[zeprock]

Juan Marichal was a dominant pitcher throughout the 1960s for the Giants winning more games in that decade than any other MLB pitcher including Bob Gibson and Sandy Koufax. He was known for his intimidation tactics as well as his unbelievably high leg kick during his delivery. A 9-time All-star, he was the first Dominican player enshrined in the Hall of Fame, an honor that was delayed to what some people think was an ugly incident during his playing days when he took to the head of Dodgers catcher, John Roseboro with his bat. I currently have 203 Beckett recognized cards of the "Dominican Dandy" in my collection. Here are nine of them.

       
1962 Topps #505 Juan Marichal
1963 Topps #440 Juan Marichal
1964 Topps #280 Juan Marichal

       
1965 Topps #50 Juan Marichal
1967 Topps #500 Juan Marichal
1971 Topps #325 Juan Marichal

       
1996 Big League Chew #JM Juan Marichal AU (I sent away for this card along with an offer from Big League Chewing Gum.)
2001 SP Legendary Cuts Game Jersey #JJM Juan Marichal Jsy
2016 Topps Tribute Relics Purple #TRJM Juan Marichal

[zeprock]

In 1992 I left my job at WWMJ radio and immediately went to work at WKIT radio, the station I still work for today. I traded in the "hits of today" for a "rock and roll" format. I also cut my commute from 30 minutes to one minute as WKIT was literally within walking distance of my apartment. Another big step I made personally that year was sit down with my brother (a contractor), and together we designed my house and started to build it on my property. We capped off a finished basement with plans to build the remainder of the house at a later date.

On the card front, Score added another set in 1992 with their Pinnacle line. I bought a complete set to add to the other 10 sets that year. Here are nine 1992 cards from my collection.

       
1992 Action Packed ASG 24K #13G Johnny Mize (This set featured embossed player photos of all-time greats. This Mize card is a 24K gold leaf stamped version, a parallel that was randomly inserted into packs.)
1992 Bowman #461 Mike Piazza RC (1,389 players were selected before Mike in the 1988 MLB amateur draft. Whoops!)
1992 Classic Draft Picks Foil Bonus #BC6 Derek Jeter (This is a foil bonus parallel card that was inserted one per jumbo pack and features Derek Jeter in his high school uniform.)

       
1992 Excel #210 Derek Jeter (This card is from a Minor League set.)
1992 Fleer Rookie Sensations #1 Frank Thomas
1992 Front Row Draft Picks Gold #55 Derek Jeter (Here's another high school card of Jeter and it's the Gold parallel to the regular Front Row Draft Picks set. I burned my complete Scorpions album collection onto CDs for another collector and this card as well as the other two Jeter cards pictured here, was from one of many complete sets I got in return.)

       
1992 Pacific Ryan Gold #2 Nolan Ryan/Number Two (Pacific released a second Nolan Ryan tribute set in 1992 and this Gold card is one of eight that was randomly inserted into packs. Each card celebrates one of Nolan's no-hitters while the eighth card summarizes them all.)
1992 Pinnacle Team Pinnacle #4 F.Thomas/W.Clark (Team Pinnacle features Pinnacle's All-star team on these double-sided cards, this one showing AL and NL first basemen Frank Thomas on one side and Will Clark on the other side. The cards were randomly inserted in Series I wax packs and feature illustrations by sports artist Chris Greco.)
1992 Stadium Club East Coast National #620 Barry Bonds (I bought this at a card show years ago. I always look for a table that has a huge box of 10 for dollar or a similar set-up but I don't just buy a dollar's worth of cards. No, I pull out every Hall of Famer whether I have it already or not and other star players and parallels or inserts that catch my eye. Then when I go to pay, the seller normally counts out 50 or 100 cards and then estimates stacks of them as I usually have picked out several hundred cards, and then they give me an even better deal. I pulled this Bonds card out of one of those boxes and spent between five and ten cents for it.)

[zeprock]

A 7-time All-star and four-time Fireman of the Year, Rollie Fingers was an elite reliever before relievers were really recognized as being elite. At the time of his retirement, his 341 career saves were the most of all-time. He's got a Cy Young Award and a Most Valuable Player Award to go along with three World Championship rings but he is probably better recognized for his trademark Snidely Whiplash handlebar mustache. Fingers grew the mustache in 1972 when A's owner Charlie Finley offered $300 to the player on his team who could grow the best mustache. Check your 1972 A's cards. The majority of their players had facial hair. Nowadays a player without it is rare but back then players were mostly clean-shaven. Rollie won the $300 prize. As of this posting, I have 226 unique cards of Rollie Fingers in my collection including these nine.

       
1969 Topps #597 Rookie Stars/Bob Floyd RC/Larry Burchart RC/Rollie Fingers RC
1970 Topps #502 Rollie Fingers
1975 Kellogg's #55 Rollie Fingers

       
1999 Sports Illustrated Greats of the Game Autographs #23 Rollie Fingers
2001 Greats of the Game Autographs #29 Rollie Fingers
2002 Sweet Spot Classics Game Jersey #JRF Rollie Fingers

       
2003 Sweet Spot Classics Game Jersey #RF Rollie Fingers
2004 SP Legendary Cuts Significant Swatches #RF Rollie Fingers Pants
2006 SP Legendary Cuts When It Was A Game Materials #RF Rollie Fingers Pants/75

[zeprock]

This thread has surpassed 20,000 views! Thanks everyone for your interest and kind words regarding my collection as I continue to celebrate 50 years in this wonderful and addicting hobby by featuring cards of the many different players I collect, different varieties of cards and the comprehensiveness of my collection.

Baseball cards have been issued in magazines for decades. I have cards from about 50 different publications. For an oddball post today, I am featuring nine cards that were all cut from magazines.

       
1986 Baseball Cards Magazine Repli-Cards #1 Don Mattingly (Baseball Cards Magazine first hit the newsstands in 1981 and was published by Krausse Publications. By 1986 they were inserting "repli-cards" into the magazine that could be cut out and collected. This Mattingly card designed after a 1951 Topps card was in a 1986 edition. These cards are not recognized by Beckett probably due to BCM being a competitor.)
1990 Sports Illustrated for Kids I #158 Ken Griffey Jr. BB (Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine is a spin off from Sports Illustrated and was first published in 1989. Each issue contains a sheet of sports cards that are perforated and cover a variety of sports. I was in my 30s when I discovered SI4K and subscribed. The magazine obviously is geared towards kids to generate interest in sports but I subscribed just for the cards. I would skim through the magazine, cut the cards out and then give the magazine to my young son.)
1991 Legends Sports Memorabilia #91 Kirby Puckett (Legends Sports magazine first arrived on the scene in 1988 and was an ultra-high quality, limited edition known for its inserts of sports cards bordered in silver or 24 kt. gold, in-depth profiles and lively features. Many issues also included postcards of athletes featuring some of the best sports artwork. These are also not recognized by Beckett.)

       
1991 Topps Magazine #49 Cal Ripken (For four years from 1990 to 1993, Topps produced their own magazine, each including  four or eight cards per issue that were perforated for removal.)
1992 Cartwright's Players Choice #26 Mike Piazza (Cartwright's Journal of Baseball Collectibles debuted in 1992 and each issue contained two to four pages of cards that could be cut out. This Piazza card is a pre-rookie card that is not recognized by Beckett.)
1992 Sports Card News #36 Cool Papa Bell (Alan Kaye’s Sports Card News and Price Guides began publication in the early 1990s and included free cards designed to entice subscribers as this was the era of the promo card rage. This tobacco themed card was one of a set of Negro League stars I cut out in 1992. Yet another plethora of cards unrecognized by Beckett.)

       
1993 Ballstreet News #NNO Lou Gehrig (In 1991 Ballstreet Journal published their first issue. Parodying the name of the Wallstreet Journal, Ballstreet was a price guide that included free cards. These are not recognized by Beckett either.)
2005 Entertainment Weekly #NNO David Ortiz (Working in television for 30+ years keeps me informed on the news, sports and entertainment fronts. There were several years where I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly just so I could be more "in the know" on what was happening entertainment-wise. There were a couple of issues during the time I subscribed that featured baseball cards. In 2005, one magazine featured repli-cards of some Boston Red Sox players following their historic 2004 World Championship. The only Theo Epstein card I have is one of these. This particular card is printed on regular magazine paper stock so is very thin. I cut out the cards and laminated each of them to make them more "card-like". My thought was that most people would not cut them out and save them making them much more rare.)
2006 Upper Deck Tuff Stuff #5 Derek Jeter (Tuff Stuff magazine out of Richmond, Virginia was a chief competitor to Beckett and unlike Beckett would list price guides for baseball, football, basketball, ice hockey, golf and auto racing all in one magazine. Upper Deck produced this Jeter card for Tuff Stuff which may be why Beckett actually lists it in its OPG.)

[zeprock]

Another player that I still collect although he's dropped to low priority over the past decade and a half is Rafael Palmeiro. He was a really good player that quietly compiled historic numbers. He wasn't even on my radar of players to collect until I realized he was going to reach the 3000 hit and the 500 home run plateaus. A four-time All-star with two Silver Slugger Awards and three Gold Glove Awards, he came up with the Cubs then starred for the Rangers, then the Orioles, then the Rangers again, then the Orioles again and retired with the most games played by any player in history to never appear in a World Series. Soon after appearing at a Congressional hearing, wagging his finger and defiantly stating that he "Never, ever used steroids. Period.", and just days after hitting his 3000th hit, Palmeiro was suspended for steroid use. To this day he still denies usage but this is a man who publicly promoted Viagra during his playing days assuring us all that he was not opposed to ingesting something to give him an edge. I currently have 986 different Beckett recognized cards of Raffy, just 14 cards short of inclusion into my exclusive 1000 card club. Here are nine from my collection.

       
1987 Topps Tiffany #634 Rafael Palmeiro (The Tiffany parallel of his Topps rookie card.)
1991 Topps Desert Shield #295 Rafael Palmeiro
2001 Fleer Authority Diamond Cuts Memorabilia #70 Rafael Palmeiro Bat/800


2001 Fleer Legacy Tailor Made #16 Rafael Palmeiro
2001 Leaf Rookies and Stars Statistical Standouts #SS15 Rafael Palmeiro
2001 Studio Diamond Collection #DC29 Rafael Palmeiro

       
2002 Fleer Maximum Americas Game Jersey #16 Rafael Palmeiro
2002 Upper Deck Rookie Update Star Tributes #RP Rafael Palmeiro
2004 Topps Chrome Town Heroes Relics #RP Rafael Palmeiro Jsy

[jack pfiester]

Kind of odd the author listed Palmeiro at 1B and not DH:

https://www.mlb.com/news/best-mlb-player...8467968527

[zeprock]

I moved into my new house in 1993. I was so happy to start accumulating equity instead of cancelled rent checks. My entire baseball collecting strategy changed in 1993. Topps added their Finest line, Donruss added Triple Play, Fleer added Flair, Score added Select and Upper Deck launched Fun Pack and their SP brands. It...was...too...much. I decided that year that I could not keep up and keep collecting all the sets so I decided to just collect the stars and maybe someday when I had more time and money (HAHAHAHAHA!) I'd pick up the commons I was missing to complete those sets. I began collecting every player that I thought might go to the Hall of Fame. Albert Belle, Joe Carter, Cecil Fielder, Juan Gonzalez, Mark Grace, Mo Vaughn, Bernie Williams, Matt Williams, etc. Here's nine cards released in 1993 from my collection.

       
1993 BBM Japan #239 Ichiro Suzuki (My brother and his wife went to Japan to begin their missionary work. I asked him to send me some Japanese baseball cards if he could find some. He sent me a box and I sat down and ripped through packs and packs of cards not being able to read any of them and not knowing any of the players. It wasn't until years later I went back through them looking for players that were starting to appear in the major leagues and found some names I recognized, like this rookie card of Ichiro.
1993 BBM Japan #423 Hideki Matsui (Another rookie card I had pulled from the same box as the Ichiro.)
1993 Bowman #511 Derek Jeter RC

          
1993 Donruss Elite #31 Barry Bonds (One of the first inserts from Donruss that was worth keeping.)
1993 Nabisco All-Star Autographs #1 Ernie Banks (I sent away for the complete set of these in 1993 after eating a lot of Ritz crackers.)
1993 Nabisco All-Star Autographs #2 Don Drysdale (As I previously mentioned back in post #213, Drysdale died during this promotion and when I sent away for the complete set, they substituted his card with a second Catfish Hunter auto. I got this from former Beckett member dbrookard to finally complete this set.)

       
1993 Pacific Jugadores Calientes #15 Nolan Ryan
1993 Pinnacle #457 Derek Jeter RC
1993 Topps Micro #98 Derek Jeter (The Topps Micro sets have got to be the most miserable cards in my collection yet I bought the complete set in both 1991 and 1992 and most of the stars from the 1993 set. I can't read them due to the print being so small and it's difficult to hold them and shuffle through them. This was a good card though worth about 5x what I paid for either complete set.)

[zeprock]

Christmas Eve is upon us. I want to wish everyone here on Beckett a very safe and Merry Christmas! Keeping with the Christmas theme, here are nine holiday cards from my collection.

       
2000 Pacific Ornaments #18 Ken Griffey Jr. (The innovative designers at Pacific came up with Christmas ornaments in 2000 and 2001. These could actually be hung on your tree.)
2000 Pacific Ornaments #10 Jeff Bagwell
2001 Pacific Ornaments #5 Nomar Garciaparra


2002 Upper Deck Mark McGwire Holiday Card #1 Mark McGwire (I was a member of Upper Deck's Collector's Club and received this beauty around the holiday season in 2002.)
2004 Hallmark Ornament Cards #NNO Barry Bonds (In 2004 the people at the Hallmark Ornament Factory produced several baseball keepsake ornaments, each accompanied by a card showing the ornament of the featured player.)
2016 Topps Walmart Holiday Snowflake Relics #RMC Miguel Cabrera (2016 marked the introduction of Topps Walmart Holiday Snowflake cards. This is a relic inserted in that set.)

       
2017 Topps Walmart Holiday Snowflake Relics #RJH Jason Heyward
2018 Topps Walmart Holiday Snowflake Relics #RCK Clayton Kershaw
2019 Topps Walmart Holiday Rare Photo Variations #HW33 Shohei Ohtani (In 2019 Topps got creatively festive with their short print variations from this set. Here's Ohtani packing some peppermint. I pulled this and a few other variations out of a big 10 for a dollar box at a card show back in January of this year. Remember when they had card shows?)

[zeprock]

The next player that I collect is Warren Spahn, the winning-est left-handed pitcher of all-time. He was named to the All-star team 14 years, threw two no-hitters and led his league in Victories 8 times, Strikeouts four times and ERA thrice. He described his approach on the mound as, "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing." As of this posting, I have 230 unique Beckett recognized cards of Spahn including these nine vintage.

       
1955 Topps #31 Warren Spahn
1957 Topps #90 Warren Spahn
1958 Topps #270 Warren Spahn

        
1959 Topps #40B Warren Spahn ERR
1959 Topps #571 Warren Spahn AS
1960 Topps #445 Warren Spahn

       
1961 Topps #200 Warren Spahn
1962 Topps #100 Warren Spahn
1964 Topps #400 Warren Spahn

[zeprock]

Moving up another year through my collection brings me to 1994. Here are nine cards that I have from that year.

       
1994 Donruss Anniversary '84 #5 Nolan Ryan
1994 Finest Refractors #240 Barry Larkin FIN
1994 Score Dream Team #3 Don Mattingly

       
1994 SP #15 Alex Rodriguez FOIL RC (About 7 years ago a client of ours at the tv station, the Diamond and Gold Mine, was talking with our account executive and mentioned that they had acquired a large haul of sports cards and didn't have a clue what they were worth. He told them that I was quite knowledgeable about cards and perhaps I could take a look at them and let them know what they had. This was more or less a high end pawn shop that specialized in silver and gold, especially jewelry. I stopped by and one of the two proprietors showed me a back room with huge boxes and boxes of cards. I took a quick look through a couple of the boxes and noticed complete sets as well as lots of singles in no particular order. I told them I would take a couple of vacation days from work and go through them for them and sort them into saleable stuff and junk. I found lots of football game-used and autographs including a Dan Marino auto and set anything I thought was worth anything into a separate box. Many of the complete sets were stuck together in bricks and I showed that to them too. I did all of this in exchange for some of the cards. Both of these ARod cards came from that transaction as well as many other nice cards that I have. All total, I probably got about $300 worth of cards from them.)
1994 SP Holoviews #33 Alex Rodriguez
1994 SP Holoviews Die Cuts #36 Ozzie Smith (This was another card show pickup out of a dollar box.)

       
1994 Ted Williams #NNO Leon Day AU/Certified Autograph (Back around 2005 I got an email from an elderly woman in Texas who had stumbled across my website. She noticed I had a Gallery page dedicated to Leon Day and told me she had a card of him that she wanted to send me. It had belonged to her son who had passed away. She didn't want anything in return for it. When I received it and noticed it was autographed, I sent her $20.)
1994 Ultra On-Base Leaders #2 Barry Bonds
1994 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes Next In Line #7 Derek Jeter (This card was a "throw in" from a trade with a former member of Trading Bases, my "other" online trading group.)