2005 ABSOLUTE TOOLS OF THE TRADE PRIME #29/50 GARY CARTER We all need a little rest sometimes. Imagine in particular that you're a veteran big-league catcher. You've spent years in a squatting position, absorbing foul tips and blocking wayward pitches in the dirt. From Little League to Legion ball, to the Minors to the Show... [...]
1995 SUMMIT BRET SABERHAGEN R.A. Dickey is on track to have one of the seminal pitching seasons in Mets' history, one to rank right up there with '69 Seaver, '85 Gooden, and '88 Cone. A lesser man might be tempted by Dickey's initials to call his season-in-progress “rad”-- but you'll get none of that from [...]
2012 TOPPS ARCHIVES JOHAN SANTANA Seeing the square-shouldered Johan Santana on this 1971 Topps card explains everything. I realize now that the whole Madoff affair was just a smokescreen. The Wilpons have actually been flush with cash all along, but they were diverting funds in the service of a special project. The project? Send the [...]
1973 TOPPS JON MATLACK They say the camera adds 15 pounds. If that’s true, I shudder to think how skinny Jon Matlack was back in the day. The Mets had pitchers with thick legs – Tom Seaver jumps immediately to mind – and Matlack stood out in contrast. Especially given the skinny jeans uniform he [...]
2012 TOPPS HERITAGE MINT DUKE SNIDER This one's a bit of a mindbleep. It's a 2012 Topps Heritage Mint card that pays tribute to Duke Snider's 400th career home run, and it contains an uncirculated 1963 quarter embedded in a small round window to the right of a photo of the kneeling Silver Fox. Duke [...]
2012 BOWMAN TAYLOR WHITENTON Bowman issued its first baseball card set in 1948. At the time, they had the national market for this novelty pretty much to themselves-- the last major card set (“Play Ball”) had been released by Gum, Inc. in 1941, right before paper drives and wartime austerity made such frivolities temporarily obsolete. [...]
1970 TOPPS TOM SEAVER CELLO BOX The dominant pack configuration for Topps baseball cards throughout the '50s and '60s was the 5-cent wax pack: five cards and a stick of gum for your hard-earned nickel. Topps also offered less-common 1-cent wax packs through until the mid '60s-- these change-makers gave you gum and one card [...]
1997 UPPER DECK GAME JERSEY REY ORDONEZ You know how back in the '90s you'd be watching Up All Night on USA, and you'd be like, “Damn, what is Patrick Swayze doing in this crap?” Then you'd squint a bit to get a sharper look at the actor playing Sgt Barnes, and you'd think, “Wait, [...]
1999 SKYBOX THUNDER RAVE BRIAN McRAE Ah, the underappreciated art of penning baseball-card backs... At its best, card-back text is an intersection of Hemingway and haiku, delivering key information and sublime insight in a tiny, rhythmic capsule of words: “Holder of host of fielding marks for NL 3rd sackers, Ron topped former high in RBI's [...]
1970 O-PEE-CHEE JOE FOY Editor's Note: The following article was written in English, and then translated into French using Babel Fish. The resulting French was then translated back into English using the same program. The Editor is still trying to figure out why. C'est la vie... Don't blame Joe Foy of T. It was right [...]
2012 TOPPS HERITAGE CHRIS SCHWINDEN So I was going to tell you all about the 2012 Topps Heritage set. How it's printed on sturdy throwback non-glossy stock, practically begging you to say “Got it, got it, got it, need it” while you thumb through a stack. How cards numbered 426 through 500 in the set [...]
1963 TOPPS HERITAGE STICK-ONS DAVID WRIGHT Topps released its annual Heritage set a few weeks back. The 2012 edition covers the 1963 set, which is best known for including the Pete Rose rookie card. The Rose rookie is perhaps one of the top 10 most noteworthy cards in collecting history, and definitely one of the [...]