Completed Refractor Run: Eric Owens

Here's another collecting project I completed recently: every Eric Owens refractor. All the variations and everything.

Background: Eric Owens was a fan favorite for a couple years on bad Padres teams at the turn of the millennium. He was a scrapy guy who played hard and would deliver an exciting highlight here and there to help keep the season interesting in San Diego. He had already hung up his cleats by the time I returned to the hobby, but going back and collecting his cards brings back fond memories of watching him play, and in turn memories from those days, meandering my way through community college with plenty of freetime to watch Padres broadcasts all summer long. Good times.

So yeah, he's a guy I like to collect, and am somewhat compelled to supercollect. But with all my other active collecting goals keeping me busy, I'm reluctant trying to supercollect anybody besides maybe guys with less than 50 total cards like Dan Walters from last post. TCDB says Eric Owens has 259 cards, and I'm tempted to log my PC one of these days, but I'd be unlikely to ever land them all without putting in significant effort and money (he has some 1996 Select Certified Edition "Mirror" [foilboard] color parallels that can get pricey due to low print runs), so just focusing on refractors seemed like the way to go.

I went through Eric Owens' TCDB checklist and made myself a list of just refractors. The "refractor run" took some patience, but I eventually tracked down them all. Luckily, the final Chrome set he was included in (2004) was the last one before 2005's premiere of the superfractor as we know it, and so there were no 1/1's I had to worry about. Barring anything that slipped by me and/or TCDB, I can now say there isn't an Eric Owens refractor that I don't have.

Without further delay, let's check out all of Eric Owens' refractors.

1996 Finest kicks things off, with both peeled and unpeeled examples.

The Limited Exposure parallels in 1997 Donruss Limited utilize "Holographic Poly-Chromium Technology" though they weren't able to come right out and call them refractors, as Topps has the trademark of using the word refractor in regards to branding trading cards, as is my understanding. But yeah, I'll count this in my refractor run. It's kind of a dumb set, though, with another player on the other side-- some chump named Trey Beamon (Padres) on the back of this one. Actually Eric is on the back, evidenced by the legalese along the right side and card number at the top. He got his first solo Padres refractor in 2000 Chrome. (He was briefly with the Brewers between his stints in Cincinnati and San Diego, but no refractors document that stop.)

In 2001, Owens was included in that year's Topps Chrome set as a Padre, and then after crossing the country to Miami, appeared in the 2001 Topps Traded & Rookies set as a Marlin, both of which had "retrofractor" parallels. Retrofractor seems to just mean Heritage-style refractors where the back of the card is rougher cardboard, which is a nice pairing to the plastic fronts from a tactile perspective. The Topps All-Time Fan Favorites refractors I've been chasing (over 95% complete now!) are also like this.

2002 Topps Chrome has 2 refractor parallels: gold and black (/50).

2003 Topps Chrome trumpets Eric's return to Southern California. Here's our first legit "rainbow" grouping, as Topps started adding more parallels this year. Blue, Silver, Gold, Black, and X-Fractor (the latter of which I've got both factory-encased and freed). This same posed shot is also in flagship 2003 Topps, but of course I'm just interested in refractor parallels here. I really only mention it because they included him in Traded that year, too...

Not sure why Topps bothered, but Eric shows up in 2003 Topps Traded & Rookies even though he was already pictured on the Angels in the main set (both flagship and Chrome), and he definitely wasn't a rookie by that point. Chrome parallels were mixed in with base (paper) for the Traded & Rookies packs that year, with both refractor and X-fractor parallels available. I've again got the X-fractor in both raw and encased ("uncirculated"), which is made more impressive by virtue of it being a /25 card (and sadly, no, neither of my copes is the Christmas Card). Honestly I didn't really set out to get both peeled/unpeeled and encased/unencased variations of Eric Owens refractors where available, originally fine with either, but as the project went on, it just kinda happened and so I leaned into the overkill.

Eric's 2003 season in Anaheim was his last MLB action, yet he shows up in 2004 Topps and 2004 Topps Chrome with this pre-game stretch photo. In reality, he was stretching for the Mariners that spring training, but didn't make the squad, then played for Detroit's Triple A club that year before wrapping up his playing career with a year in Mexico. Anyways, the refractors in 2004 Chrome are base (white), gold, black, and red x-fractor. Of most interest to me are the black refractors; My ambitious longterm set-collecting quest for them is down to a baker's dozen remaining to complete the whole set in black refractors. I had to pick up a dupe Eric Owens for the Refractor Run.

As I said before, for a collecting standpoint it's lucky for me that he didn't stick around long enough to be included in 2005 Topps Chrome, because that's when the superfractor came into play (not to mention printing plates getting packed out by then), so hobby completists had to rethink the old "collect them all" philosophy.

As for Eric Owens' journey, the Angels liked his moxy enough to bring him back as a minor league coach for a few years. He returned to the majors as assistant hitting coach for the Blue Jays in 2015 and 2016. Since June 2024, he's been head coach of his alma mater's baseball team, Ferrum College, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of his native Virginia. Sounds like a sweet gig for him.

Thanks for reading.

Joy of a Completed Player Collection: Dan Walters

Back in November 1991, a Padres catching prospect named Dan Walters was a special guest at a nearby card show. I was able to talk my mom into driving me so I could get him to autograph a minor league card of his I had recently pulled from a pack. I definitely wasn't much of an autograph hound-- I think the only autograph I possessed at the time was of '50s Olympic diver Pat McCormick, who had done a motivational talk at my middle school-- but it seemed like something fun to do. Turns out Dan lived in East County San Diego, and was even an alum of a rival high school, so it wasn't out of his way.

It was pretty cool when he got called up the following June and did a fine job filling in behind the dish the rest of that season. Dan stuck on the roster of his hometown team a couple months into the 1993 season, but as a major leaguer he tapped out a career Padre with 84 total games in the bigs. His last season in pro ball was '96, then he became a police officer. Sadly, he was paralyzed in the line of duty in 2003, eventually passing away in 2020 at age 53.

When I returned to the hobby as an adult, Dan Walters became a PC guy for me, thanks to my brush with him as a kid adding a personal connection (I only got maybe 4 or 5 ballplayer autographs as a kid, and the rest were all old-timers). For a while there I was riding high as his #1 ranked collector at TCDB. Then last year, a collector going by RollingThunder88 entered his impressive collection to the site and overtook me by a few cards. My competitive nature kicked in, and I set out to complete my Dan Walters player collection, hunting down the dozen or so cards I was lacking. Took me a few months utilizing the usual card sources-- eBay, Sportlots, COMC, and a TCDB transaction-- but I was able to land all 43 cards TCDB has listed for him, cementing the title of #1 ranked Dan Walters collector. Woo!

So now let's take a look at a full run of Dan Walters baseball cards.

He's got one card each for the years 1986 through 1989, seen here. Love the bastardized 1986 Topps design of the '88 card. The Astros drafted Dan out of high school, later trading him to San Diego after the 1988 season for pitcher Ed Vosberg.

Here's the early 90s "pre-rookie" stuff. The bottom pair aren't dupes; the one with a bit more shadow visible is from the locally distributed team set version, while the other is retail. Dan spent all 1991 in AAA and played well but was blocked on the depth chart by Benito Santiago and backups Tom Lampkin and Dann Bilardello. Then in '92, he was further tearing it up in Las Vegas-- hitting .394, a special number to Padres fans-- and finally got called up when Benito suffered an injury. 

His first MLB cards are late-season releases from 1992, Traded/Update sets for the most part. The Rated Rookie is from the Update series, only available to pull via special factory sets, so it's tougher than you'd expect a 1992 Donruss card to be. The card at the end here has some meta mojo to it, seeing as it's a San Diego police card issued of a future San Diego police officer.

Now we're into 1993, where the majority of Dan Walters' cards are from.

He was included in most of the major sets that year, getting his share of junk-era rookie cards printed in the millions.

Some oddball stuff, too.

Parallels start becoming more prevalent in '93, with Stadium Club stamping a few "First Day Production" and "Members Only". Upper Deck has the gold hologram variation with it. Looks like that quiet moment taking a knee on-deck was also the image source of his 1993 Topps card, which I've got several iterations of...

Base, gold, blank back, micro, Inaugural Marlins, Inaugural Rockies, and Rediscover Topps buyback (2017).

A closer look at the stamping reveals I've got the silver foil "Rediscover Topps", meaning I could potentially add to this PC assuming there exist blue, bronze, and gold foil versions out there for me to track down (perhaps also for his 1992 Topps Traded card?), though at this point I don't anticipate putting much effort into hunting buybacks. (Welp, ok, I just set a saved search in case something I don't have pops up cheap. At least he never got a Bowman card, so I don't have to worry about buybacks there.)

Dan's production at the plate slipped in 1993, and he spent much of the season back in Las Vegas. When the 1994 baseball card sets came out, he didn't crack a single checklist. 

...But...

..he did get a prominent cameo on Jay Bell's Topps card. Close enough for a dedicated player collector without many options for expanding a PC! I've got the rainbow of base, gold, and bilingual. These (as well as the '93 blank back and Rediscover Topps) are not factored in the TCDB ranking, just some bonus overkill.

This trio out of the mainstream wraps up the cards of Dan Walters:

1994 Osceola Astros 10th Anniversary - This might be the only card in the PC I had to break double digits buying. Not a great looking card, just a black & white sketch of a headshot, but it's scarce (guessing the set was only briefly available at a minor league stadium), so what are you gonna do?

1995 Colorado Springs Sky Sox - A friendly TCDB user sent me this tough card for free after I asked about it. Hobby warm fuzzies, right? I did my part to pay-it-forward a bit by scanning it for the site, as it was Dan's only card without images uploaded. Seems to be a Rolling Rock he's celebrating the PCL championship with in the photo. It's nice that he had that high point to remember at the twilight of his playing days.

1996 Edmonton Trappers - A stoic shot from his final stop as a ballplayer. Kind of a downer to go out on, contrasted by the happy faces on the other 2 cards here. But maybe that's fitting with how his story ended. (Rest in peace, Mr. Walters.)

So there's my Dan Walters supercollection, I guess I can call it. Thanks for checking it out with me.

Topps Retired Triad of HOF 2003 refractor autos

Haven't done one of these in a while. My "Topps Retired Triad" series is where I show off 3 additions to my hoard of Topps Retired Signature Edition cards, which I consider my top collecting priority, as far as allocating hobby funds. While sometimes I mix it up among the 3 years of the product, this post is pure 2003 refractions, and all Cooperstown homeboys, at that. Hitting you with three shots each: a couple different refractings and a shot of the back.

Frank Robinson was a nice one for me to grab recently. 

Looks like a storm brewing behind Frank thanks to the weird reflection in this pic.

An all-time great, no doubt about it.

Robin Roberts is another good one. I've had the base version of this auto for a while, so it was nice to upgrade to a refractor.

Baseball-reference has him at #22 all-time on the list of great pitchers as measured by career WAR, though Justin Verlander might overtake him assuming he keeps pitching adequately for another season or so.

Here's another notable right-hander. This Juan Marichal is a "prodigal son" of a card for me that I'm happy to welcome back to the fold. I scored a refractor a few years back, ended up selling it for a hefty profit to a hobby acquaintance, and thankfully have since lucked into this replacement at quite the bargain. (Now if I could only have similar luck with the Willie Mays ref auto I also sold to Dan.)

I now have 99 of the 119 players with autographs in 2003 Topps Retired, though that's factoring in base autos as well (which I'll ideally upgrade to refractors someday). 

Last off the line here, with 25/25 serial numbering.

Thanks for stopping by. My big COMC order has arrived, so I should have more posts for y'all soon.

Other people's customs

I don't buy customs all that often these days, but coincidentally I scored some recently from two different independent card makers and they both arrived on the same day. One is a set of cards-that-should-have-been '80s Career Cappers by Gio at When Topps Had Balls. The other group of cards are artistic interpretations of cards-that-actually-were (and some that-never-were) by Mark at IDrawBaseballCards.

I love both and figured I'd mix them together in a post.

Kicking off with a terrific pair of 1983 Topps homages.

I won't show all the backs, but I'll give you an idea with these two. In a perfect world I'd love to see full stats on these final tributes, but I know from experience that's a pain to get all lined up. The career highlights are nice, though, and look good in the original design colors. The art cards keep it simple, as you'd expect, but provide the important info.

Rookie mania!

Here are a couple active guys in Acuña and Mookie. The sketch one is a bonus thank-you from Mark. The rest I picked out from his shop from the $1 singles, and a promo code he shared took care of the shipping. Pretty good deal. They're on nice cardstock and everything.

1980 Topps mix.

A trio of 1981 Topps should-have-beens. Yeah, would have been cool of Topps to give a tribute card to Sadaharu Oh, why not?

Hall of Famers who wrapped up their careers in 1983 and could've/should've gotten base card sendoffs in 1984 Topps that might've looked something like this.

Dipping back into the 70s to pair up Pirates and Orioles with 1985 Topps.

1987 Topps representing.

Reggie Jackson and a couple other guys who last took the field during the 1987 season and therefore would have been nice to get a final card of in 1988 Topps.

Finally, we close out with these beauties in the 1989 Topps design, including a fun McGruff/McGriff combo.

So there you have a few neat custom cards I added to my collection the other day. Mad props to Gio and Mark for their fine work.
Thanks for stopping by.