The thing about kings and queens is that as soon as one dies or abdicates, the next person in line instantly becomes king or queen. There is always a monarch. That's a change that nobody had experienced in the UK for 70 years but now everyone is having to get used to it fast.  After yesterday's tenuous link between the monarchy and baseball cards, here's another card that is roughly keeping in with the theme of crowns. Card Number 1044: Fleer Ultra - Gold Medallion Edition, 1998; #216G Rather than being an insert set, the ten cards of players given a "Season Crown" were included as a subs ..read more

I'm starting yet another blog post apologising for an interruption in blogging. Everything here in the UK is dominated by the death of Queen Elizabeth II last week, and the installation of her first-born son as the new King. Plus I've been on holiday.  However, with some new cards incoming, I feel I ought to blog some of the cards I have scanned and waiting! So here are some cards that roughly fit with the current big news story, as they have little crowns printed on them. Card Number 1042: Pacific, 1994; #525 This was Pacific's second season producing cards and the first year they adde ..read more

Topps has produced a few promotional issues for other companies over the years. This one is unusual because it celebrates the Topps company even though it was a giveaway in breakfast cereal.  Card Number 1041: Post 50 Years of Topps, 2001; #17 I mean, it's a free card, you don't expect to see the player's face in the photo do you? Topps's trademark rubbish photography aside, the other quirk is placing the Padres logo on Tony's foot as if he's balancing a soccer ball there. A small soccer ball, like the "mini Mitres" I remember from school.  (OK, that might need an explanation. W ..read more

This was another card in the envelope that arrived from Casey in California recently. It's from another one of those random Skybox ranges as the Fleer company flirted with bankruptcy and was releasing all sorts of different sets trying to find one that would capture the imagination (and cash) of collectors.  Card Number 1040: Skybox Dugout Axcess, 1998; #126 It's a"7th inning sketch", like the 7th inning stretch, geddit? Unlike other card sets that featured artistic renditions of players, this card has had the art effect switched on in a very early version of PhotoShop, which was only ..read more

Have you ever bought a complete set just to get one card? A couple of months ago, I did. The 1990 set by DonRuss is one of those incredibly common junk wax sets that I quite like. I think it's the red borders. I have a few cards from it (which I blogged about in the very early days of this blog) but I hadn't seen blue versions of the cards before (even though Fuji had mentioned them in a comment on that post from the early days of this blog!) Some junk wax is harder to find, especially here in Wales. But then this sealed factory set of the 'Best of the National League' turned up in the UK co ..read more

Card Number 1037: Upper Deck Victory, 1999; #339 This is one of those cards where I had the parallel a long time before I acquired the base version. In fact, when I blogged the parallel version I bemoaned the fact I didn't have the base card! Personally, I feel that is almost a perfect baseball card. I like posed photos where you can actually see what a player looks like. The simple framing and unobtrusive logo give this a high class, timeless feel.  The cardback is also elegantly laid out, with a bit about the Qualcomm Stadium (as Jack Murphy Stadium was known in 1999) and a bit about ..read more

I'm not consistent in how I write the headers for Gold Label cards. The "class" of the card is sometimes in brackets, sometimes not. But I doubt anyone cares too much. I feel people come to my blog to look at the cards rather than read what I'm calling them. Card Number 1036: Topps Gold Label - class 2, 2021; #12 The class 1 and class 3 cards issued in 2021 are in this post from February, although actually one of those cards is a black parallel, so I think that means I'm missing the standard version... All three classes of cards in the 2021 issue juxtaposed that ever-so-cool photo of young To ..read more

Opinion is divided on 'manufactured relics' like this card. They're usually found as bonus cards in blaster boxes. While I realise they aren't to every collector's taste, they're a bit out of the ordinary and I like adding them to my collection. This particular one was an eBay purchase from a seller in Germany. Card Number 1035: Topps First Home Run Medallions, 2015; #FHRM-TG These cards were bonus cards in blaster boxes of Series Two of Topps's flagship set. The 'medallion' is a heavy piece of metal embedded in a partial hole scooped out of the foamboard material used to make the 'card'. Cr ..read more

An oddball treat today - a card that doesn't appear on Baseballcardpedia. These cards were apparently issued with a magazine called Legends Sporting Memorabilia, supplied in uncut sheets of 9 cards inserted in the magazine. Stars from several different sports were represented. (Info source) Card Number 1034: Legends Sporting Memorabilia, 1991; #53 Even in the free-for-all frontierland that was the peak junk wax era in 1991, I'm surprised a magazine would produce cards without any kind of licensing. As a media outlet they could well have owned the rights to the photograph, but the copyright c ..read more

DonRuss repeatedly honoured Tony as a Diamond King during the 80s and 90s but Fleer crowned him as a different kind of king in 1999. Card Number 1033: Fleer Ultra, 1999; #13RK The spectacular design on the front of this insert card masks the complete lack of logos or identifying features on the picture. Like the Leaf Legacy card I blogged yesterday, this could be a card from the era of unlicensed cards if it wasn't for the full team name included at the bottom.  The photo of Tony on the back was taken in that brief window when he experimented with a beard in the late 90s.  Th ..read more