Made another trip out to the Mansfield card show a couple of weekends ago. It’s a nice little show with a little bit of everything. There are usually only two dealers with any quantity of wax, but their prices are pretty good from what I’ve seen. I’ve been heading to this show mainly to pick up singles and that’s exactly what I did at this show.
These Sportscaster cards appeal to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is a modern version of a vintage set. Sure, the original cards were much larger and were designed to be more of an educational tool than a collectible, but many people have fond memories of these cards. The second thing that appeals to me is that the original Sportscaster cards were definitely an oddball issue as far as the sports subjects go.
I had been thinking of picking up a box of 2005 Leaf to chase these, but the boxes are still fairly expensive and I’m not sure what else there is worth pulling out of those boxes. I’m not going to pay $80 for 5 or 6 of the Sportscaster cards. Especially not when I can pick up a couple of them for a dollar each. The Mulder is numbered to 45 and the McCovey is numbered to 25. I really need to start tracking down some of the Piazzas in this set which might be tough since each variation is fairly low numbered.
I may have already had this Big Baby orange refractor, but when it’s numbered to 499 and available for a dollar, I don’t mind possibly picking up a duplicate. It’s funny how much more easily you’ll pick up a card for a dollar when there’s no shipping involved and the card is right there in front of you.
I’d still much rather pick up older Topps singles of the players that I collect than the junk that Panini is producing these days. I haven’t even picked up any Donruss, which I wanted to love, outside of one autographed single and the cards that I won in Hoopology’s contest. I can’t encourage them to keep putting out the same garbage.
I purchased all of these Piazza cards from the same dealer for a little over $2 a piece. He had some cool looking inserts that I hadn’t seen before and so I grabbed those along with a couple of other cards to hit a quantity discount and get everything even cheaper.
This Cheap Seat Treats card is pretty interesting. At first all that you can see of the player is their head peeking out over the top of the seat. The card is designed to fold down just like the seats at your favorite ballpark. It’s kind of strange, but it also makes sense.
I had a little bit of trouble getting a really good scan of the card with the seat unfolded. It finally cooperated a little bit when placed in a large sleeve while unfolded. This is still a strange insert set, but at least now you can see the entire player.
I like seeing things like this where companies took a chance on something new. So many cards have been produced over the years that companies have to try something new.
This card doesn’t scan all that well, but this is a beautiful card and is exactly what Topps Chrome can be at its best. There’s etching, cool designs and a really nice picture of the player. If there’s a refractor version of this card, it’s something that I really need to pick up.
There’s a ton of Piazza cards like this one that were produced while I was away from the hobby that I now need to acquire. It was nice to pick up a handful of these cards all in one place. Soon it might be time to grab another bunch of .18¢ base cards from SportLots.
I really miss some of the really cool insert sets that Fleer seemed to put into their sets on a yearly basis. They were the first company to put an insert (that wasn’t a parallel) into every pack and they were one of the first to have inserts that were case hits. The tougher to pull that a card was, the more cool things you were likely to find on it. Most of the cards can probably be acquired cheaply these days, but that’s just all the more reason to search them out.
This Baseball Rules! insert is just another very cool Fleer insert set. It’s die cut and has a cool background consisting of baseballs. I’ve already put the card away, but if I remember correctly the back explained how to figure out batting average.
Who will be your… Mystery Finest. Topps came up with an interesting idea with Mystery Finest inserts. When you pulled these cards, they had a protective film over them like other Finest cards, but the film was opaque so you didn’t know how was on the card. The card backs would picture four players that could possibly be on the front of the card. I don’t think that anyone kept these cards unpeeled or if they would go for any sort of premium in that state. Most people want to know which player is on a card.
Dufex! Boy do I miss Dufex. Museum Collection cards were by far the coolest parallel set ever produced. It’s a shame that no one is using this technology these days. Upper Deck might have used it in hockey, but no one is using it in any of the sports that I collect.
I think that Piazza had 3 or 4 cards in this set and I now have two of them in Museum Collection form. These cards are still pretty popular and sell for a lot more than any of the other common parallel sets from the 90s.
Speaking of parallels, here’s a Piazza gold chrome refractor. This card books for $12 and is available on CheckOutMyCards for $3 so I was happy getting it for what I did. I have no clue how difficult these were to pull. Luckily, Topps now numbers most of their colored refractors, but that had led to those same colored refractors being a lot tougher to pull.
Did someone say oddball cards? I love me some Sportflix. I bought a ton of the stuff back in the day which was tough because it was by far the most expensive trading cards out at the time. As times changed and sets such as Chrome, Finest and SPx came out with new technologies people weren’t as willing to pay so much for Sportflix anymore. It’s kind of like what happened to Action Packed (which I also loved for those of you who may have been wondering).
Unfortunately, I already had this Going, Going, Gone insert so if any of my fellow Piazza collectors need this card (in a Dodgers uniform) then let me know. Maybe you’ve got an extra of a Piazza insert that I need.
This Stadium Club Chrome refractor is a parallel version of an insert set. I’m blanking on anything to write for some of these cards due to putting them away before composing this post. I’ve been trying to focus on getting my desk organized and cleaned off especially in preparation of a future case break.
So, just take in the great Stadium Club photography, imagine a refractory shimmer when this card is tilted from side to side and wonder mourn a great set that doesn’t exist any longer.
This 2004 Leaf Certified Cuts card was thrown into the pile because it was serial numbered and a Marlins card. You don’t see all too many cards of Piazza in a Marlins uniform since he only played 5 games with them. I’ll also pick up serial numbered cards whenever I see them because you don’t know when you may see them again.
Last, but certainly not least, is this Piazza Moonshots jersey card. You can’t beat that for $2. Well, you probably could since Piazza jersey cards are a dime a dozen and many can be picked up for a couple of bucks, but I was very happy to add this to my collection. The jersey placement seems like something right out of Panini’s playbook which makes me wonder if there’s a version of this cars sans jersey. If there isn’t another version of this card then the swatch placement seems a little strange. A quick Google search reveals some with white jersey swatches, but that’s it.
So, there you go. All in all, a very successful day at the card show. The only place where I struck out was in trying to purchase some 1000 count boxes. Oh well, there’s always next month.
1 comment:
Those are some nice Piazza pickups!
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