Monday, March 04, 2024

My all-time Top 100 cheap azz keepers collection - 90-82

I ended up buying a binder of cards for about $6 at a card shop - I was probably looking to remove the cards and throw away the sheets and the binder, but it might be easier to leave things intact where I do not want more loose cards to worry about.

As is, even though the sheets are probably 25-30 years old and kind of a flimsy, non-Ultra Pro brand - on first glance, they still seem fairly clean and have held up.

Maybe part of the problem of putting a home brewed card project together was not having a vision to put things together to see how things would look displayed in pages - what I did for my all-time Top 100 cheap-azz keepers, was set aside enough of 'used' pages to have something to display a collection in.

I used a fresh penny sleeve for every card going into my Top 100 and put them in the appopriate pocket from #1 through #100 - there is a sense of accomplisment seeing the cards come together in pages as opposed to merely another pile, another brick destined to be squirreled away in a box somewhere.

90. 1996 Upper Deck Collector’s Choice Dante Bichette #135 - to sneak one more card to my all-time Top 100, I may consider pairing this with the parallel listed at #91.

I am not a collector who tries to worry about having the base card with a parallel - but when a card falls into my lap, it's nice having the base card to complement the more special card [even if there are more than one parallel type].

90. 1988 Fleer Exciting Stars Orel Hershiser #20 - taking the place of the Bichette is a card showing an unconventional image, where the seemingly easy going Hershiser is just chilling out, waiting for his turn to take BP.

89. 1995 Topps Stadium Club Jeff Montgomery #286 - closers were called firemen because they stopped rallies and helped put fires out in ballgames.

88. 1999 Multi-Ad Sports Tampa Yankees Dennis Twombley #25 - looks like he has choice of all the fresh fruit.

87. 2019 Topps Update Cole Tucker #US197 - too bad has hasn't been a better big leaguer, but married to actress Vanessa Hudgens, he has been blessed regardless.

86. 1994 Upper Deck Curtis Pride #250 - Pride was a good human interest story for my beyond the glory collection as a deaf player who was great athlete and played professional baseball.

I figured the one time Angel needed some Top 100 love - where I can tease his rookie card.

85. 1991 Donruss Studio Steve Lake #216 - a junk wax era common from what a baseball set trying to be a little classier, I was looking for a copy of this card in recent years and grabbed a couple of copies for $0.50 each.

84. 1992-93 Fleer Ultra Harold Miner #293 - Fleer manages to immortalize the one-time NBA player from the 1990s, dubbed Baby Jordan facing up against the man himself.

For my Top 100, I will include the occasional cards from other sports besides baseball, where there might be a cap of 10-15 at the most - though I expect to create a Top 100 for NBA, NFL, hockey and other sports, where future Top 100s will end up with less non-baseball subjects.

83. 2000 Bowman Jim Morris #164- I don't know where it ended up, but I do remember getting to sign something like an index card, when he made it all the way to the Major Leagues in 1999.

82. 1988 Fleer Sammy Stewart #616 - this was not a card I had intentions of adding to my Top 100, but it's a quirky card of a guy giving thumbs up with a dumb smirk on his face, R.I.P.

1 comment:

Jon said...

I've found that sets of any kind usually look better, and just feel more right (bad phrasing, I know), when in a binder; so I completely understand what you're saying. And I've talked about it in posts a few times over the years, but that Harold Miner rookie was such a big deal when it came out. I can remember every kid trying to get ahold of that one, and the combination of hate and awe that was shown towards anyone that got one during the sets earliest days. It's the only card from my childhood that I can recall that kind of hype for; more specifically, amongst my peers.