The Cracker Jack Prize

We all have dreams we aspire to reach in life.  I have several that involve old baseball cards.  One of them is to own an old Cracker Jacks cards from the 1910s.  Not just any old Cracker Jacks card, but I have a short list of players that would be the most ideal to find on a copy of one of those cards.  They are quite expensive. 

Hall of Famers can be hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.  Occasionally you can find a Cracker Jack card for around $50, but not very often.  Inexpensive usually means that there are condition issues that go above and beyond.

Not my card, but a good example of a Cracker Jack card with a few flaws. 

So, for years I have set aside my dream of owning a Cracker Jack card from yesteryear in favor of just owning a few nice ones from the Topps rehash from 2004 and 2005.  Still pretty nice players in there. 

My two favorite Cracker Jack cards are.......

My Yadier Molina rookie card out of the 2004 set.  

I also have a Miguel Cabrera autograph.  He's looks like he's in middle school in this picture.  

Recently one of the unaffordable Cracker Jack cards that is on my short list came available.  It's of George Whitted, or Possum Whitted, who is a Durham, North Carolina native.  I have been trying to find a few of his cards over the past few months.  I have been successful.  

He was on the Phillies at the time his Cracker Jack card was made, but he also played for the Cardinals and for the Durham Bulls.  He also managed the Bulls.  There has been a Buy It Now copy of this card on Ebay for awhile, but at $250 I have been passing month after month.  

It's not the cleanest copy, but I picked it up on the low end of the price spectrum for a Cracker Jack card.  The $250 card, but on major clearance.  I am really happy to add this to my Durham Bulls/Cardinals collection.  It's already high on my list, and it's not been here for long.  

It's in a protective case, so it's not the best scan.  

There are two main flaws with the card.  First, there is chipping along with the edges near the top left corner.  The mark on the side almost looks like it could be from a thumbtack.  The card is also discolored along the bottom border.  I am not quite sure why it is discolored, I am a little scared to take it out of the case at this point.  

Here is the back.  I had originally tried to scan the back, but it did not turn out very well.  I flipped the photo since the backs are upside on Cracker Jack cards.  

I like the bio on the back of this card, which mentions that he is from Durham and that he was on the Cardinals.  There is also mention of him playing in Wadesboro, which is near Charlotte, but there is nothing on his Baseball Reference page about him being on that team.  In fact, when you try to find information about baseball in Wadesboro the only thing that pops up is information about an Expos Minor Leaguer from the early 2000s who was from that town.  

Not my card, but Antonio Garris owns the search for Wadesboro and baseball.  

Overall, it feels good to own a Cracker Jack card that is more than a century old.  Even better that it is a player who appeared for my favorite Major and Minor League teams.  Quite a prize. 

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets from 2004

5. 2004 Fleer Showcase- I bought this box for my birthday during spring of 2004.  I remember rolling into 1,000,000 Baseball Cards in Ballwin, Missouri and picking up a box of this product.  It was National Trading Card Day and I was up for some free baseball cards, but while I was there I was not going to walk out empty handed.  This product had a cool looking design, decent autographs, and some cool insert sets like the Hot Gloves.  I got in on this product towards the end of its run, but unfortunately this was the end of line for this product.  Really cool product and my favorite fleer product from their later years (I am not counting the Upper Deck rehash).  

4. 2004 Topps Cracker Jacks- I love this set.  Is it the red backgrounds?  The minis?  Autographs?  Not sure, but I put together this whole set and have a bunch of the autographs and relics out of the product too.  The design is based on the 1914 Cracker Jacks set and has a lot of little quirks that were in the original: Writing on the back of the card upside down, old time players like Nap Lajoie, and Surprise Packs inside the boxes.  Not the most expensive set, and not the nice throwback set that Topps has ever put out, but still a very good product worth checking out.  

3.  2004 Diamond Kings- I like the Diamond Kings sets.  Donruss ran them several years in the early 2000s until the company came to an end in 2005.  The boxes are fun to open and there are a lot of cool serial numbered cards in this product.  Relics, autographs, lots of possibilities for player and teams collectors.  How many parallels made up this set?  It's huge and I am not sure that I have ever seen a collector put them altogether on a player.   The autographs are sticker autographs, which is a bummer, but many are inexpensive and pretty easy to find.  

2.  2004 Topps Heritage- This one is an easy one.  Hard to believe it only came in second on my list.  The Heritage set in 2004 was based on the 1955 Topps set.  One of my favorite old time sets.  Topps threw in a handful of short prints and some old logo variations.  Like all Heritage sets there are the usual autographs, relics, and serial numbered parallels.  Really great looking set.  

1.  2004 Bowman Heritage- 1955 was a great year for baseball cards.  The Bowman Heritage set was a redo of the 1955 Bowman set.  The television framed cards are a classic.  There are also some cool variations with black and white pictures.  Again, there are autographs, but one of my favorite aspects of this set was the fact that Topps added umpire autographs.  There have been a few umpires included in sets here and there, but this set had a really good run of umps.