Things I Am Sorting Part 5

We are getting near the end of the first two projects that I listed at the top of my page.  I still need to put up a post about my progress towards completing the 2001 Topps Archives set, but my Molten Metal Xplosion set is almost completely crossed off.  Here is a list of the cards I needed out of the set heading into last week.

2 Jose Canseco

11 Miguel Tejada

20 Pedro Martinez

23 Matt Williams

46 Javy Lopez

50 Andy Pettitte

79 A.J. Hinch

95 Omar Vizquel

99 Mike Mussina

105 Roberto Alomar

114 A.J. Burnett RC

121 Manny Ramirez  

I had actually failed to update the percentage of the set that was completed on my Projects tab after I made my last post on this set.  The page lists my progress at 55%, but I was actually at 92% of the complete set.  Well, that was until I received another batch of these cards in the mail along with a nice surprise from a generous collector.  

Here are the new cards I added to my Molten Metal Set:

A few new cards.  If you check the list above you will notice that the Kerry Wood card is not actually there, but the collector who traded me this lot of cards threw in the card as a bonus.  It's not a dupe, it's actually a promotional card.  This is a look at the back of the card....

I had not even thought about collecting a promotional sample.  A nice little bonus on top of the regular 150 baseball cards in the set.  The lot of cards scanned above actually takes 5 off of my list of 12 cards, leaving me with just 8 left to find.  It brings my completion percentage up to  95%.  

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard-#49 Kerry Wood

My Top 50 Players On Cardboard 
#49
Kerry Wood

1997 Bowman Kerry Wood RC

Hobby Impact-
Wood's card were highly sought after for a few years in the late 90s and early 2000s and still have a pretty solid following to this day, but the price has come way down and the availability has gone way up.  As a Cardinals fan, I was never a huge fan of Wood's, but I still rock some nice Kerry Wood cards in my collection.  It's not hard to find his autographs for under $10 and rookie cards for a few bucks.  There are still a few cards that still fetch some high dollars.  Always bothers me to see him on cards as something other than a Cub.  I have three players on my list who are Cubs, I also had Mark Prior on my initial list, and Wood is the third of the three.  However, sometimes when talking to Cubs fans I feel like some of them might right him higher than a certain bunny hopping outfielder and a second baseman turned manager.

On The Field Impact-
The one drawback to Wood always seems to be the fact the Cubs fans lament the fact that he did not live up to "the hype".  He was still an above average starter for four or five years and almost got the team to the World Series in 2003.  He had a couple of nice seasons as a relief pitcher, but I often feel like many cannot move on past the 20 strikeout game in 1998 against the Astros.  The slider to Derek Bell at the end of the game is my favorite pitch.  If Bell had been using a six foot bat I am still not sure he would have hit that pitch.




I don't get the obsession with this game or why it almost held against him, used as a measuring stick of what could have been, by Cubs fans.

Favorite Card-
I almost thought about putting the 1997 Bowman card down here again, or scanning a copy of his Bowman Chrome rookie.  To avoid redundancy, I am going to go with his 1998 Bowman's Best Autograph.  Wood signed a lot of cards during his career and was really generous with signing even later into his career.

1998 Bowman's Best Kerry Wood Autograph

Many of Wood's autographs were even on-card.  This one is a pretty hard one to find, is an on-card autograph, and features Wood in a Cubs uniform.  Good card to track down if you had to own an autograph from Wood.  Finally, I would like to share one of Wood's finer moments of his career captured on film:

Pudge? Where's Raffy?

I ran across a really inexpensive dual relic from the early 2000s this week when I found a really nice dual bat of Ivan Rodriguez and Alex Rodriguez.  This card hails from the 2001 Upper Deck MVP set, which has some great relic cards for a cheap box, and features the two former All-Stars as Rangers teammates.

2001 Upper Deck MVP Ivan Rodriguez/Alex Rodriguez Dual Bat Card

While the 2001 Rangers were a pretty good offensive team with the two Rodriguezs, Raffy Palmeiro, Ruben Sierra, Michael Young, and Rusty Greer the team finished in last place 16 games below .500.  I guess signing ARod for 250 million then letting Darren Oliver and Rick Helling anchor your rotation is not a great idea.  Anyway, I have spent some time over the years collecting the relic cards from this set, batting gloves and dual bat pieces, and have whittled my checklist down to a Raffy card.

If it weren't a busy week I would scan all the cards, batting gloves too, and post them.  However, I do work a job that pays money and I have an Open House tomorrow night.  Might be nice to be prepared. So, instead of a whole set, I bring you my five favorite dual bat cards from the 2001 Upper Deck MVP set.

2001 Upper Deck MVP Chipper Jones/Rafael Furcal Dual Bat Card

A future Hall of Famer, and former Durham Bull, in the person of Chipper Jones and a shortstop from the Cardinals 2011 World Championship team.  What's not to love?  

 2001 Upper Deck MVP Carlos Delgado/Jose Vidro Dual Bat Card

Anytime you can find a cool Expos card is a good day.  Anytime you can find a cool Expos card without Dawson, Carter, or Vlad is double cool.  Not sure I dig Delgado, but if Upper Deck had done an Orlando Cabrera/Jose Vidro card the awesome meter might have exploded.  

2001 Upper Deck MVP Jose Canseco/Ken Griffey Jr. Dual Bat Card

I really have a nice collection of Griffey cards for a non-Griffey collector.  Then I have this conversation piece with Griffey and Canseco.  

2001 Upper Deck MVP Frank Thomas/Sammy Sosa Dual Bat Card

There are not many Sosa relics, or Sosa autographs, floating around out there.  I like this one with Frank Thomas and the two good Chicago players from the time.  I could have also put the Magglio/Frank Thomas card here too, but Sosa.  

2001 Upper Deck MVP Kerry Wood/Rick Ankiel Dual Bat Card

Neither really lived up to the hype, but it's a really sweet card.  I like that Ankiel is hitting even though he would have been a pitcher at this point in his career.

1999 Topps Stadium Club Kerry Wood Autograph

A little 90s goodness for your Tuesday morning.  I love finding cards from the late 90s and picked this card up last week.  The Stadium Club brand ran from the early 90s through the early 2000s with a brief comeback a few years ago.  The brand was initially billed as a premium card set and maintained it's focus on quality and great photography throughout its decade long run.  One of the features added to the set in the late 90s was the inclusion of autographs in the set.  The Co-Signers card were the most popular autographs in the set, but there were lots of good single signature cards in those Stadium Club sets too including this one of Cubs hurler Kerry Wood.

1999 Topps Stadium Club Kerry Wood Autograph

The most challenging aspect of hunting down the Stadium Club autographs is condition.  The autographed cards have the same high gloss finish that the base Stadium Club cards had making the autographs subject to smears, smudges, and fading.  Fading seems to be the most common problem, but they aren't as bad as the 2007 Upper Deck Sweet Spot set.  I was happy to see this Kerry Wood autograph and was able to swap out a few duplicate late 90s autographs for this card.  Kerry Wood was a good closer for the Cubs for several years and a great starting pitcher for a few years before injuries sent him to the bullpen.  He has several nice on-card autographs from early in his career, but his later autographs tend to be stickers. 

2001 Donruss Class of 2001 Bud Smith Jersey

I also picked up a cool Bud Smith jersey card in this trade.  I enjoy picking up Bud Smith cards which are really, really cheap.  If you look up his career numbers they are rather unimpressive pitching part of two seasons with a 7-8 record and an ERA of almost 5.  Bud Smith was also part of the trade that landed the Cardinals Scott Rolen from the Phillies and also did this:

 

30 Year Top 50: 1998 Skybox EX-2001

#39-I fully appreciate vintage baseball cards and have plenty of cards that predate 1983.  The next set on my countdown of cool sets is the antithesis of vintage baseball cards.  I know many vintage collectors who look at some of the modern cards and cringe especially sets like the 1998 Skybox EX-2001.

Before I get rolling on this set: If this were a set name list, this card set would be in the bottom ten.  Easily.  The name is ridiculous and was a follow up to the 1997 Skybox EX-2000 set.  Also a terrible name.  The set line continued through 2003 with equally troubling and ridiculous names.

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Mark McGwire

There were several other plastic like cards issued sometime in the late 90s and early 2000s, but this set was always the best of them in my opinion.  One argument against plastic cards is the fact that you can have any imperfections with plastic cards.  Very true of card sets such as Topps Tek were the picture and design were printed directly onto the card surface.  However, the Skybox EX cards always had a raised surface around the player picture that make it subject to the same imperfections as other cards.  In fact, take a quick scan of secondary sales sites and you will see that there are graded cards from this set there are clearly imperfect.

The set itself was a 100 card set with an exchange card of Kerry Wood available for a total of 101 base cards.  The Wood card might be the best card in this set.  Since it was an exchange card and short printed there are obviously fewer cards available, but it also seems to be one of those cards that was an early release of a player, not a true rookie card, that people treat the same as a rookie card issue.  The set and base cards can be difficult to locate and the boxes that are stilling floating around are often not cheap.

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Kerry Wood Exchange

The Skybox EX-2001 set did have insert sets and even some autographs.  However, the real chase cards in this set were the Essential Credentials cards.  I have had a few write ups about these cards in the past featured in a highlight about my Ray Lankford collection.  The Essential Credentials were a double parallel set.  The Essential Credentials Now and Essential Credentials Futures sets were serial numbered to different numbers with one set having an ascending run with the card numbers and one have a descending run with the card numbers.  Complicated I know.  There are several up on Ebay write now for triple digits, or close.  The last completed sale was a Larry Walker out of 22 for more than $200.

1998 Skybox EX-2001 Craig Biggio Essential Credentials Now

Overall, this set was among the first plastic card sets out on the market and the best of the bunch in my opinion.  The fad surrounding these cards has faded and there hasn't been a similar card release in a very long time.  Since the set is fairly small it is not very difficult to assemble in a short time.  It's a fun set build too.

Like the 1998 Skybox EX-2001 set?  Not in my Top 50 for the past 30 years is the 1999 Skybox EX-Century set.  I had thought long and hard about putting the 2003 Skybox EX set here, but I think the 1999 model edges it out.  The 1999 issue of the Skybox EX set featured a similar design as the 1998 set, but I feel like Skybox did a good job of cleaning up the design a little bit. 

1999 Skybox EX-Century Barry Larkin

Mainly, I like how the player name is written going down the side of the card and the team logo has been incorporated into the side of the card.  Also similar to the 1998 set, the 1999 set was really about the chase for the Essential Credentials cards.  The parallel sets were again set up the same way with the dual sets with varying numbers.

1999 Skybox EX-Century Essential Credentials

The other factor that made the 1999 Skybox EX issue was the insert sets.  The earlier sets featured inserts, but they didn't fit the overall feel of the set at times.  Later sets started to dabble with autographs and jersey pieces.  The 1999 inserts I felt fit the feel of the set very well and were still in the mode of cool 90s inserts too.  One of my favorite inserts was the Favorites for Fenway set which somehow tried to predict the All-Star teams for 1999.  I guess they missed with J.D. Drew.  

1999 Skybox EX-Century J.D. Drew Favorites for Fenway