How Scarce are the Mini Relics

Allen and Ginter has both full sized card relics and mini-framed relics.  The minis are not as plentiful as the regular.  I was curious as to just how rare they are.  I'll let Ebay help me answer that question.

There are four Cubs with mini-relic cards.  I checked both current listings and sold items as of Sunday night when I wrote this.  Here's what I found:

Ernie Banks - two total, one currently listed and one sold

Kris Bryant - eleven total, four currently listed and seven sold

Anthony Rizzo - twelve total, four currently listed and eight sold

Addison Russell - ten total, five currently listed and five sold

All of those numbers seem pretty low for a set that has been out for almost two weeks. It's safe to say that they are in fact scarce.

 I also checked a couple of the players full sized relics.  Bryant has had 47 sold or listed and Addison Russell has had 30.  Those numbers are three or four times higher than the mini cards.

Does that make the minis three or four times as scarce?

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 15,019 Cubs cards from 122 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1970 Topps Super #40 Billy Williams  The card is from 1970, but the picture looks to be from the mid-Sixties.  I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this picture was taken the same day as...

...this one.

1980s: 1980 TCMA All Time Cubs #4 Larry French  Monsieur Larry spent seven seasons pitching for the Cubs.  His record was 98-84 with an ERA of 3.54.  Those are mediocre numbers, not All Time Cubs numbers.

1990s: 1990 Team Issued Marathon #18 Dwight Smith  His average dropped 60 points and his RBIs were cut in half.  Yes, Dwight Smith had a sophomore slump in 1990.

2000s: 2003 Flair Greats Ballpark Heroes #5 Ernie Banks  Wrigley Field in the background and 1968 Ernie in the front...nice card!

2010s: 2014 Heritage #348 Kyuji Fujikawa  How do you say flop in Japanese?  In English you can also say Fujikawa.  In Japanese, Google Translate says it is 
フロップ

1965 Cubs Cartoons

The 1965 card back design was a first - the cartoon was at the top of the card back and it had the player's name.  Almost every card in the set had a cartoon.  Only players with really long careers ( and yearly stats) were skipped.  Of the 24 base Cubs, just one, Lou Burdette, didn't have one.

The 1965 Cubs were young and not very good.  Of the 23 cartoons, only nine mention an accomplishment from their major league career.  The rest are from high school, college, or the minors.

The Full Sized Relics

I'm still just killing time until my Ginter shipment arrives...hopefully today.

Topps added the full-sized relics to Ginter in 2013.  They are more plentiful than their mini-sized companions. They are also unnecessary if Topps would just stick to the much nicer minis.

In the first four years, I've got 12 Cubs.

The Allen and Ginter Mini Relics

My other two mini relics have arrived.

 

There is still one more Cubs card out there and I expect I'll never get it.  Topps made a card for Ernie Banks.  So far just one has been listed on Ebay and it sold for $89.87.  That is far beyond my budget.

A free image borrowed from Ebay is all I can afford right now.

Framed mini relics have been a part of Allen and Ginter since the start in 2006.  They've been one of my favorites items in any set.  Over the years there have been 46 of them for  the Cubs.  Below are the 45 I've got.

More Scoreboards

I'm still waiting for my Ginter cards to arrive, so I'm passing the time with more shots of the Wrigley scoreboard.

The three years with the most views of the Wrigley board among Cubs cards are 1960 - 1962.  I decided to browse through the set to see if there were other looks.  I don't own any of these complete sets, so my browsing was done via the Cybercard Museum.

There were.several from each of the years:

Both the 1960 and 1961 sets give eight additional peeks at the board.

In the 1962 set we're down to just a couple extra looks.

Here's the Board

On Saturday I showed just how rare it is for the Wrigley scoreboard to show up in a Topps Cubs card.  I found just five cards out of 1660.

GCRL left the following comment: "Thank goodness for 1981 Donruss."

The 1981 set was Donruss' first set.  There are way too many fuzzy, foggy pictures but most of the National League cards have pictures taken at Wrigley Field.

 

Two of the Cubs give us a glimpse of the board.

I paged through the entire set and found all of the cards that show the scoreboard.  Including these two, there are 17.

And while I'm at it, a little American League too.  Most of those pictures were taken at Comiskey Park or in Milwaukee.  Donruss gave us several looks at both of their boards...here's one of each.

 

My First 2017 Ginter Card

My main stash of Ginter Cubs will be coming from Brentandbecca in a week or so.  I'll be getting the regular Cub cards, the Cubs in the What A Day set, and the full sized relics.  Brent wasn't able to get me the four Cub mini relics.  They odds on them are pretty high and he wasn't sure he'd get all of them.  I am on my own for those.

When I'm getting items on my own, I like to pounce on Ebay as soon as the set is released.  I've found that the earlier I buy things, the better the price.  I was able to find three of the Cubs mini relics within a day of the Ginter release at very reasonable prices.

The first card arrived in the mail on Saturday.

I've always like the Ginter framed relics.  They are much classier looking than usual relics.  It was a shame that Topps went to full sized cards a few years ago and kept the minis as SPs.

In the next few days I'm expecting the delivery of the Rizzo and Russell cards.  The final Cub is Ernie Banks.  Thus far only one has been listed on Ebay and it has an opening bid of $74.99.

I think I'll just end up with three of four Cubs this year.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 15,016 Cubs cards from 122 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1971 Topps #364 Johnny Callison  You know that your career is in trouble when you are traded in the off-season for a player to be named later.  The Cubs dealt Callison to the Yankees in January, 1972 for a PTBNL.  The Cubs had until May to claim a player of some cash.  On May 17 they received reliever Jack Aker.

1980s: 1988 Fleer Baseball's Hottest Start #9 Andre Dawson This oddball comes from the Dawson player collection.  The card is part of a 44-card boxed set.  Dawson was one of baseball's hottest stars in 1988, coming off of his MVP season in 1987.

1990s: 1996 Stadium Club #180 Brian McRae  This card looks like it belongs in Studio, not Stadium Club.  Hatless cards were something from the '60s, not the '90s.

2000s: 2003 Fleer Traded #140 Troy O'Leary The Cubs signed O'Leary as a free agent prior to the 2003 season.  He was a bust, hitting nearly 60 points below his career average.  The 2003 season was hit last as a major leaguer.

2010s: 2012 Topps Update #258 Josh Vitters Vitters was one of the Cubs top prosects inherited by Theo from the Hendry era.  The cynical part of me says that Theo brough him up in 2012, knowing that he would fail, to show just how bad the system was.  Vitters was a total flop, hitting .121 in 99 at bats.  He would never return to the majors.