Did Jon Leiber Not Like Fleer?

This was one of the five random Cubs cards on Sunday.   I commented on how awful his signature looked.  Curious, I looked to see if he used the same signature on other cards.  I found four other Cubs cards that used an autograph.

 

 

These are all Topps products and they appear to use the exact same signature, the same very legible signature.

Did he not like Fleer, so he decided to just scribble something for them?

 

Nope.  It looks like the scribble is what he used at his autograph.  My guess is that Topps got his signature when he was recruited by them as a minor leaguer.  He hadn't yet developed his big league scribble.  When other companies signed him, they got the chicken scrawl.

2022 Finest Cubs

 January is over tomorrow and I still have cards from 2022 to show.  In fact, I have cards from a 2022 set that was released in 2023.  Yikes!

The 2022 edition of Topps Finest came out on January 20, 2023.  If that is what Topps considers "Finest" then we are in big trouble.  The set has 125 cards and just two of them are Cubs.

 

The Suzuki picture was taken at a spring training game because the Cubs never wear the blue top at home.  And I should have waited for the Contreras wrap-up post I did last Friday because now I have one more of his cards.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 20,920 Cubs cards from 316 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1975 Topps #494 Pete LaCock I love the blue sky in the background and how it so nicely compliments the blue on the uniform.  The pink and yellow border, though... ick!

1980s: 1981 Topps #381 Cubs Future Stars  Lezcano and Martz both had some decent time in the big leagues, while Macko's life was cut short by cancer.  Macko's picture seems haunting to me... it's like he's looking into the future with a smile, anticipating a life as a Cub, sadly, a life he never got to have.

1990s: 1992 Team Issued Dave Smith  Friday, July 10 was baseball card day at Wrigley Field in 1992.  Everyone at the park got this set.  The attendance was 35,067 so we know about how many of these sets should have been in circulation.  The Cubs lost to the Braves 4-0 as John Smoltz outpitched Greg Maddux.  Smith didn't play.

2000s: 2005 Diamond Kings #284 Andre Dawson  Dawson always looks so cool on a card.

2010s: 2019 Big League #254 Yu Darvish This set is a confusing mixture of the 1962 and 1987 wood grain sets along with elements from a ticket to the game.

Sixties Saturday - 1967 Dexter Press

 Today's set is one of my favorite from the 1960's. the Dexter Press set.  These were made by Dexter Press for Coca-Cola, who gave them out as a premium.  Sets were made for eighteen of the 20 MLB teams.  The cards are large, coming in at 5½" x 7".  The fronts are pretty plain, with just a picture, white border, and facsimile autograph.  The backs have a small writeup on the player.

Team sets consist of twelve cards.  

One interesting not about the pictures... it looks like the photographer had a mark on the ground and had the players stand on the mark.  The backgrounds in almost every picture is nearly identical.

All I've Got of Him - Willson Contreras

 It's been over a month since he signed with the Cardinals and I guess I'm ready to finally get to this.  It was tough seeing him go, as he seemed to be the team leader on the field.  You couldn't argue against the intensity he brought to the field.  He was also one of the last remaining 2016 Cubs still with the team (Kyle Hendricks is the only one left now). But time marches on and Willson marched south to St. Louis.  He will be hard to replace.

I have a total of 165 cards of Contreras.  There are 152 regular cards, 12 relics, and one autograph.

 

These are probably my favorites of the bunch.  The 2017 Fire (left) captures his personality while the 2018 gives a glimpse of his intensity.

A Guest Writer Today

 Its January and there isn't much happening with new cards.  The first series for Topps 2023 won't come out for a couple more weeks.  I don't have much to say, so I invited a guest writer for today.  

Please give a warm Wrigley Wax welcome to Chatgpt.

I thought I'd let the bot do some of my work.

I have that card, which means it can't be that valuable.

Well, the bot is wrong.  It says that Billy consecutive game streak was the third-longest in NL history at the time.  It was actually the longest NL streak and the third-longest in MLB history.  It's nice to still be smarter than a machine!

Only one of the bot's recommendations, "Cardboard History," is what most would consider an actual blog.  And no Night Owl?  What about Wrigley Wax??

Ouch!  

My Most Wanted

 My goal is that when I work on adding a particular brand to my Cubs collection, I get all of the cards.  For the most part I have been successful with that.  But I do have some holes in the collection and I've been trying for years to get some of them filled.

Below are the cards that are on my most wanted list.  Most of the pictures have come from the Trading Card Data Base.  There are a few cases where the TCDB doesn't have the picture and I've not been able to find one anywhere else.

I've also included links with each card that takes you to an eBay search for the card. In most cases, you'll get the dreaded "No Exact Match Found."  There are a few that do show the cards, but the prices are way out of my price range.  

1981 FBI Disc Dave Kingman

1985 Subway Ryne Sandberg

1989 Key Food Andre Dawson

2004 Pro Sigs Renyel Pinto

2009 Topps Walmart Mike Fontenot

2009 Topps Walmart Lou Piniella

2010 Jewish Sam Fuld

2010 Jewish Adam Greenberg

Topps Complete Set Prices 1969 - 2022

 I'm bringing back a feature that I haven't run in almost seven years.

Beginning in July of 2009 and running through February, 2016, each month I would post the prices of Topps complete sets from 1969 through the present.  I go back to 1969 because that is the first year of my run of complete sets.

I used eBay to determine the set prices.  I would find the five most recent auction sales of the set and average the prices.  The time to do it eventually was too much and I gave up the feature.  I have some more available time now that I am retired, so I thought I'd bring it back.

I was shocked at how much the set prices increased over the past seven years.  I know that the influx of collectors due to the pandemic caused a general price spike.  I had no idea just home significant the increase was.

Take a look at that I found:

YEAR	1/22/2023	2/1/2016	% change
1969	$1,729.81	$787.21	120%
1970	$1,625.99	$869.15	87%
1971	$1,782.90	$704.01	153%
1972	$1,916.20	$749.11	156%
1973	$816.80	$361.60	126%
1974	$346.30	$252.85	37%
1975	$786.91	$195.48	303%
1976	$369.20	$186.99	97%
1977	$264.69	$135.70	95%
1978	$171.91	$81.19	112%
1979	$157.35	$77.51	103%
1980	$213.20	$65.26	227%
1981	$68.18	$28.02	143%
1982	$62.95	$34.22	84%
1983	$85.50	$26.95	217%
1984	$36.30	$26.70	36%
1985	$28.30	$17.70	60%
1986	$22.40	$4.35	415%
1987	$10.50	$7.00	50%
1988	$18.53	$8.40	121%
1989	$14.09	$7.26	94%
1990	$16.98	$8.19	107%
1991	$9.47	$8.59	10%
1992	$11.60	$8.29	40%
1993	$52.48	$13.42	291%
1994	$23.10	$22.60	2%
1995	$24.90	$22.24	12%
1996	$19.58	$15.19	29%
1997	$32.30	$31.79	2%
1998	$31.70	$22.40	42%
1999	$26.30	$21.44	23%
2000	$25.88	$10.95	136%
2001	$68.00	$42.64	59%
2002	$41.33	$25.99	59%
2003	$34.85	$27.71	26%
2004	$46.00	$16.29	182%
2005	$40.40	$33.14	22%
2006	$45.93	$22.11	108%
2007	$31.32	$27.47	14%
2008	$50.98	$30.70	66%
2009	$75.40	$41.80	80%
2010	$43.80	$23.57	86%
2011	$110.80	$27.79	299%
2012	$52.58	$28.00	88%
2013	$70.66	$34.19	107%
2014	$174.71	$39.11	347%
2015	$47.50	$44.79	6%
2016	$69.59
2017	$136.20
2018	$197.80
2019	$94.23
2020	$37.12
2021	$22.16
2022	$28.80

There are some pretty significant increase in prices!  The biggest bump was with the junk-wax era 1986 set, which went up 415%.  However, in dollars it was an increase of just $18.  In actual dollars, the 1972 set would cost you almost $1,200 more.  That's a pretty big chunk!

Overall, in February 2016, it would have taken $5,232.23 to get one of each of the 1969 - 2015 sets.  Today, the same sets would run you $11,736.56.  That's $6,504.33 more and an increase of 124%.  Any financial people out there know how that compares to the stock market of the same time?

All of the Ginter Cubs Relics

 I showed the 2022 Cubs Ginter framed relics last Friday.  Today I've got the entire Cubs run of them, starting in 2006.

I have a total of 64 cards below.  There are a couple times when I have two cards of the same player.  I did that if there were both bat and jersey cards.  I haven't really looked into that recently, however.  I also have never considered getting multiple cards if a player had both a home and away jersey.

Year by year, the breakdown is:

2006 - 1 card

2007 -  2 cards

2008 - 2 cards 

2009 - 2 cards 

2010 - 5 cards 

2011 - 12 cards 

2012 - 10 cards 

2013 - 2 cards 

2014 - 1 card

2015 - 1 card

2016 - 4 cards 

2017 - 4 cards 

2018 - 4 cards 

2019 - 2 cards 

2020 - 3 cards 

2021 - 3 cards 

2022 - 5 cards 

 

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 20,920 Cubs cards from 316 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1979  Topps #663 Mike Vail He looks like a pretty nice guy on the card.  Cubs manager Herman Franks felt otherwise.  After resigning, he said this about Vail, "He's a constant whiner that made me sick."  He also added, "I just got tired of being around him. There isn't enough money in the world to pay me to manage if I have to look at that face every day."  Ouch!

1980s: 1983 Team Issued Cubs Team Card This was taken at a weird angle, not directly in front of the team.  Odd choice.

1990s: 1990 Topps TV #57 Dave Pavlas Pavlas actually pitched in 13 games for the 1990 Cubs and did pretty well, posting a record of 2-0 and an ERA of 2.11.  He was one of the last cuts in spring training the next year and spent most of it in AAA.  The Cubs released him after the 1991 season.

2000s: 2008 Chicago Tribune Geovany Soto The Tribune put out this set which included all of the Cubs and Sox players as both teams made the playoffs in 2008.  Both teams tanked too, as the Cubs were swept and the Sox lost in four.

2010s: 2017 Archives #96 Bruce Sutter Looks like Sutter had just a pinch between his cheek and gums.