2018 Sportlots purchases: a mountain of Maddux

It's about time I put this series to bed so I can get to the three(!) trade packages that are waiting for well-deserved screen time.  Please enjoy today's post:  the big finish starring Mr. Greg Maddux!

The "S"s have it here, with Stadium Club, Studio, SP, Sportflics, and, uh, SPinnacle!, especially Topps' best brand.  The top row includes a card from each year of 1991-93, the second is entirely '93, and '94 claims the bottom row.  You can see that my concerted effort to fill in some holes in PCs from my favorite products really paid off.

More '94s--the first five cards here--plus some from 1995.  The top three are repeat brands but card #1 in the second row is an insert about which I was ignorant: a Topps Traded finest chase card.  Pretty cool!  '95 chips in, among other things, a Leaf Great Gloves insert and Sportflix with an "X"!

UD's flagship '95 product finishes off that year and is in the midst of my favorite run of the product, from 1994-98.  '96's editions of Bowman's Best, Stadium Club, Studio, and UD are again top tier.  And you probably recognize the Classic Confrontations insert from previous posts in this series.  Maddux is the only pitcher in that group so you get to see how he fared against some of the more notable hitters around then.  Check out the back for yourself but briefly, he had the most success against Andres Galarraga and David Justice, and hated facing Tony Gwynn and Barry Bonds.

Now we start getting into the "more variety era" where brands experimented with lots of different ideas, often to the benefit of collectors (hint HINT, MLBPA).  Multiple examples of Donruss Preferred and Fleer's collaboration with SI--especially those cover cards!--along with perennial great E-X go well with stalwarts like Stadium Club and Finest, even if the latter is one of the worst designs in the product's run, in my opinion.

Here 1998 finishes on a strong note with a typically outstanding Stadium Club design, the always exciting Topps Gold, and Fleer's beautiful Ultra Artistic Talents insert that I've mentioned in this space previously as a great value.  The next row is a 1999 trio of mid-end Topps products in Bowman Chrome and Best--again, my least favorite design--plus an improvement from finest.  The bottom continues my big run on Sports Illustrated cards in this series, including a Headliners insert which notes on the back that between 1995 and '97, Mad Dog had fewer walks allowed compared to the number of starts he made.  That's crazy!

One of my all-time favorites, Upper Deck's Century Legends, leads off this scan with double the fun in the form of one card each with both of his main teams.  Year 2000 highlights include Bowman's Best--a huge improvement over the previous year's version--Fleer Showcase, and yet another Stadium Club look that gets high marks from me.

Everything here (plus the Absolute Memorabilia card above) comes from 2001, and it was a very good year for Maddux cardboard.  There's plenty more designs to enjoy, especially Bowman's Best (another favorite), Donruss Classics, Fleer Focus and Showcase, and Topps Gallery (bring it back!  The right way!).  Mixed in is another insert I was happy to grab on the cheap:  Stadium Club Capture the Action.  It's kind of like an alternate design of the base set and I like it a lot.

Donruss out of nowhere!  A five-card run of that manufacturer here includes the always-great Diamond Kings and Classics, plus the Archives-like Originals.  I think I'm short one of Maddux's entries in this set but did nab the ones utilizing designs from 1982, '84, and '88.  A Fleer pair of Flair and Showcase plus Finest and another amazing Gallery look make this a contender for best scan of the post.

Here's a hodgepodge of 2002-03 stuff.  Favorites include UD's 40-Man and World Series Heroes, Fleer Showcase once again, and the unfortunately one-and-done Playoff Portraits.  Though the latter is kind of superfluous due to Diamond Kings it feels like it has its own thing going and I wish it would have lasted longer.

2003 concludes here with Prestige and Studio designs I can appreciate, plus Ultra and Upper Deck base looks that are similar enough that I keep confusing them!  Donruss and Fleer are a great way to kick off 2004 thanks to Diamond Kings (not as good as the '03 version) and another Braves/Cubs twofer out of Classics, along with Flair and a really cool Showcase design.  You couldn't ask for a better card if you were a Braves fan.

And he's back with the Cubs!  Just a couple in the last scan reflected his return in 2004, but almost everything here gets it right.  Studio's 2004 iteration opens things with a kickass design featuring Maddux looming over the Windy City, and another excellent version from 2005 sits a couple cards below.  Diamond Kings returns with the reverse twofer, and Mad Dog looks great on a Donruss Greats card as well, though it's clear Fleer was the top dog when it came to a set with that name.  Heritage makes one of several appearances here as well.

Now we get into the weirdness of the one-plus seasons Maddux pitched with San Diego at the tail end of his career.  That's captured on five of these seven offerings, most of which came out from 2007-09, the best of which are 2008's Topps Heritage and UD Masterpieces.  An '09 Upper Deck base gets Greg once more with the Dodgers in his second LA stint, after which he retired.  Then we jump all the way ahead to 2016 and a nice throwback to Stadium Club, which throws it back to Maddux's heyday with the Braves.

When it comes to sports cards, goalies and pitchers are often the biggest beneficiaries of horizontal cards, so I'm happy to have a bunch to show off tonight.  There's plenty of variety, starting with Denny's Holograms from 1995 and '96, produced by UD and Pinnacle.  As always:  garbage food, great cards.  I snuck in another pair of inserts:  a '95 Leaf Checklists issue and '96 Fleer Smooth Leather.  Dude did pile up those Gold Gloves after all.  '96 base cards from Pinnacle Aficionado and Stadium Club sew up this group.

And we end this post (and the series) with a few more cards I really liked.  '97 Upper Deck remains my favorite set that I don't own, and I should rectify that at some point.  The '99 Topps Gallery base has one of my favorite photos in the entire series (not to mention one of the best designs):  a sliding Maddux with Pirates infielder Kevin Polcovich succumbing to gravity on an almost-Tatooine card.  And I grabbed that last insert, from 2003 Fleer Tradition Milestones, because I think his run of 15-win seasons is one of the cooler accomplishments of the game's recent history.

In a completely unintended twist of fate, this 100-plus bunch of Maddux cards bumps his PC to 567 items, or the exact same number in Tony Gwynn's.  Not bad at all.

This was a great run that once again proved the value of Sportlots and gave me plenty of post fodder, enough that I procrastinated heavily while finishing up showing off cards on both blogs.  But now it's done and I'll be moving on to some fun new trade posts soon!