Pristine Legends #1 - Vida Blue

Yep, here's the start of a new recurring blog series where I'll take you readers on a tour through my beloved 2005 Topps Pristine Legends refractor frankenset. It's 140 cards deep (well, currently 139... I've still got an eye out for that final card), so it's a bit of a commitment. But part of the point is to prompt some easy-lifting posts for me to turn around my faltering goal of getting the annual post count up here.

Sometimes this series might cover multiple cards in one post, but a decent "PC guy" of mine like Vida Blue will likely warrant a full post to himself, seeing as I plan to take the opportunity to show off other favorite cards of that player in my collection. See, I had been thinking for a while now about doing something along the lines of the Diamond King's "Pick me a player" series, but instead of turning to readers, I'll just let the 2005 Topps Pristine Legends checklist pick the players for me, since around half are PC guys of mine anyways. (Though if any readers happen to be especially curious about seeing highlights of any certain PC of mine, and it's not a guy in 2005 Topps Pristine Legends, then by all means suggest away in the comments and I'll be happy to work up a post for you.)

I should mention I'll often refer to this project in shorthand as simply my "Pristine Legends" set instead of the full "2005 Topps Pristine Legends refractor" frankenset. The fact is it's the only Legends set that Pristine put out, with all the other releases under the product line featuring active players or a mix of active and retired. And it's my understanding that a current MLB or MLBPA licensing agreement stipulates no new set/product can be released featuring only retired players anymore, so that would seem to stand in the way of another Pristine Legends release ever coming out, even with (non-Legends) Topps Pristine seeing a return here in the Fanatics era. Hence if you just refer to a set as "Pristine Legends", there's not really another set to confuse it with. There's only 2005!

With that intro out of the way, here's Vida Blue... 

As this series continues, we'll see that Topps selected many photos for the set that are familiar thanks to being featured on other cards already (e.g. Rod Carew reprises an old Hostess photo), though this shot of Vida doesn't ring a bell. This was later on during his Oakland tenure, as opposed to his early 70s days as a young phenom. Mustached Vida doesn't appear on cardboard until 1976 oddballs, helping narrow this photo down to probably '76 or '77. It's a nice picture-- Vida was always game to fake a set/wind-up for a Topps photographer-- and one that could still look fine were it lightly edited due to a lack of licensing, thanks to only a couple visible "A's" bits poking out.

Here's a look at the card with softer refraction. The first 100 cards in the set are a subset of "The Legendary Years" featuring dudes in their MLB uniforms with a layout riffing on the classic 1965 Topps design. Later subsets to come are The College Years, The Negro Leagues, and The Early Years.

The backs are solid, with Vida's vitals, a sizzle-reel write-up, and a career stat line.  

He's still the most recent switch-hitter to win MVP, right?

There hasn't been another "Vida" in MLB, though there have been a few guys named Vidal.

He's not in the Hall of Fame, thanks to drug-addled off years knocking his career arch out of shape, but he has a higher career WAR than Harold Baines, so that makes him an honorary HOFer to many big-hall dreamers such as myself.

One of the first vintage cards I ever bought back in my childhood collecting days of the early 90s was a 1970 Topps Vida Blue / Gene Tenace rookie. I remember my local card shop had it priced at a few bucks, one of the less expensive offerings behind glass in the vintage section, and Vida Blue was a fun and slightly familiar name, which must have helped draw me to the card.

That '70 Topps card remains a personal favorite of mine and was among the holdovers after I jettisoned the bulk of my childhood collection before moving up to Portland. After returning to the hobby as an adult, I gradually built up a decent Vida Blue PC and still enjoy adding to it. 

 
Looks like I've nearly finished his flagship Topps run, and for what it's worth, I didn't raid any sets for this group pic, meaning I've got dupes of most of these in sets/builds, happy to say. Among other PC highlights I didn't get around to showing off in this post are some of his Kellogg's cards, a few OPC, and the 1983 Fleer "2-card puzzle" with Royals teammate Bud Black on the other card ("Black & Blue"). 

From 2015 into 2020, I did a bit of through-the-mail autograph requesting, usually using my own customs, and Vida was among my best returns. He charged $5 per card back then, totally reasonable. He signed the custom card I made using a slightly tweaked version of his old Time magazine cover, and he included a nice little note asking if I could send him a few extra copies of the custom, which I happily did.

My most-wanted Vida Blue card is his 2003 Topps Retired refractor autograph. Scoring that would complete the "Retired Refractor tRifecta" for me, already having '04 and '05. I have the drab base '03 auto, but dang it, really hope to upgrade to a colorful refractor version someday. 

I'll have a Blue Christmas... 
In fact, make it two. 

(Sorry for the bad photo, but above are [the backs of] my pair of 12/25 Vida autos. If you want a clearer look at his full stats, here's a handy link to his baseball-reference page.)

The rock band The Cult have a song called "Soldier Blue" on their 1989 album Sonic Temple. I owned the cassette, rocked it a lot in my youth, and loved to sing along to the chorus of "Soldier Blue" changing the titular lyrics to "Vida Blue!". LOL, not exactly Al Yankovic caliber stuff, but amusing to a kid (..well, a kid who happens to be a fan of both The Cult and Vida Blue). But no, really, if you make that subtle change to the lyrics ("Soldier"→"Vida"), it basically becomes a song about Vida's tumultuous relationship with Charlie Finley.

Speaking of music, there was later a jam band called Vida Blue featuring the keyboard player from Phish. Vida himself made an appearance at their 2004 gig at The Fillmore in San Francisco, apparently happy folks were still out there celebrating him. Sadly, he passed away from cancer in 2023 at age 73. 

Some oddballs to close out this salute to Mr. Blue, with another "Legends" card making a nice bookend for this initial post in my Pristine Legends blog series. Ready for #2? Bert Blyleven's on deck.

TGI Mailday

Got cards in the mail from a few different sources today, helping it shape up into a pretty nice Friday afternoon. Let's whip up a quick post out of 'em.

As mentioned a couple weeks ago in the Tony Clark post, I'm working on a set of 1998 Bowman refractor reprints. Here we see a couple young sluggers from 1990 Bowman, secured from different ebay sellers coincidentally showing up at the same time.

On the topic of refractin' reprints, I've also been working on my ARMS.. Yep, my quest for an Archives Reverse Master Set is still slowly chugging away. I only have 109 cards left to go, which doesn't seem like such a huge number, but it's all autos and relics left, which leads to financial complexity, as I don't need to tell you readers. I'll likely not complete the football portion in my lifetime at current rate of acquisition, but maybe if I focus on the 2 baseball releases...?

TOP PRIORITY alert! 1972 Topps high numbers. I've been racing Crocodile to see who can finish our '72 Topps sets first. I'm down to 22 needs remaining, but I think he's gonna pass me. One of these was from a tcdb trade and the other was a Greg Morris ebay win (the only one of many '72s I bid on from that particular setbreak that I actually ended up with, grrr).

Here's the rest of the TCDb trade. I reached out to user ejholmes76 because I was after the '72 Traded Cardenal he had available, and our trade matching shook out nicely to a PWE swap of cards changing hands, to which he agreed, and that also netted me a '64 need (108 cards left, 81.66% complete on 1964 Topps). The '75s I already had in my set (surprisingly still down to only needing only a Reds team card [Sparky Anderson] but out of spite I haven't bought one yet, choosing to hold my breath until I get one by sheer luck), but I needed this pair of '75 dupes for PCs. (Thanks for the trade, Eric, if you're reading.)

And finally, here's the rest of the Greg Morris spoils: a double blast of Hoyt! I realized the other day that I should make a point of completing his Topps run. Well, the '52 Topps high number rookie card is unlikely to ever grace my collection in non-reprint form, but otherwise this goal is within reach, especially after landing this '62 Topps. Now really just need 1958 Topps and 1960 Topps (An extra '72 Topps for the PC would be nice, but it's a dang high number, so I might be content to "share" with the setbuild because who cares at the end of the day as long as I got one in the greater collectionscape.)

Oh, and the other card is my first 1953 Red Man. Looks good! I don't normally go after oversized pieces such as this, but ya gotta stretch outside your comfort zone for your top PC guys sometimes. And hey, does anyone have a running list of baseball cards where they put eyeliner on the player? You can put this one on it along with Dave Winfield's 1980 Topps plus several of the 3-player prospects at the end of 1979 Topps. Seriously, have you taken a close look at them? It's kinda weird, right? But yeah, whatever. Neat card and nice addition to the Wilhelm PC.

Enjoy the weekend, all!

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.

2001 Topps Chrome "Before There was Topps" refractors

Y'all know I like refractors. Well, one niche that especially interests me are guys' 1st Refractor, specifically talking about old-timers who played before such parallels were a thing. And in poking around, I found this 10-card "Before There was Topps" insert set from 2001 Chrome that features the first refractor produced of several inner-circle HOFers, and so I went about completing it. Took me a couple years, but I tracked them all down, paying about $10-20 per card. The base versions typically run a buck or two, but the refractors were tougher pulls-- 1:200 odds compared to 1:20 for base (per baseballcardpedia).

They didn't go too nuts in imagining what a Topps design from way back then would look like, going with a simplified 1959 Topps design with the photo circle in the middle. If this "what if" set came out today, chances are the pictures would be artificially colorized, but back in 2001, at least, Topps went old-school and kept the photos black and white.

With all these household names, you'd never guess what ended up being the final card I needed to track down. If you can believe it, it was Grover, who one might argue is the least-remembered of these 10 men today if you were forced to rank them. Hey, that gives me an idea, let's use TCDb to see which of these legends has the most cards out there as of May 2025.

#1 with 16,275 cards - Babe Ruth

Might as well do the list in descending order, since Babe Ruth having the most cards surely isn't a surprise. He's the original GOAT and still well-known today despite his heyday being a century ago.

I'd pick full stats over a little write-up any day, so I'm happy with these backs. Neat to see the Boston bookends to the Bambino's career.

#2 with 5,518 cards - Lou Gehrig

Quite a drop in card volume, with second-place Lou Gehrig having over 10,000 fewer cards out there than Ruth.

Great career ended by a tragic disease.

#3 Joe DiMaggio, Total Cards: 4,822

Yankee supremacy continues with Joe DiMaggio in third place.

I always thought it was a bummer that Joltin' Joe narrowly missed getting a playing-days Topps card.

#4 Ty Cobb, Total Cards: 4,729

Cobb just missed third place with less than one hundred fewer cards currently on the market than DiMaggio.

Ty Cobb still gets talked about a lot today, though it's often in conversations regarding Pete Rose. While he might not have the "Hit King" crown these days, check out that insane lifetime average.

#5 Honus Wagner, Total Cards: 3,189

Honus Wagner places fifth out of these fellas in terms of cards produced of their likeness.

Honus Wagner is best known in the hobby for his T206 SSP that's considered the all-time "best baseball card" to many. But yeah, he was a pretty good player, too! Not a lot of pop, but hey, that's pre-Ripken shortstops for you, right?

#6 Rogers Hornsby, Total Cards: 2,361

From Honus to Hornsby. Took me a while to notice the subtle lines of stars in the design.

More teams on the back than we've seen in the post so far. Hornsby was player/manager for most of the latter half of his career, which helps explain sticking around with limited action as his career wound down.

#7 Christy Mathewson, Total Cards: 1,423

The remaining players in this list are all pitchers. Christy Mathewson is arguably the greatest pitcher of all time, though his 1,423 different cards on the market are dwarfed by, say, Roger Clemens (19,958), but that's modern cards for you.

Imagine guys today pitching that many innings!

#8 Walter Johnson, Total Cards: 1,190

Walter Johnson is among the 3 graded cards in my completed set. I got the trio from COMC, though not all at once. I don't particularly want them graded, but I haven't been motivated to break them out either.

His total of 110 career shutouts is the record. One of those firmly unbreakable records.. at least until robot pitchers are legalized in 2063.

#9 Cy Young, Total Cards: 1,021

Cy Young is mentioned plenty today thanks largely to MLB's pitcher-of-the-year award being named after him. Barely a thousand different cards of him out there, though.

Tons of wins and losses. Cool seeing forgotten teams Spiders and Naps on the back.

Last at #10 Grover Alexander, Total Cards: 480

As I suspected, Grover Cleveland "Pete" Alexander does have the fewest cards out of the 10 players in this insert set. Less than 500 cards means he's not even halfway to the #9 spot.

30+ wins.. 3 years in a row.. Can you imagine?!

And that wraps it up. Nice group of shiny cards featuring all-time greats.

After completing this set, I decided I should go after the "What Could Have Been" refractors, also from 2001 Chrome, basically a similar 10-card set but with Negro League players. I don't have any of those yet, but I'm keeping an eye out.

Thanks for stopping by.