more smatterings from the pacific smorgasbord

i've got just a few more cards to show from the box that brian at play at the plate sent to me.  the box was mostly pacific brand cards, with some 2002 upper deck vintage thrown in as well.

here's a 1999 pacific prism otis nixon card

he's wearing the ellis valentine face mask, which actually reminds me of lando calrissian's helmet from the start of return of the jedi.

1999 pacific paramount ben grieve

1999 pacific private stock john olerud

i thought the olerud was an insert, but it was not.  just a shiny base card

2000 pacific paramount randy velarde

the mustard background works for the a's cards, but that was by design. there weren't any dodgers from this set in the box, but their cards have a blue background that also complements their uniforms.

2000 pacific private stock craig biggio

which is a sort of precursor to 2001 topps gallery and the upper deck masterpieces sets of the late 2000's.

this is a 2000 pacific diamond leaders card of the reds

i have a couple of these (the brewers and dodgers) in my memorials collection.

the last pacific card i'll show also comes from 2000 pacific.  it's a derek jeter ruby foil parallel

jeets was also prevalent in the 2002 upper deck vintage cards that were in the box - he shows up on three of the postseason scrapbook subset cards

i know that the first one there is more of an alfonso soriano card, but jeter is waiting at home plate so it's a jeter card, too.

thanks again for the great cards brian! i had a blast looking through the box.

final tributes like it's 1999

2 hall of famers played their final games in 1998 - paul molitor and dennis eckersley.  in 1999, upper deck tried to fool us by producing a final tribute card of wade boggs, but that proved to be premature.  here are some bona fide 1999 final tributes of molly and eck that i have in my collection.

1999 fleer tradition paul molitor

look at those full career stats on the back!

molly's career had begun at the same time i began collecting cards.  he was my favorite non-dodger for a while (until steve garvey went to san diego), and i was happy to have been able to see him play in person when he joined his hometown twins.

i don't have eck's 1999 fleer tradition card, but i do have his 1999 pacific crown collection card

it's only got one season of stats on the back, but a whole lot of espanol

here's molitor's

with a paul waner (dodger double dipper) mention

molitor also got a card in the regular 1999 pacific set

which has the full career stats on the back

molitor also got a card in the pacific private stock set

but the career stats on the back

take a back seat to the box score from the twins' second game of molitor's final season.

topps didn't produce cards for either of these guys - not even a checklist or highlight card - but upper deck did them justice with base cards and the 'final tribute' shield.

here are eckersley's complete career stats

and here's molitor's 1999 upper deck card

which, for some reason, leaves three seasons off of the back

molitor is currently 9th on the all-time hit list, but will be surpassed by derek jeter as soon as today (jeter is sitting on 3318 career hits).

as for the head-to-head stats, 11 of eckersley's 2401 career strikeouts came from molitor, and 13 of molly's 3319 hits came off of eck.  overall, eckersley got molitor out most of the time as would be expected, but molitor won the war - he hit .310 with a 1.024 ops off of eckersley over the course of their fine careers.

uh, wait - what? hey! good god those are baseball card boxes!

pay attention to your peripherals, kids.  even when driving on a saturday morning running errands.  you never know when you might be passing by folks setting up a here-to-fore unknown flea market and catch a glance of some familiar white cardboard boxes being added to a table.

that's what happened to me last saturday.  i doubled back after completing my errand (hastily, i might add), and sure enough, my well trained eyes had not deceived me.  there were three or four large white boxes set up - dime boxes at that.  two of the boxes were even sorted by team.  by team!  what a timesaver.

i wound up buying 140 cards for 13 bucks.  it was awesome.

the very first card i saw was this 2008 topps chrome matt kemp xfractor

nice.

there were a bunch of non-team sorted inserts, too.  like this 2013 topps lance berkman cut to the chase die cut card

a 2013 topps opening day aroldis chapman blue sparkly parallel

and a 2010 topps angels/vladimir guerrero gold parallel

i wound up buying about 25 different gold parallels from 2006 topps update, as well as a few gold, emerald, and walmart blue parallels of 2013 topps.

there were some rarely seen sets represented in the boxes like 1999 upper deck victory.  i grabbed some dodgers and a double play card that was new to me.  hello orlando cabrera

let's get back to the dodgers.  here is a nice and shiny 1998 donruss mike piazza fantasy team insert

fellow rookie of the year raul mondesi was represented by this 1999 pacific private stock card

i also picked up a black bordered mini of rafael furcal from 2010 topps allen & ginter

in total, i had found 110 singles featuring dodgers, double plays, memorial patches and a few others that will turn into cards for some of you out there in baseball card blogging land.

the other 30 cards i bought were part of a twins' stadium giveaway set from 2005.  it features 29 of the most memorable twins moments throughout their history.  the 29 tied in with the local station that carried twins Saturday games that year.  can you tell that the station was the twin cities' fox affiliate? yes, the 30th card in the set features homer simpson.  

note that the geniuses who produced the set also misspelled 'collectable' as 'colletable'.  d'oh!

 

here's a look at nine of the cards from the set.  many of the images look like they were tv screen grabs, which makes sense, i suppose.

in addition to the homer card, we have cards commemorating the all-star game at the met in 1965 (the twins also hosted the all-star game in 1985 (at the metrodome) and will host it again in 2014 at target field).  there is also an homage to harmon killebrew's monster home run (which is still honored inside the mall of america), dave winfield's 3000th hit, eric milton's no-hitter (i was supposed to be at that game), bob allison's catch in the 1965 world series that robbed jim lefebvre of a base hit in game 2 (the twinkies beat sandy koufax to even the series at one game apiece), paul molitor's 3000th hit, kirby puckett's home run to win game 6 of the 1991 world series, and the first postseason game in twins history - game 1 of the 1965 world series.

the twins faced, of course, the dodgers in that series.  the photo which was used on this card features dodger reliever howie reed as he pitches to either mudcat grant or zoilo versalles.

back to the allison card for a moment - at target field, the twins have done a great job recognizing the history of the franchise, as well as baseball as a whole in the twin cities and the state of minnesota, too.  there is a wall where they have posted famous quotes and calls regarding the twins, and the dodgers' own vin scully is represented by his call on that catch by allison.  here's a picture i took during a tour of the stadium.

here are the rest of the cards from the set

that's not a bad set - killer, carew, tony o, and herbie pulling ron gant off the base.  not a bad flea market find.