Resisting the Relics

This year I swore off the relic cards and so far, I haven't caved (like I did last year).  My good friends at Topps are making it easy for me.


By staying away from the Series Two relics, I'm missing out on cards of....

....Ex- Cub Carlos Pena

....Ex-Cub Carlos Zambrano, and 

....Ex-Cub Marlon Bryd.


I'm happy to just borrow some pictures from ebay rather than buying cards of players who aren't on the Cubs any more.


In the interest of fairness, Topps does have two jersey cards of players that are actually on the Cubs....

But I've got plenty of relic cards of both of these guys, so there's no temptation to fall off the wagon.

A Couple Extra Archives

In addition to the base cards, there were a few extras in Archives that I wanted to add to my collection.  The last of them arrived a couple days ago.

It was great to see Bill Buckner included in the Fan Favorites set as a Cub.  The longest and most productive part of his career was while he was in Chicago and he was definitely a favorite among the fans on the north side.  When I saw that there was an on-card autograph parallel to his base card, I was on it right away.  Even though I already has an autograph card of Billy Buck, I wasn't going to pass on this one.

Once I picked up the Buckner autograph, I figured I should get Dunston's too.  His was easier and cheaper to get than Buckner's.  Gee, I wonder why Buckner's stuff goes for more??  DId Buckner do something that makes his stuff more collectible?  Truthfully, it is a shame that Buckner's very successful 22-year career is defined / overshadowed by one play.

This is the final extra card I picked up.  Some of the other duo cards in the set really look fake, but Topps seemed to do a decent job pulling this one off.


That should do it for me with Archives.  Up next is Series Two.  An email from my dealer said the cards shipped on Saturday.  Hopefully I'll have them in the next day or two.

Tile Tuesday: Kelloggs Cubs

This week's tile is a blast from the past.  It's the far out and funky Kelloggs 3D cards from the '70s and early '80s.  Many a mom was coerced into buying some sugary boxes of breakfast so the kids could rummage through it for a baseball card.

These cards run from 1970 through the 1983 season plus a one year comeback in 1991. The first two years featured five Cubs but after that it was no more than three.  In fact, many of the latter years saw only one or two Cubs make the list.  All told there were 36 Kelloggs Cubs.  Since there were so few card, I went with four per row, which gives a better look at each card.

Cloth Stickers: Archives vs. Originals

Although Archives included several different inserts that mimicked inserts from the '60s and '70s, a Cub was included in only one of them.

Starlin Castro made the list for the cloth stickers.

These are to supposed to mirror the original cloth stickers that Topps sold in 1977.  The originals were not inserts in baseball cards packs, but instead were sold in separate wax 

packs.  

They copied the Topps 1977 design, but the checklist had only 55 players.  Two were Cubs.

Jose Cardenal was still sporting the giant fro, but in 1977 he was no longer a regular.

Bill Madlock wasn't even a Cub in 1977.  The reigning two-time NL batting champ was traded to the Giants for Bobby Murcer in February, 1977.

When I put the original next to the Archives reproduction, there was a glaring problem.

The "Cubs" on Castro's card is waaaayyyy too small.  Its not even close to the size of the original.  Look at all the space between the "Cubs" and the yellow flag.  Terrible.

Better.

Maddog

I was looking through my autographed cards a few weeks ago and I realized that I was missing a pretty important Cub, Greg Maddux.  It wasn't intentional; I really like Greg Maddux.  But most of his certified autographs show him with the Braves.  Those won't be going into my collection.  


I decided to go a different direction.  Instead of certified auto, I would look into just a plain on-card autograph. The risk here, of course, would be fraud.  I'm not much of a betting man, so I wasn't going to spend too much on one of these.

Here's what I ended up with, an autograph on a Donruss '91 card.  The card set me back all of $6.99.  The seller sells a bunch of autographs and has a 99.9% feedback rating with over 6900 transactions.  His only negative didn't mention a fake autograph.

Plus, he included a nifty Certificate of Authenticity.  Of course, anyone can make up one of these, so for the most part, they aren't worth the paper their printed on.  


So there, $6.99 and piece of mind....for the most part!

Cracked

I can't recall many (...or any) other cards that feature a cracked bat like this one...

This is Moises Alou's Upper Deck 2005 card.  It looks like the bat is split right down the middle.  Pretty cool looking shot.


Now a question: How many of you have had a bat crack on you?  Or even better, how many of you have played with a wooden bat?


I played Little League in the early and mid seventies, and all we had were wood bats (aluminum bats were just starting to arrive when I was done playing).  I never had a bat shatter into pieces like they do today, but I did have bats crack on me.  And boy was that depressing.  It was like losing a good friend to have your favorite bat crack.  We would take the bat into the garage and put a couple screws in it to try and save it, but it was never the same after that.


But those of you who played ball in the '80s and beyond, was it all aluminum for you?  I don't think WW Jr. has ever held a wood bat, let alone use one in a game.  Maybe it's my age, but the "ping" of the bat just seems wrong.

Getting the Kids Involved.....20 Years Ago

When the future of the hobby is discussed, one recurring theme is that something needs to be done to get more kids involved. I agree. For a generation growing up on computers, touch screens, video games, etc., the idea of cardboard is not the most appealing thing.

But that theme is nothing new. Twenty years ago Topps released a product to get the kids involved. It was a 132 set called "Topps Kids." At the time there were several TV shows that featured kid versions of the characters, shows like Muppet Babies, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Flintstone Kids. So Topps jumped on the bandwagon and created kid version cards of 131 baseball players.

To appeal further to the young crowd, they sold the packs for only 35¢ (a regular pack went for 55¢, though you got more cards) and included a stick of gum too. Keep in mind that 1992 was the first year that a regular pack of Topps cards didn't include gum. If you wanted a rock hard slab of gum that year, you had to buy Topps Kids for your fix.

So how did the product do? Quoting the Standard Catalog, "the concept was a flop and was not repeated in subsequent years." I had a seven year old and five year old in 1992, probably smack in the target group, but I never heard of, or remember seeing these cards.

One interesting feature of the set is that Topps numbered the players according to their team. There were five Cubs and they were the first five in the set, including card #1, Ryne Sandberg. I recently picked up the five cards from Sportlots, paying 18¢ each.

Quick question with the Grace card....where is his right hand? Why is his glove just floating mid-air?

Did anyone collect these when they came out? Were any of you kids at the time?