2017 COMC purchases: getting into spring form

With all my other 2017 stuff finally posted I'll be bringing you a few posts covering my last round of COMC purchases from late last year, which will amount to something like two here and five over on TMM.  Speaking of the sister blog, you can head over there this evening for more COMC loot!

Meanwhile, over here it's all about my baseball PCs with cards starring eight different players:

As our first player was wont to do beginning with each opening day, we'll come out of the gate hot with this five-spot of Griffeys from the very cool 1996 Collector's Choice Griffey a Cut Above insert.  If the set sounds a bit familiar that's because I picked up the first five at a show I posted about last September, meaning between that show and COMC I picked up the whole set on the cheap.  Look for a complete set post covering that eventually, after I finally get caught up with everything else!

Those weren't the only Griffeys that traveled from Washington state to Ann Arbor, though, as I came up with three more I really liked.  First up is a 2001 Diamond Kings insert from the triumphant return of Donruss baseball after a two-year hiatus.  As always I loved the artwork and design, not to mention the serial numbering (1009/2500 in this case).

Card #2 is one I picked up previously to help bulk up Junior Junkie's Griffey Giving Box after raiding it for quite a bit of stuff.  I liked the look of this 2002 Upper Deck Superstar Summit I (there's a second version) so much that I grabbed one for myself.  The design has aged reasonably well even if the group of players hasn't!

Last up is an extremely cool translucent-style insert called Swing For the Fences from Panini's wonderful revitalization of the Pinnacle brand in 2013.  It calls to mind some of my favorite inserts from the Pinnacle name in the 90s and I knew I had to have it.

In getting the images ready for this post I realized that of the eight players featured today, five appear on just one card, and each of those happen to be PC guys I collect because they played their college ball at Michigan.  Just a weird coincidence.

Anyway, the first of those players is Drew Henson in his first appearance on this here blog since he got roasted by Roy-Z of Plain Gray Swatch in a trade post from Scribbled Ink that included a bat relic of the dual-sport bust.  Here he is on an insert from 2002 Donruss Rookies called Phenoms (#0840/1000) that exemplifies what I loved about inserts from back then--colorful, holographic foil, and serial numbering--and I suppose what others hate.  For me this design is a hit, something Henson could have used more of during his pro baseball career!

Our next guy is blog favorite Rich Hill on just my third card of his from 2017.  The other two also hail from Topps base sets--flagship and Archives--and this one is from the burlap-ified Heritage product.  It happens to be an SP, and that's also the case for his 2018 card that I'm now chasing.  I've largely been treading water or falling behind a bit as Hill has appeared on more and more cardboard and I continue to be glad of that as he more than deserves any hobby love he gets!

Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken are all represented today (you'll see the last two in a minute) but Tony Gwynn is not.  Filling his role as an NL 19+ year veteran of one team HOFer PC guy is Barry Larkin.  Here he is on an insert from 2015 Finest called Generations.  The design didn't really grab me as much as the low price, but I do approve of Barry appearing in products more than a decade after retiring.

And here's one of those guys I just mentioned, Greg Maddux, on two great cards, one of which led me to use one of my favorite tags, "90s inserts rule" (along with a few others, such as those Griffeys above).  The 90s example is one of my favorites, Pinnacle's Starburst parallel.  They changed the name once or twice but no matter the title, these Dufex beauties are still fun to track down.  I now have half of Mad Dog's from the '96 set (I'm short his solo checklist and the six-player version as well).  "Hardball Heroes" is a group to which Maddux certainly belongs.

The other is a slightly newer insert I wasn't aware of until recently despite my enjoyment of Donruss' Diamond Kings product:  a set called DK Evolution that was produced in 2003.  If you can't quite tell from the scan, it's a hologram-like card done in the style of something like Sportflix  When you rotate the card along the horizontal access the image switches from the photo to the artistic version (which I believe is the same one used on the base card) and back again.  It's a very cool looking set and I'm working on tracking down my other PC guys from it!

Here's a weird one for you:  this 2006 Topps Chrome Black Refractor of PC guy Mike Matheny is my third different parallel of his from the six-card rainbow, and I still don't have the base version!  I'm not really sure how I managed to do that.  Besides that the Blue (unnumbered) and Red (/90) versions await.  That's a far cry from the rainbow-chasing experience these days!

I thought I'd already landed this 1995 Score Platinum Team Sets issue of former Reds 1B Hal Morris during my huge Sportlots purchase last year but somehow that wasn't the case.  Luckily COMC stepped up to the plate and filled that hole in my collection.  Maybe I should have just found a full team set considering the number of guys in it that fit my collections.

Last up is a group of four cards from the 1995 Flair Ripken insert set starring, oddly enough, Cal Ripken Jr.  I've pieced together part of the set from various sources and was happy to find good prices on this quartet from COMC.  It's a beautiful looking insert starring one of my favorite players and I'm looking forward to nabbing all 15 (the 10 inserted in that year's Series II product as well as five wrapper redemptions).  As it stands I have numbers 6 and 9 plus the five wrapper cards, #11-15.  Look for a highlight post when I do finish it off!

That's it for today but I do have one more COMC pickup for you over here that you'll see soon, plus a few more over on TMM.  Then I can finally start showing off my 2018 scores.