Weird sets

Just before I started to return to collecting modern cards in 2006, card companies seemed to be going wild with sets that were difficult to define or track or both.

Really, this had been a pattern since the mid-1990s but I tend to pin the blame for that period of craziness on Pacific and Pinnacle and other very '90s sets that had burned themselves out by the first couple years of the new century.

With just Topps and Donruss, Fleer and Upper Deck remaining, for the most part, I thought maybe things would have relaxed just a little. But they didn't. Sets grew stranger and more confusing.

I was reminded of this by a package I received recently from Greg at The Collective Mind. During his multiple-state travels where he went a-gathering for trading cards and is now inundated with them, he found a few bits of weirdness for my collection.

The card above doesn't seem all that weird per se. I like it's shininess. It seems straightforward: it says right there on the front that it's from 2004 Donruss Elite Extra and is apparently from the Career Best insert set.

OK, I check the back where it says it's card number "CB-18" and I note that it's numbered out of /1000. I then consult my Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards and card number 18 under the "Career Best All-Stars" insert from '04 Donruss Elite Extra is .... Curt Schilling.

I search the rest of the Donruss Elite Extra checklist for some sort of spin-off of Career Best All-Stars. I find nothing. I look online. Nothing.

Weird.

So I don't know what this is even though it should be obvious. Probably some sort of parallel and the 2.54 ERA 1995 listing is probably a tip-off. But, come on card companies from around 2001-05, I DO NOT HAVE ALL DAY. It shouldn't take me 20 minutes to search for an answer and then not even get one. I'm glad Panini took you over Donruss! You didn't deserve to manufacture trading cards anymore. Neither does Panini, but right now you're the one pissing me off, Donruss!

Weird set No. 2.

This is Donruss' doing again but hiding under its Leaf brand. But I see you Donruss.

Leaf, at around the same time as the Nomo card, released a super-fine insert set based on the '70s oversized Sportscaster cards that I adored so much as a kid. But they made them baseball-card-sized, which made them even more desirable.

But stupidly, these weren't easy to pull. I do not know if I even have the basics correct but I think the green-header cards, like the one above, are the "base," if you can call an insert numbered to /70 "base." Also, the original Sportcaster cards had yellow headers but that's a relatively minor detail when so much of the set is shrouded in mystery.

I thought these were from 2004.

Copyright at the bottom says so.

Now I've been tricked by copyright dates many, many times from many different card brands and sets. But when you didn't collect at the time, it's about all you have to go on.

After too many more minutes of searching I found this insert listed under:

2005 Leaf.

I can't stress how much I dislike guessing games.

It's called Sportcasters Green. I already own two other versions of the Eric Gagne Sportscaster card:

Red

Orange

The red is numbered to /45 and the orange to /20.

I can't find reference to these in the Standard Catalog except under the Sportscasters Green listing that says there are variations "numbered 35-65" and "20-30." I will assume that's what these are under that rather vague range of serial numbering.

Another Sportscaster Leaf card from Greg. I think Duke Snider is the only other Dodger in the Sportcaster Green set (this is a big assumption considering the theme of this post). This is numbered to /55 but is red like the Gagne card numbered to /45, so I guess that falls into the "35-65" range of nebulous numbering and good golly this is weird.

But not as weird as this:

Ah, yes, Co-Signers. This set arrived when bloggers got really angry about sets, I mean, froth-coming-down-the-computer-screen angry. For weeks, months even. And nothing fueled that rage quite like Co-Signers.

I'm not going to pretend to understand Co-Signers. It was a set made mostly for high-end collectors to chase dual-signed cards of presidents and war generals and, oh yeah, baseball players. It appeared only in card shops because I think this set would explode the brains of us poor retail buyers.

But I just updated my Dodgers want list for 2008 Co-Signers so I feel all puffed-up about my new-found knowledge.

The above card is from '06 Co-Signers and is one of the "Changing Faces" parallels. These parallels spin-off of the base set by adding one of three different teammates to half of the card, in this case Rafael Furcal. There's also one of Gagne with Nomar Garciaparra and one of him with Jeff Kent. Oh, and in each case, Gagne-Furcal, Gagne-Garciaparra, Gagne-Kent, there are several different parallels, bronze, red, gold, blue, etc., and then "hyper parallels" with refractory stuff on them, too. The above card is a "silver-bronze" parallel numbered to /125. This is about as weird as it gets.

But since I did the homework on what is in the '08 Co-Signers, Dodger-wise, I was ready for what Greg sent me:

Jeff Kent paired up with just himself on a bronze parallel.

Derek Lowe paired up with Jason Schmidt on a gold parallel (it's even a challenge tracking the difference between bronze and gold) and Lowe paired up with himself on a blue parallel. One numbered to /150 and one to /250.

Isn't that fun? Going on a treasure hunt to determine what you're holding in your hand? Forget raising kids or going to your job. You have weird sets to figure out! Looks like someone is calling in sick again!

The rest of the cards in this envelope are from about the same time but I have a little better handle on them.

Weee! A new Ron Cey card!

Don't even care if it's a parallel (50/50!).

I have a hunch that if I wasn't collecting modern cards now and say I returned to the scene for the first time around 2021, that I'd find this period of collecting just as weird. After all there is Topps Now and it's endless iterations, Topps' Living Set, other Topps online exclusives, plus Panini Chronicles. My gosh no one has time to pin down Panini Chronicles.

I grew up during a simpler collecting period and I will always consider that a better collecting period. You had time to try to get every card and also time to run the rest of your life (or in my case back in 1976, time to clean my room).

There's just no way you can do both anymore.