2007 USA Baseball Darwin Barney

I'm in a bit of a lull between Topps releases that I collect, so I've been using the time to fill in some holes in my Darwin Barney player collection.  Barney was a member of the 2006 USA baseball team that won the University Games and was included in their 2006-2007 product.

The problem I've had with this product is the number of parallel cards.  Accoding to Beckett, there are 17 different cards for Barney in the set:

USA Baseball #8
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USA Baseball Foil #8
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USA Baseball In His Own Words Signatures #8..../20
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USA Baseball Patriotic Patches #8..../20
USA Baseball Patriotic Patches Signatures #8..../1
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USA Baseball Signatures Black #8..../595
USA Baseball Signatures Blue #8..../275
USA Baseball Signatures Red #8..../100
USA Baseball Signatures Green #8..../2
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USA Baseball Signatures Jersey Black #8..../295
USA Baseball Signatures Jersey Blue #8..../150
USA Baseball Signatures Jersey Red #8..../50
USA Baseball Signatures Jersey Green #8..../2
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USA Baseball Today & Tomorrow Signatures Black #9 D. Barney/M. Moustakas..../295
USA Baseball Today & Tomorrow Signatures Blue #9 D. Barney/M. Moustakas..../150
USA Baseball Today & Tomorrow Signatures Red #9 D. Barney/M. Moustakas..../25
USA Baseball Today & Tomorrow Signatures Green #9 D. Barney/M. Moustakas..../2
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Of the 17, I've got five (they're the ones in bold).  You can also see all the different parallels they've got for the signature cards.  I'm content to just have one of the versions, I don't need a rainbow with these.

If you narrow the cards down to different designs, there are seven and I've got five of the seven.,  I'm missing the In His Own Words signature card and the Patriotic Patches.  Both have only 20 copies out there, so I'm not too sure about seeing them any time soon.  I've got an ebay search saved, and if anything pops up, I'll be in the hunt.

Here are the five cards I've got, in the same order as the bold cards in the list

Billy's Cooperstown Cards

Panini continues to crank out unlicensed sets, with Cooperstown being their latest.  At this point I've just picked up the Billy Williams cards.  I may go back later to get Ernie, Andre, and Ryno.

I'll say this about Panini---they've embraced the idea that their sets are not going to have official logos and I like that.  The Triple Play cards with the drawings instead of photos was a nice way to work around the lack of logos.

They've done the same thing with Cooperstown, designing the cards to minimize the missing logos.  You can see that bump on the top of the picture border, which matched with the general curve of a baseball hat bill.  Slide the picture into the bump and you can show a face but lose the top of the hat and the logo.

The photo frame is similar to this Donruss Classic card.

I've never been a fan of the unlicensed, logoless cards, but I do like what Panini is trying to do.

Billy was also included in the Induction insert set.  Logos weren't an issue here.

2006 Legendary Cuts...Really Messed Up Back

I've already shown the 2006 Legendary Cuts Cubs.  In fact, it was this year, given to me in a package from Michael, that got me started with Legendary Cuts.

Instead of looking at the fronts, today I've got a screw-up on the back of one of the cards.  Its on the card of my all time favorite Cub and its a biggie.

Take a look at the back and read Billy's write up.  I made it nice and big for you.

So, according to the geniuses at Upper Deck, Billy was part of that slugging infield with Ron and Ernie.  Whatttt?

Billy played 2,213 games while with the Cubs.  He played first base in 89 of those games, mostly in 1973 and 1974.  The 89 games represent 4% of his Cubs career.  Anyone with half a baseball brain knows that Billy Williams was an outfielder.  Yet the writer of this card is clueless to that fact.  It's written as if he played first base his entire career.

So how does Upper Deck hire someone to write these cards that has no idea who is being written about.  And then, is there anyone proofreading or editing these? This isn't just a transposing of digits or the switching of a couple letters.  This is a completely wrong write up.

Unbelievable.

Tile Tuesday: The Cubbie Bear

Last week I had post on the final appearance of the Cubbie Bear on a Topps card.  I included a Topps card from each of the bear's run, from 1963 - 1982.   As I was selecting the cards for the post, I started to think that maybe all of the cards in my collection that show the bear would make a nice tile.

 So I went through my cards, all 11,100 of them, and found the ones with the bear.  That may sound like a daunting task, but it wasn't as hard as you may think.  First, since I've already got all the cards scanned, I didn't have to look though the cards in the binders. Instead, I looked through the folders on my computer.  I would click on the cards I wanted to select, then I copied and pasted them into a new "Cubbie Bear" folder I set up.  Secondly, since the patched was only on uniforms from 1962-1978, I didn't have to even bother with a ton of folders.  Upper Deck, Donruss, Fleer, Stadium Club, and a bunch of others were made after 1978--so no Cubbie bear on them.

Once I had all the cards in the new folder, it was just a matter of making the tiles.  I ended up with 335 different cards.  I put the Topps cards first, then the Ernie Banks and Billy Williams collection cards, and then the rest, alphabetically, by brand name.

 

 

2005 SP Legendary Cuts Cubs

The 2004 set was my favorite.  The 2005 set isn't.  After the full color of '04, the set returned to the monochrome look in 2005.  The big design change for the year is that the layout switched from vertical to horizontal.

The checklist was scaled back to only 90 cards, so the number of Cubs dropped too.  The smaller set left only four Cubs.  Playing it safe, they went with all hall of famers, and all four have been on Legendary Cuts checklists before.  In fact, Ernie Banks was in all of the earlier sets, while Fergie, Ryno, and Billy were in three of the previous four.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 11,096 Cubs cards from 76 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1950s / 1960s: 1954 Bowman #221 Frank Baumholtz  A part-time outfielder for the Cubs, Baumholtz played in 90 games for the '54 Cubs.  He hit .297; I wonder why he didn't play in more games?

1970s: 1978 SSPC #253 Gene Clines  This card comes from the 1978 SSPC All Star Gallery Cubs team set.  The cards are pretty plain looking--just a picture on the front.  But if you just add an autograph to it, you've got the '54 Bowman!  1978 would be Clines last full season in the bigs, though he had been reduced to a part time role, playing in 109 games.

1980s: 1988 Fleer #628 Ryne Sandberg Master of the Double Play  Nice to see a couple hall of famers share a card.

1990s: 1998 Topps Devils Rays Inaugural Set #78 Terry Adams  When MLB expanded in 1998, Topps put out special inaugural sets for both the Devil Rays and the Diamondbacks.  The sets were identical to the base set except for the addition of a team logo on the card.  Adams pitched in 63 games for the Cubs in 1998, all out of the bullpen.  He was 7-7 with an ERA of 4.33

2000s: 2004 Donruss Classics #115 Kerry Wood  These Classics cards were nice looking.  The 2004 was Wood's last as a full time starter.  Injuries limited him to 22 starts and he was 8-9.

2012 Sega Card Gen Cubs

I found out about the Sega Card Gen card a couple months or so ago and I picked up the Darwin Barney card for the player collection. The cards aren't widely available and I've only seen one ebay seller offer them. Just for the heck of it, I saved him in my sellers list.

A couple weeks after I got the Barney card, he listed a bunch more of these, including all eleven of the Cubs. Since I have a good experience with him the first time (I was a little leery working with an overseas seller), I decided to see if I could put together a Cubs team set--eleven cards. I set the sniper and waited for the auctions to end.

When the dust settled, I won eight of the cards. I was happy, but a little disappointed too, since that wasn't a complete set. The cards arrived within a week, and I waited for the other three to become available.

A couple more weeks later, the seller was at it again, listing almost the entire set, including all of the Cubs. I again set the sniper, though I set the prices a little higher than usual--I didn't want to have to wait again!

This time there wasn't as much action and I got all three pretty easily. I didn't have to come close to my max bids. The final three have arrived, so now I can show the entire team set.