Sixties Saturday - 1967 O-Pee-Chee

 The 1967 O-Pee-Chee set is made up of the first Topps series.  Three of the Cubs biggest stars, Ernie Banks, Fergie Jenkins, and Billy Williams, are missing because they were in higher Topps series.  You can also tell the difference between the first and second series cards because the first series does not have a dot between the player's name and position.

 

 

 

 

 

2022 Allen and Ginter Framed Mini Relic Cubs

 Today, the good ones... the framed mini relics!

These are the original Ginter relics, included in the first set back in 2006.  Topps added the full sized relics in 2013 and at the same time the number of the framed minis was reduced.  That was a shame!

This year  there are 62 framed minis.  There were 174 in 2012, the last year without the full-sized.  Again, a real shame to see the numbers cut back so much.

While there are just 62, the Cubs hit the mother lode this year, with 5 cards.  Only the Yankees with seven (of course the Yankees) had more.  Here's how the cards per team went:

0 cards: 5 teams -- Diamondbacks, Tigers, Guardians, A's, Rangers

1 card: 13 teams -- Orioles, Rockies, Marlins, Brewers, Expos, Phillies, Pirates, Padres, Mariners, Cardinals, Rays, Blue Jays, Nationals

2 cards: 4 teams -- White Sox, Astros, Royals, Twins

3 cards: 2 teams -- Angels, Reds

4 cards: 2 teams - Mets, Giants

5 cards:  4 teams - Braves, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers

7 cards:  1 team - Yankees

I feel very fortunate that there were five Cubs cards.  However, I also had to spend more than usual because of two of the five Cubs players.  Can you figure out who were the expensive ones?

 

 

First, notice that three of the five are retired.  

The two that were expensive were the Banks and Suzuki cards.  Both seem to be fairly rare.  Right now there are none of the Banks cards currently listed on eBay and just six have been sold.  Seiya Suzuki's cards are similar with none listed right now and just eight sold.  

None of the online checklists show either to be short-printed, but the are obviously less of these available than of the other cards.  I sure hope that Topps doesn't turn the framed minis into a hard to get item.  If they do that, then I'll have to be done with them.

2022 Allen and Ginter Cubs Full-Sized Relics

 It's been several years now that Ginter has had two types of relic cards - the awesome framed mini relics and the dull full sized cards.  I'm not really hiding me feelings as to which one I prefer!

I had just two full-sized relics to get.  These both come from the A checklist, which has 63 cards.  The Cubs were shut out on the 52-card B list.

RIP Frank Thomas - My Very First Cubs Card

 On Monday morning, slugger Frank Thomas passed away at the age of 93.  To many he was "the other Frank Thomas" since a hall of famer by the same name started playing in the early 1990s.

He had his best years with the Pirates and he was an original Met.  But he also spent some time with the Cubs and has a special place in my Cubs collection.

This well-worn 1961 card of Thomas is the very first Cubs card I owned.  It was given to me by my cousin in 1967 or 1968 when I was five or six years old (you can read more about how I got the card here).  The card was the only way I had ever heard of Frank Thomas and he was long gone from the Cubs when I got the card.  But it was a Cubs card and that is all that mattered to me.

So rest in peace Frank Thomas, the man on my very first Cubs card.

Other Colors?

 After writing yesterday's Red post, I looked through all my sets for other colors.

Using ROYGBIV (did you learn about ROY G BIV in elementary school science for the colors of the rainbow?), let's see what I have.

R - Red - see yesterday

O - Orange - no sets with Green in the name

Y - Yellow - no sets with Green in the name

G - Green - no sets with Green in the name

B - Blue - no sets with Green in the name

I - Indigo - no sets with Green in the name

V- Violet - no sets with Green in the name

Nothing, nada, not a single other color set besides the red!

Other colors?  Purple?  Nope.

The only other color sets I found have the word "Gold."

These three are from Gold Label, Golden Press, and Meadow Gold.

I really thought that I had more sets with colors in their names.  Did I miss something?  Anyone got any other color brands?

Lots of Red Cards

 This post was inspired by last week's on the Red Man set.  I probably should have saved it for February 14.

After putting the digital files of the Red Man cards into the folder where I keep all of my Cubs sets, I noticed several other sets that are Red.  In addition to Red Man, I have Cubs cards from 

 

 

 

 

Red Barn, Red Foley, Red Heart, and Red Lobster.  Fans from Boston or Cincinnati may have been more aware of all the Red.  It was new to this blue team boy.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 20,919 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: 1953 Bowman #42 Tommy Brown Bowman didn't exactly do much with card design in 1953, but I like that they used actual photographs instead of paintings.  The first Topps set with photographs didn't come until 1957.

1980s: 1987 Team Issued Bryan Dayette  Baseball Card Day in 1987 was July 29.  Wrigley Field was nearly full, but the crowd went home disappointed as the Expos crushed the Cubs 11-3.  Dayette came into the game in the eight inning as part of a double switch.  He grounded out to third in his only at bat.

1990s: 1998 Topps Diamondback Edition #92 Scott Servais The 1998 season was the last of Servais' four with the Cubs and it was his worst.  In fact, his averaged dropped each year after putting up a decent .286 in 1995.  By the end in 1998, it dropped to .222.

2000s: 2000 Fleer Ultra #201 Henry Rodriguez  Looks like Rodriguez is finishing up a nice running catch.

2010s: 2016 Bowman BCP #116 Pierce Johnson It's pretty cool that they got the ball centered and coming right at us.  Johnson was the Cubs first round draft pick in 2012 but his big league career is not what you'd have expected from a #1 pick.