Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball insert series part 2

The second half of the 10-card insert series I started showing yesterday. 

Card Number 408: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG5

I always like cards that show Tony signing autographs!

Card Number 409: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG6

Card Number 410: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG7

(Sidebar - some of these photos have a background and some do not. There doesn't seem to be any guiding reason to why the cards either side of this one have the backgrounds left in and in this one it's been photoshopped out. It's a fielding photo. What could be in the background that they didn't want people to see?)

There's a good line there for my collection of ways Tony is described on the backs of baseball cards: "simply the best pure hitter of his generation."

Card Number 411: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG8

That's a little factoid that I haven't seen represented before - 11 invitations in a row to play in the All-Star Game.

Card Number 412: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG9

And a posed potrait photo to finish.

As I said after the first half of the set, this is a nice little series with some good photos and write ups. It fills a page in the binder and looks very attractive doing so.

Total: 412 cards

Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball insert series part 1

In 2002, Upper Deck released nine ten-card insert series of various 'Heroes of Baseball' in their Prospect Premieres set. The base set was all hitherto unknown rookies and prospects and included autographs and relics from players who Upper Deck predicted would be "future gems". The multiple insert series of heroes counter-balanced this parade of youngsters with players people would have actually known because they had all just retired, like Cal Ripken Jr, or were legendary figures, like Mickey Mantle and Tom Seaver.

Technically, there are only 9 cards in each set and a 'Header', which is the tenth card and messes up displaying the complete set in a 9 pocket card page. 

I got this small set from Gawain a while back but didn't get around to including it in my original 394 cards. So I'm going to show them now. They are all self-explanatory so commentary will be at a minimum.

Card Number 403: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball,  2002; #HTG

This is the 'Header' card, which is why it isn't numbered.

The header card functions as a checklist.

Card Number 404: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG1

Card Number 405: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG2

Card Number 406: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG3

Card Number 407: Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Heroes of Baseball, 2002; #TG4

This is a nice set and I like the way it picks out facets of Tony's career. My only negative criticism of the set is that it doesn't use photos from the year in question. Tony looked very different when he was stealing lots of bases in 1987 to when he was smacking his way to the .394 average in 1994. Using chronologically accurate photos would also mean seeing the lovely 1984 jerseys on card number TG4 as well, which I would have preferred.

The second half of the set will be on the blog tomorrow!

Total: 407 cards

Modern Monday - Stadium Club 2020

Andy M, who sent me the DonRuss card packet featuring Tony recently, got back in touch to ask if I had the 2020 Stadium Club card. (At that point I didn't, although I've subsequently been offered it by several people.)

Card Number 402: Topps Stadium Club, 2020; #160

That's an attractive photo, although Topps seems to be doing their darnedest to make it look like a logoless card. However, it's a great pose and always fun to see a batting doughnut on the bat.

Tony's place on the all-time hitting list is dependent on whether you count Cap Anson's total as 3,435 or 3,081. This comes down to which leagues are counted as "major" leagues. Baseball Reference includes Anson's batting record from the five seasons he spent in the North American League before he joined the Cubs in the National League. Topps have followed the Baseball Reference list.

As an aside, I've noticed that Tony has had a card in all of Topps's main releases this year. This includes in Topps Archives, where it makes sense for Tony to have a card, but it also includes a short print card in the flagship set along with some inserts and retro cards, a faux rookie card, cards in Allen & Ginter and the Topps 206 sets, and so on. There have also been more than a few put out by Panini under various brands like DonRuss.

Out of curiosity I went to Trading Card Database to see how many Tony Gwynn cards have been released recently. I was astounded really to see that since Tony passed away, almost 1,800 cards have been produced and listed on the database.

In 2015, the year after he passed away, 313 cards were produced. That's understandable given the cicumstances. DonRuss produced a set of 5 tribute cards for example. There were 155 cards released in 2016, 153 in 2017 and 159 in 2018. A lot of these are parallels and short print versions of the same card, so in reality there aren't that many cards to collect to have an example of each type.

150 cards a year for a player who stopped playing over a decade beforehand is a lot. But things went slightly bonkers in 2019. TCDb lists 514 Tony Gwynn cards released last year. That level of production has continued into this year. As of the 2nd October when I was looking these numbers up, TCDb had 426 cards listed. That's more than were released in 2001, the season Tony retired.

The peak year of releases during Tony's career was 1998 when 812 cards are listed. However, at least 200 of these are variant patterns in the plastic on "Topps Tek" cards. While that is a ridiculous volume, it was at the height of the mad card boom in the 1990s, and, more importantly, Tony was still playing!

Just to show the 'bloat' in production, at the end of the 80s Tony's card totals rose from 66 in 1987 to 108 in 1990. in 1995, the season after he recorded his .394 modern day batting record, he featured on 173 cards. Then there is a huge peak at the end of the 90s, before the bell curve drops back down to more sensible levels. In 2002, the year after he retired, he featured on 232 cards. It peaks back up for a few years to an ultimate high (1,297 cards in 2005 after 648 in 2004 and before 485 in 2006), mainly because card companies started doing lots of very short print memorabilia cards, and then drops again (189 in 2010). So this is definitely a third surge in sheer numbers of cards.

There are probably lots of reasons why Tony is such a popular choice for the card companies in the last year or two. I get a sense from reading card blogs that a lot of collectors are a bit older and nostalgia plays a factor in their collecting. Cards of retired heroes, particularly the cards designed to look like cards from the 70s and 80s, or referencing events in the 80s and 90s, are targeting that demographic of collector who isn't interested in the latest hot rookie. And because absolutely every card in a set released this year will have multiple parallels as a matter of course, the number of cards will be inflated even more.

And that's why I'm blogging about a Stadium Club card released this year on a blog dedicated to a player who stopped playing 18 years ago and passed away six years ago.

Total cards: 402

One card only - streaks and a plain patch

As is customary for this blog, it's Sunday so that means one card only. As is also customary for this blog, there will be a short complaint about the card hobby at the moment.

But first, the Padres 2020 season came to an end in the early hours of Friday morning (UK time). One benefit of getting up for a 2am first pitch was it meant I could text my friend who was being kept up all night by her brand new twins and say "Hi, I'm up in the middle of the night too!" I didn't last the whole game. 8-2 down at the end of the fifth inning I went back to bed. I wasn't too surprised to see the Dodgers had gone on to win the game and the series when I woke up in the morning. 

It's been an exciting season to be a 'Slam Diego' fan. Fernando Tatis Jr has become a very hot property in the collecting world and it's been funny watching my fellow collectors scramble to pick up Padres cards in the various Facebook groups I'm in. Until this year I've had a free run at anything Padres. Now I'd have to be quick if I wanted to buy any. I'm not complaining. It's nice to be a fan of a popular team for a change.

However, being in those groups, I have noticed how many people are putting relic and autographed cards up for sale. There is a constant stream of newly minted, newly pulled relics up for grabs. Now you can buy boxes that guarantee you a relic inside and it feels like they are almost too common. In fact they are so common now, a friend gave me a Topps hangar fatpack as a birthday present, and I pulled a relic card out of that. It was the first time I had ever done that in my life, and I feel that if I'm pulling them, given the rarity of how often I open packs, then it shows what I mean about them becoming almost commonplace.

But that is the situation at the moment. I've seen several people ask if we are into a second over-production era. I think we are. Except this time it's not just junk wax. It's also junk parallels and junk relics and junk autos. There are a few people still building sets out there, but there are also people accumulating lots of special insert cards that they don't really want. 

Anyway, enough of my complaints. Today's one card only dates from a time when relic cards were difficult cards to pull from a pack.

Card Number 401: Pacific Private Stock, 2001; #148

It's a dark blue swatch card.

On the back there is a note about the item's provenance. It claims to be from "game used gear" and specifies the season it was worn - 1999. The Padres introduced a navy blue 'alternate uniform' in 1999. An alternate uniform is different from a 'road uniform', which was dishwater grey for a number of years.

Summarising the 1999 season, the cardback mentions Tony's batting average and a 16-game hitting streak, but doesn't mention his 3000th hit that season.

Hitting streaks are odd things. Tony's record was 25 games in his first full season (1983). He is third on the all-time Padres hitting streaks list. Weirdly the top two streaks in Padres history are both by catchers - John Flaherty surpassed Tony's 25 with a 27 game streak in 1996, and the all-time leader is Benito Santiago with a streak of 34 games in 1987, which was his rookie year. That's actually still the longest hitting streak by a catcher in Major League Baseball. 

So far none of the big hitters in the Slam Diego line up in 2020 have had a streak to rival these records. Maybe one of them will next season.

Total: 401 cards

Earth-shaking cards

Today's post will see this blog reach 400 cards, which is a milestone I wasn't really expecting to get to when I  started out on this project. Especially as I was aiming for 394 cards. 

I've decided to celebrate with two cards produced by Pacific that really embody the weird collecting journey I have been on this year. These came out of an eBay lot and tick a lot of the boxes you'd expect from Pacific cards.

• Colourful - check
• Spanish - check
• Variation for no reason - check
• Strange choice for a set name - check

Card Number 399: Pacific Invincible Seismic Force, 1999; #16 (portrait photo)

I do wonder if there's a link between California, earthquakes and this set name.

I quite like the orange. It's a bit different.

"Despligues de Fuerza!" That's Spanish for "Seismic Force".

There are only 20 numbered cards in this set, but Pacific produced two versions of each card. With the same number. That means there are actually 40 cards in the insert series to collect. 

Pacific liked to do things like this to keep collectors on their toes!

Card Number 400: Pacific Invincible Seismic Force, 1999; #16 (running photo)

Basically, Pacific swapped the photo theme round to have an action photo on the front...

...and a portrait photo on the back.

The text is the same on both cards. It's just the photography that's different. 

And that takes the total up to 400 cards!

Access with an X

Every so often a set appears that needs a bit of research. Dugout Axcess (sic) is one such range. According to this article on Beckett's it was a one-year wonder aimed at younger collectors. It was also released by Skybox when Marvel operated the brand and Beckett mentions some cards that paired baseball players with superheroes. I had to look those up on Trading Card Database and it's true, but sadly Tony didn't feature in that 10-card insert set.

However, Tony did feature on more than one card in the set.

Card Number 397: Skybox Dugout Axcess, 1998; #43

The X in Axcess is formed from two crossed bats, which I thought was just a design motif, but actually it's the proper name of the set!

This card is similar to a Skybox card featuring Tony at Spring Training, with him carting his equipment bag around. He's carrying at least three bats poking out of the top. This set definitely went for quirky photos - Roger Clemens' card has a picture of him bunting!

The back carries a photo and quote from Orel Hershiser, which made me wonder if there is another card from the set with a little inset photo of Tony saying something about another player. I decided if I was really committed I would go through all the images on TCDb and find out.

The answer is 'yes'. Tony provided a little quote on the back of team-mate Ken Caminiti's card.

Tony has another card in the base set as part of a 'sketch' series. I don't have that card, but I do have a card from the 'Double Header' insert set.

Card Number 398: Skybox Dugout Axcess Double Header, 1998; #18DH

This insert series was printed on foilboard and doesn't scan well. 

I'm going to be petty and ding this a point for the missed opportunity to give Tony the number 19 card in a 20 card set, instead of 18.

Double Header was a dice-based card game (dice not included) that looks absurdly tedious and I predict has been played by no one, ever. On the front of the card it lists the outcome of a dice roll if someone was playing using this card. On the back it explains what the abbreviations are. 

I have a dorky interest in games and I know that on a two dice roll the most common numbers to roll are 6,7 and 8. To have those numbers allocated to the outcomes "double play", "ground out" and "hit by pitch" are just terrible game design decisions. They also don't take into account Tony's actual ability to make a base hit and seriously overplay the likelihood of him being hit by a pitch. In his 20-season career, Tony was only hit by a pitch 24 times. But the likelihood of rolling an 8 with two dice is 13.89% - which would be a huge number if that probability reflected reality considering he made over 10,000 plate appearances. 

This wasn't the first time a card set tried to introduce an interactive game element, and it probably won't be the last. They all seem like they would be extremely boring, but at least it gave me an extra Tony Gwynn card for the collection.

Total: 398 cards

Carrying on beyond 394

After the excitement of reaching 394 cards yesterday, today was always going to be a bit of an anticlimax. And what could be more anticlimactic than looking at checklists? (Leave an answer in the comments!)

Card Number 395: Upper Deck, 2000; #294

To be honest, checklists like this aren't really what I think of when I think of checklists. This is to all intents and purposes an actual card.

My quibble with the back is the re-use of the photo on the front for the headshot. Given that Tony's face is obscured by his batting helmet, it's an unusually poor choice of photo for Upper Deck.

Stylistically there isn't much difference between a stats box full of tiny numbers and a 30-card checklist. Particularly when one of those players is called "Pokey". (#86 - It's not actually the name on his birth certificate, though!)

Card Number 396: Upper Deck, 2000; #536

What's better than one checklist in a set featuring your favourite player? How about two checklists in a set featuring your favourite player?

It's a much better photo on the front and there's a different photo on the back this time. The front photo has all the identifying things you could possibly need - Tony's full face, the team name on the uniform, the number 19 and 'SD' on his helmet and arm patch. It's the exact opposite of a logo-less card; a logo-full card? The only place where it slips up is bisecting Tony's ankle with a blob of gold foil and decolourising his now-detached foot.

There is a slightly new take on Tony's 3000 hits on the back. I wasn't aware until reading this card that Tony achieved 3,000 hits in the third fewest games up to that point. Tony reached his 3000th hit in his 2,284th game and nobody has done it in fewer games since. He is still third behind Ty Cobb and Nap Lajoie.

I love learning a new factoid and there is something a but unusual about learning it off a checklist!

Total: 396 cards