- Great game action shot of Thome about to catch the ball at first base. It didn't take Thome long to transition to 1st base as his fielding percentage was routinely in the .990s after the move.
- Hard to tell, but it looks as if Jim has both the eye black on his face, along with the sunglasses. Overkill?
- Bio on the back: "...(Jim) is the first Indians left-handed batter with back to back 30 plus homer seasons since Hal Trosky in 1936-37." I know that I've mentioned that before somewhere on the blog...
- Robert
- Loved the idea of this card, collectors pulled these out of packs and if the player scored on the date listed, you won a "really cool" 30 card. Each player had 3 different dates to score on.
- February 3rd, 1996 the Avalanche played the New York Rangers and won. Joe scored two goals that night, so someone could have sent this in and claimed their prize.
- I could go on twitter right now, and tell people that Sakic scored on Glenn Healy that night and would get responses such as "not surprising" and "good". A lot of people from the Great White North did not enjoy listening to Glenn on their hockey telecasts...
- Robert
- Bio on the back: "Jim Thome smacked a pair of no-doubt-about-them home runs against the White Sox on 6/3/97 for the fifth two homer game of his American League career." Wonder why Fleer found it necessary to put in "American League"?
- I've never been to Jacobs Field in Cleveland, but I'm assuming that the stadium below Jim represents that. Please correct me if I'm wrong...
- I like the baseball in the upper right corner, it appears that it's headed towards the moon. If it were an actual baseball coming off of Jim's bat, that would have been even better...
- Robert
- Had a trio of Nordiques cards still to show, but they belong in a mini-marathon so I decided to get the first card of Joe in an Avalanche uniform out there today.
- No beating around the bush, this card is HEAVY! Almost as heavy as the thick as a brick the Cup cards.
- 5 copies of the card are currently listed on COMC, ranging from $1.45 to $2.74. Might be able to make more if I melted the card down....
- Robert
- What does a guy gotta do? The one season that Matt Williams spends in Cleveland, he wins a silver slugger and gold glove. What do the Indians do? They trade him to the Diamondbacks for Travis Fryman.
- Wonder what would have become of Thome's career had he remained at 3rd base instead of moving to 1st when Williams arrived...
- Need the Blue Jays version of this insert, which features Roger Clemens and Jose Cruz Jr. There are some great duos featured in this insert set, including Griffey/ARod and Vlad Guerrero/Pedro Martinez of the Expos.
- Robert
- First of the Pacific brand of cards for 1998; I only showed one for Thome from 1997.
- What is that design in the background? Pinwheel? Chinese throwing star? Any ideas? Also I found it interesting that the blue background you see on the scan is actually silver in hand.
- Only 3 copies of this card on COMC right now, 1 is at 73 cents, the other 2 at 74 cents. Sounds about right.
- There are 19 unique Pacific branded cards (incl. parallels) listed for sale on the site. I'd be surprised if I have half of them.
- Robert
- Similar to the McCutchen card in yesterday's afternoon post, the horizontal shot makes all the difference here. Gotta wonder if he stopped the Bruin featured in the shot here...
- This is another example of me having the parallel card and not the base card. I've really got to change that...
- I love the border. The greenish/blue marble effect has always been a favorite of mine, and it hasn't changed in 25 years.
- Robert
- I've never been big on companies such as Classic, but this card I really like. I'll be damned if I can remember who sent it to me, but thank you to the person that did!
- It took a bit of searching to find out exactly what set that this card was from. I finally found it on COMC.
- This will probably be one of the few cards that you will see featuring Felix in his St. John's Maple Leafs jersey. I think Classic was the only company to release cards of him with that particular logo...
- Robert
- Believe me, I get it about people not liking unlicensed cards. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of them myself. But done right, you have to admit that some of them look pretty good. I do like this card.
- Not sure why I had this card mixed in with the 2014 page of McCutchen cards, it clearly says on the back 2012 Prizm. Brain fart!
- Team MVP indeed. .327 average, 194 hits and 31 homers is going to be tough to beat out for top dog honors.
- At Andrew's current pace, he would hit the 3000 hit mark sometime during his age 40 season. I think that 2500 is a more reasonable objective for Cutch.
- Robert
- I think that this card was made even better by the fact that it's a horizontal shot. If the baseball was in the frame, the photo would have been absolutely fantastic. I still miss the dreads.
- It had been almost a month since I posted a McCutchen card, so I decided to make up for it today by posting two MVP related cards. No, the next post will not be the base card version of this one...
- I was curious to see how much this card would be selling for on COMC. When I went there, no copies were for sale! The series 1 base blue parallel had a few copies, selling from 64 cents to $2.25.
- I was a little surprised (but shouldn't have been so..) that this was the first card from the 2014 Topps set featured on this blog. I'm sure that I'll find a card or 2 from this set for Brett Lawrie to post as well...
- Robert
- The only way that you can tell that it's a different photo from the 2013 Topps base set is that he's wearing his road greys on this card, whereas on the flagship he's in the home whites. Otherwise, it's virtually the same fielding pose.
- Why do guys wearing batting gloves underneath their leather? Never really made any sense to me. Can't be for protection, can it?
- Bio on the back: "Brett topped the Blue Jays with a .319 batting average against left handed pitching. He also relished raking at the Rogers Centre (Skydome), where he swatted .302." What happened to words such as hitting or batting in the 2nd sentence? Did they become passe?
- Robert
- I always enjoyed pulling the predictor cards from packs. Joe Sakic unfortunately didn't win the Art Ross trophy in 94-95, as Eric Lindros and Jaromir Jagr tied for the league lead in points with 70. Joe finished the season with 62 points (remember it was the strike shortened season).
- Love that the blue border matches up really well with the blue in the Nordiques uniform.
- Insanity on the back: When redeeming winning predictor cards, Canadians had to answer this skill testing question within 3 minutes: 9+7+3. Think you can manage??
- Robert
- How is it that I managed to get the Gold Medallion parallel, and have had it for quite a long time, but don't have the base version of this card??!! That needs to be rectified, and soon.
- The back of this card has 3(!) photos of Sakic. I don't know if I've ever seen a card with 3 photos of the same player, save for the 70's OPC/Topps team leader cards.
- Career goal #123 for Joe came on 12/5/91 at the Boston Garden. Joe scored both goals in a 2-2 that night. Andy Moog was the victim for both goals...
- Robert
- Love the look of this card, the dual photo looks really sharp. I also enjoy that the photos use both the home and road jerseys. Fleer got this one right in my opinion.
- This is part of a 10 card insert set, featuring a who's who of great center-men of that era. Messier, Fedorov, Gretzky, Lindros, Francis, Oates, Sundin, Roenick, and Zhamnov were the other 9 to be part of the set.
- There are currently a dozen of these listed on COMC, ranging in price from $1.40 to $2.75. Not bad, seems like a decent range for this card.
- Robert
- '98 Bowman, a solid effort. Got everything you would want in a card. Great shot, team logo, facsimile signature (I've always liked those) and a border that doesn't overrun the card.
- Stats on the back: No bio on Bowman, just stats versus every team. Jim rang up the White Sox to the tune of a .326 average, 8 HR and 18 RBI. The only two teams in '97 that Jim didn't hit a HR off in the AL were the Angels and Orioles.
- '98 Bowman=441 card set. Lists in Beckett magazine for $50, while the Thome card is at just 75 cents. Jimmy Rollins and Magglio Ordonez are the biggest RC's in the set, listing for $5 each.
- Robert
- Cleveland won again yesterday, so I'm posting another Thome card. Will keep doing so each time they win.
- Card didn't scan as bad as I thought it would. The picture of Thome on the small inset box is hard to see when the card is in hand, so it being the same on the scan isn't all that upsetting.
- Career home run #122 for Jim broke the streak of solo shots I mentioned a few days ago. It was hit 8/2/1997 off of Bobby Witt of the Texas Rangers, a 3 run shot that broke a 3-3 tie and pushed the Indians to a 7-3 victory.
- Robert
- First blood: Indians took the first game of the ALCS last night over the Jays 2-0. They also took first blood in the '99 ALDS against the Red Sox. Take a look here at that series and see how it wound up....
- Jim's future was so bright, he had to wear shades. This is the first card that I've shown of Jim that features him with sunglasses, every other card you see him wearing eye black.
- Bio on the back: "Jim became the first player in club history to record 40 home runs and 100 bases on balls in the same season." Jim would accomplish that feat 5 more times, twice with Cleveland, twice with Philadelphia and once with the White Sox.
- Robert
- 3 straight days of Finest cards on the blog is sort of a happy accident. The scan almost makes it look like Jim is under water while swinging the bat.
- Is it me, or does the first baseman's glove at the bottom of the card look like it's a lefty glove? Jim throws right handed. Maybe I'm just looking at it wrong?
- Bio on the back: The card mentions that Jim was 4th in the AL in homers with 40 in 1997. This season, 40 would have tied him for 6th with Todd Frazier of the White Sox. Frazier hit 40 this year? Really?
- Robert
- The other half of the Sakic Bowman's Best cards from Finest looks really sharp. The blue on Joe's jersey and pants came out really dark, which for me really enhances the card.
- Tell me that the silver "thing" just to the right of Joe's pants doesn't look like a growling animal of some kind?
- Bio on the back: "Premier play maker, but also finishes with accurate wrist shot." The wrist shot was one of the best in the game during his career, if not the best.
- There are currently 9 copies of the card on COMC, ranging anywhere from $1.49 to $4.15. How does someone come up with an arbitrary price such as $4.15 anyways?
- Robert
- A little bit confusing if you're trying to find this card on the trading card database website. Even though the front of the card says Bowman's Best, it's a Finest insert, so you have to look under Finest to find it.
- First multi-player card featured for Sakic. There are dozens featuring him with fellow Avalanche players down the road.
- Bonk didn't enjoy the statistical success that 3rd overall picks usually have, but his career was long enough. Radek played in 969 games with three teams (Ottawa, Montreal and Nashville) scoring 497 points. He played 4 more seasons in his home Czech Republic after he left the NHL, and retired following the 2012-13 season.
- Robert
- A little less busy than last year's release, don't you think? The scratches above Jim's head remind me of when you're trying to get a dry pen to write...
- Bio on the back: "I can't control where the ball goes, I can only try to have at-bats and hit it hard". I'm sure that there are a lot of baseball people that would say that they can control where the ball goes to a certain extent.
- Career home run #119 was hit off of Minnesota's LaTroy Hawkins. It was the start of a big day for the Indians, as they won 12-5 over Twins on 7/13/97.
- Robert
- Cheese! Love how Lawrie mugs for the camera on this photo. Something different that the many fielding poses that he's had over the previous years...
- Bio on the back: "Brett just turned 23 but is already one of the game's best third basemen." By 2014 Brett was splitting time between 3rd and 2nd base, and this year with the White Sox he was exclusively a 2nd baseman.
- I just don't remember Lawrie with blond hair. It doesn't look right on him if you ask me...
- Robert
- Posted a couple of days in advance, as I expect to lose power during this storm, but have no idea for how long.
- Starting to see poses on cards showing Jim playing first base, as he'd made the transition full time during the 1997 season.
- Career HR #118 came against the Twins Todd Ritchie, 7/12/97. It was the 9th consecutive solo shot that Jim had hit, and he would go on to hit 3 more solo shots until he finally had some men on base about a month later.
- Robert
- I actually like how this card scanned. The ice looks as if the arena is dark and a little spooky.
- I only recently obtained this card. There was an empty space in the Sakic binder for many, many years.
- Checked out COMC to see what the prices were on this card. Pretty big range, $2.74 to $11.05. I would say somewhere towards the $4-$5 mark is about right for this parallel...
- Robert
- By the time this post hits, Matthew should have struck where I live. Positive thoughts my friends.
- The higher number cards in the Players Club set were a little harder to spot, as they didn't have the grey border to distinguish them from the base set cards. I'm sure I probably missed a few while opening packs back in the day.
- Career goal #118 for Joe was scored 11/21/91 against their provincial rivals, the Montreal Canadiens. The Nords won the game 5-2, and both of Joe's goals came that night against Rollie the goalie, Roland Melanson.
- Robert
- Remember what I said yesterday? Making up for missing the other day? Well, today will be a 3 post day. Yep, another 3 versions of the same card. At least they'll be out of the way quicker.
- Joe's career average per game of 0.737 assists per game would give him 60 a season when playing all 82 games. His career high? 69 assists in 1995-96.
- Love this shot of Joe assessing the situation while stick handling. The greats never look at the puck.
- Robert
- Back posting tonight. I was so engrossed in the Jays game last night that by the time it ended (1130) I was too tired to post. I'll have to make up for it sometime this month.
- Starting the '98s with Fleer Ultra. Design? Not bad, I got used to seeing the player's name written in script over the years that it became the norm. Besides, the red script matches Jim's socks.
- Bio on the back: there wasn't a bio on the back of this card, but there was one stat that Fleer added that caught my eye, AB/HR. Jim hit a homer every 12.4 ABs during the '97 season, or if you assume that he has 3.1 ABs per game, Jim's hitting a homer every 4 days. Not too shabby if you ask me.
- Robert
- I will always identify Potvin with his cat mask, which he dutifully kept with each of his stops after Toronto.
- I was surprised to see how many of these were on COMC, 17 in total! Range is from 75 cents to $2.24. Sounds about right to me.
- Career game #7 for Felix was during his 2nd season with the Leafs. It was 10/22/92 in the old Expo Hall in Tampa Bay. The Leafs won 5-2 with Felix stopping 28 of 30 shots. Rob Pearson and Nikolai Borschevsky each scored twice for the good guys.
- Robert
- I'm sorry Jim, but you don't remind me of an Olympic sprinter in the blocks getting ready to run the 100 meters. Besides, nobody is faster than Usain...
- "Finishing up 1997". The posts for Thome's 1997 cards that I own started back on July 22nd with the Donruss Preferred card, and finish today with the SP. 28 cards later, and we move on to the 1998s.
- In case you were wondering, the card numbers on the back are just about impossible to read. I had to turn the card into the light in order to see the numbers. Yikes.
- A rough count off of my Trading Card Database checklist shows that I need 134 more Thome cards if I want to "complete" the 1997 releases. Nah, don't think that's going to happen...
- Robert
- This card is sharp. Love the gold borders, and even though the inner foil didn't scan very well, I really do like the look of this card.
- Bio on the back: "One key to Jim's success is patience. He averaged an AL leading 4.46 pitches per plate appearance in '96." I would love to know who is the leader in this category now, as it seems that pitchers are throwing more pitches in a game than ever before. The Jays starter last night was over 50 pitches in the 2nd inning. Yikes!
- Home Run #115 for Jim was off of one of the best closers the game will ever see, Mariano Rivera. It was a solo shot in the 9th inning, 6/27/97 in Yankee Stadium. It wasn't enough as Rivera held on for a 3-2 Yankees win.
- Robert
