2012 Topps Golden Giveaway

On the heals of their successful "Million Dollar" and "Diamond" giveaways, Topps recently launched the website of this years promotion, the Golden Giveaway. By entering codes randomly inserted in packs, you are rewarded with either a virtual gold coin, or if you're lucky, an exclusive Golden Moments card, which can be requested and delivered at a later date.

According to Topps, the odds of receiving a a regular Golden Moments cards (the set consists of 100 players) is 1:15 codes. There's also a gold parallel (1:200 codes), as well as a 14k gold 1:1 version (1:20,000). Along with the Golden Moments cards, there's also 14k gold 1:1 versions of all 330 Topps Series 1 and 2 base cards, but the odds aren't much better (1: 6,666).

2012 Topps Golden Moments # GMDC-20

2012 Topps Golden Moments Gold Parallel # GMDC-20

2012 Topps Golden Moments 1:1 Gold # GMDC-20

Unlike in previous years promotions, you don't get an actual "vintage" Topps card with every code that you redeem. Since the odds of the Golden Moments cards aren't that great, you're more likely than not to get a virtual gold coin. If you collect all 30 coins in a single category (current MLB Stars, past MLB greats, MLB teams, with the rare 30th coin having odds of 1:6,666), you instantly win a signed Willie Mays card.

The coins will not actually be produced, so unless you want to print out and cut up this picture, there's no need to attempt to track one of these down.

The cards themselves probably won't be produced and able to be shipped for a few months, but once they are, I'm sure they'll flood eBay fairly quickly.

A Few New Additions, Including an MLB Logo Patch

I've been lucky enough to pick up quite a few cards over the past few months, both via trades with other Rickey collectors, and purchases on eBay and trading sites. I figured I'd quickly share some of my favorites.

2005 Donruss Champions Impressions MLB Logo Patch Padres 311 #/2

2005 Prime Patches Team Materials Triple Team Logo Patch 4 #/37

2005 Absolute Memorabilia Team Trios Swatch Double 21 #/100

1996 Select Certified Mirror Red 70 PR/90

2000 SkyBox Star Rubies Extreme 84 #/50

2001 Topps Archives Future Rookie Reprints 80 Gold 11

2011 Topps Triple Threads Sapphire 78 #/25

2011 Gypsy Queen Original Art Patches

Topps' newest addition to their retro product line in 2011 included Topps Gypsy Queen, a sort of derivation of their popular Allen & Ginter product line.

The rarest cards in the set were the 50 player Original Art Patches. The hobby exclusive set consisted of original hand-drawn portraits along with game-used patches, all of which were one of ones.


I have yet to see the Rickey card surface (the redemption card is probably still sitting in a sealed case somewhere), so I contacted one of the artists in the set, Dave Hobrecht, hoping that he'd scanned the card prior to sending it back to Topps. Luckily for us, he had!


Here's a few of the other original art cards that Mr. Hobrecht created for the set. If you want your own Rickey, just let him know, as he does work on commission, and would probably love to recreate the Man of Steal.

More 1978-79 Liga Mexicano Rickey Pictures

Since it's been almost 6 months since my last post, and a few fellow collectors (you know who you are) have been asking for some new content, I figured it was about time I obliged.

As a follow-up (albeit, a much delayed one) to my previous post on the newly discovered 1978-79 Navojoa Mayos sticker book, I have even more pictures of Rickey to share from his time in Mexico. A big thanks goes out to Arturo (and his father), who has saved all of these unique items. These pictures probably haven't been seen in 30+ years, and there can't be too many copies of them out there!


This first item is the 1978-79 Liga Mexicana del Pacifico Media Guide, which includes a picture of Rickey's Navojoa team on the front cover.


Although the picture is a bit small, you can see Rickey in the back row, just below the "1" in 1979, and next to the far left guy in the black suit.


On the page above you can see Rickey's stats for the year ("Rick Henderson" is the third player from the top). He hit .257 in 44 games (45 hits, 4 2B, 1 3B and 22 SB), so not his best offensive performance, but he was only 20 years old.


The book above (translated as "On, Mayos, On -- 30 Seasons of Professional Baseball") was written by Dr. Arturo Leon Lerma, past president of the Mexican Pacific League. Diamonds Around the Globe: The Encyclopedia of International Baseball, provides the following summary of the book:

"Restricted to a single Mexican pro ball club, the history of the Navojoa Mayos covers action over six seasons in the Sonora Winter League (1959-1966) and twenty-four campaigns in the wintertime Mexican Pacific League (1970-1994). Season recaps, league standings, rosters, player photos, and individual player statistics offer not only a detailed account of the Navojoa franchise but also a valuable summary of Mexican Pacific League baseball."


While there's likely to be more mentions of Rickey in the book, the caption of this picture "loosely" discusses his time as a "Robber of Novojoa," who then went on to become the all-time major league base stealer.


Finally, here's a few random pictures of Rickey on the Mayos. You can now add #10 to the long list of numbers that Rickey has worn over his career.



While I can't promise I'll be extremely active in the next 6 months (I'm finally finishing my MBA program in May, and should have a bit more time for the blog once that is complete), I do frequently post random articles and pictures on the RHC Facebook page, which is probably the easiest way to keep up with all the current Rickey-related news and events.

1978-79 Liga Mexicana del Pacifico Sticker

As a Rickey collector for almost 25 years, it's not too often that I'm surprised by an item that I've not only never seen before, but never even heard of, especially one as significant as the card below. Fortunately, thanks to the help of fellow collectors, it still does happen, which is one of the reasons that makes player collecting that much fun!


After being drafted by the A's in 1976, Rickey played for the Boise A's in 1976, and then the Modesto A's in 1977. It was his time in Modesto that produced his first baseball card, the ever elusive 1977 Modesto A's Chong.


Rickey then played for Jersey City in 1978, followed by Ogden in 1979. But, before the 1979 season began, he played winter ball for the Navojoa Mayos (Mayos de Navojoa) of the Mexican Pacific League (Liga Mexicana del Pacifico or LMP). Prior to this weekend, the only picture of seen of Rickey's time with the Mayos is the one shown above.

I have never been able to find any other items from Rickey's days in the Mexican League, until now...



The above images are of a sticker album produced by the Liga Mexican del Pacifico for the 1978-1979 season. It was quite a surprise to see a young Rickey featured, along with the rest of his Navojoa Mayos teammates. It's not often that an unknown "pre-rookie" card of a Hall of Famer surfaces, but that seems to be exactly what happened here. It's possible that others have known about this cards existence, but all of the other hardcore Rickey collectors I've talked to have been just as shocked as I was.

The cover of the album is shown above, and is officially titled "Album Fotografico de Beisbol," with the rays of the sun on the right indicating the other teams in the league. You can view the rest of the pages here, filled with stickers of the other players in the league.

The pictures of the album are all courtesy of Arturo, a collector of Mexican born baseball players, who was recently selected by Beckett to be featured in an upcoming SuperCollector issue. Thanks again to Arturo for scanning all of the pages of this album, if you hadn't, the Rickey card might still be a mystery today!

20th Anniversary of Steal #939!!

Edit: This post was originally from May 1, 2008 (the first year that I started the blog), but I figured it would be appropriate to repost in honor of the 20th anniversary of the event.



May 1 is an important date to any Rickey Henderson fan, it's the day that he stole his 939th base, and passed Lou Brock on the all-time list. Today's post will be a fairly picture heavy showcase of some of my items that commemorate that memorable day.

The first few pictures are some of the cards that were produced commemorating Rickey breaking the record. Most were produced in 1992, but some, such as the 1999 Upper Deck Epic Milestones in the second picture, came many years later.







The next two pictures depict a 1992 Starting Lineup Headline Collection. These collections contained a figure as well as a stand that contained a newspaper headline from a local paper commemorating the event, which in this case was the Oakland Tribune.





This picture of Rickey hugging Lou Brock was cut from the front page of my local paper (the Daily Republic) on May 2, and I have no idea what happened to the rest of the paper. The caption also mentions the other historic event that happened on that day (Nolan Ryan's 7th no-hitter).



There were quite a few pins produced depicting Rickey's 939th steal. The top one was given away at the Oakland Coliseum on the day he broke the record.

Pepsi Max Commercial -- Rickey Wins Again!!

Although I'm a Coca-Cola guy myself, Rickey has always had a relationship with Pepsi, and has done quite a few promotions with them in the past. It has been awhile since he's done any work for them, but the new Pepsi Max commercial "Clubhouse in the Corn" more than makes up for the delay.

The commercial is set in a Field of Dreams-esque setting, starring CC Sabathia searching for the whispers he is hearing, which eventually lead him to a cornfield in Iowa filled with retired baseball stars.


You have Jim Thome spelling out his name to get an autograph from Babe Ruth autograph, Lou Pinella apologizing to an umpire, and Ozzie Smith doing a patented backflip.


Although I'm obviously biased, I think Rickey steals the show. The commercial features three different "Rickey's," in A's, Yankees and Mets jerseys. They are playing Rock, Paper, Scissors amongst themselves, when one exclaims, "Rickey Wins Again!" Classic!


The commercial also includes Carlton Fisk, Mike Schmidt, Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and Randy Johnson, among many others. I never thought I'd say this, but nice job Pepsi!