I have very few card collections given my limited resources and space, but I did decide some time ago to begin collecting on-card Royals autographs. It’s been a blast so far trying to track these things down and this is the latest addition to my collection. To view the cards currently in the collection, take a look at the Gallery or the other posts in this series. I’m working on getting a legit want list together on my trade page but, in the meantime, if you have any on-card Royals autos that it looks like I don’t have, don’t hesitate to drop me a line!
While we wait for the Golden Whatever to go live for 2012 Topps, I’ll show you guys a magic trick.
You see, I got these green pieces of paper with serial numbers on them from selling stuff on eBay. Then I magically transmorphed them some baseball cards featuring Carlos Beltran with an on-card autograph. Penn & Teller, here I come!
But no, seriously. Beltran autos are a little tougher to come by than you might expect. He’s still got a tiny bit of collecting clout for his RC Autos (and the two years after) based on his success a few years ago. I don’t know if you remember this, but in 2006, he was one of the best in the game with a WAR of 8.0 if you believe in that sort of thing. I thought he had fallen off really hard or something but he actually had a really good last year as well- finally playing in more than 100 games after injuries the past few. Certainly no 2006, of course, but that would be hard to expect. He broke the 300HR barrier last year though, at 34, it might be tough for him to hit the next century mark. He signed a 2-year with St. Louis in December, which makes him something of a consolation prize for Pujols I guess. If he can stay healthy, who knows? According to Baseball Reference, he’s on track to hang with Andre Dawson and Dave Winfield in the Hall. But I have a feeling he has a little more to prove than they did, given that time period during which he hit his peak.
The card above is from Bowman’s Best, a set I do not miss in the least. They had insert autos as well as base autos. Awesome! Ugh. Chrome! Don’t care.
Apart from this card’s two photos making it look like Carlos is hitting himself in his own junk, I’ve never been a fan of the “stats on the front” theory. It works fine for Carlos, who had a great 1999. But I’d hate to see a guy who had an off year with that info plastered right under his cup. I never really understood the angle of SP. There were like 5 different versions of this (obviously this is from SP Authentic, though I don’t know what that makes regular SP… counterfeit?) and I couldn’t tell the difference. Any help would be appreciated.
Now, Fleer I usually get. But I have no idea if this card is from a set called Autographics or a set like Genuine or flagship or whatever and this is just the name of the autograph set. Doesn’t matter now I guess. This is also the laziest form of “parallel” ever devised by man. “Just stamp 250 of them with a number. People love that stuff.” Nope, we don’t. This is called the silver version so please make the guy sign in silver or just make any sort of effort to prove that you had this idea from the beginning and it wasn’t just something they did after they realized they had the more than 500 autos of each guy to validate stamping 250 of them and calling them limited.
Those are sweet additions to your collection. You know, if you like that kind of stuff.