finestkind
Well-known member
I wonder if most people these days even know how to use a manual can opener.
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A few items. Sometimes manufacturers submitted checklists to Beckett and later the cards weren't produced. Beckett never bothered to update. I contacted them about one such item but they stood by their manufacturer's checklist and wouldn't change. Hard to prove it "doesn't exist."
What are the ones you're questioning?
I found out in 2001 when I was a Senior Manager of Playoff Customer Service- that less than half of the 2,000 Sandy Koufax cards were even signed! Playoff made a deal with Koufax to sign (800) cards and then he'd sign lots of (100) as needed for a fixed price. They still had the 1,200 2001 Donruss Significant Signatures of Koufax unsigned cards at Playoff when I worked there and I handled them (to see if any were signed and none were). Someone at Playoff stole them around 2009 when Playoff went bankrupt (mostly thanks to the evidence of fraud I sent to the MLB & NFL Players Associations) then Beckett added them to their Price Guide at a VERY LOW price- $1.00 each last time I looked. Wouldn't ANY Sandy Koufax insert serial numbered to 1,200 book for more than $1.00??? PLUS IT'S AN ODDITY THAT SHOULD GO WITH ANY 1998 SIGNIFICANT SIGNATURES MASTER AUTOGRAPH SET!
Your description of Clough reminds me of Pete "The King" Franklin, who was one of the pioneers of sports talk radio. I used to listen to him on San Francisco's KNBR. Similar to Clough, you knew you had arrived when you were such an idiot that he had to "flush" you (cue flushing toilet sound effect).Also also, congrats on inspiring that cardcop post! You have indeed arrived. I grew up in Denver and there's a longtime sports radio host named Sandy Clough. He is extremely knowledgeable but known to be surly on occasion with callers. So one day I was listening to his show and this guy called in and started joking that "you haven't arrived as a Denver sports talk radio caller until Sandy Clough has told you to "Give it a rest, caller!""
2005 Diamondbacks - I am not positive about 2005, but I do know there were Pepsi-sponsored Diamondback team issues for the previous few years, back to 2001 I think. I found these listings in the Standard Catalog, but now google books doesn't have a readable version online so I can't verify that 2005 exists. In any case the 2004 issue was a standard size card. Hard as hell to find though, I only found my copy for my PC by accident, spotting it mixed in with a large lot on ebay.
Also, congrats on the 1997 Pinnacle Inside pickup. I guess I never realized how lucky I was to find my copy, for a reasonable price to boot.
Also also, congrats on inspiring that cardcop post! You have indeed arrived. I grew up in Denver and there's a longtime sports radio host named Sandy Clough. He is extremely knowledgeable but known to be surly on occasion with callers. So one day I was listening to his show and this guy called in and started joking that "you haven't arrived as a Denver sports talk radio caller until Sandy Clough has told you to "Give it a rest, caller!""
Crap. I was hoping you guys were on to something, but it looks like it's not a Pepsi promo set. 8 of the 15 players in the pic that Brad posted aren't in the checklist that Beckett has linked to the card I'm looking for. According to Beckett, it's a 25-card set, but no description of any kind is provided, not even a card size.
Some of you guys might remember that I'm a player collector, too. Brett Butler is one of my favorite modern players, and somehow I got on this quest to collect every card any company has ever issued of him. Beckett has 534 unique Butler cards catalogued - I've got 521 of them, plus several hundred uncatalogued variations and oddball cards that 80s & 90s player collectors recognize but Beckett doesn't
For years I'd check eBay for new Butler cards several times a day, but for the past few years I've needed the same 13 cards (8 of which are numbered 1/1), so now I only check maybe once a week - if I even remember to. Hits to my wantlist have been so infrequent that I've been giving a ghost of a thought to actually getting rid of it.
So late last week I figured I'd see if anything new had popped up, which usually only happens if the Topps Vault released something. Scroll scroll scroll... wait a damn minute... WHAT'S THIS??? Well, how 'bout that - a card I've literally never seen before is sitting right there with a $25 BIN/BO + $3 shipping. So what does my dumb ass do? Offer the seller $15. And the whole damn time I'm waiting for a response I'm mentally kicking my own ass for not just grabbing it up. Patience won out, though - the seller accepted my offer around midnight and I paid immediately.
Some of you guys may have seen this incredibly weird and not-very-popular issue: Pinnacle Inside. There was a pack of cards inside a can that you literally had to open with a standard can opener.
It was a 150-card base set with two parallels: Club Edition and Diamond Edition. And because it was such an incredibly popular idea (eye roll), there are hundreds of the base cards floating around, maybe dozens of the Club Edition, and damn near none of the Diamond Editions. Guess which one I've been looking for?
So here it is, kids - the 1997 Pinnacle Inside Diamond Edition Brett Butler, a card that's been on my wantlist for 21 years. I'm decently stoked.
Sorry for the cruddy scan, btw - these foil fronts just don't scan very well.
Here's the base and Club Edition:
These three have driven me crazy for a long, long time. Yesterday I had finally decided to cross all three of them from my list and forget I was ever looking for them. This is how Beckett has them listed:
1995 Mets Colla 9
1992 Dodgers Smokey 4292
2005 Arizona Diamondbacks team issue 2
I was in the middle of comparing my haves & wants to TradingCardDB's list and was trolling around on Google and stumbled across this listing on Worthpoint:
LOT OF 30 1992 LOS ANGELES DODGERS SMOKEY THE BEAR FIRE SAFETY POST CARDS. Postcards? Thanks, Beckett - what a helpful listing. (eye roll)
So I jumped on eBay and trolled some more. Jackpot! https://www.ebay.com/itm/202504909921. The seller had a 6-card lot, all autographed no less, so I made a deal to pick up two of them. For the numbering system, it turns out that every postcard in the set ends in 92, making Butler's card number 42.
I did a little more research and have tentative positive ID on the 1995 Mets Colla - looks like they are also postcards and likely exist.
So now I'm down to the 2005 Diamondbacks team issue, which I'm now suspecting is some sort of postcard as well. That fits with every other team-issued Butler oddity in my collection. Any ideas on that one?
These three have driven me crazy for a long, long time. Yesterday I had finally decided to cross all three of them from my list and forget I was ever looking for them. This is how Beckett has them listed:
1995 Mets Colla 9
1992 Dodgers Smokey 4292
2005 Arizona Diamondbacks team issue 2
I was in the middle of comparing my haves & wants to TradingCardDB's list and was trolling around on Google and stumbled across this listing on Worthpoint:
LOT OF 30 1992 LOS ANGELES DODGERS SMOKEY THE BEAR FIRE SAFETY POST CARDS. Postcards? Thanks, Beckett - what a helpful listing. (eye roll)
So I jumped on eBay and trolled some more. Jackpot! https://www.ebay.com/itm/202504909921. The seller had a 6-card lot, all autographed no less, so I made a deal to pick up two of them. For the numbering system, it turns out that every postcard in the set ends in 92, making Butler's card number 42.
I did a little more research and have tentative positive ID on the 1995 Mets Colla - looks like they are also postcards and likely exist.
So now I'm down to the 2005 Diamondbacks team issue, which I'm now suspecting is some sort of postcard as well. That fits with every other team-issued Butler oddity in my collection. Any ideas on that one?
I'm speculating, but from my collecting Astros autographs, this was probably a card issued by the Diamondbacks for events like FanFest. The Astros have made a set like this for every year since at least 2000 and Beckett, when they list them at all, always poorly describes them. You are probably looking for a team issued postcard that was given out at public signings. It likely only exists autographed, but an employee could have kept a few unsigned.
Again, totally speculating. I have found this to be the case with my Astros player collections.