Topps Retired Triad 3 - Tippy, Baines, Davey

More Topps Retired autos acquired in my neverending quest to collect 'em all. These here are all from 2005, the Return of the Jedi of the Retired trilogy of sets.

Hey, here my first Retired printing plate. Normally I don't mess with them at all (my negative feelings towards stickergraphs being a big reason), but this one popped up too cheap to deny. I think the seller forgot to mention in the listing title that it was a plate or 1/1, so that might have kept the price down to be comparable to what the base autos typically go for.

Since my collection of Retired autos is already a "frankenset" of base and refractors, figured adding a autograph plate to the mix would be cool.

Tippy Martinez was a reliever who came up with the Yankees in the mid 70s, but spent most of his career with the Orioles. His best season was probably 1983, helping Baltimore win it all that year as their closer.

And this Harold Baines base auto was cheap enough to justify, though these days I try to focus on refractors since I like them so much more.

As a "big Hall" guy, I was glad to see Baines in the HOF, though there are several more-deserving players still on the outside looking in.

Check out the front and back photos... The White Sox sure went through a lot of uniforms back before deciding to stick with what worked so well for the Raiders.

Refractor time! Last card today is Davey Johnson.

Davey is best known as manager of the '86 Mets, so it's no surprise the write-up is centered on that. As a player, he was a 4-time All-Star and won a couple rings with the Orioles ('66 & '70).

Wow, and Maryland native Harold Baines had 3 different stints in Baltimore during his career so I guess this post turned out to have a theme of notable Orioles of the past.

That's all for this time. Thanks for reading.