Mike Schmidt 2004 Topps Retired refractor auto

Here's another big one I recently scored for my 2004 Topps Retired refractor autograph set-- Mr. Michael Jack Schmidt!

This is one I've especially been hoping to find lo these many years. Gotta love Schmitty!

A beauty of a card! Have a catch with Mike Schmidt within a rainbow.

Lots of red ink on the back. The little factoid is no longer true, thanks to Ryan Howard's 382 ding-dongs. But still!

We like ROY

Sort of a random little post revisiting 3 cards and taking a look at 3 new additions. 

Despite my half-hearted attempt to rebrand myself as The Pre-Covid Collector, I find myself with nice cards of each of the recently announced 2020 Rookie of the Year winners. The pair of Kyle Lewis refractors were a surprise in a Zippy Zapping from a couple years ago. While I'm always happy to receive random shiny prospect cards, gotta admit at the time I didn't see him ending up as the unanimous AL ROY.. very nice surprise, indeed.

The Devin Williams auto was included in a lot of nine cheap Bowman autos I bought in 2014 during a combined shipping eBay spree with a few other items from one seller. The other 8 prospects in that auto lot have pretty much all faded away, but nice to see Devin break out with a dominant shortened season. I sure don't own many 1st Bowman autos of ROYs, so that's pretty cool, even if his card prices aren't too wild as a 26-year old relief pitcher. While it would have been nice for me to see Padre Jake Cronenworth take home the award in the NL, well, I don't own any of his cards, so screw him, lol.

The Diamond King reached out to me shortly after I moved offering up this second-year Mike Schmidt card. Heck yeah! He seemed to indicate the condition left something to be desired, but no, it fits in perfectly with the rest of my 1974 Topps setbuild. There are a lot of '74s currently populating my Desperate Dozen sidebar wantlist as I make a push to close out this set sooner rather than later, and this is a big one to check off. Just 35 cards left to go. (Be sure to appreciate the bullpen cart in the background!)

Michael Jack Schmidt had trouble making contact during his rookie campaign, so no ROY votes for him-- Gary Matthews of the Giants took it that year-- but he figured it out the next year and went on to become an all-time great.

Big thanks, DK! Glad you're feeling better now. I haven't had much luck finding cards on your wantlist, but hope to return the favor soon.

Here's a very shiny Jose Abreu card. He was an unanimous selection as AL ROY in 2014 and has been consistently solid since.

My favorite part about this sweet card...

Christmas Card!

Featured here on another super shiny card from 2019, Eric Hosmer placed 3rd in AL ROY voting in 2011 behind Jeremy Hellickson and Mark Trumbo.

This gold wave refractor and the Abreu orange wave refractor were scored in an easy PWE purchase from @MashingDingers on Twitter. Took a while to find my mailbox, forwarded from my old address, but eventually showed up safe and sound. Thanks, Eric!

That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by.

Schmidt Happens Twice

Man, I have the worst luck with buying Mike Schmidt cards on eBay. Maybe you remember back when I bought a 1973 Topps Schmidt rookie that turned out to be fake? That's right: Counterfeit Schmidt!

Well, after receiving my first counterfeit card (that I'm aware of, at least), I think I've now received my first trimmed card (again, that I'm aware of). And again, the player is Michael Jack Schmidt.

The card on the left is the one I recently won, while the non-auto on the right is from my factory set. The autographed card is clearly shorter than the other. It seemed off right out of the package, as it loosely rattled around in the standard screw-down hard case it was mailed in.

I know some vintage sets may have slightly varying sizes, but as you can see from my set, these 1991 Classic Best cards all appear uniform in width and height.

I love this minor league set and it was the only full-length set from my childhood collection that survived "the great possessions purge" as I prepared to move out-of-state years back. Card #1, poster boy Schmidt is the only big leaguer in a set of minor league cards and I figured adding an autographed card would be a cool addendum. It's an official auto card from Classic Best.. I believe they were only available in packs, probably seeded at crazy odds. The only autograph in the set, they are hand-numbered to 2100, but otherwise don't mention they are autographed (no "Congratulations!"-type message on the back), though the back is slightly different than the base version.

Thanks to TCDB-- because I've already returned the auto and didn't snap a shot of the back-- here are both cards for you to compare and contrast, noting the differences on the backs...

I'm now almost thinking I was too hasty and maybe the auto card really is just a little smaller?? Does anyone have one of the other 2099 copies who could confirm the size?

Maybe I'm just paranoid with all the "trimming scandal" hobby news over the past few months. Did the Schmidt auto originally have a dinged top corner that somebody decided to trim away to improve its visual appeal? Or was the manufacturer's card-cutting machine just set a little smaller when it came to the the run of to-be-signed cards?

Anyways, the seller was cool about it and I was able to get the return process going through eBay and use a provided return postage label. I don't think the seller was behind any nefarious activity, as he has a big inventory of listings yet few trading cards, so he's probably more of a "pawn shop" type of seller who just ended up with the card from somewhere. He was calmly apologetic about it, which was in contrast to the earlier seller who sent me the counterfeit Schmidt rookie; that guy accepted the return without a fight, but otherwise I got conspicuously no other communication from him, so I'm left to assume he probably knew it was a fake card all along.

So it's a bit of a bummer that the Schmidt auto purchase didn't work out for me, but I'm not too heartbroken over it thanks to the painless return. I'll keep a casual eye out for another one of these someday, but it ain't like it's a white whale of mine or anything (There are a couple others on eBay right now, though they're more expensive [Buy It Now] than the auction I won). If I end up with another one someday and find that it's also smaller than expected, I'll have egg on my face. But this one just seemed off and would've likely bugged me had I decided to hang onto it. Oh well.

UPDATE 1/31/2020

Reader mr. haverkamp, a big Schmidt collector, sent a scan and was able to confirm that yes, the autograph cards do seem to be a bit smaller! I probably should have consulted him before I returned it. Live and learn, I guess!


UPDATE 2/8/2020

The prodigal Schmidt returns! When I first got this card last month, it seemed trimmed, so I returned it. Found out ALL copies are a bit small. Ebay bungled the return and delayed refunding me. Seller was cool and sent card back to me at his cost, return canceled. Nice. pic.twitter.com/AQWuFwhLmW

— Baseball Card Breakdown (@breakdowncards) February 8, 2020

customs overload

FINALLY today I finished designing the long list of customs that John Miller sent me last year. I've still got a lot of printing to do now, so the project isn't completely finished yet, but at least it feels good to have the heavy lifting out of the way. I've moaned about it before, but it was tough going. While I normally enjoy making custom cards, to have a big list hanging over my head made it feel like a job and I quickly grew to resent it and avoided working on them. Nothing against John, who was quick to tell me no rush and hooked me up with plenty of cards to return the favor, but I wouldn't agree to another large custom commission order like this again. I'd rather do several small commissions, just a few cards at a time, than to get bogged down with one big list of requests.

Anyways, thought I'd get a post out of showing off some more of the highlights, following earlier posts here and here. Most of these customs are for his "same name" binder.

Jackie Brown pays homage to blaxploitation films of the early/mid 70s, so I figured 1973 Topps would be a good design to use.

Gotta admit I didn't really know about the Chuck Taylor behind popularizing Converse shoes, so it was interesting to learn about him as I was working on the card (These all include backs with little write-ups).

Yeah, it probably would have made more sense to use a football design for this Craig T. Nelson card, but whatever.

A couple very different guys both named Michael McDonald.

John doesn't mind multi-player cards, though he prefers them to be vertically oriented, which limits the options. But this league leaders design from 1970-71 Topps basketball worked for squeezing 3 guys onto 1 vertical card.

Gotta love Tom Jones.

Steve Martin's The Jerk was released in 1979.

Towards the end of the list, to hurry things along, I started mainly sticking with the 1989 Pacific Baseball Legends design because it's quick and easy. I sometimes changed the border color to spice it up. Looks pretty good in blue here (the real cards have a grey border).


Thanks again, John. I should be able to have these printed and in the mail soon.

Customs next on my "to do" list include a few for Jaybarkerfan and Dimebox Dad.

Let's close things out with a new gif...

Made this yesterday to celebrate Mike Schmidt turning 70. I believe that's a clip of him hitting his 500th homer. Pretty neat.

Prospecting from my childhood

I recently stumbled upon some draft pick / minor league sets from my childhood collection that were boxed away. Let's check 'em out.

It's draft day, so let's go back 27 years to the 1992 draft. Looks like I've kept this box sealed the whole time, but I wouldn't put it past younger me to slyly try keeping the sticker seal intact while peeling it back.. just trying to sneak a peek at the cards before resealing.

But now I think I'll just look up 1992 Front Row Draft Picks on TCDB.

The big name here is Derek Jeter. That's pretty much it. There's also Jason Giambi. Jason Kendall is another familiar name. Eric Owens is a fan favorite of mine, though I think I've already got that card in the PC.

Bonus Card (#39) is a send-in offer for another card of a '92 top ten draft pick, though it doesn't specify who, and TCDB doesn't seem to have the possible redemptions listed. Perhaps you just got one of the silver or gold parallels.. I'm not sure. There are apparently also autographs, though I'm not sure how they were distributed. Sure would be nice if there was a randomly inserted Jeter auto hiding in my box, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I just looked at the completed listings on eBay, and was a little surprised these sealed sets seem to sell for around $25-30 these days-- more than I was expecting. Not sure how much of my allowance I spent on this set back in 1992, but it was most likely less than $25-- or at least in that ballpark-- so I'll consider this a wash as an investment, but that's alright as far as overproduction era cards go.

And a PSA 10 specimen of the Jeter sold for $200 back in April. So I suppose if you can buy a sealed box for $25 and turn around and get the Jeter graded, you could make a tidy profit assuming it grades out to a 10.

But I don't mess with getting cards graded. There's apparently a big stink going on in that part of the hobby the past week or two with it being revealed that big eBay seller PWCC allegedly worked with a dude who would trim/alter cards so they would grade higher, with PSA also possibly being in on it in the allegations. So that could get ugly. I've never been one to hunt down PSA 10s, so it's not as big of a deal to me than it is to guys out there spending thousands on big cards.

Anyways, on with the sets.

I loved minor league team sets as a kid. I guess I was kinda prospecting-- trying to get in on the ground floor of a future star. But it wasn't about the money, as I never had any intentions to sell my cards.

I had a handful of mid 80s TCMA minor league sets, including one I remember with Danny Jackson and another with Kal Daniels. These instances definitely weren't prospecting, as they were already established major leaguers at that point. Their careers petered off after I ponied up for their minor league sets at the LCS, and I lost interest in those guys, so the sets were among the cards I purged when I moved out of San Diego over a decade ago.

But among the very few minor league team sets I kept was this 1990 St. Catharines Blue Jays team set. Looks like this set can be bought for around $10 today, so didn't exactly appreciate much. At the time, Steve Karsay got the coveted "front card of the case" billing, and while he went onto a respectable MLB career, getting into 357 games over 11 seasons, he never became the top-of-the-order starter the Blue Jays were hoping when they drafted him 22nd overall in 1990. He's a bullpen coach with the Brewers now.

So yeah, Carlos Delgado eventually broke out as the big name on this low-A squad. Funny to see him as a baby catcher, as he played the vast majority of his career at first base. Delgado and his 473 career home runs were overshadowed by heavy hitters of the day such as Barry Bonds, and unfairly got overlooked for HOF consideration. Maybe if he could have stayed healthy for a couple more seasons and reached 500 dingers, but he was battling a bad hip at the end.

Looking through the set now as an adult, one name I know now (that I didn't know as a kid) is manager Doug Ault. He's got that cool '78 Topps card with Thurman Munson making a cameo. He's best known for playing in the first Blue Jays game on April 7, 1977 and hitting the first two home runs in franchise history that day. After his playing days, he went into coaching, and later ran into life trouble and is no longer with us.

The other familiar name I was pleasantly surprised to see on this coaching staff is Darren Balsley-- a happier story-- current long-time Padres pitching coach. This here is his very first coaching card, having just retired as a player the previous season, so that's kinda cool.

Here's another neat one. I remember having several different team sets from 1988 CMC back in the day, though the Richmond Braves were the only ones I kept. It hasn't turned out to be much of an investment, as a similar set recently sold for $1.25 (+$4.50 shipping) on eBay. But I still always think it's cool to have a minor league card of a Hall of Famer, like young John Smoltz here.

Ron Gant is another guy I collect, and so that card helped me make the choice circa 2008 to hang onto this set and not throw it into the big lot I ended up selling on Craigslist for a very fair price because I didn't want to worry about trying to move it all or bothering trying to break it up into many smaller sales. A few other guys had MLB success in this bunch, too.


Last set for today...

Now this 1991 Classic Best Minors factory set was among my prized possessions during my initial time in the hobby. Loved it! So chock full of promise! I expected a lot of big stars to rise from this set over the mid 90s. And hey, there were Cooperstown-bound Pedro Martinez and Ivan Rodriguez, and future All-Stars such as Reggie Sanders and Brian Giles (my boy Carlos Delgado is in this one, too, and probably other good players I'm leaving out), but the vast majority of the guys in the set never made the big leagues, much less became a star.

I guess Classic Best made of ton of these because now you can find the factory set for under $20 shipped (and much of that price is covering postage). Maybe I should break up this set, keeping my PC guys and getting rid of the rest. But then I'd probably get sentimental over it a few years down the line and have to re-complete the set.

I didn't thumb through the whole set when picking out highlights, but here are a few of the better-known young dudes in there.

And card #1, the retro Mike Schmidt minor league card sans mustache is pretty cool.


So there are a few sets I bought as a kid with an eye toward the future. And while they were failures as far as investments, I sure had fun with them and still like 'em today, so no regrets.

Card Show Constipation

Let's check out some of my recent card show pickups.

The Dark Home Run King. Nice refractor. I think these were all 50¢ cards in this post.

Looks like this is /425.

Numbered Springer RC. Ugly card, but happy to throw it in the PC.

Schmidt happened.

1978 out of 1980.

Holy Cow! I've seen this Jordan plenty of times and finally picked up a copy. I'm lucky enough to have caught a lot of Harry Caray Cubs broadcasts on WGN back when I first got into baseball/cards in the early 90s.

I've never collected Nick Markakis much, but hey, he's put together a real nice career under the radar, having a career year now at age 34. Figured I'd pick up some early cards of the guy.

Trevor Story is a guy I collected during his hot rookie season, then cooled a bit on him when he hit a sophomore slump, but now he's having a good junior jumpback, so I'm warming up to him again. Yeah, I'm not always a very loyal player-collector.

Wow, this pic is tailored to Sport Card Collectors, with some Griffeys and Jeters and Mariano.

'75 mini Perez, Jackie Galasso, and '86TT Canseco.

Baby Beltre. Heard he just passed Chipper Jones for third place for homers by a third baseman. I assume Schmidt and Mathews top the list.

Gypsy Queen doesn't draw my interest much, but these tarot card are pretty cool. I could see myself trying to finish this insert set someday.

I still like Billy Hamilton, and was happy to add a couple shiny, early cards.

And we close with a shining Stargell and cool Correa. I suppose I prefer the days back when Topps Tribute had refractory base cards.

As for card show constipation, well, it's not that I've been backed up, but gotta admit these cards have been waiting in the chamber since last month's card show. I missed the August show the other day because I was busy doing family stuff. Always a bummer to miss the show, but nice to be out having fun.

Thanks for reading.

Julie trade

Good stuff in the mail from Julie!

A Beltre blast!

Neat cards from new HOFers!

O's goes!

Bringer of Rain has been brought!

Keep on rocking!

Never too old for this Schmidt!

Pads and sods. Maybin black mini super scare, #'d 10/10!

2018 Heritage base team set!

A couple dudes basically traded for each other.

And some minicollection hits with a Pride PC addition, glowing Griffey, and parallel Gavin.

Big thanks, Julie! You're the best! (I was tempted to make this a post in my GNR series for "Your Crazy" [meant with all the love] but I didn't want to offend.. lol!) I'll get a return package out to you soon!