The Made-Up Set Checklist

A few weeks back, I showed off a few 1975 Topps Minis that I was going to make into an official 1975 Durham Bulls team set.  I posted five different cards, but I was a little unsure of exactly how many former Durham Bulls players were in the set.  I guesstimated that it would be around 20 cards.  I was pretty close, but I may have to go back and double check again.  The Bulls were affiliated with several different teams in the 1960s and early 1970s, which makes it a little more challenging to track down all the players.  

Checklist in a few.  

First, I found two new cards for my Durham Bulls set last week.  

#371 - Gates Brown - 1961 Durham Bulls 

Gates Brown played 13 years in the Majors, all for the Tigers.  He was never a starting player, but was an important bench player for years.  He still holds many of the American League pinch-hitting records.  I understand that the opportunities for bench players have dwindled in the American League since the start of the DH, but Brown's numbers are impressive.  Brown has the all-time American League pinch-hit records for at-bats, hits, and home runs.  He also hit .450 as a pinch hitter in 1968, which is 1 point off the American League record.  

Cliff Johnson, Matt Stairs, and Lenny Harris have all passed Brown for the Major League record for all the categories listed above, but Stairs and Johnson played in both leagues.  Lenny Harris only played in the National League.  

#90 - Rusty Staub - 1962 Durham Bulls 

I am not sure that Staub needs a long write up.  Good player for a long time.  

Here is my checklist.  Bolded names are cards that I have already.  After my 2 new cards above, I am now at 7 cards out of 23 former Durham Bulls in the 1975 Topps Mini cards.  Roughly 30%.  

#44 - Pat Dobson

#89 - Jim Ray 

#90 - Rusty Staub 

#98 - Rich Folkers 

#125 - Ken Singleton 

#143 - Cliff Johnson 

#155 - Jim Bibby 

#165 - Doug Rader 

#180 - Joe Morgan 

#245 - Mickey Lolich 

#282 - Jerry Morales 

#286 - Mike Jorgensen 

#290 - Jon Matlack 

#342 - Leroy Stanton 

#343 - Danny Frisella 

#351 - Bob Boone 

#371 - Gates Brown 

#441 - Bob Heise 

#476 - Ed Figueroa 

#615 - Pat Darcy 

#621 - Rawley Eastwick 

#630 - Greg Luzinski 

#637 - Ted Martinez 

I Will Just Make Up My Own Set

There was no Minor League Baseball season this year, which means there was no post on this year's Durham Bulls team set.  It's an annual rite of fall.  Lining the cards up as straight as possible on scanner, hoping that they don't all shift when I close the lid.  I need to start running those posts with a five year delay.  They are actually more fun to look at now then at the time the cards were produced.  

Look at this group from 2014.  

You've got the reigning National League leader in saves, a guy with three gold gloves, and the manager of the Toronto Blue Jays.  I think Enny Romero might have been the highest rated prospect in this group in 2014 and he's not even playing anymore.  

Crazy stuff.  

With no Durham Bulls team set coming out in 2020, I decided I would just work on putting together another team set from a different year.  After checking out what was available on Ebay, I decided that was actually not much of a challenge.  So, I am making up my own Durham Bulls set to collect.  

Something I don't already own.  

Something with interesting players.  

Something with a decent quantity of cards.  

Something that will require me to work harder than placing one Ebay or COMC order.  

After a lot of thought, I am putting together a 1975 Topps Mini Set of the Durham Bulls.  There were a ton of Durham Bulls players who were in the Majors at the time.  The cards are fun to collect.  While they are easy to find, it's such an odd combination of players that I cannot just click a few Ebay listings and have all the cards. 

In fact, I am still making the checklist.  I think the answer is between 15 and 20 cards.  I will let you know for sure with the next post.  So, for tonight, I have my first group of cards fresh out of the mailbox.  

Scans are jumbo, cards are minis.  

#476 - Ed Figueroa - 1968 Raleigh-Durham Mets 

It makes me cringe when I see the "Raleigh-Durham" one the back of a baseball card sometimes.  What person thought it was a good idea to change the name of the Durham Bulls?  Obviously someone in the Mets front office, but the Phillies kept it later on.  Figueroa was on the Raleigh-Durham Mets.  He's a player I learned about after moving to North Carolina.  Ed had two Top 10 Cy Young finishes and pitched for two World Series winners with the Yankees.  

He actually hurt his arm while pitching here, hence the 7 games, and quit baseball to join the Marines.  After a stint in Vietnam, he ended up in the Minors with the Giants, but was traded to the Angels.  Ed Figueroa made his Major League debut pitching in long relief for Nolan Ryan who had given up 3 runs in the first inning and had walked the bases loaded in the second.

 

#245 - Mickey Lolich - 1959-1961 Durham Bulls 

Lolich is best know for winning Game 7 of the 1968 World Series.  He also retired as the all-time left-handed strikeout leader before being passed by Steve Carlton.  Randy Johnson and C.C. Sabathia have also passed him, making him fourth.  Lolich ranks 20th overall, roughly 150 strikeouts away from 3,000.  I don't think Mickey is a Hall of Famer, but he's better than Jack Morris.  Maybe he is? 

#351 - Bob Boone - 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies 

Another Raleigh-Durham card.  Bob Boone played 19 years for the Phillies, Angels, and Royals.  He also managed the Royals and Reds for awhile in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  Boone was on the 1980 Phillies World Series winner.  He didn't win the MVP in that series, but he did hit .412.  While Boone did not win the World Series MVP, he did win 7 Gold Gloves.  

Is the jacket he is wearing under his uniform from an Army surplus store?  

#630 - Greg Luzinski - 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies 

I am a little disappointed that Luzinski's Minor League stats were not included on the back of his card considering that he and Boone were in Durham the same season.  Luzinski was shuffled between the Minors and Majors several times during his first few seasons, so maybe with the multiple teams over multiple seasons it would not have fit on the card.  He hit 31 home runs that season with the Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which would look nice on a baseball card.  

Luzinski was an old guy on the White Sox by the time I started watching baseball.  "The Bull" is not a Hall of Famer, more a great of his era.  He and Schmidt were a pretty scary tandem in the middle of the Phillies lineup.  

Last night.  

#44 Pat Dobson - 1960 Durham Bulls 

This card was made near the end of Dobson's career.  He played with the Durham Bulls while he was coming through the Minors with the Tigers.  The 1960 Bulls were 20 games under .500 and had a starting rotation with both Pat Dobson and Mickey Lolich, who were both on the 1968 Tigers World Series team.  Dobson also pitched for the 1971 Orioles, who made it to the World Series, but lost to the Pirates.  

More 1975 Topps Minis and a checklist next week.  

Mini Mania!

The other week I saw a Facebook post from Topps that was a little too good to pass up.  Three boxes of a newer product for $50?  That's a steal, and while I am sometimes critical of rehash products, I was happy to pick up some boxes of mini for a great price.  2014 was the third edition of the Topps Mini product, and since I have bought exactly zero packs of the previous two sets, I was excited to see the product in person.  

Well, let's start off with the no brainer stuff first.  The set is 660 cards and basically mirrors the regular Topps base set that we all know and love.  As far as I can tell the checklists and the pictures are the same as the regular full version of the Topps set.  Just smaller.  

If I didn't tell you that the Matt Holliday card pictured above was a card from Topps Mini you would really not have any way of knowing it was not from the regular set.  So, yeah the base set of Topps Mini is a rehash and there is no other nice way to put it.  That's really the only negative with this product, but there are three huge positives with this product that still make it a great buy at less than $20 per box:  

1.  Small numbers of relics and autographs 

I bought three boxes of Topps Mini and got three relics.  Autographs are actually one every four boxes, so the autograph odds were actually against me.  I love autographs and relics, but they are way over done.  Relics have been downright stale for awhile and much of the problem, in my opinion, has a lot to do with overproduction.  Has anyone ever tried to track down and buy some of the relic cards out of the late 90s Upper Deck products when the odds were long on landing a relic?  The cards have held there value very well and are highly sought after.  Not to say that reducing the numbers of relic cards is the only way to make them fresh and relevant, but it would help a lot.  Topps Mini got this right.  

2. Simplified Inserts 

Not saying that all sets have complicated inserts, or that only one insert set is a good thing, but it makes it easy to put them together when there are few of them and they are simple.  Topps Mini only has one insert set, The Future Is Now, and after three boxes I put together a large portion of the set.  How many insert sets did the regular Topps set have?  How many of the insert sets have a repetitive feel to them?  

3. Simplified Parallels

There are printing plates in Topps Mini, but I did not pull one.  I believe that they are one per case, or something like that, so I missed out.  I did pull a black parallel of Brandon Belt which is numbered out of 5......

Three pink minis which are numbered out of 25 and.........

a bunch of Golds which are numbered to just 99.  How many parallels were in the regular 2014 Topps set?  There is orange, green, light blue (Wal-Mart), red (Target), gold, camo, black, pink, acetate, platinum, and the printing plates.  That's a lot and I am not sure sometimes how modern player collectors manage to cope with all of these parallels.  Pretty overwhelming and I am glad that mini has just four parallels.  

Rays from the Vault

This is one of those posts where I feel like the scan I spent ten minutes trying to make does not really do the card justice.  I am not really all that into encased cards.  Never really like the whole graded card thing.  All of the Topps sets with slabbed cards, not my cup of tea.  However, every once in awhile I see an encased card or two worthy of my time.  Tonight's card is one of those cards......

This is another card from the Topps Vault.  I have about four other cards I have picked up from their Ebay store over the past two or three years.  If you have never checked out the Topps Vault page on Ebay, it's basically a whole bunch of odds and ends the card giant has hanging out around their offices.  Old pictures, slides, photo proofs, sample cards, and about anything else you could think they'd have sitting around.

This Archer gem is actually a blank back card from the Topps Mini set.  I am not sure what the purpose of the blank back cards are in production, but Topps has a ton of them.  For all I know they just make blank back cards so that collectors like me will buy them off of Ebay.  Either way, I am happy with my latest Archer 1/1.  Third one I have added during this past month.

The card also comes with the really cool and very official looking Topps Vault certificate.........

Of all my Topps Vault pick ups almost all of them have been Rays items recently.  I am going to make it a goal to add something really cool from the Cardinals, or maybe another team, in the near future.  I am going to go do my other job and watch Fantastic Mr. Fox....Have a good evening!