An Attempted Run at Area 51

My memory isn't what it used to be.  That being said... I still remember watching Ichiro Suzuki receive a standing ovation from players and fans at the Tokyo Dome as he walked off the field as a player for the final time in his career back in March of 2019.

Since then it's been a waiting game... since there was no doubt in my mind that he'd be a first ballot hall of famer.  And as we all know... the wait is sort of over.   Last Tuesday he got the call from the National Baseball Hall of Fame, but now Ichiro and his fans must wait another six months for the Class of 2025 Induction Ceremony which will be held on July 27th in Cooperstown.

Until then you can expect at least two or three posts celebrating Ichiro's career.  Today's post focuses on his Topps flagship base card run.  It's not complete, but it's darn close.

2001 Topps #726

2002 Topps #225

No Topps base card run could be considered complete without his rookie card.  It took me twenty-three years, but I finally acquired a copy last summer at the flea market.  Unfortunately, I'm still looking for his 2001 Topps Traded & Rookies card.

2003 Topps #100

2004 Topps #10

His 2004 and 2005 Topps base cards are two of my favorites.  Both feature attractive action shots.

2005 Topps #400

2006 Topps #225

2007 Topps #400

Topps dropped the ball on Ichiro's 2007 base card.  What could have been one heckuva "play at the plate" card ended up being a zoomed in... cropping disaster.

2008 Topps #320

2009 Topps #300

2010 Topps #125

Topps redeemed themselves in 2008 with a nice photo of Ichiro and his iconic "samurai" pose.

2011 Topps #200

2012 Topps #537

2012 Topps Update #US272

On July 23, 2012... the Seattle Mariners shipped him off to the New York Yankees where he'd play the next two seasons.  Unfortunately Topps didn't have a contract with him, so Ichiro didn't have base cards in their 2013 and 2014 flagship sets.

2015 Topps Update #US396

2016 Topps #700

In 2015, he signed with the Miami Marlins as a free agent and returned to Topps in time for their Update set.

2017 Topps #699

2018 Topps #157

2018 Topps Update #US100

In March of 2018, he'd return to play for the Seattle Mariners for about a month before transitioning to a position in their front office.  The following season, he'd play his final two MLB games for the Mariners in Japan for the 2019 MLB Opening Series.

Ichiro has one of those "legends" variation cards in 2019 Topps flagship and another in the 2019 Topps Update set, but I haven't tracked either of those down yet.  In fact, I haven't really gone out of my way to obtain any of the Topps flagship short prints with the exception of this card:

2020 Topps #363

I'm not sure if this card fits into Dime Box Nick's Into the Sunset category or not... but it's an Ichiro Topps flagship base card (albeit a legend variation) that happens to feature statistics from his entire MLB career:

This is one of my most recent Ichiro purchases.  I had been waiting for this card to pop up on eBay for a reasonable BIN price.  Then last month, one came up for auction and I wound up being the highest bidder ($14.75 + $1.25 shipping).

I will continue to look for reasonably priced Topps flagship variations of Ichiro, but who knows when I'll be fortunate enough to land another one.  In the meantime, if you like these sorts of things... I encourage you to check out Reds Card Collector.  His Ichiro collection is super impressive.

Well that's it for now.  I'm a little behind on blogging, but I do have another Flea Market Find post in the works.  Hopefully I'll get it published on Thursday.  I have another trip to the flea market planned for Saturday and I'd hate to start piling up posts.  But we'll see how things play out.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Not an Expert... but Proficient

In one of our district inservice trainings, the presenter discussed the five stages of acquiring expertise.  Without boring you with the details, it just states that people go through a five step process (novice → advanced beginner → competent → proficient → expert) to become an "expert" at something.

It got me thinking about whether or not I consider myself an "expert" at anything.  Sadly... I couldn't really think of anything.  But when it comes to classroom management, collecting cards, and knowing Star Wars trivia, I'm confident that I'm at or at the very least close to being "proficient".

Those are three areas in my life that I enjoy and I'm eager to grow in.  Over the Christmas break, I found a cool YouTube channel dedicated to teaching Star Wars geeks like myself random facts that most people could care less about.

2000 Star Wars: Young Jedi CCG Battle of Naboo Expansion #86

(Photo from SWCCGStore)

In one of their videos, I learned that the famous bikini that Leia wore in Return of the Jedi made a cameo in The Phantom Menace.  Maybe I was focused in on Jabba... or maybe it's because the scene only lasts a few seconds.  Regardless... I've watched The Phantom Menace at least ten, maybe fifteen times... but never noticed it.

But now that it's embedded in my brain... my eyes will be drawn to it from this point moving forward.

I also discovered a bunch of baseball card variations over the holiday break.  Rod @ Padrographs sent me over 300 different Tony Gwynn cards last year.  I finally sat down and went through them to see which ones I needed.  TCDB opened my eyes to a boatload of variations.  And just like the Diva Shaliqua bikini scene in The Phantom Menace, you've gotta look closely or you'll miss them.

I found eight different ones in Rod's care package.  

1989 Donruss #128

I'm hoping my scans will be clear enough for you to see the very subtle difference between these variations.

1989 Donruss Bonus MVP's #BC-20

In regards to the Donruss variations, all six in this post have to do with whether or not the cards have a period following the INC on the back of the card.

1990 Donruss #86

1990 Donruss Bonus MVP #BC-4

1992 Donruss #441

1992 Donruss #425

I wish I could tell you which variation I had and which one Rod sent me... but I didn't have the foresight to jot down that information back when I scanned these cards.  If I had to guess, I'd say that all of Rod's cards are either at the top or the bottom of the scan though.

The Stadium Club variations are based on tiny letters on the back of the card which I'm thinking is related to the sheet they were printed on:

1991 Stadium Club #308

1992 Stadium Club #825

Now I wasn't exactly a "novice" in regards to these tiny variations from the Junk Wax Era.  I'd probably classify myself as an "advanced beginner" who knew they existed and even knew that some of them were related to "periods" and "letters".  This information was accumulated by exploring TCDB and reading card blogs like Nachos Grande who shows off these types of variations within his Barry Larkin PC from time to time.

Have I moved up to "proficient" in regards to these variations?  Probably not.  However I consider myself "proficient" in the overall knowledge of baseball cards.  I've been collecting off and on for the better part of 42 years and I'm continuously learning new things about our hobby.

And while we're on the subject of variations, here's a 2022 Topps Advanced Stats parallel that Reader X sent me last year:

2022 Topps Advanced Stats #617 (#'d 112/300)

You can't tell this is a variation by looking at the front.  You've got to turn it over to see the differences:

The first difference is obviously in regards to the advanced statistics listed instead of the standard stats you'd normally see.  But if you look in the upper righthand corner, you'll also notice this card is serial numbered to 300.  If I'm not mistaken, you can also differentiate these variations by zooming in on the Topps code at the very bottom, but I'll leave that up to the collectors with superior vision.

Luckily for me, Xavier had this card sitting in a top loader.  Had it been in the stack of penny sleeved cards, there's a good chance I would have missed it.  It's these types of things that keep me from becoming an "expert" in baseball card collecting.  And with new variations coming out year after year after year... I'm more likely to slide back down into the "competent" level than advance to "expert".

What about you?  In regards to collecting cards...

Do you consider yourself a novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, or expert?

As an educator, I probably should create guidelines or a rubric for these categories.  But we're not in a classroom and this isn't an assignment.  It's just a friendly blog with carefree standards... and I'll leave it up to you to set come up with your own guidelines.  Honestly... whether you are a "novice" or an "expert", I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and hang out.

Thank you Rod and Xavier for these generous donations to my collection and for motivating me to learn more about our hobby.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Extra Innings

While putting the final touches on this post over the weekend, I actually discovered three more 1989 Donruss variations sitting in my duplicate box:

1989 Donruss #128

1989 Donruss Bonus MVP's #BC-20

Yup.  Seems like the learning process never ends.  And maybe I'm closer to "competent" than I really think.

Topps Variations... Love Them or Leave Them?

One week down.  Thirty-four to go.

2020 Topps Legend Variation #248

Sorry I've been missing in action the past few days.  The first week of the school year is always a little hectic, but for some reason this year seemed to take things to the next level.  I think it has to do with a pair of things:

#1:  We're back to a normal schedule.

#2:  We're back to teaching standard sized classes in-person.

The bottom line was last week was exhausting.  It was also extremely fun, exciting, and entertaining.  I averaged a little over ten hours a day on campus last week and almost eight hours of sleep each night... which meant a short vacation from the hobby.

Today I'm going to read some of the blog posts I missed over the past week, but in order to balance out my life... I've decided to dedicate exactly two hours of my Sunday.  So I apologize in advance if I don't read and comment on all of your posts from last week.  

Now that I've finished another chapter of my life update, let's check out some cards.  This past Thursday was World Photography Day.  The original plan was to show off a few cards featuring some nice photography, but that never panned out.

Instead I'll be showing off a photo variation of Logan Webb's rookie card:

2020 Topps Photo Variation #514

Webb has been the talk of the town the past month or so.  Since May 11th, he's gone 6-0 with a 1.64 ERA and the San Francisco Giants have won ten of the eleven games he started during that time.  Hopefully the Oakland A's can get to him this afternoon in their rubber match.

This card is one of the many cards donated to my collection over the past six months by Reader X... who has been a supporter of my blog for several years.  At first glance, this card looks like your typical base card.  However it was sitting in a stack of San Francisco Giants inserts and parallels.

I thought this was kind of weird, so I decided to look him up on COMC and that's where I discovered that this was one of those photo variations.  The sad thing is I never would have noticed this had I pulled it from a pack.  I realize that Topps prints different codes on the back of their cards to help collectors identify variations, but the print is way too small for my poor eyesight.

This motivated me to start looking up all of Topps "base" cards he sent.  Here's are some other variations I discovered...

2020 Topps Advanced Stats Variation #97

This variation is much easier to identify due to the different statistics listed on the back of the card.  I'm not exactly sure how long Topps has been doing this, but I found a pair dating back to 2014:

2014 Topps Update SABR Variation #US-169

2014 Topps Update SABR Variation #US-143

My favorite Topps variations are the ones featuring MLB legends like these two:

2020 Topps Legend Variation #560

2020 Topps Legend Variation #556

In fact... I picked up this card for my Tony Gwynn PC on COMC back in the beginning of May:

I just noticed that this card would have been perfect for my Back to School post last week... since he's holding a book of some sort.  Anyways... this purchase took place right around when I received my first package from Reader X, so there's a good chance I was motivated to buy it after seeing the above Reggie and Winfield.

Thank you Xavier for providing all of this blog material!

Here is today's question of the day...

What are your thoughts on Topps and their flagship variations?  Love them or leave them?

I think the only ones I've actually gone out of my way to purchase are the "legends".  I like them, because they are easy to identify and I enjoy collecting hall of famers.  I have no problem adding the SABR and photo variations to my player/team collections.  But sadly... most of those fly under my radar unless they are pointed out to me.

Time to get this post published and start catching up on all of those blog posts I missed out on last week.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!