Shiny and Wooden Mailday

It's been about a week since my last Alomar card came in.  I know I have a number to receive yet, but for some reason they have not been coming in lately.  Today, that changed in a big way:

The first card is a Mirror Gold parallel from 1997 Pinnacle Certified.  I still need the Mirror Black, which I suspect will be hard to come by, and apparently the Mirror Red.  I had the red version which is different I guess.  I had to amend my collection list to reflect that.

The second card came in a Red Sox trade.  Every great while I find someone with an Alomar I need on the forums.  This is one such time.  I miss Score, but not as much as Pacific.

And the third is definitely one of my new favorite Alomar cards.  This card has bat pieces from all three Alomars who have played in the Majors.  Sandy Sr. represents the Braves, Roberto oddly represents the Indians, and Sandy Jr. represents the White Sox.  It is my second triple bat card of Sandy Jr. with the White Sox.

Card #40: 1990 Donruss Rookies #1

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Rookies
NUMBER: 1
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Much like Alomar had two Rated Rookies cards, he also had cards in the Donruss Rookies sets in both 1989 and 1990.  Donruss never had the update set like Topps and Fleer, instead they had Rookies sets which provided some big-name rookie cards over the years.  Alomar was of course a big deal both years as he was coming off of consecutive seasons in which he won the Minor League Player of the Year.

Card #39: 1991 Donruss #51

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Donruss
NUMBER: 51
SUBSET: All Star
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

It took quite awhile to get this one.  I am not really sure why.  1991 Donruss was a favorite set of mine when I first got into collecting, and I had all of the other Alomar cards pretty quickly.  But this one eluded me for awhile.  This is a decent-looking shot.  I am not sure if it is actually from the All Star game or not.

Card #38: 1991 Ultra #105

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Ultra
NUMBER: 105
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Poor Fleer.  After Score, Upper Deck, and Leaf all had successful premium brands enter the market in successive years, Fleer decided to jump on the bandwagon and release their own premium set.  But they were blown out of the water by Topps's foray into the premium scene, Stadium Club.  Still, Ultra presented some nice, crisp photography and nice full-color backs.  I like this card of Alomar going back for a foul pop-up.  The picture appears again later in my collection, but this card did it best.

Invincible

One-card mailday today, but it was a card from my Top Ten Most Wanted list.  I always liked 1998 Invincible.  It was one of my first real big exposures to Pacific brands, and it was probably the first real premium brands I bought a lot of.  The packs contained five cards, one base card and four inserts, usually Gems of the Diamond.  Yes, the base set was rarer than the inserts.  I love the acetate window profile shot.  I previously had the silver parallel of this card.

Card #37: 1991 Upper Deck #144

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Upper Deck
NUMBER: 144
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

This is a very classic-looking shot.  Yes, it's another posed shot, but Alomar really exudes leadership in this card.  He looks ready to run out on the field and play hard.  It is just a very nice profile shot, complete with chest protector, mask, and mitt.  Undoubtedly one of the better posed shots I have seen.

Card #36: 1990 Fleer Update #U89

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Update
NUMBER: U89
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Coming soon on the heels of the base 1990 Fleer card, came the Update version picturing Alomar with the Indians.  The shot is not nearly as interesting as the base card either, though I am not sure what Sandy is going to be doing with those four bats.  Where was he going?  How did the photographer convince him to do a shot with four bats?  What the hell?

Oddball Parallels

Two cards came in today, one of which I have been a little concerned about.  Both cards are kind of oddball parallels to the much more common sets they correspond to.

The first card is the 1993 Topps card with the Rockies Inaugural Year stamp.  I previously had the Marlins version.  I also have both of the different Devil Rays from the 1998 set.  I still need the two Diamondbacks versions from 1998 Topps.

The second card looks just like the 1990 Fleer but the copyright reads "Printed in Canada", so this is the Canadian version.  I am very happy about this card.  As I mentioned earlier, the 1990 Fleer card was one of my early favorite Padres cards of Alomar.

Card #35: 1991 Jimmy Dean #8

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Jimmy Dean
SET: Signature Edition
NUMBER: 8
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

The advantage to being a catcher on a non-licensed food issue is that pictures do not have to be airbrushed to take away the team logos and names.  At least not as much.  You would not be able to really tell that stuff is missing on this card.  I have mentioned many times how much I love food issues.  This was actually my first food issue card of Alomar, but not my favorite.  I believe I picked it up at a card shop.  It was an unusual pickup at the time, but I love the card.  I am a little puzzled by the "Signature Edition" on this card.  These were not autographed, though they did have a facsimile signature on the back.  What was the point of that?

High Tek Mailday

I recently found another sports card forum.  There was a huge thread on that site about 1998 Topps Tek.  Since that is my major project within my Alomar collection I thought I would see if anyone had any of the Alomar patterns.  One person responded and told me that he had 37 cards that were not listed on my haves list.  That's right, 37.  Here they are:

I now have 54 of the 90 patterns.  I am supposed to be getting two more, but have been having problems with the sellers.  So hopefully soon I will have 56.  Or not.  If anyone has any of these available, please let me know.  The ones I need are listed in the Top 10 list on the right side of this page.

Weekend Pickups

I got quite a few cards in over the weekend that I had not previously had time to scan, so here they are:

This particular scan consists of a COMC package and another Beckett package.  The COMC package is the first four cards which includes another Leaf buyback and the orange version of the Rookie Cup card.  I still need the blue, green, gold, and silver (though gold and silver will be hard to find).

The middle card is really a magnet, but since it fits in a page, I will count it as a card.  The next card is from the 1989 Padres Magazine set, a cutout set from the team magazine.  This is one that I thought would have been a lot harder to find.  I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to find it, and for a decent price too.

The first two cards from this scan also came in the Beckett package.  The next three Topps cards are all the Tiffany versions.

Card #34: 1989 Fleer #300

YEAR: 1989
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Fleer
NUMBER: 300
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: San Diego Padres

My third rookie card of Alomar was his Fleer rookie.  Like the previous two (Topps and Donruss), this card features a staged shot of Alomar.  Specifically, crouched in a catching stance.  This particular design of Fleer is definitely not one of my favorites, but it does stand out reasonably well.  This is an error card that was never corrected, listing his birthdate as "6/16/66" instead of the correct "6/18/66".  If it had been corrected, it would have probably been a little more valuable as this was the height of the error craze.

Card #33: 1990 Fleer #150

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Fleer
NUMBER: 150
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: San Diego Padres

This is one of my favorite Padres cards of Alomar.  Most of that is due to the fact that it was one of the rare cards of him that showed a little bit of action.  Most Padres cards of Alomar were portrait shots or staged poses.  Much of the reason for this is the fact that Alomar only played in eight games with San Diego.  So there were not a lot of opportunities to catch him in action.  But Fleer managed to pull it off and here we have it.  Now, that is probably not a home run swing, but there is so little competition for decent action shots that this became a favorite.

Card #32: 1990 Leaf #232

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Leaf
NUMBER: 232
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

After 1989's Upper Deck release, other brands decided to jump on the premium bandwagon.  The next big one was 1990 Leaf which was buoyed by the rookie card of Frank Thomas.  This was likely one of the earliest cards portraying Alomar with the Indians.  It does not seem as impressive now, but this was one of the better Alomar cards early on, probably next to the 1989 Upper Deck Rookie Card.

Card #31: 1990 Upper Deck #655

YEAR: 1990
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Upper Deck
NUMBER: 655
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: San Diego Padres

There is not a whole lot to say about this card.  It is not a terribly exciting shot.  Alomar was coming off a season in which he won the Minor League Player of the Year for the second year in a row and then played in about seven games with the Padres.  One of the things that has changed for the worst in baseball over the years from when I first became a fan is the size of sets, resulting in a much smaller number of players getting cards.  Granted, Alomar was one of the biggest prospects in the world, but I have more than 40 cards of Alomar with the San Diego Padres, with some more out there.  He had 23 plate appearances in seven games with the Padres.  By contrast, Alomar spent 22 plate appearances in eight games with the New York Mets at the end of his career and there is not a single Major League card of him in a Mets uniform.  Go figure.  

Card #30: 1991 Upper Deck Final #81F

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Final
NUMBER: 81F
SUBSET: All Star
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Here is another card honoring Sandy Alomar Jr. for being named the starting catcher in the 1991 All Star game.  I have said it before and I will say it again: he did not deserve it.  But he took a good position on it: he said he would play because the fans wanted to see him, but he felt he did not deserve it.  Another catcher for whom I am a big fan also was a non-deserving All Star choice later on (Jason Varitek in 2008).  This is a very nice action shot with the bat barrel and the strap from the catcher's mask seen on the fringes of the card.  I can not tell, but the shot may be from the All Star game.  I cannot make out the players in the background, but they appear to be wearing two different uniforms (White Sox and Royals maybe?), and it does appear to be in the SkyDome.

2 New Cards

A couple more cards came in, both somewhat hard to find.  The MVP Celebration card features Alomar holding his 1997 All Star MVP trophy, a rather large trophy really.  I like the star-spangled chest protector as well.  The Collector's Choice card is actually from the Indians-only set, a common practice in mid 1990's sets.  I was not aware Collector's Choice did this.

Card #29: 1989 Donruss #28

YEAR: 1989
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Donruss
NUMBER: 28
SUBSET: Rated Rookies
TEAM: San Diego Padres

My second Alomar rookie card was the Donruss card.  This featured the Rated Rookie logo, which was one of my favorite Donruss subsets, next to Diamond Kings.  Alomar was a Rated Rookie twice actually.  Fitting, since he was the Minor League Player of the Year in both 1988 and 1989.  The 1989 Donruss set was one of my first favorite sets.  Though I have no real idea why that is.  There are a number of variations for the 1989 Donruss set.  On the back, the "INC" came with a period and without and there was an extra asterisk in the stats section as well.  My first of the four variations came with the period and the extra asterisk.

Card #28: 1991 Score #879

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Score
SET: Score
NUMBER: 879
SUBSET: Award Winners
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

This is the fifth and last card from the 1991 Score set in my collection.  This is the card celebrating Alomar's winning of the American League Rookie of the Year award in 1990.  I had a friend back when I started this collection who insisted that this award was for the 1991 season, not the 1990 season because it was on a 1991 card.  Big argument about it.  Hey, we were 10.  He also insisted that only 100 players changed teams throughout the entire season because Upper Deck only had 100 updated cards.  Anyway, this is a pretty boring picture.  But it was good to have all five Alomars in the massive 1991 Score set.  

Card #27: 1992 Stadium Club Dome #6

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Topps
SET: Stadium Club Dome
NUMBER: 6
SUBSET: All Stars
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

The Stadium Club Dome set was kind of an extended set to 1991 Stadium Club.  Why it came out in 1992, I have no idea.  It was called Dome because the 1991 All Star Game took place in Toronto's SkyDome.  All Star cards were featured in the set, along with draft picks.  Alomar was voted the starting catcher in that year's game, although he definitely did not deserve it.  Still, nice action shot here.

A Lot More Tek Progress

A lot of stuff came in the past two days and here I am to show it all off:

This is only my third variation of the 2005 Topps Rookie Cup base card.  There is still a green, blue, and orange version out there that should be relatively easy to get.

Up next is four more patterns for the Topps Tek set.  There are two more in the second scan putting me at 17 different variations.  Only 73 to go.  If anyone has any I have a list of what I have on my Sandy Alomar Collection page.  I really want to complete this set.

The Beisbol Amigos card is kind of odd.  A number of Latin Indians show up on this card, including Felix Fermin, Carlos Martinez, Jose Mesa, and Carlos Baerga.  There are some others as well, but I can't remember them all and one player is not even named on the card.  Annoying.

Here is another Beisbol Amigos card with just Alomar and Baerga.  

The Leaf buyback is the card I bought for myself for my birthday.  It is numbered 5/5 and even though the buyback thing is kind of dumb, I still like it.  

The Bowman card is the Tiffany version.

The Tristar is a cut autograph card.  I decided not to break the case open to put the card in my binder.  Tough decision to make.  Now I have a separate card floating around from the rest of my Alomars.

These are two parallels from Pacific sets in 1998.  I always liked the Platinum Blue parallels and Invincible was a favorite set of mine anyway.  Nice to add the Alomars.

Card #26: 1992 Ultra #45

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Ultra
NUMBER: 45
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I was always really impressed by 1992 Ultra.  The photography was crisp and clear.  The finish was nice and glossy.  And I liked the marble borders on the card.  I like the fact that Alomar is depicted here in a crouched pose, but there is absolutely no action.  Nevertheless, I have always liked this card.  Ultra would decline in quality in subsequent years.  This has always been their best set in my eyes.

Card #25: 1991 Studio #41

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Studio
NUMBER: 41
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I always liked Studio.  It was Donruss's next foray into a premium brand.  The idea of the brand was to have some more classic studio photography.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  Alomar's picture is decent, but it does definitely look like the kind of picture you would see in a high school yearbook.  I remember being pretty excited about this card when I found it.  I had it before I had any Red Sox Studio cards somehow.

Feliz Cumpleanos a Mi

Yeah, I can't figure out how to do the punctuation.  Ah well.  Here are today's additions:

The Prism card means I just need one more to have all of those variations.  

The Nestle card knocks another one off of my Top 10. 

I like the Christie Brinkley card.  Plus it has a picture of her on the back.  She STILL looks good now. 

The 1989 Fleer is the Glossy card.

Three more Tek variations in the bag.  I now have 11. 

That's it for today.  I still have quite a few more cards of Alomar coming.  Though things will slow down after that.  I allowed myself to spend a little more this week because it is my birthday today.

Card #24: 1989 Bowman #258

YEAR: 1989
BRAND: Bowman
SET: Bowman
NUMBER: 258
SUBSET: Father-Son
TEAM: San Diego Padres

This has been a card that I have thought a lot about.  I guess it is not technically a Sandy Alomar Jr. card.  It is definitely more of a Sandy Alomar Sr. card.  Sr. is the one whose name is on the back with a reference to where to find Jr. and Roberto.  Nevertheless, I think most people consider it a card of all three.  So this marks the third appearance of Roberto in my collection and the first time all three Alomars have been on one card.  All three were with the Padres at this time too, so it is that much more interesting.  I have never been the biggest fan of 1989 Bowman because of how much taller they are than normal cards.  Still this is a very interesting card in my collection.

New Pickups

It was another big mailday for my Sandy Alomar Jr. collection.  Most of the items were from Ebay, although there was one Beckett marketplace order.  The biggest additions were undoubtedly the autograph cards.

 

I am not sure what the Schwebel's Stars disc is.  I am a little disappointed with it because it is too large to fit in the nine pocket pages.  So I have to keep it separated from the other stuff.  I love the autograph card.  I am surprised it is not serial-numbered.  There are only 100 made and I have mostly seen it for very high prices.  I lucked out.  The 7-11 coin is a Sportflics-like card and is kind of interesting.  I apparently had the Upgrade version of the Swing for the Fences card, which was much more rare.  So I added this one.  I like the design of the Pacific card on the bottom row.

I finally got the regular version of 2005 Rookie Cup.  I am working on picking up all of the color variations.  I already have the orange.  The 1991 Topps card is the reprint version from Rookie Cup.  I have the Original Relics card as well.  Finally, we have the Millenium Marks Autograph as well, which leaves only the red version to get.

Card #23: 1992 Upper Deck #81

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Upper Deck
NUMBER: 81
SUBSET: Bloodlines
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

This is the second appearance of Roberto Alomar in my collection and it is once again a 1992 card picturing Sandy with the Indians and Roberto with the Blue Jays.  I will once again point out how much bigger Sandy was than Roberto.  The Alomars played together on the AL All Star team in 1991 and actually hit back-to-back in the starting lineup.  This is from the Bloodlines subset that celebrated family members in the big leagues.  Other families included the Griffeys, Mitchells, and Dwight Gooden and Gary Sheffield.

More Tek Progress and My First Printing Plate

Three nice hefty packages showed up today.  The first one is my very first order from COMC.  I don't know why it took so long before I tried it out.  Maybe because I was concerned about the shipping.  I don't really know.  Well, I picked up a few random cards:

Obviously you can see the Tek cards were the focus.  I picked up all three from the site bringing my number of those variations to seven.  The Bowman Heritage is a short print.  The Flair Showcase is one of the rarer Legacy Collection parallels.  The Pacific card was on my Top Ten Most Wanted and there is a minor league card and a couple of nice Pinnacle parallels as well thrown in.  Not a bad collection of cards.

The next pickup was a small buy from a store in the Beckett marketplace:

The first two cards are the Devil Rays inaugural cards.  The third is my eighth different Topps Tek card.

And this is the highlight of my day:

My first Alomar printing plate and first 1/1.  This comes from the 2004 Topps Total set and is the cyan plate.  This is one of the better action shots of Alomar in a non-Indians uniform.  That was another reason to be excited about it.

Card #22: 1991 Classic Game #194

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Classic
SET: Game
NUMBER: 194
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I never had the game that these cards went to.  I just had a bunch of random singles in my Alomar and Red Sox collections and the occasional card that showed up in a repack.  I know some people do not consider these as cards.  I am not one of those people.  I do like this shot.  Most pictures showing Alomar in full catchers' gear are pretty cool.  The purple border is not real impressive personally though.

Card #21: 1991 Toys 'R Us Rookies #1

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Topps
SET: Toys 'R Us Rookies
NUMBER: 1
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Another oddball.  I always felt a little self-conscious about adding cards like this to my collection.  It just seems a little juvenile to me, even at the time, when I was 11.  I still added the Red Sox cards to my collection as well though.  Ultimately, it is just another card.  This is one of those cards that you had to buy the entire set at once.  Nevertheless, I found this copy at the store mentioned earlier that had a ton of oddballs in boxes separated by team.  Finding the Alomars required digging through the Indians stuff, but it was worth it.

Stickers

Apparently Beckett lists stickers as cards, so I always have as well.  I have a number of Panini stickers previously in my collection.  Today, I got this one:

It's pretty small and very thin, but I like the fact that it is kind of an oddball item of Alomar from his time with the White Sox.  Unfortunately there were not a lot of oddball items around any more by the time Alomar was jumping from team to team.  So this is a nice little pickup.

Card #20: 1992 Score 100 Superstars #49

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Score
SET: 100 Superstars
NUMBER: 49
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I never really knew where these cards came from.  I don't think they are inserts because I have never known anyone to pull one from a pack.  I suspect they were a factory set thing kind of like Fleer used to do a lot in the 1980's.  All of the brands did really.  All I really knew is that I had the Alomar and a few from the Red Sox.  I never really cared about any of the other ones and definitely never looked at the checklist.  I like this shot quite a bit.  Nice follow through on the swing.

Oddballs and Mirrors

I have a lot of Alomars coming in soon.  I wanted to slow down, but I went on another binge recently.  That will slow down again soon.  In the meantime, here are the most recent additions:

I have no idea what that first card is, some type of oddball.  The second card is a Broder card that came from Mark Hoyle, one of my favorite trade partners with Red Sox cards.  We regularly exchange Red Sox duplicates.  This time, he found an Alomar I had never seen before.  Thanks Mark!

The next two are Pinnacle Certified parallels that look really nice and shiny.

Card #19: 1991 U.S. Playing Cards All Stars #11D

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: U.S. Playing Card Co.
SET: All Stars
NUMBER: 11D
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

This is the point where my Sandy Alomar Jr. collection went completely crazy.  I was getting oddball cards of Red Sox, but this is the first oddball card I got of Alomar.  I used to frequent a card shop that had tons of boxes of oddballs, so there would definitely be more to come.  This one is from a card deck that just happened to have player pictures on it.  It is also a picture that will be seen later.

More Variations and Team Cards

Okay, this is probably where my OCD really kicks in.  Recently I was doing some more research on errors and variations after discovering the variation on the 1989 Topps rookie card and I found a very helpful thread on the Beckett forums discussing errors and variations.  That thread listed a number of print run variations on cards from the late 1980's/early 1990's, extremely minor changes.  Yet most of the collectors in the thread treated these minor variations as separate cards, so of course I had to as well.

Here is the first one, from 1989 Donruss:

Note the "*Denotes" on the left and the "*Denotes*" on the right next to performance?  That is the variation.  Like I said, it is extremely small, but my brain tells me it is a different card.  So there you go.

Here is the next two from 1992 Donruss:

You can probably barely see it on the first card, but the second card is better.  The copyright lists "Leaf Inc" or "Leaf Inc."  Again, so minor, most people would barely register it, but I am not most people.  And I am a supercollector these days, so these are treated as different cards.

The same thing with the missing period can be seen in the 1991 Donruss cards below:

Finally, on this 1991 Stadium Club, there is either a "*A" or "*B".  This is likely to differentiate print runs, I think:

I justify this madness by pointing out that the 1990 Fleer set has a Canadian version whose sole difference is that the copyright is either in the U.S. or Canada.  So there is some precedent for this.  I do need the 1990 Fleer Canadian card, especially since the 1990 Fleer was one of my early favorites.

I will probably not seek these out, but if I have doubles and there is a variation, I will count the card as a separate card.

Now after all of that madness, I have been kicking myself lately trying to decide whether to include team cards that Alomar appears on.  I finally decided this weekend to include those cards, mostly due to the fact that I count them with my Red Sox collection.  So here are the three team cards I have with Sandy on them:

The Topps Heritage is important because Alomar is actually a coach on that card, seating right next to the manager.

Here are some of the closeups of Alomar on each card, which did not come out terrifically well:

Again, like the variations, I am not going to seek these out, but it is nice to have them.