Player collection scanning project: It's Mag-Gibby-nificent

A couple weeks ago I announced that I was embarking on a crazy project to scan nine different player collections totaling more than 1,000 cards.  Well, I've been hard at work with that, sorting, scanning, optimizing, labeling, and uploading.  To-date I have about a quarter of the cards stashed away in complete sets scanned and in various stages of post-scan completeness, plus a number of singles as well.  Thanks to all that work I was at the point today where I needed to grab cards from just five more sets to complete the process for one of those players, so I went ahead and finished it and now I'm going to show off the fruits of that labor!

Today's subject is former Tigers/Dodgers (and Royals and Pirates, but that's just weird) OF/DH Kirk Gibson.  I had a few things scanned for him in the past, mainly his hits and a few interesting inserts, and to those I added another hundred or so, about a third of which hailed from sets I'd completed.

As of this post his collection comprises 126 cards including three autographs and two each of jersey and bat relics, plus a pair of RCs.  There's no need for me to show off every single card in one post, and I've already covered the hits in previous ones, so here's a few highlights I decided were worth showing off:

The RCs:

I don't know how I neglected to include Kirk's 1981 Fleer and Topps RCs in my significant Baseball RC collection, but rest assured I've already rectified that.

The Diamond Kings:

Gibby was part of the iconic subset as both a Tiger and Dodger in 1986 and 1989 Donruss, respectively.

The Greats:

Gibson appears in Fleer Greats of the Game sets in 2000 and 2006 (shown here) as well as 2001, which I totally need to track down.  The 2000 set is still one of my all-time favorite designs.

The oddballs:

I've acquired a number of oddballish Gibson cards, especially through trades.  The four I chose include, in order:  1986 Donruss Wax Box Cards, 1987 Boardwalk and Baseball, 1987 Coca-Cola Tigers, and Kirk Gibson 1988 Topps UK Minis.  I also have a few others from boxed sets and the like, but I think this group is fairly representative.

The ???:

I haven't seen it listed as an error, but this otherwise cool insert of Kirk from 2005 Throwback Threads called Century Stars has me scratching my head.  Can you see why?  I had to look at other cards in the set to confirm I wasn't crazy, but it would appear that Donruss didn't just randomly assign a position in the repeated text on the other cards (e.g. Ivan Rodriguez's says "catcher" multiple times).  Gibby never played a single inning in the infield, much less at third base!

The "That homer he hit that one time":

Six cards:  four from Upper Deck, one Fleer, one Topps, spanning 1989-2009, and they all have one thing in common--celebrating one of the most famous moments in World Series history.  In order these are from 1989 Upper Deck, 1995 SP Championship Classic Performances, 1998 Sports Illustrated World Series Fever, 2001 Topps, 2007 UD Masterpieces, and 2009 Upper Deck Goudy.

The goofball:

I did a quick bit of sleuthing on this 1994 Collector's Choice base of Gibson and I believe the player he's so helpfully carrying on his back is none other than former Reds star Eric Davis, who appeared in 60 games with the Tigers over the 1993 and '94 seasons.  This is a fun moment to have captured on a card for sure!

The competitor:

I do believe that's former Indian Jim Thome that Gibby is attempting to barrel over in this card from 1995 Pinnacle.  It hails from the year of his final MLB season and includes his stats from his penultimate year in the bigs in which he put up a resurgent 23 HR for his best total since '88.

The tribute:

Kirk was the recipient of a sole farewell card in 1996, the year after he retired, and it came in the form of this base card (along with Silver and Gold Signature parallels) from 1996 Collector's Choice.  I was dumb and didn't think to scan the back, which shows off his career's worth of stats, so here it is thanks to COMC:

There's just a little sampling of what's there, but please make sure to head over to the album for lots more!  Hopefully I'll keep adding to this as I find more of his stuff.

I'll get to other players soon enough, but for now I'd like to point out that I now have individual links for each guy in the project on the right side of the page above my blogroll and beneath my other collections.  You can also follow along with my Michigan-centric baseball and hockey PCs (including Barry Larkin!) at the Michigan Player Collections link at the very top to the right of my other pages.