He's making a list, he's checking it twice

We are a week away from Christmas, and this song lyric has been in my head. So it seems an apt title for a blog post about Tony's appearances on checklists.

Some player collectors don't count checklists. That's their prerogative. I think they're missing out.

Card Number 894: Upper Deck, 1995; #Checklist 2 

This card takes me to 500 cards over my original target of 394 cards!

These shiny checklists were basically insert cards.

On the front there's a reference to Tony's famous batting average in 1994.

I enjoy reading the list of names on these checklists. Among all the really famous names are players who have been long-forgotten, like Chuck Carr and Pat Rapp. 

Card Number 895: DonRuss, 1994; #440

DonRuss used this checklist to commemorate Tony's reaching the 2000 hit milestone.

Some of the random forgotten players on here include Phil Leftwich and the frankly amazingly named Hipolito Pichardo!

Hipolito pitched 350 games in a ten year major league career for the Royals, Red Sox and Astros. He also had 103 baseball cards in his career, according to TCDB. Phil Leftwich had 39 cards, which is actually more than the number of games he pitched in the major leagues (34 games in 3 years for the Angels).

Card Number 896: DonRuss, 1993; #660

This is really a 'cameo card'. It's not about Tony per se - DonRuss put a photo of  different teams on their checklists. But Tony is in the photo walking behind Gary Sheffield. There seems to be a giant patting Gary on the head as well. That guy must be about 6 foot six.

The winners in the peculiar names category this time around are on the front - Chuck Crim and Scott Scudder both sound like low rent villains from a comic book. They're joined on the back by William Pennyfeather! But the name that really stood out on the back was Tony's brother, Chris Gwynn, who was #657 in the set.

I could count this in the number of Tony's cards where Chris gets a mention somewhere. Chris had 118 cards of his own, and may well have been mentioned on a similar number of Tony's cards. (That's another project when I run out of cards to blog!)

Total: 896 cards

Tony's insights on Jeff

This cameo card was a bonus in the recent joblot of cards I bought off eBay. I knew there were two ProFiles cards in the lot and I banked on at least one of them being one of the ones where Tony offered an opinion on another player.

Card Number 710: Topps Profiles by Tony Gwynn, 1996; #NL-01

There were 20 cards in this insert series. This card features Jeff Bagwell. I blogged about another card from the series back in June.

It's super-shiny, so I used the overhead scanner. There wasn't enough light in the room so I tinkered with some settings and the resulting scan is a bit grainy. But you can get the idea.

So, what did Tony think about Jeff Bagwell...?

One thing that I've noticed with Tony's take on hitting is that he always used to say that a hitter needed to find their stance, swing, rhythm and then stick with it - here he talks about Jeff finding continuity. Except of course, Tony was happy to change things in his own batting. That's how he earned the nickname 'Captain Video' in the early stage of his career, because his wife, Alicia, would tape his games and he would watch and re-watch his at bats to see what he could have done differently. He also changed his preferred bat on the advice of Ted Williams in the early 90s, setting him up for his four latter batting titles.

So, there was continuity, and also scope for change. Which is kind of what he says here about Jeff's approach to hitting. 

And, speaking of Ted Williams, there's a card tomorrow featuring him.

Total: 710 cards

Monday Mysteriousness

I have recently been away on a holiday with family. I had a box of cards waiting for me on my return - two eBay purchases of cards from 1996 and 2001. I only saw a handful of cards on the listing, but both sample pictures had a Tony Gwynn card in, so I decided to risk it. Unfortunately the rest of the lots were very light on the Gwynns.

Still, at least it gave me something to share, including this shiny card from Topps's most mysterious range.

Card Number 709: Topps Mystery Finest, 1996; #M9

The number 'M9' comes from Trading Card Database. It's hard to work the number out from the actual card.

It's a super shiny card so I stuck it under the overhead scanner. It's a bit more silver in real life.

On the back we get some "Mystery Facts" and you have to guess who the player is who is being described. M9 is really easy as it's the picture on the front of the card.

The way these mystery facts are presented made me check something. This same card back appeared on M7 and M8 on the set as well, which would make them "cameo cards". According to BaseballCardPedia, these cards were found in Series 1 of Topps's flagship set in 1996 and came with a black film over the top that had to be peeled to reveal the mystery player. That makes this the mid-90s version of a "Rip card" except the card doesn't get ruined in the process.

Speaking of cameo cards, that's what will be coming along tomorrow.

Total: 709 cards

Tony's Project70 cameo appearance

I'm bending my own rules here about cameo appearances on cards, but I have some good reasons. 

Card Number 679: Topps Project70, 2021; #61

This is a card of Fernando Tatis, Jr. But I'm including it anyway, for obvious reasons if you look at the card.

This card was designed by Keith Shore in a homage to Tony's Topps card from 1986.

And Tony is featured in Keith's artwork, looking on from Heaven as Fernando tears up records for the Padres. (He was the fastest Padre to reach 200 hits a couple of days ago, and one of the fastest players ever to reach 50 home runs.)

It's a bit of a sentimental depiction and I'm in two minds about it really. It's less intrusive than the 'Master and Apprentice' card from the Topps Gallery insert set in 2020, which paired Fernando and Tony, and was anachronistic on a number of levels. But I'm not sure whether it's particularly respectful of Tony's memory to reduce him to a 'spirit in the sky' onlooker.

There is a short biography of Keith Shore on the generic-looking back. Keith is a popular baseball card artist, and that's reflected in the demand for this card, which had a print run of 9,884. That's well over three times as many sold compared to the Project70 card of Tony by Mimsbandz that I blogged about yesterday. I think partly that reflects the popularity of Fernando Tatis, Jr as well. 

So, although this is a 'cameo card', it's a bit different to cameo cards where Tony is in a photo of another player. He has been deliberately included in the artwork, so I'm counting this as a card in the collection, even though, technically, it probably isn't really a Tony Gwynn card.

Total: 679 cards

Cameo blogger

A little diversion today, to redirect readers to a guest post I wrote for Baseball Fans Only. Dave from the UK Collectors Group on Facebook runs the blog and asked me to write something about collecting Tony Gwynn cards. You can read the post here (and see a picture of me looking a bit tired in the Hall of Fame!)

A couple of weeks back Fuji described a card I showed as a "cameo card" - that's when a player appears on another card that isn't really "theirs". The card in question was this card from the Topps 1989 set which features Tony sliding in to second base on the 'Pirates Leaders' card.

The year prior to this, Tony featured on the Padres Leaders card, alongside Benny Santiago. I'm not sure whether this is really a 'cameo', but it was listed on the checklist just as Padres Leaders and it doesn't have Tony or Benny named on the front.

This is another card that I have already blogged about, which arrived in a joblot of Tony Gwynn cards, but wasn't a Tony Gwynn card. He is high-fiving, and partially obscuring, his team-mate Greg Vaughn.

And here's another card that arrived in a similar lot of Tony Gwynn cards. Like on the first card in this post, he is sliding in to second base. This time it's Astros second baseman Bill Doran trying to avoid a Tony Gwynn slide. 

I admit I'm inconsistent with these cameo cards. The first two I count in the collection, the latter two I don't. I think if it has another player's name on the front then it can't really count as a Tony Gwynn card. 

I hope you enjoyed the cameos - sorry, no new cards today. If you want to see my cameo on Dave's blog, then here's the link again!