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. 

Set Appreciation Post #9 - 2000 Pacific Paramount Update

There was a 2000 Pacific Paramount Update set?  

Yes.  

Seems pretty random, right? 

Yes.  

Well, there was a lot of really weird stuff going on with this set. Let's check out a base card, which kicks off the weirdness of this set. Right off the bat, the first card seems a little bit off, if you collected Pacific cards around this time.  

Paramount Weird Fact #1- No Garrett Anderson?  What about Darin Erstad? 

 

 

Pacific sets were always set up with the teams arranged alphabetically by the city/state name of the team, with the players organized alphabetically by last name within the team set.  The Anaheim Angels were always the first team.  How many late 1990s or early 2000s Pacific sets had either Garrett Anderson or Darin Erstad as card #1?  

 

The answer is almost all of them.  

Pacific put out 12 different baseball card products in 2000.  Nine of the sets had either Anderson or Erstad as card #1.  Pacific Prism had Erstad, no Garrett Anderson card, but they included Jeff DeVanon (you may not know him for good reason) who had the first card.  I rolled my eyes too.  Vanguard had Troy Glaus as the first card, but only two Angels cards in the set.  

 

Same with the 1998 and 1999 Pacific cards, only Jim Edmonds was still on the team, and before Erstad alphabetically.  

Beyond Jeff DeVanon and Troy Glaus, there was also this Adam Kennedy card in the 2000 Pacific Paramount Update set, which was the first card in the Paramount Update set. 

Weird Paramount Fact #2 - The set was sold through the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog and limited to a print run of just 12,500.  I certainly did not get this set from the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog.  Instead, I got it from a local card shop in St. Louis whose owner ordered the sets for his store out of the J.C. Penny Christmas catalog, because it was loaded with Cardinals players.  

Here are a few.  

Here are three of them.  There is another Cardinals card later in the post.  

Gene Stechschulte is actually a pretty interesting player.  He did not have a very long career, playing three seasons all with the Cardinals in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a middle reliever.  I believe he had some arm or shoulder injuries.  What he is really famous for was hitting a home run in his first at-bat on the first pitch he saw. 

 

 

The Diamondbacks were winning this game 15-1 when Stechschulte hit the home run.  LaRussa put him into the game to pinch hit for the pitcher Mike James.  Stechschulte never threw a pitch in this game, but the Cardinals did use Bobby Bonilla for the ninth.

 

Weird Paramount Fact #3 - I own two copies of this set.  I bought one back in 2000, but also ended up with one a few years ago when a co-worker gave me some of his old baseball cards.   Pacific was a solid card manufacturer.  I cannot remember them ever have major issues with quality control.  However, for some reason there are odd sticker pieces that are attached to random cards in both my copies of the set.  

Again, weird for Pacific to have quality control issues.  

What is even going on here?  

The green striped piece on the Bret Boone card actually looks the same/similar to the bottom border of the card.  Only it's clearly a sticker if you could be here to touch it yourself.  Why is there a giant white sticker over Mike Lamb's head?  We will never know.  

 

If there were actually any rookie cards worth owning in this set, there were would likely be tons of annoying "Ebay 1/1" listing with random stickers all over the cards.  

 

Weird Paramount Fact #4- There are 100 cards on the checklist, but I swear at least 50 of the players in this set were not traded or signed as free agents during the year.  Lots of cards like......

.....Chipper Jones on the Braves.  

 

There is also a Derek Jeter on the Yankees, Tony Gwynn on the Padres, Cal Ripken on the Orioles, Barry Bonds on the Giants (free agent signing in 1993), Scott Rolen on the Phillies (traded in the future), Mark McGwire on the Cardinals (traded 3 years earlier), and Mike Piazza on the Mets (traded two years earlier).  

It feels like someone at Pacific said. "Lets make an Update set!".  A bunch of people sat down and started making a checklist. 

 

"Who got traded or signed as a free agent in 2000?  Ken Griffey, Jim Edmonds, and Juan Gonzalez."

 

They probably wrote down a few players who were rookies, a few free agent signings, and they were still 70 cards short of a set.  

"Meh, let's throw in an ARod card." 

This has to be the all-time record holder for traded/update set with the most players who were never traded, nor signed as a free agent during the calendar year.  

 

Weird, But It's Just The Uniform 

 

One of the best parts of getting out an old update set is looking through the cards to find players you know, on teams you don't remember they were on.  Like all old update sets, I found two players who were in unusual places in 2000.   

 

Rickey Henderson started to the 2000 season with the Mets, but was released and signed with the Mariners in the middle of the season.  He was 41, played 92 games, and managed to steal 31 bases.  Not bad.  I actually kind of remember him being on the Mariners, but it's not like I stayed up and watched a lot of Mariners games.  He was there, I did not watch very often. 

Nomo on the Tigers looks a little strange too.  I always think of him as a Dodger, but he played a lot of other places in between his two stints in LA.  I remembered the Mets and Brewers, but I went and looked him up on Baseball Reference.  The Dodgers traded him to the Mets in 1998, and he went back to the Dodgers in 2001.  In between he appeared, or was on the roster of the Mets, Cubs, Brewers, Phillies, Tigers, and Red Sox.  

Nomo threw a no-hitter on the Red Sox?  

Best Cardinals Player Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set  

 

Jim Edmonds.  

 

Edmonds was traded to the Cardinals during Spring Training of 2000.  He was scheduled to be a free agent at the end of the season.  The late 1990s/early 2000s Cardinals were good at trading for pending free agents and getting them to sign before they hit the market.  They did this same thing with McGwire and Scott Rolen. 

Best Durham Bulls Player Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set  

I am going to put two different Bulls players in this section.  I will go with one Minor Leaguer who was promoted to the Majors, along with one Major League who changed teams.  I will do the Major Leaguer first.  

 

 

Klesko appeared for the 1990 Durham Bulls.  After a long run with the Braves, Klesko was traded to the Padres for Reggie Sanders and Wally Joyner.  Love the facial hair.  I believe this was a homecoming of sorts for Klesko, who spent almost all of the second half of his career with the Padres.  Not a Hall of Famer, but a very good hitter. 

 

The former Durham Bulls player who appeared in the set as a Minor League call up was Jeff Sparks.  

 

 

He did not have a really long Major League career.  He only pitched in 23 games between the 1999 and 2000 seasons.  According to his Wikipedia page, his career highlight was a save against the Yankees at the end of the 1999 season.  His Wikipedia page says that he makes YouTube videos with former Dodgers reliever Mike Marshall. 

 

It's true.  

The Bulls get a mention on the back of the Jeff Sparks card.  

Best Player(s) Who Deserved To Be In A Traded Set 

I decided to balance this section with a traded/free agent player and a young player who got called up during the 2000 season.  Veteran player first.  

 

 Seemed like an easy answer.  

 

The rookie card.  Perhaps the only decent rookie card in the entire set.  

 

 Two time Cy Young Award winner in the American League.  His career was really shortened by injuries, but he was Hall of Fame quality when he wasn't hanging out on the disabled list.  He almost had that no-hitter the one time.  

 

 

How Does It Compare?  

 

The design isn't great.  I am not sure all of the weird and quirky aspects of the set are really all that positive.  While I love many things about Pacific Baseball Cards from this era, this is not one of their better efforts.  Where are the parallels?  Where are the interesting die-cut cards?  Paramount Update will occupy the 9th spot for the moment.  

 

Better set next week.  I will go with something a little older too. 

 

9. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

8. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

7. 2000 UD Ionix 

6. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

5. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

4. 2001 Fleer EX 

3.1979 Kellogg's 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Not Really My Style, But Happy You Came Along

I have been working on the Project 2020 cards, mostly sticking with the Bob Gibson and Mark McGwire cards.  Not buying all of them, just sticking with the art work and artists that I enjoy.  Not really been into the "investment" resale and flip thing that has made them popular with some people.  I have posted a few of the cards here over the summer, but I am happy that the prices and insanity around Project 2020 has settled down.  

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the high prices for awhile.  I was able to trade out a Project 2020 Bob Gibson card for an actual Bob Gibson rookie card.  Not sure I could make that trade anymore, which is actually probably a good thing the baseball card hobby.  

Baseball cards are fun, not investments.  

The card that seems to have burst the Project 2020 price bubble was the Ken Griffey card by artist Keith Shore.  You could see it coming a mile away.  The card has an enormous print run.  I am certain there were people who bought hundreds hoping to flip them for a good margin of profit.  They're not quite free on Ebay, but selling at a large discount.  

I figure at this point, the card is at least notable, so I bought one off of Ebay.  I think of this Griffey like a prospect card that was expensive at some point, but is now selling for a dollar because the player has been stuck in A Ball for 6 years.  It felt like I was getting it for free, but not quite.  Some actual money was involved.  

The art is not really my style, but to each their own.  I am just happy this card came along to burst the bubble.  I am sure there are people who really like this card for the art.  The pirate hat people in background are pretty cool.  Seems to be a staple in this guy's art.  

After reading the artist bio on the back, I was curious about the designs he has created for the beer labels.  I had to go check them out.  Similar style art as the cards down to the people with the pirate hats, but it feels like it works better on cans and bottles than cardboard.  

The crashing prices and interest in the Project 2020 cards has helped me go back and add a few cards that I was not sure about at the time they were released, but since several of them are now selling for roughly half of what it would have cost me to originally purchase them, the decision is now much easier.  

The first card I picked up was a remake of the 1987 Topps Mark McGwire rookie card by Blake Jamieson.  One of the criticisms of the Mark McGwire cards in Project 2020 has been that Topps is using the 1987 Topps card with the A's rather than his 1985 Topps rookie card featuring him on the 1984 Olympic team.  

This card combined the two with the wood border from the 1987 card, and the picture of McGwire in a USA Baseball uniform from the 1985 rookie.  I still have issues with the card I will address in a second, but for a discounted price I was willing to add this card to my collection.  

Personally, I would have rather seen the 1985 Topps card used for this set for McGwire.  This seems like a solid attempt to marge the two cards.  My lone fault with this card is McGwire's uniform number.  The artist made McGwire with a 25 jersey, which he wore in both Oakland and St. Louis.  However, he did not wear that number while playing for USA Baseball.  

If you're a long time reader, you know the USA Baseball facility is a few minutes away from my house, and I usually go to games there during the summer.  There is a McGwire plaque inside the stadium that recognizes his play during the 1984 Olympics and commemorates his jersey number being retired a few years back.  I currently cannot find my picture of it.  

McGwire wore 41 while playing in the Olympics Games.  I know, it's a small detail.  I can be picky.  There actually is a card of a player wearing the uniform number 25 for the 1984 Olympic team if you flip through your 1985 Topps set.  That number belonged to......

long time Indians, Giants, and Dodgers outfielder Cory Snyder, who was a shortstop at BYU during college.  His jersey is not retired.  

Here is the back of the McGwire card.  

Blake Jamieson is one of the artists who seems to be a natural fit for the Project 2020 cards since he already did sports art.  I know I posted a card a few weeks back and mentioned that the artists gallery of work online was not kid/work friendly.  Blake Jamieson is fine.  Go ahead and look at his Instagram, nobody from HR will be talking to you.  

One last quick card.  

I believe this card was available the same day as the Griffey show above, or they were at least relatively close.  While I have stuck to McGwire and Gibson cards up to this point, this is the first card that I have bought of a non-Cardinal because of the art work.  

I own the McGwire card by this artist.  The majority of the card is made out of triangles.  The writing on the bottom is the most obvious set of triangles, but you can also find them on the portrait drawing of Koufax's face and hat, along with the picture on the side with him standing on the stairs.  

I also like the original card, but as a collector with a budget, it's not like I am going to be springing for 1 1955 Sandy Koufax card.  Go ahead and assume I won the lottery if the real version of this ever appears on my blog.  

Back of the card.  

Here is the full explanation of the artist and his style.  When I said triangles, I meant to say Pop and Cubism with a surrealist vision. 

Cards I Love Part 23 - 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr.

Upper Deck came out in 1989 with foil packaging and glossy cards.  I was still on Topps, Donruss, and Fleer.  I dabbled with Upper Deck during the early 1990s, but really did not appreciate the brand until the mid 1990s.  Maybe even later than that.  At a $1 per pack, it cut down on the quantity of cards that I could buy if I stuck with my usual brands.

I was in middle school when the Upper Deck card craze kicked in.  The two most important things in my life at the time were baseball cards, and pick up basketball games.  There were plenty of neighborhood kids with Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck cards, and all it would cost me was a large stack of all the other rookie cards that I cared about.  Barry Bonds, Will Clark, Tony Gwynn, Barry Larkin, Ryne Sandberg, Eric Davis, Darryl Strawberry, and Greg Maddux all probably would have left my collection if I had traded for a Griffey rookie.

To me, at the point in my life, Ken Griffey Jr. was a flashy player on SportsCenter.

  

All of those players listed above, I actually got to watch them in person.  They played against the Cardinals.  They had some sort of meaning outside of being a player with highlights on television.  Although, truth be told, I was the only kid in my neighborhood who had actually seen Ken Griffey Jr. in person.

The full box score is here.  This was on vacation.  The bottom of the box score says the weather conditions at the time of the game were unknown.  It was hotter than hot, and the Rangers had metal bleachers in their stadium.  Back to the card.  

I did not trade for an Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.  

For years, the most important Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card in my collection was his 1990 Topps card.  I still love this card, and was more than happy with this being best Griffey card.  

Fast forward about 15 years into the future.  There was a brief window during my life when I did not teach.  It was something along the lines of six months.  I left St. Louis, moved to a small town in southeast Missouri, worked a job or two including managing meeting and convention space for a hotel and restaurant holding company.  I took some historical preservation classes on the side.  More into old buildings than old paintings.

So, one of the buildings I managed meeting and convention space was recently demolished, so this is  the only picture of the building that I can find on the internet.

This had really large rooms inside.  Large weddings, large corporate meetings, things with multiple hundreds of people showing up at an event.  I also had an office inside of the building, along with the office staff that actually worked on selling the dates for the meeting rooms.  There were really busy days with lots of meetings and things to set up, and other days where you were just hanging out.  You know, managing stuff.

One of the slower days, the office staff decided to clean out a box of random items that had been left behind at weddings and meetings.  All sorts of odds and ends.  Umbrellas, flasks, clipboards, mini bottles of liquor, notebooks, fountain pens, keys, centerpieces, candles, and one baseball card complete with a massive screw down holder.

The card was a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.  It was in great condition.

Front of the card.  So iconic.

Back of the card.  

Man, I loved that job.  It took me 15 years to find a copy of this card, but I landed one for nothing.  Actually, I was not really looking for it when I found it.  

I ended up getting a teach job that I was not really looking for a few weeks later.  There is a good parallel to the card.  I packed up my stuff and moved to North Carolina.  Long story how that happened.   Anyway, I love this card, because it reminds me of the brief time I was not a teacher.  Not for long, but I had a good time working in the business world.  

Adding To The Title Wave Of Set Posts.....

I know that there have already been several blog posts in 2019 about different set projects that I am working on at that moment.  It feels like the number is higher than two, but I am going to post a third one today.  It's not only a post about a set project, but it is a brand new set project.  Fresh off the presses.

At some point in December, I sat down and wrote different ideas for set projects I could work this year.  It was a good list and there were several good ideas in a notepad on the desk in my office.  Unfortunately, my two year old daughter colored over all of the pages in purple crayon and ripped out the other pages.  It was a good list, I remember most of it.  The first set on the list was the 1998 Donruss Preferred Title Waves set.

The cards look like this:

It's a die cut insert set.  I have tried to track down on the ratio for these cards, but I do not think that they were very difficult to come across based on the availability of the cards, the price, and the fact that there 30 cards in the set with almost 2000 copies of each card.  That's 60,000 cards.  

I best remember this set as the cards that came in tins.  I think I used to have some hanging around the house, but I am fairly certain they fell victim to a Goodwill run.  Not my picture, but the packaging tins looked like this.....

Thanks Ebay for the picture.  Each tin had a different player on them.  There were different sized and different colored tins, but that's not why I am here.  

There are thirty cards in the set with each card featuring some sort of accomplishment connected to an award or accomplishment of the player on the card.  The card is then serial numbered to the year that the event, or accomplishment took place.  The card at the top celebrates Andres Galarraga winning the 1996 National League Home Run title, so the card has 1996 copies.  

I have a good chunk of the set, but there is really no rhyme or reason to what I own.  I feel like these are cards that I have found in cheapie bins at card shows and the whatnot.  I found a copy of the Manny Ramirez card in a top loader with a $0.50 orange sticker attached.  

The card actually looks like it has been sitting in the sun or something.  Might have to replace this card.  Checklist with the cards I have highlighted red.  

1 Nomar Garciaparra 1997

2 Scott Rolen 1997

3 Roger Clemens 1997

4 Gary Sheffield 1997

5 Jeff Bagwell 1997

6 Cal Ripken, Jr. 1997

7 Frank Thomas 1997

8 Ken Griffey, Jr. 1997

9 Larry Walker 1997

10 Derek Jeter 1996

11 Juan Gonzalez 1996

12 Bernie Williams 1996

13 Andruw Jones 1996

14 Andy Pettitte 1996

15 Ivan Rodriguez 1996

16 Alex Rodriguez 1996

17 Mark McGwire 1996

18 Andres Galarraga 1996

19 Hideo Nomo 1995

20 Mo Vaughn 1995

21 Randy Johnson 1995

22 Chipper Jones 1995

23 Greg Maddux 1995

24 Manny Ramirez 1995

25 Tony Gwynn 1995

26 Albert Belle 1995

27 Kenny Lofton 1995

28 Mike Piazza 1993

29 Paul Molitor 1993

30 Barry Bonds 1993

In all, I have 19 of the 30 cards, which puts me just north of 60% of the set being completed.  I think the biggest challenge in completing this set will be the fact that I need to find a lot of the "big name" players from the late 1990s.  It's going to take some patience to find most of the remaining cards, maybe not Mo Vaughn, at a good price.

For example, there are several copies of the Griffey card floating around on Ebay, almost all of them are around $20 or higher.

and if I just wanted to finish off the set and cross it off the list, I could go buy one of these cards this afternoon.  It would probably be at my house by the weekend.  Same with the other cards I am missing on the checklist.  However, I feel like I am likely going to go the auction route on several of these cards.....

An auctioned copy of the Griffey card.  No, I did not win this one.  I did not even bid, but a difference of $18 is worth a little time to complete this project.  Add in that I am still putting the finishing touches on my Topps Glossy Mail-Ins, and I am going to give myself until April to finish this project off.  

About Those Projects....

Yeah, I made some promise about finding specific cards from specific sets.  I made a tab at the top of my blog where I was supposed to track the projects and report on my progress.  That hasn't happened for a few reasons.

1.  I am writing about half of the posts that I have made in previous years

2.  A limited amount of posts means that I really have to think about which cards are deserving of a post versus what cards are not deserving of a post.

3.  Picking up a single card from a set I am trying to finish is not always exciting.

I know there are very good ways to solve these problems and I am planning on addressing them in a post sometime next week.  So, here is a quick update on where my set projects are versus what the little tab up at the top of my blog says......



1.  1999 Molten Metal Xplosion 

It's done.  It took forever to get a copy of the Pedro Martinez card that was ridiculously expensive because that card is ridiculously difficult to find.

The box that this set is in weighs more than any other set in my collection.  At least it seems that way.  I should take it to the Post Office and stick it on the scale.  It would be fun.  

2.  1999 Topps Gallery Heritage 

Done too.  These cards deserve their own post.  It doesn't even have to have words, these are just really nice cards.  

3.  2002 Bowman Futures Game Autographs 

I have had the opportunity to finish this set, but I am being a bit picky about the cards.  The surfaces of the card are glossy and the autographs tend to smudge off.  For example, I already had a copy of the Ryan Ludwick autograph.  I bought it long ago when he was on the Cardinals.  The autograph is basically gone.

I found a fairly clean copy for my set....

There are a couple of imperfections there.  If I find a really clean version I might trade up again, but I am not really sure I am going to do much better than this copy.  Mint seems to be a pipe dream with this set.

My latest card from this set is a Dennis Tankersley.....

He is a St. Louis native who never quite turned out the way he was supposed to turn out.  Again, I have seen a lot of copies of this card, they are not expensive, but I waited until I was able to find a decent copy.  I went with this card.

In conclusion, I have not finished the Bowman Futures Autograph set.  It has nothing to do with time or effort and everything to do with being picky.

The Junk Wax Dilemma Part 2

At some point two months ago I made a post about trying to finish up my 1990 Upper Deck set which was missing about 100 cards.  After some sorting and quick math the total was actually at 107 cards.  I acquired two boxes of 1990 Upper Deck, which seems like overkill for roughly 100 cards.  It was definitely way more cards than I really needed to finish the set, but ripping open junk wax can be underrated fun.

Just looking at the names on the cards makes me happy.

After opening 72 packs of 1990 Upper Deck I sorted the 107 cards I needed to complete my set into my box and then sat down to flip through the rest looking for cool players I liked watching as a middle school kid back when these were brand new.

First, I had done some dabbling in the 1989 Upper Deck set, but never really ripped a ton of packs from that set.  The 1990 set was the first year that I really worked on an Upper Deck set.  Of course the best card in the 1989 Upper Deck set was the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.  It was the most popular card from the moment that the set was first released.  The 1990 Upper Deck set also had a really popular Griffey card.  There were other popular rookie cards in the set, but the 1990 Griffey second year card was my favorite card in this set at the time.....

One of the other really popular rookies in the set was Yankees first baseman Kevin Maas who hit 21 home runs while only playing half of a season.  Everyone was sure that he was going to be awesome. Pretty card to have in 1990.......

Maas played a few more years with the Yankees and a year with the Twins, but never really lived up to the half season he played in 1990.  The junk wax era cards always get the bad rap of not having any really stand out rookie cards, but there are plenty of good name rookie cards in the 1990 Upper Deck set like Sammy Sosa and Frank Thomas.  There are plenty of other players in this set too who turned out to have decent Major League careers......

like these two guys were pretty good players for most of the 1990s.  Sure these cards can be found for next to nothing, but one of these guys had more than 2000 hits and 400 stolen bases.  The other one had more than 350 home runs and 1000 RBIs.  Not a bad pair of players and there are others like this in the set.  

There are also the usual superstar cards like Bonds and Henderson....

but my real enjoyment came out looking at the Cardinals cards in the set.  Being a Cardinals fan living outside of St. Louis I really took time to find their cards in the set.  1990 was really the end of the WhiteyBall Era teams with Vince Coleman, Wille McGee, and Terry Pendleton.  Ozzie stuck around for awhile longer, but I loved those teams.  My favorite two Cardinals out of the set, I eliminated Ozzie because he's the easy answer, were.......

This is actually the last Willie McGee Cardinals card until he came back to the team in 1996 as a fourth outfielder.  He also won the National League batting title in 1990 even though he finished the season playing for the A's.  This is also one of the final Coleman cards as a Cardinal as he would leave for the Mets at the end of the season.

Not the flashiest set, but overall I had a good time opening up these packs and checking out these cards.  Happy that I could finish off a set while I was at it.

Had to listen to some 1990 music while I was writing this post.  I went with my most played album from that year on my iTunes which is......