2010 legends variations part 3

Welcome back to the final installment of the 2010 legends variations collection of posts! Today I will go over the Update series batch. There are 22 total.

661 Bob Gibson / US-15 Willie McCovey / US-45 Steve Carlton
US-50 Reggie Jackson / US-85 Andre Dawson / US-100 Robin Roberts
US-175 Bruce Sutter / US-185 Jim Palmer


US-203 Tony Gwynn / US-214 Dave Winfield / US-225 Brooks Robinson
US-276 Rickey Henderson / US-317 Babe Ruth / US-318 Bo Jackson
US-330 Johnny Bench


US-25 Philadelphia Athletics / US-58 New York Giants / US-200 St. Louis Browns
US-220 Boston Americans / US-320 Washington Senators / US-330 Cleveland Naps
US-260 Brooklyn Dodgers

Another fairly easy batch to complete. Nothing eluded me too badly. The Ruth was probably the most expensive to obtain but is pretty cool seeing him in a Sox uniform. I pulled a few of these myself also. I like the inclusion of the teams in this series. Great teams in history that have moved to a new city or simply turned into a totally different team altogether. I love the Brooklyn Dodgers card, although the back of the card is upside down. I believe they are all printed this way. You'll notice that 661 is Bob Gibson, who parallels the 661 Strasburg. Well Strasburg may be good and all but he's no Gibson, nor will he end up being (probably).

2010 legends variations part 2

Welcome back to part two of the legends variations collection! Today I'll be showing the cards from series 2. There are 20 total.

331 Eddie Mathews / 354 Johnny Mize / 369 Jimmie Foxx
370 Mel Ott / 403 Ozzie Smith / 409 Richie Ashburn
476 Thurman Munson / 479 Dizzy Dean / 489 Roy Campanella

532 Dale Murphy / 549 Pee Wee Reese / 569 Tris Speaker
590 Ernie Banks / 600 Honus Wagner / 615 Nolan Ryan
650 Ty Cobb / 652 Mickey Mantle

377 Tom Seaver
400 Frank Robinson
559 Eddie Murray

Series 2 was not nearly as difficult to finish. The only one I had a tough time with was Mantle but that was due to me not wanting to pay too much for it. I pulled a few of these myself, including THREE Eddie Murrays. They have been since traded but I pulled three myself. What are the odds? Some of the better pictures they used were Nolan Ryan (a funny little tribute to his Upper Deck card), the great Ozzie Smith picture doing what he did best and the Ty Cobb, where if you look closely above his head, you can see a fingerprint in the picture itself. Probably from being handled for maybe 100 years or so. Stay Tuned for the Update set next!

2010 legends variations part 1

Ah the legends variations. I still remember coming across my first one, Ryne Sandberg, in the early days of my re-entry into the hobby. Sure it was only about a year and a half ago but it seems like forever. I had no clue what I had and assumed that Topps put in older players in the mix of the base set. A short time later, I pulled Robin Yount. Both of these are featured below. I know these tend to be the bane of some collector's existence with them being short prints and all but you don't have to collect them nor are they part of the set officially. I like them though and I made a valiant effort to collect them all.

Today, I begin the legends variations series of posts, with the offerings from 2010 series 1. There are a total of 20.

1 Hank Greenberg / 20 Warren Spahn / 50 Cy Young
56 Whitey Ford / 80 Christy Mathewson / 85 Jackie Robinson
90 Rogers Hornsby / 94 Carlton Fisk / 95 Rickey Henderson

110 Willie Stargell / 116 Robin Yount / 125 George Sisler
200 Walter Johnson / 250 Lou Gehrig / 294 Babe Ruth
300 Ryne Sandberg

100 Stan Musial / 130 Reggie Jackson
165 Joe Morgan / 175 Roger Maris

Like I had mentioned a few times before, series 1 is the most difficult to finish. I assume it could be due to a lower print run than series 2, or that it is older and most were probably discovered and sold shortly after release. I'm just late to the party. I noticed the hardest ones to get were Greenberg, Musial and Maris. The Hornsby, Morgan and Reggie don't appear too often either. The best pick up I had in this lot (and out of every vintage legend I've ever obtained), was the Whitey Ford. I found him in a ten cent box at a local show. Ten cents. Obviously it was a mistake on the dealers part but who am I to argue? Stay tuned for series 2 next!

hank's missing!

Corner that is. Before I went into the vintage legends scans, I wanted to touch upon what happened to my Hank Greenberg and why it needed to be replaced. Hank was card 1 in 2010, mirroring Prince Fielder, an accurate paring I suppose. Although normally Topps tends to pair up Hank Greenberg with Ryan Braun or Ike Davis (see 2010 Legendary Lineage subset) or other players based off of the fact that they are all Jewish. While there is nothing wrong with being proud or even just celebrating religion, I feel the comparisons should stick within the realm of baseball stats. The thing being that Hank was persecuted and treated differently due to his beliefs and was probably why it took him so long to get into the Hall of Fame, unfortunately. Players of today don't have the social issues that players of his day went through. No one is out in the stands shouting racial slurs at Carl Crawford as they did Jackie Robinson. Things are very different today and obviously for the better. No one need be persecuted or treated different due to who they are. Anyway, this post has turned into something completely different than I envisioned so before I go on and on, here is what I was going for.

I needed Hank for the collection and his card is one of the tougher ones to come by. I was very pleased I won it for around $12. The card came quick but when I opened the envelope this is how I found it:

Now, I open my packages with a boxcutter. Maybe not the best way, (obviously I need to be more careful huh?) but it gets the job done. I slit the top part of the envelope about an inch down from the end and I noticed I had cut the corner off of poor Hank here. Of course, it is my fault for feverishly opening up the envelope with total disregard of its contents but would it have killed the seller to tape up the top of the top-loader? No. It wouldn't have. Needless to say, I had to get another one. Luckily I found one on Check Out My Cards for $9.95, so I snapped it up and now Hank is in good standing with the rest of the binder. The cut one above is in my doubles section. I open packages much more careful now. Or at least I just pay attention.