Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Rickey's in the Mail: Base Cards and Inserts

As a follow up to the post from a few weeks ago, which focused on the Rickey Henderson game-used cards I'd recently acquired, this post will highlight some of the base cards, inserts, and parallels that I've recently added to my collection.



1999 Upper Deck MVP Gold Script #131 -- These gold signature parallels were serial numbered to 100, and are surprisingly difficult to find. I was able to acquire this one in a trade over at the Bench.



2000 Crown Royale Premiere Date #89 -- Pacific was producing an insane numbered of parallel cards in 2000, and this is one of the nicer ones. It is serial numbered to 121.



1987 Action Superstars Series III #50 -- Being a big fan of oddball cards, I can never past up one of these that a don't already have. It's one of many unlicensed cards produced in the late 1980's that have now become known as "Broder Cards," since most were produced by a mysterious guy named Rob Broder.



Fleer Then and Now R.Henderson/I.Suzuki #5 -- This card compares Rickey to Ichiro, arguably today's best leadoff hitter. It features a great vintage picture of Rickey wearing a ridiculous headband. It's serial numbered to 275, which although isn't very limited, it's not a card that shows up very often.



1994 Stadium Club Members Only Parallel #107 -- This Members Only parallel from the 1994 Stadium Club sets has proven fairly elusive, until now. Rickey had two cards in the set, each with a Golden Rainbow, Members Only, and First Day Issue parallel. All I need now is the First Day Issue of #654, and the set will be complete.



2001 Topps Home Team Advantage GM #787 -- This Home Team Advantage parallel features a great shot of Rickey setting the stolen base record in 1991. I still need the base card version of the HTA parallel, which is #105 in the set.



This above collection of six cards, as well as the six below were all acquired in a trade with a fellow Rickey collector. Highlights of the top picture include a 1993 A's Stadium Club #8 (I had been looking for this card forever!), 1993 Fleer Jeff Reboulet #642 (This is the latest Rickey "cameo" card that I've added to my collection, of which I'll write a post on some time in the future), and a 2001 Bowman Heritage SP #412 (You just gotta love black and white cards).



The second picture includes a 2003 Topps Hit Parade #21 as well as my favorite of the bunch, a 1989 Broder-type card, (Series 4, Card #6), which for some odd reason features Rickey in front of Wrigley Field!



2005 Studio Portraits White #82 -- This is probably the first Rickey card, that when looking at a checklist, I had no idea which one it was! There are 56 different studio portrait variations, which is rather ridiculous. But, this is a rather nice looking card (and serial numbered to 50), so I can't complain too much.



The above picture contains some awesome inserts! It starts with two 2002 Leaf Rookies & Stars Longevity parallels, both serial numbered to 100. The next card is a 2004 Upper Deck Play Ball Home Run Heroics 81st Lead #RH. It's a two layered card with the background layer the box score from the game when he hit his 81st leadoff home run. We round out the picture with two Fleer inserts, a 2005 Fleer Tradition Club 3000/500/300 3000 #7 and a 2002 Fleer Triple Crown Diamond Immortality #3.



The next six cards start with a nice tribute to Rickey's 1989 MVP season (2003 Upper Deck MVP Celebration ALCS #37, serial numbered to 1,989 on the front). My favorite cards above are the two inserts with Jose Canseco (2005 Throwback Threads Dynasty Rickey/Eck/Canseco #4 and 2005 Leaf Cornerstones J.Canseco #18).



The final picture of this incredibly long post begins with Rickey's 2003 and 2004 Timeless Treasures base cards (serial numbered to 900 and 999 respectively). It ends with a 2001 Topps Chrome Retrofractors GM #657 and finally a 2002 Fleer Box Score AS #258, serially numbered to 2,950. Overall, I pretty wide variety of cards, and all good additions to the collection!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great cards! Thanks for sharing.

ManOfSteal said...

Glad you enjoyed them! It's always great to hear from readers, especially fellow Rickey fans. If you ever have anything you'd liked to share (cards, memorabilia, etc.) just let me know. I've done a few "Visiting Collections" posts in the past, and always enjoy seeing what others have as well. If you're interested, send me an e-mail, and hopefully we can work something out.

Anonymous said...

There are 56 variations. 4 different borders - red (pinkish), blue (bluish-gray), sepia (tan), and white (gray). Then, there are 2 different fronts/portraits for each border color - color and black&white. Finally, there are 7 different backs for each border&portrait pairing. Thus, 7x8=56. Do a search for 2005 Studio Portraits on freedomcardboard.com for sample type sets.