- Right side of the background? Reminds me of striped curtains. Don't ask me why, it just does.
- Left side kind of scanned dull, looks much better in hand as it's silver foil. Kind of different that it has the beginning of the "Indians" on the home jersey, but doesn't finish the word. Wonder why Fleer made the card that way.
- Career home run #220 was the first of two homers Jim hit off of Wade Miller, 7/17/2000. Both were solo shots, but helped as the Indians beat the Astros 8-6.
- Robert
- Another part of the recent Sportlots purchase. Just 50 cents. Have seen a few of these online for a few bucks.
- Just need the Blue parallel in order to complete the rainbow of this particular card. I have never used the Beckett Marketplace to buy a card before, is it easy or a pain in the ass?
- For years I've never been big into inserts, but I think it would be great if a card company brought back something like these cards, based on player performance. This is one of the better ideas of the past quarter century, IMO.
- Robert
- I need to look at cards a little closer. Never noticed the eX logos in the silver "wave" portion of the card until I scanned and displayed on my monitor.
- I'm going to miss Chief Wahoo on the Indians Topps cards going forward. Believe me, I get it, doesn't mean I won't miss the logo though...
- Two parallels for this card, Essential Credentials Now #'d to 37 and Essential Credentials Future #'d to 24; one copy the Future card is listed on eBay currently with a BIN of $79.99. I don't expect to see either of those in my collection any time soon.
- Robert
- This appears to be the last year that I'll be able to readily tell the gold parallels from the base set. I've opened many packs from 2016 & 2017 Topps and have overlooked the newer gold parallels every time.
- Serial #'d 888/2015. I looked on TCDB to see if this had been submitted, and it had, with the parallel being #'d 666/2015. Interesting...
- The TCDB also showed eBay listings for this card, most of which were right around the $1 range. The 4 copies of this card on COMC are listed between 95 cents and $1.15, so it seems that all is right in the world when it comes to this particular card.
- Robert
- I remember in the past that Topps had the update series numbered with a "UH" (updates and highlights) prefix. Wonder what made them change to US.
- First card of Brett featuring him in an Oakland uniform. This will go quick, as I only have 5 of such cards.
- I tried hard this morning to read what the writing was on the tattoo on Brett's forearm, but couldn't make it out. Does anyone out there know what it says? Maybe a bible verse, but I'm not sure...
- Robert
- Thank you to Kin at the I feel like a collector again blog for this card, which he sent as part of a very generous trade package.
- Bio on the back: How's this for a comparison? Wagner joins the Pirates in 1900, the franchise hadn't finished higher than 6th in 11 of the previous 13 seasons. The Pirates won three straight NL titles from 1901-03. McCutchen joined the Pirates in 2009, and not too long thereafter they started making the postseason. Not quite as successful as Honus, but a good comparison indeed.
- It's also interesting to see how the colors have changed over the years for the Bucs, with the early unis having the red lettering and the blue caps. Today we all know Pittsburgh as the black and gold steel town.
- Robert
- I've had the Fleer Extra card from this set for a very long time, but when buying cards off of Sportlots recently, I couldn't believe that I didn't have this base card. 18 cents later, this was in the cart.
- I still have a few more Sakic cards that feature him in the Nordiques jersey to acquire. A lot of what's remaining are refractors, parallels or oddballs.
- The back of the card has 3 times as many photos as the front. Not sure why Fleer thought it necessary to use that many photos on the back. If you total up the photos, 2 feature Joe in his road uniform, and 2 have him in the home whites.
- Robert
- I wonder if people requested Topps to start numbering the Opening Day cards differently because they were confusing these with the regular base set. I don't remember seeing older sets with the "OD" before the card number.
- Cutch is still 3 homers away from 200 for his career. 9 more this year will tie his career high of 31 set back in 2012.
- I looked over a lot of career numbers for Andrew this evening, and the one that caught my eye was number of games started in CF. He moved into 50th place all time tonight with his 1266th career game in center. He would have to play every day for nearly 10 years to catch the all time leader, Willie Mays, who has 2829.
- Robert
- Another portion of the recent order from Sportlots. Very cheap for a Sakic card, just 18 cents. It's usually tough to find a Sakic card priced below a quarter.
- I had forgotten about this set; Sakic has multiple cards in it. This is the 2nd of the 3 that I own. The third is a short print that I have not yet found.
- Graphite shaft? I thought that graphite was more of a 21st century creation. Had no idea that graphite sticks went that far back. Guess I should really pay more attention to the game I love...
- Robert
- The card scanned wonderfully, looks better with the gold in the scan than the bronze in hand. Interesting with the 3 panel background, with only the dual photo of Jim in the 3rd panel.
- Back of the card is very interesting for stat geeks, as it breaks down Jim's statistics vs. pitchers who have certain ERA's. For example, for pitchers that had ERA's of below 3.00, Jim's batting average against them was .161 with 2 HR and 5 RBI in 31 ABs.
- Wondering when they weigh these guys: Most of the Topps and Upper Deck cards list Thome at 220 or 225 lbs. This Bowman's Best card lists him at 240. That's a big difference for cards from the same season...
- With 41 posts in July, I broke my own record for posts in a month. I need to average 37 posts a month for the remainder of the year to match last year's total.
- Robert
