keith hernandez is in my hall of famer collection

here's another relatively recent addition to my hall of famer collection. it's keith hernandez, with this card as his entry:

that's a 2023 topps archives signature series 1986 topps all-star subset card, autographed and numbered 07/81. here's the back: 

once i decided to add hernandez, i decided i wanted one of the all-star cards that he "stole" from steve garvey. garvey, of course, was the national league starter in both 1984 and 1985, but topps gave the all-star cards the following years to hernandez, much to my chagrin. hernandez wasn't even on the 1985 all-star squad, for goodness sake.

hernandez was, however, the better first baseman by that point in time. he succeeded garvey as the national league's gold glove winner at first in 1978, and then claimed the award in each of the next 10 years to boot. he has a batting title, an mvp award, and two world series titles to his name, and he has remained in the game as a broadcaster since his retirement. the mets recently retired his number which again raised the question of his hall of fame candidacy.

modern metrics show hernandez as perhaps slightly below average when it comes to hall of fame first basemen, but he is one of the few modern first basemen with a positive dwar and ranks higher than tony perez, for example, in overall war. he has over 2,100 hits and a .296 lifetime average and passes my sniff test of more than 3,000 times on base.

i didn't see hernandez play in person until 1988. on august 24, i saw him go 1 for 4 as the mets beat the dodgers and orel hershiser 2-1. this was just before hershiser began his scoreless streak. he shut the mets out for seven innings but then mike marshall misplayed a mookie wilson fly ball into a triple and hernandez singled him home.

i'm not sure if hernandez will show up on the classic or contemporary era committee as he won his mvp in 1979 but fully entered the national stage with his two world series wins in the 1980's. whenever he shows up on the ballot, i am sure he will receive some votes.

as a reminder, you can see hernandez and all of the members of my hall of famer collection here.

it's still 1978 somewhere

i've been paying some attention to my "1978 master set" lately (as a refresher, i featured the non-1978 flagship cards that i've included in my 1978 master set in this post). as a result, i've tracked down some more cards to add to the effort.

i had previously dismissed the reprints of nolan ryan's 1978 topps card that topps issued back in 1999 because they were reprints. however, i decided to pick up the "finest"

and "finest" refractor

versions because they offer the first glimpse of 1978 topps chrome-ified. 

similarly, i had ignored willie hernandez's 2001 topps archives reserve

and ron guidry's 2002 topps archives reserve

cards for the same reason, but relented because they, too, show chromed and refractored versions of their respective 1978 topps cards.

i then decided to pick up chrome refractor examples of at least one of the 1978 topps design cards from the 2003-2005 topps all-time fan favorites sets. from 2003 i picked up jim rice

and from 2004 it was eric gregg

joining my collection.

i was able to track down a second copy of dusty baker's 2005 topps atff refractor

to complete the three year run. these sets used different photos which was fun to see.  i also picked up a rick monday refractor

for the dodger collection, along with the gold refractor parallel

these are numbered to 25 so i probably won't be able to find one to add to the '78 master set.  also, 1978 topps looks strange with a gold border.

back to reprints, here's a 2014 topps chrome eddie murray all-time rookies insert

and i believe it is the first time that the topps chrome logo has shown up on a 1978 topps card.

in 2021, there were three new 1978 design cards to find thanks to the 70 years of topps insert sets across series 1, 2 and update. i decided to pick up at least one of the chrome versions of the cards and wound up with cal ripken's

this is the second one of these in my overall collection, as this card was also my favorite non-dodger card of the year back then.

with 2022 topps archives using the 1978 design, there were plenty of parallels to chase. i held off for quite some time, but decided to go out and pick up examples of the ones that i didn't already have (where were all but the rainbow foil). so, here's the green border

numbered to 125

the silver border

numbered to 99

the red border

numbered to 75

the blue foil

numbered to 25

the red hot foil

numbered to 50

the orange hot foil

numbered to 15

for some reason, trevor rogers and alex kiriloff were easily available in the parallels when i went looking. rogers is the player whose rainbow foil i pulled from the box i opened as well. i have a spencer torkelson design variation/color swap as well, and so i'm not too concerned about chasing down any of those. maybe someday i will find a 1/1 foil fractor though.

i also decided to add this 1988 topps card to my master '78 set

and then i went out and bought an autographed version of it from 2023 topps archives signature series

i put that card in my "meaningful and just because" collection. here's the back:

it gives a nice little recap of the 1978 regular season, which was the first one i followed wire to wire.

collecting baseball cards that year was a lot of fun, even though there was only topps. i amassed a bunch of doubles on my way to completing a set, and i suppose if other options had existed i would have bought those cards, too. so, i may eventually try to chase down the rest of the 2002 donruss originals what if? 1978 inserts - i already have pops

and i know that chasing these down will help me keep the feeling of being a new baseball fan alive.

not your normal ebay 1/1

let's start the new year with some nonsense, shall we?

several months ago, i purchased this 2021 topps archives signature series steve garvey buyback autograph card on ebay

i was, of course, enticed by the fact that it is his 1978 topps card which is near and dear to me. the fact that it was an actual 1/1 didn't really factor in to my decision to purchase it, other than the scarcity drove the price. the fact that it is an actual 1/1 is just arbitrary shenanigans on topps' part. i have a 1978 topps garvey auto buyback from the 2016 archives signature release that is numbered to 6.

anyway, it is a 1/1 and not the "ebay 1/1" idiocy that some sellers actually use as a selling point for cards numbered 99/99 or whatever. what makes this one different for me, however, is that it was the first time that i purchased a card that was subjected to ebay's authentication process. i previously showed my 1963 topps ken mcmullen rookie card that also went through this process, so it's not new in terms of this blog, but i purchased the garvey before the mcmullen.

because of the authentication, the card comes wrapped with a couple of stickers.

i will probably remove the card from the bag since the card is already authenticated by topps and i doubt anyone is counterfeiting these cards - the foil stamps on the front would be pretty tough i think. i will admit, however, that i have considered how fantastic it would be to be able to replicate topps buyback stamps and apply them to all of my junk wax cards to make them more desirable on today's market.

as for these particular buybacks, i picked up another 1/1 last year

i couldn't resist adding another shawn green autograph to my collection, especially when it's his 2003 bowman chrome card with the tommy lasorda mural in the background.

i used to be more interested in adding garvey autos from these sets, but have tempered my approach. still, i have added a few to the collection, including this 2016 card of garvey's 2011 topps reprint of his 1985 topps base card

i added it because the price was right and i didn't have a similar representative in my collection already.

i also wanted to have a representative from the 2022 set, so i picked up this 1987 topps buyback for a very small sum

and later added a 1983 buyback for good measure

it was one of 14 copies that garvey signed, and topps dropped that number to 12 in 2023. i know that because i also purchased the 2023 buyback auto of his 1983 card

why? i guess i couldn't help myself. it's been a few months now and i don't quite recall. i do know that i vowed to only consider cards that i didn't already have in buyback autograph fashion, and so this 1982 drake's card 

makes more sense to me. still, if there is a 2024 version of this release i plan to be pretty standoffish, unless more 1978 cards are involved.

the most recent garvey buyback auto i have purchased is his 1974 topps card

that was included in 2023 topps heritage as part of the "1974 mvp autograph edition" offering (jeff burroughs' 1974 topps card is similarly included). this is an actual 1974 topps card as opposed to the "real one" autographs that are reprinted homages to the originals.

this is the red ink version of the "real one" for this year

and you can easily spot the differences between it and the original. both are numbered to 74

so one is not more scarce than the other, although i have seen far more red ink versions for sale than buybacks.

i took a run through my garvey collection, and from the 2004 topps originals set through the 2015-2023 topps archives signature series sets (and 2023 topps heritage, too), i have the following garvey cards in buyback auto format:

1974 topps (2023 heritage mvp buyback autograph /74)

1975 topps (2004 originals 1/1)

1978 topps (2016 archives signature series /6, 2021 archives signature series /1)

1979 topps (2004 originals /26, 2015 archives signature series /16, 2021 archives signature series /12)

1981 o-pee-chee (2016 archives signature series /6)

1981 topps (2015 archives signature series /33, 2021 archives signature series /63)

1982 drake's (2023 archives signature series /28)

1982 kmart (2015 archives signature series /38, 2021 archives signature series /99)

1982 o-pee-chee (2016 archives signature series /21)

1982 o-pee-chee in action (2016 archives signature series /23)

1982 topps (2004 originals /122, 2016 archives signature series /37)

1982 topps in action (2016 archives signature series /50, 2021 archives signature series /87)

1983 topps (2004 originals /19, 2016 archives signature series /35, 2021 archives signature series /52, 2022 archives signature series /14, 2023 archives signature series /12)

1983 topps traded (2015 archives signature series /7)

1984 o-pee-chee (2016 archives signature series /49)

1985 topps (2015 archives signature series /99)

1985 topps glossy all-stars (2015 archives signature series /65)

1986 topps glossy mail-in (2016 archives signature series /24)

1987 topps (2016 archives signature series /52, 2022 archives signature series /69)

1987 topps tiffany (2021 archives signature series /19)

2002 topps traded (2015 archives signature series /30)

2011 topps 60 years of topps (2016 archives signature series /11)

i suppose there are a few gaps on that list that i wouldn't mind filling. we will see what 2024 brings. 

happy new year!

lee smith is in my hall of famer collection

when i first put my list of players together that would make up my hall of famer collection, i had the idea of limiting myself to a certain number of entrants. that made no sense to an older version of myself, especially since some of the players i chose aren't in cooperstown. lee smith was one of the guys that i overlooked the first time around, but he's in the collection now with this card as his entry:

that's a 2023 topps archives signature series 1985 topps buyback autograph numbered 14/18

here's the back:

smith was the first pitcher to reach 400 saves for his career, and he was the all-time saves leader when he retired with 478. i think that when you retire atop an all-time leader board of one of, if not the most, significant statistics for your player category, you should be in the hall of fame. maybe there's a ray guy allegory to be made here, and, now that i think about it, i am sure that correlation was made in many debates about smith's worthiness of the hall.

i didn't get to see smith pitch in person during his prime, but i did see him a couple of times in his later years.  first time was on april 2, 1996 which was opening night at angel stadium. smith pitched the 9th inning for the halos, but they were down by nine so it didn't matter that smith gave up a hit and no runs, striking out one. he wasn't in line for the save.

i next saw him pitch in his final season, as an expo, against the dodgers on may 11, 1997. with the expos down a run, he pitched a flawless 8th inning, striking out eric karros to end the frame.

of course, my main recollection of smith is seeing him as a cub surrender a walk-off home run to steve garvey in the 1984 nlcs. even though garvey was still my guy, i had caught cubs fever and was going to be happy with a cubbie win. things just didn't work out that way, but that home run doesn't diminish smith's achievements, or his worthiness as a hall of famer.

you can see smith with the rest of my hall of famer collection here!