Another Week. Another Set Completed.

Our hobby is being flooded with autographs by card companies striving to please autographs hounds like myself.  And although I'm not a huge fan of the plethora of sticker autographs out there, I've got to admit that Topps has done a pretty good job in recent years about inserting a fair share of hard signed signatures by some of the best names in baseball.

In 2012, I fell in love with and started stockpiling the Topps Archives Fan Favorites autographs.  The following year, I became addicted to Five Star Signatures.  A year later it was their High Tek autographs.  In 2015 I was picking up as many bargain priced Topps Archives Originals as I could get my hands on.

This year?  Well... believe it or not... I've actually set my sights on a different Topps product.  But I'll have to share them in a future post, because today I want to go old school and share a small, five card set I recently completed.

When Upper Deck entered the hobby back in 1989, they single handedly changed the hobby by raising the bar in terms of cardboard quality and ingenuity.  They avoided the dreaded Sophomore Slump when they became the first baseball card company to insert autographs into packs.  They teamed up with Reggie Jackson and had him sign 2,500 of his Heroes header cards.

Five years later they inserted Reggie's autograph into their baseball card packs again.  Well... technically... they inserted redemption cards into packs.  But collectors fortunate enough to pull one of those cards could send it in for this:

1995 Upper Deck Autographs #AC1

Damn.  Doesn't Reggie's signature look pretty?

Reggie wasn't the only hall of famer included on the checklist.  Upper Deck also had Willie Mays and Frank Robinson sign cards too:

1995 Upper Deck Autographs #AC2

1995 Upper Deck Autographs #AC3

They also included one of the greatest pitchers I've been privileged to watch in my lifetime.  

1995 Upper Deck Autographs #AC4

I never really liked Clemens.  Maybe it's because I chose to be a Gooden guy.  However... I still feel that Clemens deserves to be enshrined in Cooperstown... even with all of the controversy over PED's.  The guy simply dominated the first half of his career.

C'mon... just one fan's humble opinion guys.  Hopefully I won't receive any hate email over supporting Rocket Roger. 

For two solid years, I've had these four signatures sitting in my collection.  I kept going back and forth on whether or not I wanted to finish off the set and pick up the Raul Mondesi.

1995 Upper Deck Autographs #AC5

On one hand, I was content on owning the four big names in the set.

Sure... Mondesi was the 1995 NL Rookie of the Year Award winner, an MLB all-star, a two-time Gold Glove Award winner, a two-time 30-30 Club member who happened to have a respectful .273 career average along with 271 MLB home runs.  But these accolades and numbers qualifies him for Baseball's Hall of Very Good and not quite Cooperstown like the other four guys.

On the other hand... it's one card... and like I've previously pointed out... he's not exactly a slouch either.

The deciding factor?  Cost.

I added him to my Most Wanted list (which I haven't updated yet) and if I could find the card for less than $10 I'd buy it.  Well... I saw one offered on eBay with a BIN price tag of $7.99 (+ $2.62 shipping) and decided it was close enough, so I pulled the trigger.

Technically I received the card sometime in mid-September... but only recently got around to opening the package up and physically completing the set.

As soon as my COMC package arrives, I should have the cards to complete two more sets I'm building... so stay tuned.

I hope all of you are having a good week.  Happy Tuesday and sayonara!