pirates Patch

This year Topps went manucrazy for some baseball history.  They started out with three manu-products in their initial Topps base products.  First, they had player patches that featured the last names of Hall of Famers stitched in cursive across an older piece of fabric.  These reminded somewhat of the 2008 manupatches, because they were patches in name only.  Not really very patch like at all.  Not their best effort, but just a warm-up for the manu-excellence that would follow.  

2012 Topps Historic Stitches Bob Gibson Patch 

The other two manu-products followed closer to the bat barrel products issued in the 2010 Update set.  They took a piece of baseball and turned it into a cool product.  For example, the second product in the initial Topps base releases this year was a set of Retired Rings.  This set featured some of the all-time greats of the game with a cool piece of ring with the player's retired jersey number on the ring.  Topps also issued a similar set of patches in their retail boxes, but the reitred number was stitched and not displayed on a ring.  I love the rings, but the retail numbers are also excellent.

2012 Topps Commemorative Retired Number Patch Stan Musial

2012 Topps Retired Rings Stan Musial

Topps also issued an excellent set of World Series pins in their base set this year.  Assuming your team has won a World Series in recent years, then they likely have at least one card in this set.  The pins are metal and generally follow the same design pattern across the different eras of players shown on the cards.  For example, the 1967 Cardinals pin on the Bob Gibson card is nearly identical to the Albert Pujols pin for the 2006 World Championship team.  It would be cool if the pins were somehow unique, but this manu-concept was another excellent collectible for fans.  

2012 Topps Bob Gibson 1967 World Series Pin

Which brings us to the end and in my opinion the best manu-product Topps has issued over the past five years.  I really enjoyed tracking down these two cards from the 2012 Topps Update set featuring Ozzie Smith and Stan Musial.  The cards hail from the Gold Hall of Fame Plaque Set.

2012 Topps Update Stan Musial Gold Hall of Fame Plaque

2012 Topps Update Ozzie Smith Gold Hall of Fame Plaque

I have had a stand alone blog post for a Sandy Koufax autograph, but never a manupatch.  However, these cards might be worthy of such a distinction.  I have been impressed by how much Topps has been able to evolve the manupatch cards over the past five years and think that this latest effort is by far their best effort.  Definitely worthy of a tip of the cap to Topps for producing a quality product and continuing to innovate the manupatches.  Looking forward to what the 2013 releases bring.  

  

30 Year Top 50: 2004 Bowman Heritage

#46-The fact that this set borrowed it's design from the 1955 Bowman set almost single-handly placed it on my list of great card sets from the past thirty years.  The 1955 Bowman set is one of the great vintage sets of all times and has some great cards, even Don Mossi appears in the set.

1955 Bowman Don Mossi 

The 2004 Bowman Heritage sets does have a few other positives beyond the really cool design.  If you have been following my countdown you will notice that many of the sets on this list have been included because they were either innovative in some manner, or they contained a key rookie.   My most important reason for owning this set is the Felix Hernandez rookie card.   Hernandez is one of the better pitchers currently playing, but unfortunately he plays his games in Seattle and not seen by half the country.  Okay, maybe three-fourths.  

2004 Bowman Heritage Felix Hernandez RC

The 2004 Bowman Heritage Felix Hernandez rookie is a short printed rookie card and raw copies can be easily found for less then $20.  Need persuasion to buy one?  Hernandez has spent the eight years of his career playing for a team that has frequently finished near the bottom of the AL West.  Despite having a lack of talent around him, Hernandez has put up almost 100 wins and 1,500 strikeouts.  Check out his comparable player list on Baseball Reference and you will turn up the Eck, Catfish Hunter, and Don Drysdale.  Not bad for a guy who is just 26. 

The 2004 Bowman Heritage features a few other really quality rookies that would be solid additions to your card collection.  My personal favorite as a Cardinals fan is the Yadier Molina rookie.  Most people over look Molina as a player and as a target for their card collection.  I blame it mainly on his brothers and people who watched him take an at-bat the first few years he played.  

2004 Bowman Heritage Yadier Molina RC

Molina first appeared for the Cardinals in 2004 as a defense first catcher.  He certainly played like that for his first few years in the majors, but more recently he has dramatically improved his offense.  While maintaining his reputation as one of the best defensive catchers in the league, Molina has quietly hit over .300 the past two seasons.  In fact, this year he among the league leaders in batting average, has over twenty home runs, and is tied for the National League lead in WAR with Ryan Braun and Andrew McCutcheon.  Not bad for a guy who hit .216 a few years ago.  

You can also find the rookies for Carlos Quentin, Neil Walker, Wade Davis, Phil Hughes, and Kurt Suzuki.  The set also has some sweet umpire autographs if you are looking for something a little bit unique and different to hunt down.  Bruce Froemming included.  

Like the 2004 Bowman Heritage Set?  Not in my countdown is the 2005 Bowman Heritage set.  The 2005 set might ultimately have more important rookie cards then the 2004 release, but it falls short in two areas.  First, the design is borrowed from the 1956 Bowman set and is not really anything great.  Second, the two biggest rookies in the set, in my opinion, are Matt Kemp and Justin Verlander.  Both have more important rookie cards than the Bowman Heritage issue.  Don't worry, both will appear on the countdown in a few weeks.    

2005 Bowman Heritage Justin Verlander RC

2005 Bowman Heritage Matt Kemp RC

Beyond these two rookies there are plenty of other rookie cards in the set for Ryan Zimmerman, Little Weaver, Jacoby Ellsbury, and Andrew McCutchen.  However, just like the Kemp and Verlander rookies, most of the star players in this set have other more important rookie cards.  Still a great set to own, but I give the nod to the 2004 set. 

A D-Bull and Two Trades

One of the best parts of living in the Raleigh-Durham (the Triangle) area is the awesome baseball.  Sure we are known for our basketball, but the quantity and quality of baseball is pretty awesome.  We have two teams in the immediate area, the Durham Bulls and the Carolina Mudcats, and several more within an hour or two.  The Durham Bulls are by far the most recognizable minor league franchise in these parts and they are often quite talented.  I usually pull together cards of players on the team and am pretty happy with the cards both in the short and long term.

This year has been difficult for the Bulls.  For the first time in a long time they are bad.  Really bad.  There are really very few players to be excited about.  Alex Cobb is the team's ace at this point and he is not a star in waiting.  Tim Beckham has been suspended for 'roids and there are a lot of thirty somethings on the team.  So, I have been reduced to finding cool cards of scrubby players.  Example:

2010 Donruss Elite College Patches Kyle Hudson Autograph

I also picked up a bunch of different materials cards and an autograph in two separate trades this week.  The autograph is an Eric Gagne from 2005 Showcase.  This is my second copy of this card, but the person trading it was looking for very little in return.  

2005 Showcase Eric Gagne Autograph 

I also picked up a few Rays and Cardinals relic cards from a trade on Facebook.  I also picked up a few 2012 Topps relics including a David Price, Justin Verlander, and a dirty Evan Longoria.  The cards all came from Ryan who is a fabulous and reliable trader.  Always looking for some good Brewers.   

2001 Fleer Final Cuts Wade Boggs Jersey Card

2010 Topps Allen & Ginter Jon Jay Bat Card

2009 Topps Heritage Clubhouse Collection Ryan Ludwick Jersey

2012 Topps Evan Longoria, Justin Verlander, David Price, and Sergio Santos Jersey Cards

2012 Topps Gypsy Queen James Shields Jersey Card

2008 Bowman Sterling Carl Crawford Refractor Jersey 14/25

New Card and My Marquee Collection

Ladies and Gentleman,

I wish you a good evening and thank you for your visit to my little corner of the blogging world.  For your enjoyment this evening I present to you a fabulous new card which I received this afternoon in my mailbox from a trade last week.  The card is a 2011 Topps Marquee Matt Kemp Gametime Mementos Quad Jersey Quad.  However, you will note from the scan posted below the top-right hand box of the card features a piece of blue patch.  Nice.  Remember that you have until Sunday to enter my first month trivia contest (please read the rules) and the question has been reposted below along with several other scans of Topps Marquee cards which you may, or may not, enjoy looking at during your spare time.


Thank you,
The Snorting Bull

2011 Topps Marquee Matt Kemp Quad Jersey 

Trivia Question
Contest #1 Question- During the summer of 2007 Evan Longoria played briefly for the Durham Bulls.  Who was the primary third baseman that season for the Durham Bulls prior to Longoria's arrival?


Some other random cards: