One Set, 25 Years of Minor League Greatness!

Tonight I've got a great minor league card set to share with you.  During the 1997 season, the Pawtucket Red Sox (AAA franchise for the Boston Red Sox) had fans vote on the 30 best players in the franchise's history.  The players who made the cut were all included on the checklist for a card set commemorating the first 25 years of PawSox baseball.

The result is one of the most star-studded minor league sets I've ever encountered.  You've got HOFers, local fan favorites, controversial names and personalities, and just about everything in between covered in this release.

The design is nothing special per se, just a purple border, darker at the top fading lighter towards the bottom, where you see the Pawtucket Red Sox 25th Anniversary All-Star designation.  Within the confines of the photograph you get a very basic player name and position bar, and a small PawSox 25th Anniversary logo above it.

What makes this set such a winner though in my opinion is that every card features an authentic photograph taken during the player's time with the team.  The resultant mix of uniforms and era fashion trends (see striped shirt above) makes for a really interesting set.

The backs aren't nearly as aesthetically pleasing, though I think they do a half-way decent job for being limited to black and white print.  You get the player's stats from just the time they were with Pawtucket, which is kind of interesting to see, and the write-ups are actually done quite well.  You'll notice there's no numbering at all, which is a minor pet peeve of mine as you'll find slightly different variations of the checklist online.

Just know that there are 31 cards in total, the 30 players voted in by the fans plus this checklist/header card.  Here you get a much better look at the PawSox 25th Anniversary logo that appears on each card.

Since this set is all about the great photographs and star-studded checklist I've actually got all 30 cards here for your viewing pleasure.  I won't provide too much commentary since the scans will make this post long enough as it is...enjoy!

My personal favorite, which is why I led the post off with it.  The photograph just perfectly captures hanging around after a minor league game to get autographs.  I also think it's really cool that Fidrych spent time with fans like this after his minor league starts, even though he'd already tasted big league success many years earlier.  If this photo isn't staged, and I have no reason to believe it is, then it seems like a good visual representation of an athlete not letting prior success go to his head.  Either way, what an awesome card.

There you have it, my personal favorite minor league team set, at least at this point in my collecting journey.  If you'd like to pick one of these up for yourself you can do so from the PawSox online store for just $6 (fair warning that shipping is ridiculously high though at $11).

The COMC Shuffle

I have a small lot of cards headed my way from the COMC Spring Cleaning promotion that took place recently.  Before those arrive though, I need to make some space in my card chest for them.  This entails grabbing a bunch of cards from the already-stuffed COMC drawers, scanning them in and slapping them into a post; a process I refer to as the "COMC Shuffle".

Let's dive right in and see what cards were lucky enough to be pulled, scanned and inventoried to make space.  In the lead-off spot is a nice Topps Legends variation of The Hawk from 2011 Topps Update.

I liked this card so much (and the price was so right) that I ended up with the Diamond Anniversary parallel of it as well:

Nice enough card, but I like the plain old base version better in this case.  All I need now is the Cognac version to complete the mini-rainbow.

30 out of 100 now as far as this seemingly impossible one-per-box Yellow parallel set from 2009-10 Champ's hockey goes.  I don't know why I continue to pursue these knowing I'll likely never complete the set, but I guess stranger things have happened and this James Neal was cheap enough to justify going for it.

This represents my one and only hockey card of Bruins defenseman Kevan Miller.  The team just re-signed Kevin to a four-year deal worth $10 million a few weeks back.  Not sure how I feel about that contract personally, but there were a lot of fans complaining at the time that the franchise overpaid for Kevan's talents.  Time will tell!

I'm somewhat obsessed with the Topps Finest refractors of the '90s, both baseball and hockey.  This is my 7th one from the '94-95 hockey set, and definitely the best player I've added so far (and the only HOFer).  Plus, the shiny blue design looks nice on a Leafs card.

Speaking of shiny, here's the closest thing I've got to a Carlton Fisk Topps rookie card.  Admittedly, it's not very close.

Looking back on it, I think 2011 might be my absolute favorite year for Topps variations/parallels.  The Diamond Anniversary and Cognac parallels are both great, and this is also the one year where you can get Topps Chrome Atomic refractors without paying a fortune.  In today's lot I have a couple of those, both of pretty decent players too in Paul Konerko...

...and Johnny Damon.  Random seeing him in a Rays uniform, 2011 was Johnny's only year with Tampa Bay.  A complete set of these would look absolutely amazing in a binder, but it's probably not a realistic goal for me given that with these two in hand I now own just 6 of the 220 that are available.

Switching over to soccer for just a quick moment, I picked up a pair of Camo parallels from the 2015-16 Select set.  Both cards feature some of the brighter offensively-minded players in the game today.  First we've got Sergio Aguero, one of the top forwards in the English Premier league.  He finished 3rd in league scoring in 2011-12, 4th in 2013-14, 1st in 2014-15, and 2nd in the recently completed 2015-16 season.  He is the only player to finish in the top 5 in scoring each of the last 3 EPL seasons.

The other Select camo parallel I grabbed is James (pronounced Hah-Mez) Rodriguez of Columbia.  Those who watched a lot of the 2014 World Cup will remember that James won the Golden Boot as top scorer for the tournament.  More recently, he helped propel Real Madrid to the top of the UEFA Champions League this past season.

Okay, let's get back to baseball before all of this soccer talk scares off the handful of readers I have.  Back in 2007 I was in Target when I saw a random blaster box of Goudey baseball.  I hadn't touched a baseball card in well over a decade, but I figured it would be a fun way to re-live some childhood memories of ripping packs.  I guess I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, because almost a decade later here I am still at it.

I decided all the way back then that I wanted to complete this 2007 Goudey set since it marked my return to the hobby, but it's been a real challenge thanks to the 88 pesky short prints at the end of the checklist.

Today's post gets me three cards closer though!  I've only got about 10 of these left to track down, but it's gotten to the point where I don't really want to pay $3 each or more.  Instead, I'll try to exercise some patience in finishing this one off.

I was really impressed when I received one of these Target Retro parallels from 2009 Topps in a trade package a while back.  It wasn't so much the retro logo on the front that impressed me...

...as it was the great old-school card stock.  These don't seem to be the easiest parallels to track down, so I was pretty excited to find Dustin Pedroia here at a reasonable cost.

I've really been ramping up my Kellogg's collection of late, having recently completed the 1972 and 1977 Red Sox team sets.

Well, I can now add 1981 to that list, as I've managed to pick up all five of the Red Sox from that release.

These aren't the most rare or valuable cards by any means, but I really enjoy them.

Yaz is of course the biggest name among the five Red Sox players included in the '81 set, but like I said you're not retiring on the money you'd make from selling any of these to say the least.

These are also significant in that it was the first year that Kellogg's abandoned the mini sized cards in favor of the larger, standard format.  I'm going to make an effort this summer to knock off some of the other team sets from the Kellogg's run of 1970 - 1983.

Sticking with the Red Sox theme for a moment, here's a trio from the 2014 High Tek release.

I love these as I love nearly all acetate cards.

These three are just the most basic of the endless number of variations that are available in this set.  I think I have a few more kicking around within the card chest to be pulled and posted at a future date.

Ah, the All-Time Fan Favorites sets!  I've yet to see a single card from one of these releases that I didn't enjoy.  What an excellent shot of Carlton Fisk here.

Here's a nice addition to my small Mookie Betts collection, courtesy of 2014 Pro Debut.  Betts seems to have really solidified his place atop the Red Sox lineup this season.  After a mediocre start, Mookie has really picked it up.  His batting average is getting closer and closer to .300, and he's provided some really good power out of the lead-off spot with 14 HR thus far.  Oh yeah, and he's leading the league with 58 runs scored at the moment.  Can't ask for more than that, especially from someone who's still just 23 years old.

I'll close out today with this fantastic autograph of the bespectacled wonder, Kent Tekulve!  I drooled over this one last summer when Archives was released, and was 100% satisfied when I was at long last able to bring home my own copy for less than $5.

Well, that's all I've got time for today.  I'm certainly going to need to clean out some more space though before my next COMC shipment arrives...