Before I get to today's post, I want to invite you to join in on my Season of Giving for 2019. For all the details, be sure to check out the sign-up post here.
I've been building up a fairly large stockpile of cards over the past several years that I've deemed as possibilities for my non-Reds Frankenset. The goal of the Frankenset is to fill a binder with cards numbered 1- 792 that follow a couple of rules:
Simple right?
Well, not quite so fast... It turns out that cards 1-99 (in particular) have an amazing array of quite cool cards from a variety of sets...so I've decided to make my Frankenset even more Frankenstein-y. I'm going to actually have two sets of cards numbered 1-99 in my set (thus two #1s make it in, two #2s, etc.). I'm still going to have to make a ton of tough decisions but I think this will make for the overall Frankenset to be a much stronger set!
For today, I though it'd be fun to go through my selection process in real time while showing you the cards I currently have to choose from for each card slot number. No better place to start than with card #1, right?
#1:
My initial pile of possible cards had 15 different cards numbered 1. Of those cards, there were the usual suspects such as McGwire, Sosa, Jeter, and Trout but also some "surprises" like Trevor Bauer, Adrian Beltre, and Troy Glaus. None of them are bad choices, but we immediately have to make some tough decisions. First things first, I need to get the pile down to a reasonable amount of cards to fit into a scan...so here are the top 6 that I need to pick from.
Obviously there is no shortage of star players for the first slot in the set! For nostalgic purposes, the McGwire is the card for which I have the most memories attached but it's hard to ignore the shiny Sosa from the same era. Both the Jeter and Trout are great images of star players while the A-Rod is simply a classy, simple card that I happen to love. All that said, believe it or not it's the Pedro that gets through the gauntlet first. I love images that are quirky (or at least different in some way) and a pensive Pedro dugout shot is exactly that (plus Pedro is no slouch in the star player category either). The second card #1 is the much more difficult choice but in the end I went with the A-Rod card. I love that particular year of Topps Heritage, even if I didn't end up trying to collect it in its entirety.
I'm already dreading this procedure if it takes me this long to narrow cards down for each card number in the set! That took way too long to figure out the two keepers for the card #1!
#2:
I started with 14 possibilities for slot #2 but this time around the level of star power was much lower than it was for card #1 (that makes sense since a lot card companies treat card #1 in the set as a "hero number"). Anyhow, after much consideration here are the eight finalists for spot #2 in the set.
The reasons for each of the above cards are as varied as the players and sets represented! The Travis Lee card kind of scares me with his intense look but it was worth considering for the set for that very reason. Ultimately though, scary Lee was the first cut from the final eight. Next to go, the Chipper and Jeter. I actually like the Fleer Box Score set a lot (and the colors on the Jeter card are particularly nice) but in the end Derek couldn't beat out the final five cards. I love the Gold Label brand and, in fact, I wish I had the money to actually collect the 2000 Gold Label set but alas I don't...and in this case, Maddux doesn't quite make the cut for the Frankenset either. The sliding Aaron Rowand is a great image and it happens to be a set that I barely own any cards from (Sweet Spot) but he can't beat out the remaining cards. The final card cut from the group was the Dawson. I really wanted to have Bo Jackson represented somewhere in the Frankenset and I don't actually know how many other Bo cards I own. The other winner from the group is the Stadium Club Chrome card of Juan Gonzalez leaping at the wall. I don't even care if it's a staged shot, it's awesome (trust me it's great despite the terrible scan of the card above)!
Phew, this is much tougher than I was anticipating!
#3:
It would appear that card number 3 isn't as "in demand" as other numbers as I only had nine cards that I deemed worthy of possible inclusion in my Frankenset. Of those, it was actually quite easy to narrow my choices down to only five cards.
The Palmeiro is tough to see in the scan but it's basically a picture of him playing baseball on a street near a fenced in field. Ridiculous, yes, but also awesome. The Victor Martinez card is almost the polar opposite of Palmeiro's card, simple, elegant, and even mundane. Ozzie is included as a choice here because of star power and the phrase "super vet" plastered on his card. Kluber is Kluber and that Garret Anderson card has an amazing bunch of faces on the outfield wall. The choices here are definitely varied and I'm finding that makes choosing the best two to be that much more difficult!
In the end, I went with the quirky Palmeiro and the stoic Martinez cards to represent card #3 in the set.
#4:
For slot #4, I initially set aside ten cards but five were relatively easy to knock out of contention. In an interesting quirk (to me anyhow), three of the five remaining cards were Oakland As!
The Cespedes rookie card is a chrome card which really pops with the green and it makes the cut. As a surprise to everyone, after doing all my scanning I realized that I misfiled a 1999 UD Hologrfx card of Randy Johnson which ended up knocking out the Yogi Berra for the other spot.
#5:
Spot number five had ten possibilities but most of them were actually kind of on the weak side.
I ended up choosing to go with a really nice Topps '52 rookie card of Troy Tulowitzki and then I also took a flyer on a Yoan Moncada rookie card from 2017 Topps Bunt. Not my usual way of picking cards for the Frankenset but like I said, other than the Tulo nothing really stood out for me here.
In the future, I plan to continuously update my Frankenset with the goal of always finding better cards to replace what I currently have in the set. Thus, not every card has to be perfect right now!
#6:
Although I didn't make it a super high priority, I do hope to have some decent representation of each MLB team throughout the Frankenset. For slot #6, I have a feeling that I'm hitting a couple of teams that probably won't get a ton of love throughout the set with the Angels and Royals both filling the slot here.
The Damon card makes it mostly because it's a pretty, shiny card. The Salmon is a kind of neat card showing him during a time that is most definitely not a actual ballgame. There's a bunch of non-baseball folks on the field in the background and Salmon himself almost looks like he's talking on a cell phone (he's probably not though since this was a set from 1999).
#7:
For slot #7, I had a whole lot of choices...15 to be precise!
No surprise to see a bunch of nice Mickey Mantle cards in spot #7, after all there was a bunch of years that Topps basically dedicated card #7 to Mantle. I think that I almost have to include at least one Mickey Mantle card in my Frankenset and the Bowman Heritage Mantle is the easy choice for me. The competition for the second #7 card came down to the either the A-Rod Flair Showcase card or the 2008 Mickey Mantle card. After much deliberation, I chose to go with the A-Rod over Mantle. That feels kind of wrong to me but I really do like the look of the Flair card so much more than 2008 Topps design.
#8:
The competition for spot #8 fell away very quickly as only two cards really stood out to me.
That Coco Crisp card is all kinds of great while Ichiro as a Marlin means Florida/Miami gets some representation in my set (and Ichiro finally makes it in after being a finalist for a number of spots already)!
#9:
We finally made it to card #9 for the set! This has been a long process (this post has taken me the better part of three evenings to put together for whatever that is worth). I ended up whittling the card options down to a final four for the two slots:
I feel like I almost have to put the Matt Williams card in the Frankenset because 2000 Pacific Invincible is so weird (and I love it) and that card is one of the few cards I own from the set. The other three cards are all neat on their own merits - the color scheme of the Mo Vaughn card appeals to me, the rolling Dawson is amusing, and the Pollock rookie card in chrome is quite nice. In the end, I decided to have this been a clean sweep for the Diamondbacks in spot #9 - welcome to the binder Mr. Pollock.
And with that I'm finally through the first nine (18?) cards of my Frankenset.
I've been building up a fairly large stockpile of cards over the past several years that I've deemed as possibilities for my non-Reds Frankenset. The goal of the Frankenset is to fill a binder with cards numbered 1- 792 that follow a couple of rules:
- No Reds in the non-Reds Frankenset (players that played for the Reds but are featured with a different team are okay)
- No cards from sets that I'm collecting (or have fully collected)
- No cards of players for whom I have a mini PC
- Try to keep set variety on each page
- Try to keep player variety on each page
- Priority goes to stars, interesting photos, and favorite sets/card designs
Simple right?
Well, not quite so fast... It turns out that cards 1-99 (in particular) have an amazing array of quite cool cards from a variety of sets...so I've decided to make my Frankenset even more Frankenstein-y. I'm going to actually have two sets of cards numbered 1-99 in my set (thus two #1s make it in, two #2s, etc.). I'm still going to have to make a ton of tough decisions but I think this will make for the overall Frankenset to be a much stronger set!
For today, I though it'd be fun to go through my selection process in real time while showing you the cards I currently have to choose from for each card slot number. No better place to start than with card #1, right?
#1:
My initial pile of possible cards had 15 different cards numbered 1. Of those cards, there were the usual suspects such as McGwire, Sosa, Jeter, and Trout but also some "surprises" like Trevor Bauer, Adrian Beltre, and Troy Glaus. None of them are bad choices, but we immediately have to make some tough decisions. First things first, I need to get the pile down to a reasonable amount of cards to fit into a scan...so here are the top 6 that I need to pick from.
Obviously there is no shortage of star players for the first slot in the set! For nostalgic purposes, the McGwire is the card for which I have the most memories attached but it's hard to ignore the shiny Sosa from the same era. Both the Jeter and Trout are great images of star players while the A-Rod is simply a classy, simple card that I happen to love. All that said, believe it or not it's the Pedro that gets through the gauntlet first. I love images that are quirky (or at least different in some way) and a pensive Pedro dugout shot is exactly that (plus Pedro is no slouch in the star player category either). The second card #1 is the much more difficult choice but in the end I went with the A-Rod card. I love that particular year of Topps Heritage, even if I didn't end up trying to collect it in its entirety.
I'm already dreading this procedure if it takes me this long to narrow cards down for each card number in the set! That took way too long to figure out the two keepers for the card #1!
#2:
I started with 14 possibilities for slot #2 but this time around the level of star power was much lower than it was for card #1 (that makes sense since a lot card companies treat card #1 in the set as a "hero number"). Anyhow, after much consideration here are the eight finalists for spot #2 in the set.
The reasons for each of the above cards are as varied as the players and sets represented! The Travis Lee card kind of scares me with his intense look but it was worth considering for the set for that very reason. Ultimately though, scary Lee was the first cut from the final eight. Next to go, the Chipper and Jeter. I actually like the Fleer Box Score set a lot (and the colors on the Jeter card are particularly nice) but in the end Derek couldn't beat out the final five cards. I love the Gold Label brand and, in fact, I wish I had the money to actually collect the 2000 Gold Label set but alas I don't...and in this case, Maddux doesn't quite make the cut for the Frankenset either. The sliding Aaron Rowand is a great image and it happens to be a set that I barely own any cards from (Sweet Spot) but he can't beat out the remaining cards. The final card cut from the group was the Dawson. I really wanted to have Bo Jackson represented somewhere in the Frankenset and I don't actually know how many other Bo cards I own. The other winner from the group is the Stadium Club Chrome card of Juan Gonzalez leaping at the wall. I don't even care if it's a staged shot, it's awesome (trust me it's great despite the terrible scan of the card above)!
Phew, this is much tougher than I was anticipating!
#3:
It would appear that card number 3 isn't as "in demand" as other numbers as I only had nine cards that I deemed worthy of possible inclusion in my Frankenset. Of those, it was actually quite easy to narrow my choices down to only five cards.
The Palmeiro is tough to see in the scan but it's basically a picture of him playing baseball on a street near a fenced in field. Ridiculous, yes, but also awesome. The Victor Martinez card is almost the polar opposite of Palmeiro's card, simple, elegant, and even mundane. Ozzie is included as a choice here because of star power and the phrase "super vet" plastered on his card. Kluber is Kluber and that Garret Anderson card has an amazing bunch of faces on the outfield wall. The choices here are definitely varied and I'm finding that makes choosing the best two to be that much more difficult!
In the end, I went with the quirky Palmeiro and the stoic Martinez cards to represent card #3 in the set.
#4:
For slot #4, I initially set aside ten cards but five were relatively easy to knock out of contention. In an interesting quirk (to me anyhow), three of the five remaining cards were Oakland As!
The Cespedes rookie card is a chrome card which really pops with the green and it makes the cut. As a surprise to everyone, after doing all my scanning I realized that I misfiled a 1999 UD Hologrfx card of Randy Johnson which ended up knocking out the Yogi Berra for the other spot.
#5:
Spot number five had ten possibilities but most of them were actually kind of on the weak side.
I ended up choosing to go with a really nice Topps '52 rookie card of Troy Tulowitzki and then I also took a flyer on a Yoan Moncada rookie card from 2017 Topps Bunt. Not my usual way of picking cards for the Frankenset but like I said, other than the Tulo nothing really stood out for me here.
In the future, I plan to continuously update my Frankenset with the goal of always finding better cards to replace what I currently have in the set. Thus, not every card has to be perfect right now!
#6:
Although I didn't make it a super high priority, I do hope to have some decent representation of each MLB team throughout the Frankenset. For slot #6, I have a feeling that I'm hitting a couple of teams that probably won't get a ton of love throughout the set with the Angels and Royals both filling the slot here.
The Damon card makes it mostly because it's a pretty, shiny card. The Salmon is a kind of neat card showing him during a time that is most definitely not a actual ballgame. There's a bunch of non-baseball folks on the field in the background and Salmon himself almost looks like he's talking on a cell phone (he's probably not though since this was a set from 1999).
#7:
For slot #7, I had a whole lot of choices...15 to be precise!
No surprise to see a bunch of nice Mickey Mantle cards in spot #7, after all there was a bunch of years that Topps basically dedicated card #7 to Mantle. I think that I almost have to include at least one Mickey Mantle card in my Frankenset and the Bowman Heritage Mantle is the easy choice for me. The competition for the second #7 card came down to the either the A-Rod Flair Showcase card or the 2008 Mickey Mantle card. After much deliberation, I chose to go with the A-Rod over Mantle. That feels kind of wrong to me but I really do like the look of the Flair card so much more than 2008 Topps design.
#8:
The competition for spot #8 fell away very quickly as only two cards really stood out to me.
That Coco Crisp card is all kinds of great while Ichiro as a Marlin means Florida/Miami gets some representation in my set (and Ichiro finally makes it in after being a finalist for a number of spots already)!
#9:
We finally made it to card #9 for the set! This has been a long process (this post has taken me the better part of three evenings to put together for whatever that is worth). I ended up whittling the card options down to a final four for the two slots:
I feel like I almost have to put the Matt Williams card in the Frankenset because 2000 Pacific Invincible is so weird (and I love it) and that card is one of the few cards I own from the set. The other three cards are all neat on their own merits - the color scheme of the Mo Vaughn card appeals to me, the rolling Dawson is amusing, and the Pollock rookie card in chrome is quite nice. In the end, I decided to have this been a clean sweep for the Diamondbacks in spot #9 - welcome to the binder Mr. Pollock.
And with that I'm finally through the first nine (18?) cards of my Frankenset.
With the Pedro taking one of the first two slots, it got me thinking that if you're going to have two runs from 1 to 99, one should be all vertical and one should be all horizontal. Obviously you didn't show a horizontal contender for every spot, but just a thought. Anyway, I do think that Pedro is a GREAT card and a great way to kick things off.
ReplyDeleteNo Mets yet, but with Pedro and Céspedes showing up in the first three cards, I really can't complain!
The first time I saw one of those 2000 Pacific Invincible cards (which was within the past 3 months), I totally thought it was a rare insert. They're beautiful cards.
ReplyDeleteI thought the exact same thing when I encountered my first two at a card show last year.
DeleteFun read. Pacific's short little run was full of odd and wonderful weirdness. It was during my peak collecting years as a youth and I know I had no idea what was going on, and still don't.
ReplyDelete