Rockies from Japan

A sort of odd ball mail-day with some Rockies cards from the Japanese Sega Card-Gen set. These cards show up on the bay from time to time so they are not really that rare, but still pretty different. The Helton and Rosario are from the 2013 set and the Belisle is from the 2012 edition. I believe these are used in an arcade game, but most of the info is in Japanese so I'm not sure the details. Most of the text on the card backs is in Japanese other than a few lines, one of which has Rosario as a "Strong Plate Blocker" and Belisle as a "Dependable Relief Workhorse".

Acetate Appreciation: 2013 Momentum NFL Clear Cut

Panini seems to have embraced acetate this season with inserts in the Prestige product and now clear parallels of the entire Momentum set. These have been a little out of my price range and have been slow in showing up so I cheated by stealing some scans off the Bay. The "Clear Cut" checklist is the same as the base set, but the card design and photos are different. From first glance these cards are very nice, I love the faded logo behind the player photo and the design is nice and simple, with the base "non-rookie" cards being the better of the two in my eyes. The rookie design is very similar to the 1999 Playoff Momentum SSD acetate set that I will be posting about next week. I will definitely be trying to track some of these down.

2013 Orange Rockies Catchers

Another installment of 2013 Topps flagship parallels. This time it's the orange border from the Factory Set, numbered out of 230. These are challenging the pink borders for the ugliest version of flagship, and look even worse with the Rockies purple in the design. This brings me up to 12 different versions of the 2013 Ramon Hernandez and a pink parallel should be making it's way here via the COMC mailbox service to complete the rainbow.

Zistle Trade

Zac247s has the most trades on Zistle so it is kind of surprising it took this long to trade with him. In return for some Cardinals and Matt Holliday cards, he sent me a stack of cards, including Fleer and Score rookie cards of Tom Glavine. Despite a strong dislike for the Braves, I always liked Glavine and these cards are nice to add to the collection.

Custom Card: 1993 Topps Mark Knudson

Kind of a random card here, but it is part of a quest to get a digital photo or scan of every Rockies player. This scan came from the April 1993 Rockies Scorecard Magazine and is the first time I have seen Mark Knudson in a Rockies uniform.

Knudson was the first Denver native to play for the Rockies, but didn't last long pitching 5 2/3 innings over 4 games, giving up 14 runs for a 22.24 ERA. In his Rockies debut he gave up 8 runs, in 1+ inning of work for a super small sample size ERA of 72.00. He is probably best known for his time with the Brewers from 1986-1991, winning a career high 10 games in 1990.

Acetate Appreciation: 2000 Fleer Focus Star Studded

A football themed post in honor of the NFL pre-season starting, an acetate die-cut "Star Studded" insert from the 2000 Fleer Focus line. A thick black border outlines the stained glass window look of the card. Not a terrible looking card, but the die cutting makes it looks weird in a page and the player name on the left looks like it was an afterthought in the design.

Congratulations to Andrew Albers

It took over 20 years and a strange path, but Saskatchewan has a representative in major league baseball again. Andrew Albers make his debut last night, becoming the 8th Saskatchewan born player, and the first since Terry Puhl retired in 1991, to play in the majors. Albers came within two outs of a complete game shut-out, pitching 8 1/3 scoreless innings before being removed after 109 pitches, winning his MLB debut 7-0 against the Royals. He becomes the first Saskatchewan born player to win a MLB game since Reggie Cleveland in 1981.

Albers, a 27 year old native of North Battleford, was drafted out of high school by the Brewers in 2004, but chose to attend the University of Kentucky, and was then drafted by the Padres in 2008. He was assigned to the Rookie class AZL Padres and pitched in 5 games in 2008, but then missed all of 2009 with Tommy John surgery and was released. The comeback trail started in 2010 with Quebec of the independent Canadian-American Association, going 3-0 with a 1.40 ERA and 17 saves over 40 games. The Twins signed him as a minor league free-agent in 2011 and Albers moved through the system quickly, and was converted to a starter in 2012 with the AA New Britain Rock Cats. He would be named to Team Canada in the 2013 World Baseball Classic and then the AAA All-Star team before making his MLB debut.

GQ From COMC: 2012 Completed

The biggest part of a recent COMC order, over half of the 48 card order was Gypsy Queen, and a large part of that was finishing the photo variants from 2012 (not including the Yu Darvish card). There was also some 2011 & 2013 short prints as I slowly chip away at those sets.

I managed to gather a couple nice Rockies cards as well, the 2013 Tulo short print, a 2011 Printing Plate of Jorge de la Rosa, relics of Jordan Pacheco and Carlos Gonzalez, a 2013 Black Mini Cargo, the last 2 Drew Pomeranz mini's I needed for the rainbow and a mini autograph, numbered to 10, of Wilin Rosario.

Full Trade and Want lists below if anyone is intrested in trading
2011 / 2012 / 2013

Vancouver Canadians Cards Fresh from Nat Bailey Stadium.

Back from a week in British Columbia with a day of minor league baseball squeezed into the vacation. While picking up a hat in the Vancouver Canadians team store at Nat Bailey Stadium I noticed team sets for sale so I grabbed one. The first two things I noticed were how nice the cards looked for a Low-A team, and how thick the team bag was. The team set checks in at 41 cards, with 34 being players and the rest being staff from the manager to the video coordinator. The starting pitcher in the game I saw was surprisingly not in the set as he was demoted from Lansing and was making his first start for Vancouver. I know little of the Blue Jays farm system and none of the player were in their top 20 prospects so the cards shown will be somewhat random. The Canadians lost 7-1 to the Hillsboro Hops, who are a Arizona affiliate, and Andy Fermin drove in the only run with a 1st inning triple so his card gets top billing here.