2021 Bowman Prospects Cubs

 The checklist for the 2021 Bowman Prospects has 150 cards.

 

 

Amaya and Morel are with the Cubs AA team.  Marquez is having arm issues and will head to AA once he is ready.  Howard was the Cubs' #1 pick last summer and will start the summer with the Cubs low A team in Myrtle Beach.

The prospect cards have the usual parallels including the Chrome version.  I've had those each year, and continued the run this year.

 

 

2021 Bowman Base Cubs

 The 2021 Bowman set was released last week.  I found a seller that had the entire Cubs team set (Brentandbecca doesn't do Bowman) and it got delivered promptly.  I'll have the base set today and show the prospects tomorrow.

The base set consists of 100 cards, four of which are Cubs.

 

 

We get two good guys, one ex-Cub and one future Cub.

Marquez was with the Cubs last year for just one game.  It didn't go well as he gave up five runs in two-thirds of an inning.  That gives him a career ERA of 67.47.  I wonder if there is another player with a higher ERA on their card?

2021 Opening Day Insert Cubs

 Opening Day has several insert sets.  There are a couple that are super short-printed and I am not going for the Cubs cards in those.  Putting SSPs in Opening Day seems to go against the set's concept, which is a simple kid-friendly set.

This card comes from the Opening Day subset, which has a card for each team.  The Cubs picture is from their 2020 opener, in which they won 2-0.

 

This set features some outstanding opening day performances.  Baez hit two homers to kick off the 2019 season.  Billy hit a 10th inning walk-off homer against the Cardinals to give the Cubs a 1-0 win.  Fergie outdueled Bob Gibson.  

Here's the homer.

Mr. Cub is a legend of Baseball

The mascot set returns and includes Clark.

2021 Opening Day Cubs

 Today I have the 2021 Opening Day cards.  These came out a little later than usual and it's taken me a little longer than usual to get them posted.

The set concept remains the same - a reduced-sized version of the flagship set, with no foil printing and the Opening Day logo.

The best thing about the set for me is that I get an advanced look at cards from the second series of the Topps set.  There are 11 Cubs total in the set and five of the 11 do not have a card is Topps series one.

 

I'm assuming that the Darvish and Schwarber cards will not be included in series two, since both are no longer Cubs.

 

 

 

These six cards are players that also had a card in series one.  

2019 Clear Travel Cubs

 In 2019 Topps partnered with Utz, releasing a 100-card promo set.

I snagged all six Cubs cards before the end of April, 2019.

That same year Topps paired with PKWY for a 25-card set.

I had the two Cubs before the end of the season.

Both sets used the Topps flagship design but the partners' logos were added.

In 2019 Topps partnered with Clear (a travel security check company) and put out a 100-card set.  

I had no clue it existed.

I hate when that happens!  Utz and PKWY were on my radar but Clear wasn't.  Until recently.

Its been almost two years since the cards came out and they were not as easy to find as the Utz and PKWY were in 2019,  I had six Cubs to get, the same six that were in the Utz set plus Anthony Rizzo.  I eventually found them but it took more time and money than I expected.

Take a look at the cards and see if you can spot a couple differences between these and the other two Topps promo sets.

 

 

 

The first difference is pretty obvious.  These cards lack any mention of Clear on the front.  

Clear has a nice enough looking logo, but it didn't make it to the front of the cards.  That may explain why these are harder to find now.  To the untrained eye these are your basic Topps 2019 cards.

The backs don't help too much either.  

The only difference is the numbering in the upper right hand corner.  The Clear cards numbering starts with the letters CP.

The other difference is the Baez card.  The Clear card vertical while most other versions of the Topps card (base, Chrome, Opening Day, Utz, PKWY, Holiday) have the horizontal version.  The factory team set is the only other vertical card.  All use the same picture, just cropped differently.

Five Random Cubs Cards

 I've got 19,214 Cubs cards from 284 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1976 Fleer Baseball Firsts #1 Mike Kelley  The set is called Baseball Firsts, and this card recognizes the first slide.  The back of the card says that no one knows who made the first slide.  Kelley is on the card, recognized as the player who came up with several slide variations like the head first slide and sliding away for the base and grabbing it with your hand.

1980s: 1988 Topps Traded #131 Don Zimmer  Popeye was hired to manage the Cubs in 1988 by his childhood pal and Cubs general manager Jim Frey.

1990s: 1999 Action Flats #5 Kerry Wood The scan ruins the logo on the card, the Action Flats logo.

2000s: 2005 Heritage New Age Performer #8 Sammy Sosa I associate the NAP subset with up-and-coming players, not veterans.  Sammy was not new is 2004, he was aged.

2010s: 2013 Team Issued #60 Jose Cardenal This came out eight years before Heritage, but notice how the border color is red just like this year's Heritage and not like the pink on the original 1972 cards.

1986 General Mills Gary Matthews

 Last summer's MSA disc binge ended up extending into all of the MSA releases, both cards and discs.  I ended up with a MSA cards checklist of 49 sets that included 59 Cubs.  I was able to get 58 of the 59 Cubs cards.  I was sooo close to completion.

I can now say happily that I am at 100% of the MSA Cubs cards.

This is the missing card.  It comes from the 1986 General Mills set that was issued only in Canada.  I'm sure that had something to do with the difficulty I had tracking it down.  One finally was listed.  I set my sniper.  I lost!  

Bummer!

Then, on a lark, I decided to do a little more digging and I found another one.  This one had was Buy It Now.  I bought!

Here's my update list of Cubs in the various card sets from MSA.

1986	Burger King	No Cubs
1986	Dorman's Cheese	Sandberg, Sutcliffe
1986	Drakes	Moreland, Sandberg
1986	General Mills	Matthews, Sandberg, Smith
1986	Kellers	No Cubs
1986	Meadow Gold	Sandberg, Sutcliffe
1986	True Value	Sandberg, Sutcliffe
1987	Burger King	Sandberg
1987	Drakes	Moreland, Sandberg
1987	General Mills	Sandberg
1987	Kraft	Davis, Sandberg
1987	M&M's	Sandberg
1987	Ralston Purina	Sandberg
1987	Stuart Superstars	Davis, Dawson, Durham
1988	Chef Boyardee	Dawson, Sandberg
1988	Drakes	Dawson, Sutcliffe
1988	Nestle	Dawson
1989	Cereal (Ralston Purina) Superstars	Dawson
1989	Gardners	No Cubs
1989	JJ Nissen	Grace
1990	All American	Dawson, Sandberg
1990	Jumbo Seeds	Sandberg
1990	Post	Grace, Sandberg
1990	Wonder	Sandberg, Walton
1991	Jimmy Dean	Sandberg
1991	Jumbo Seeds	Dawson
1991	Mootown Snackers	Sandberg
1991	Post	Grace, Sandberg
1992	Diet Pepsi	Sandberg
1992	French's	Sandberg
1992	Jimmy Dean	Sandberg
1992	Jimmy Dean Living Legends	No Cubs
1992	Jimmy Dean Rookie Stars	No Cubs
1992	Jumbo Seeds	No Cubs
1992	Mootown Snackers	Dawson
1992	Post	Sandberg
1993	Duracell	Dawson, Sandberg
1993	Hostess	Sandberg
1993	Jimmy Dean	Sandberg
1993	Jimmy Dean Rookie Stars	No Cubs
1993	Metz Bakery	Dawson, Grace, Sandberg
1993	Milkbone	Girardi
1993	Post	Sandberg
1994	Post	Grace
1994	Tombstone	Grace
1995	Kraft	Sosa
1995	Post	No Cubs
1995	Tombstone	Sosa
1996	Pizza Hut	No Cubs