The Investor's Journal - 8 More Cards of Guess Who

The Investor's Journal appeared on the scene in 1992.  Cards were a part of the magazine from the first issue.  Cards continued to be issued through 1996 though I had a hard time finding any of the actual magazines after 1993.

Though cards came out through 1996, Cubs were included in just the the 1992 and 1993.  Technically, the previous sentence should read "Cub were included..." because just one player was featured.

You've probably already figured out who that player was, based on who was included in other price guide sets.  The magazine cover above is also a pretty good hint too.

 

 

 

These six cards are from the 1992 set.  Seems silly for him to be included so often, but it is what it is.  Gold foil on the cards didn't scan well, appearing black.

 

Ryno was cut to just two cards in 1993.  

And that's it for the Cubs.  No more Cubs in 1994, 1995, or 1996 and then no more The Invertor's Journal.

1994 All-Time Heroes of Baseball Cubs +1

 I picked up the 1993 All-Time Heroes of Baseball way back in 2013.  It was an interesting set with trifold cards and an inclusion of Cubs players not usually seen in sets like this.  Normally I collect all the Cubs cards from all the years of a brand.  In 2013 I assumed that I had done that.  I had no idea that there was a 1994 version.

I got the idea of the 1994 set when reader Chad sent me this card of Hack Wilson.  It was off to TCDB for the team checklist and Sportlots for the cards.  There were seven Cubs cards to get.  They were easy to get from a single dealer.

 

These are the regular cards.  There are also a couple of subsets that include some Cubs.

These show some players from the 1993 Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball game.  The game was held in Baltimore the day before the All Star game.  Notice that the players are wearing hats with the All-Time Heroes logo.  Kingman is wearing a uniform that he never wore with the Cubs.  He should have been wearing the white pinstriped pajama uniform from the late '70s.  Madlock is in a Pirates uniform buy the headshot shows him with the Cubs.  Since there is no team designation on the cards, the headshot gets him into my Cubs collection.

The cards came in during MLB's 125th anniversary season.  This subset recognizes various significant seasons.  Hack Wilson's 1930 season was one for the record books.  Again, no team designations are on these, but since Wilson is prominently shown, it goes to the Cubs.

Now for the +1 mentioned in the title. As I was looking over the set checklist, I saw that Ron Santo had a card but he wasn't on the Cubs checklist.  That's odd, I thought, so I found a picture of the card.

Upper Deck put Santo on the White Sox.  Horrors!  But the insert shows him with the Cubs.  I decided to go ahead and get the Santo card and pretend that its a Cubs card.

The 1994 set was the last for the brand.  I double and triple-checked.  So now I am done with it!

Cartwrights Cubs

 

These are what comes to my mind when I hear "Cartwright," the Bull's Bill Cartwright or the Bonanza Cartwright family.

Cartwrights Journal of Baseball Collectibles never came to mind.  But I became aware of this Cartwrights when I went down the price guide cards rabbit hole a month ago.

From what I can find, Cartwrights put out a total of five issues.  Their first four were Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall of 1992.  They missed the Winter, 1993 issue and put out a Spring, 1993.  It is labeled as their First Anniversary Issue.  It is also the last one I could find.  

There were cards in each of their issues and they had several different sets, too.  The sets included (sets in bold include Cubs players):

• 1992 Cartwright's Players' Choice Gold 
• 1992 Cartwright's Players' Choice MVP 
• 1992 Cartwright's Players' Choice MVP - Blue Foil 
• 1992 Cartwright's Players' Choice Rookie Series 
• 1992 Cartwright's Players' Choice Silver 
• 1992 Cartwright's Tobacco Series 
• 1992-93 Cartwright's Aces 
• 1993 Cartwright's Future Hall-of-Famers 
• 1993 Cartwright's Players Choice

That's more sets than journal issues!

I picked up all the Cubs except for the MVP Blue Foil - I didn't think it was necessary to get a parallel. Each of the sets had just one Cub and you can probably guess which Cub player was in most.

Of course it was Ryno.  The gold and silver foil does not scan well.  It ends up looking black.  With the black borders on these cards the foil almost completely disappears.  The cards, from top to bottom, 1992 Players Choice, 1992 MVP, 1992 Aces, and 1993 Players Choice.

One Cub did make the 1992 Player Choice Rookies set.

The foil at the top of McElroy's card is almost visible.

And with that, were done. Five Cartwrights Journals produced five Cubs cards.

2002 and 2003 Fleer Focus Cubs

 Reader Chad sent me the 2000 and 2001 Cubs team sets.  Not wanting to have an incomplete brand, I went out and picked up the 2002 and 2003 sets.  The cards are all your basic 18¢ Sportlots specials.

In 2002 the brand name changed slightly, from Focus to Focus Jersey Edition.  Each box came with a jersey card and a manufactured relic jersey card, which is the reason for the Jersey name in the product.

The base set has a 256-card checklist that includes eight Cubs.

 

 

 

 

The 2003 set was pretty much a duplicate of 2002 - Jersey edition name, a couple of jersey relic cards in each box.  The set did shrink, though, down to 180 cards. The Cubs cards shrunk, too, as there were only six.

 

 

 

The Matt Bruback card was one of 20 shortprinted prospect cards.  I had to splurge and pay 35¢ for him.  Though you may not have ever heard of Matt Bruback, he was extremely helpful to the 2003 Cubs.  He was one of three players the Cubs sent to the Pirates in late July, 2003, and in return the Cubs got Aramis Ramirez and Kenny Lofton.

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 18,864 Cubs cards from 278 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1971 Topps #220 Ron Santo  Showing some muscle!

1980s: 1987 Red Foley Stickers #42 Lee Smith He's wearing one of those heavy "I need to sweat off some pounds" jackets.  You don't see players wearing them any more.

1990s: 1992 Panini Stickers #183 Ryne Sandberg  Three HOFers in a row!  You don't see very many cards with a sawtooth border.

2000s: 2003 Bowman Heritage #87 Aramis Ramirez  The streak ends, but we do get a player worthy of enshrinement into the Hall of Very Good.  I'm wondering if this is a Photoshop job.  The Cubs logo seems to be in a very odd place.  The Cubs picked up Ramirez in July of 2003 while the set came out in December 2003.

2010s: 2017 Donruss #69 Kyle Hendricks  Panini used a good angle here to cut down the the logo removal that they'd have to do.

Legends and Pocket Pages Cubs

 I've been working on getting as many of the price guide card sets as I can.  Today I've got two.

Legends Sports Memorabilia Guide included cards from 1990 through 1994.  They issued a total of 218 cards over those five years.

This card of Ryne Sandberg is the one and only Cub that Legends made.  It was included in the winter 1990 edition.  Too bad they didn't make one for Ernie Banks, too.

Pocket Pages Price Guide had insert cards from 1991 through 1993.  A total of 60 cards were made, but like Legends, there was just one Cub, Ryne Sandberg.

His card was in the April, 1993 edition.  

Pocket Pages also included Pogs in some of their issues.  I've got a Sandberg Pog on the way, but it is coming from Canada, so it will be a while before it arrives.

These price guide cards are doing two things for my collection.  One, they are significantly boosting the number of overall sets I've got while not doing much at all to my total number of cards.  Secondly, my number of Sandberg cards is going way up since he is the one player that is in most of the guides.  Expect to see more Ryno as I show cards from other guides.

Happening Hairdos Fixed

 The Super 70's set has an insert set called Happening Hairdos.  As soon as I saw that, I thought that there is one Cub that would be perfect for that set.  Think 1970s Cubs and hairdos and you may think of the same person.

Topps did not.  They thought of Bruce Sutter.  I don't see anything that I would consider "Happening" with Sutter's hair.

I made a card for the player that I, along with any Cub fan from the 1970s, thought of.

Jose's afro was super-happening!  How is it that he wasn't a part of the set?