The Update Cubs Are Starting To Roll In

Some of my Update cards are starting to arrive.  My big shipment from Brentandbecca is still coming.  It takes Brent a while to rip and sort 95 cases of cards.

But not all the Cubs cards are coming from Brent. Two of the insert sets were retail-only, which he doesn't rip.  Those cards were going to have to come from elsewhere.

Luckily I was able to find a seller on Ebay that had all of them, all five.

 

Happ and Darvish are Legends in the Making. This set was also a part of Series One and Series Two.  With two more in Update, the Cubs Legends total stands at seven.

An insert set making it's debut in Update is Postseason Preeminence.  The Cubs landed three players on the checklist:

 

 

Bryant, Lester, and Rizzo.  I sure hope they have a chance to be preeminent in the 2019 Postseason. 

Varied Colors: 1975 Fixed

Thought I was done with these, didn't you?

I thought I was done, too.  But I found a mistake with the 1975 set.

I was looking through the 1975 binder to get a list of all the different color combinations Topps used.  i was curious to see how many skipped the Cubs.  In doing so, I found a two different combinations that I had included as one.

 

I had these as Brown Orange.  I just assumed that the Stone card had a printing issue with the bottom.  Actually, the bottom for Stone's card is tan, not orange.  There was another Brown Tan card, too.

I went back and corrected the set composite.

The 1975 Cubs set has 14 color variations, not 13 as I had in the original post.

But 14 out of how many total combinations?  Turns out that Topps had 18 different color combos, and four didn't include any Cubs cards.

The Cubs missed out on...

...Orange Yellow,

 ...Yellow Blue,

...Red Yellow, and...

...Red Blue.  And of course, which combo would have made the most sense for the Cubs?

Red Blue!

Catching Up with Another Brand, Leaf

I was familiar with the Leaf brand of cards put out by Donruss starting in 1985.  I have all the Leaf Cubs cards from 1985 through their end in 2005.

What I didn't have were the Leaf cards from waaay back.  Leaf put out the first color post-WWII set, in 1949.  The set is one of the toughest sets to complete.  It's also one of the more expensive sets. 

I knew that the only way I was going to get to check this one off my list was to get a reprint set.  Yet even those are nowhere to be found.  Search Ebay using "1949 Leaf reprint Cubs" and you will get zero matches.  The best I can do is save the search and wait for something to show up.

Eleven years later, in 1960, Leaf put out another set.  This one came out in competition with Topps.  To avoid legal trouble, the packs didn't have gum, but instead, a marble.  Really, a marble!

I don't think those packs stacked up very well in a box.

The checklist consists of 144 cards issued in two series.  The second series, #73-144, are scarce.  There are eleven Cubs in the set, including seven in the second series.  No reprints were found for this set either, so I picked up the real McCoys.  Only a couple of the second series were priced pretty high.  I decided to treat myself.

The cards themselves are very plain looking.  They have a black and white picture, and the player's name, position, and team are printed in black.  There is no color.

Also missing from the set is the Cubs biggest star in 1960, Ernie Banks.  I'm guessing that there were several star players that Leaf couldn't sign.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty plain looking, aren't they.

When you see them compared to what Topps was putting out, it's pretty easy to see why Leaf lost this battle.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 16,090 Cubs cards from 135 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1960 Topps #489 Steve Ridzik  He looks like he should be the pitching coach, not a pitcher.  Does anyone else find that there are lots of players on cards from this era that look really old?  Assuming that this was taken in spring training, 1960, Ridzik was just shy of his 31st birthday.

1980s: 1988 Star #8 Mark Grace  Grace was featured in both the 1988 Star Base and Star Gold set.  This card is on of the eleven of him from the base set.  The orange border does not look good for Cubs cards.  Mets, yes, but Cubs, no.

1990s: 1995 Collectors Choice #210 Sammy Sosa Doesn't Sammy look dreamy!

2000s: 2002 Donruss #163 Juan Cruz  The rated rookie was 3-11, including starting the season 0-7, in 2002.  That does not rate very highly to me.

2010s: 2012 Factory Team Set #CHC9 Geovany Soto  He hit just .199 in 52 games for the Cubs in 2012 before being traded to the Rangers.  The move didn't do much for Geo.  He hit .196 in 47 games with Texas.  

Goudey Real vs. Upper Deck

Upper Deck put out three year's worth of Goudey cards from 2007 through 2009.  They tried to stay faithful to the original designs.  How good were they?  Let's take a look.

  

 

Here's their take on the 1933 set,   This was the only time that Upper Deck matched the size of the cards.  They get a plus for that.  Points are taken away for the funky background.    The originals have a plain colored background.  I don't know why UD didn't use those.

 

The 1934 cards are the opposite of the '33s.  The backgrounds are a match, but the size isn't.  UD went with the standard 2½" x 3½" size, not the 2 3/8" x 2 7/8" used by Goudey.

 

The 4 in 1s should have been easy to copy, but UD didn't really try to match the font style.  Seems like they got pretty lazy.

 

The 1936 card is another that should be easy, but no attempt to match the font was made.  When all you have is a black and white photo and a name, it shouldn't be that hard!

 

The 1938 cards didn't come off too bad.  They actually had to do some work to make these and were fairly close.

Ten More Goudey Cards

My Goudey Cubs collection wasn't as complete as it needed to be and recently I got it up to snuff.

Upper Deck came out with a Goudey set in 2007. I got all of the Cubs cards and did the same with subsiquent releases the next two years. I was not really into the super old stuff, so the Goudey name was unfamiliar to me.  I found a reprint of the 1933 set and I thought I was all set.

I wasn't.

Goudey also has smaller sets that came out in 1934, 1935, 1936, and 1938.  Among the four years there were just ten Cubs cards.  But I needed to have them so satisfy my need to be complete.

To not break the bank I found reprints for the '34, 36, and '38 cards.

 

 

 

 

 

These are the 1934 cards.  Five of the six are "Lou Gehrig says" cards.  Interesting that Chuck Kline's card is not a "Chuck Kline says" card.

The 1936 design was pretty basic.  I wonder why they took a couple steps backwards.

 

In 1938 they went with the Heads Up cards.  The set has both plain and cartoon versions.  Frank Demaree was the lone Cub.

No reprints were to be found for the 1935 set, however.  Since there was just a single Cub card, I splurged and bought the real deal.

It's not in the greatest shape, but it is 83 years old.  And even though I needed one card, it's like I got four.  So if I divide the price by four, then it isn't such a bad deal.

Now I am Goudey complete!