Lords Of The Diamond

 

For a few months now, @Jake1725 and myself have been working on and off on a trade and knocking out the details on it. I knew in the end we would work it out like we always do, its just sometimes it takes a little longer to do so.

I didn't know completely what I was getting on my end from Jake and on his end was the same from me. All I know is kicking it off with this beautiful Lords Of The Diamond Ken Griffey Jr is a heck of a start.

Wanna feel older? This was Topps 55th anniversary design. We are now in Year 70....Also, remember when we used to be able to spot a gold parallel from Topps easier?

Juan's gone the right way. If you know Donruss 90 and this card, you will get that.

Another new Griffey Jr! Big Fly Zone, he definitely sent plenty of balls that way.

The Franchise Big Hurt

Alex Rodriguez

Three more new Griffey Jr's. I like the Drawing Power insert but the photography on Big Shots takes the medal here.

Five-Tool Talent A-Rod. His sixth tool was cheating the game.

Revolution always came out with a nice base card design, I believe this is my first taste of the 1998 baseball.

I hate to admit it, I like Stick Ums

Randy Johnson Proview. Except this is the gold version I have never seen before.

Some fun 90's chromed inserts

Upper Deck MVP had some nice cards despite being on the same level as Collectors Choice as a brand and cost. These Swing Times also are foiled.

Super Tools. Revert to the comment above about MVP

Some shiny Topps inserts. I wished Topps would do more of these and not so much bland like today's

Bonds Home Run cards. Not sure how many of these should count

Up next, I know it's Collectors Choice and that these Star Quests fell one-per-pack, but these were probably the most eye-pleasers of this group of cards for me.

The blue ones/one star are the easiest to find falling one-per-pack

The green falls 1:8 packs. A tad tougher than the blue level

The Red level falls 1:23 packs.

Almost a complete rainbow of Clemens, just lacking the Gold. That one is really tough to find and numbered to 100. I tried to look on eBay for one just for kicks and didn't see one.

Thanks to Jake for another terrific trade and looking forward to more.

It Was The Collectors Choice

Up to this point, I hadn't busted any baseball. Just like with basketball, I didn't have much baseball knowledge at all as my focal point was football. Luckily, my sports fanatic father did. He was a die hard Yankees fan. Funny thing about our origins sometimes, we may follow someone else's steps. I later on became a Yankees fan because of him and we will hear about that in 1996.

Even though I didn't know much about the sport or the players, I think when packs of 1995 Collectors Choice hit the shelves my father looked at that as an opportunity to open me up to it. The price was fit our budget as well with it only going for .99 a pack for a 12 card pack.

The base set was huge, we don't see much of this today, it was also one single series and a whopping 530 cards. The base set was simple with a white border and action photography.

 

 

But, for me at 12 years of age, it was the subsets that caught my eye.

Rookie Class were the first cards in the set. They made up numbers 1-27 in the set. Of course at the time with the confusion that baseball can cause, I thought I had a Derek Jeter rookie card. I never did pull the real key rookie of the product, Hideo Nomo.

 

 

Future Foundation were those upcoming stars that a team could build around. I had put these into rookie binders at the time as well.

 

Best of the 90's made up card numbers 51-65 and were key players on their 90's teams

 

 

What's The Call was a goofy subset making up numbers 86-90 but somewhat eye appealing. It was truly what a kid friendly product needed.

 

There were a couple cool inserts but not loaded by any means. There were two parallels and one insert set to chase.

Silver Signature parallel fell one-per-pack taking a players signature and making it facsimile silver.

 

The tougher one per box Gold Signature parallel taking a players signature and making it facsimile Gold

And You Crash The Game fell 1:5 packs and also had two parallels. Gold and Silver. I never pulled a Gold however. These were fun for sure. It was a redemption card of sorts and if a featured player does their feat on the day on the card posted, you could exchange that card in for a set of You Crash The Game cards. Whatever happened to fun promotions like this in sports cards today?

 

 

Did Collectors Choice get me into watching baseball? No. Did it peak my interest in getting more baseball cards? Absolutely. This is what you would call my baseball card origin and it only grew from here on out.