In that spirit let's have a look at some new cards that site is responsible for adding to my Greg Maddux PC:
Mid-90s inserts from Select and Ultra hail Maddux as a strikeout artist, which he was while never being a flamethrower or leading the league in the stat (he only even broke 200+ once). That '95 UC3 card dead center is a good reminder that Chicks Dig the Longball. The bottom right corner includes three Certified cards (Select and Pinnacle) from '96 and '97 in all their mirror finish glory. And Greg looks like an ace on my favorite SP base design, released in 1996. Once I get caught up with purchases I'll likely put together a series on my favorite year of each product I like. Non-purchase content FTW!
Topps' Gallery could be a product that could be difficult to narrow to just one, though here I prefer the '97 offering to the subset from 1999 seen on card #8 (though the regular '99 design is fantastic). Collector's Choice's Stick'Ums seems to be quite popular among bloggers that were collecting back in '97 and I don't blame them! I'm guessing Pinnacle Inside's 1998 Stand-Up Guys isn't too unfamiliar to most of you, and here you see half of one of Greg's appearances on a card he shares with fellow aces Randy Johnson, Roger Clemens, and Hideo Nomo. The other includes both Jones guys--Andruw and Chipper--and Javy Lopez. Some very nice base designs from '98 Ultra, '99 Black Diamond, and 2000 Pacific fit in nicely while '99 SPx has always been a bit of an outlier, kind of like a non-numbered version of the previous year's SPx Finite with that big old gold stamp.
SPx's 2000 version is another natural choice for me when it comes time to do that favorites list. A blast of blue from that year's Ultimate Victory looks fantastic, and 2001 Leaf Certified Materials completes a shiny trifecta in the top row. Another trio of UD brands forms in the middle with 2001 Sweet Spot and Gold Glove and '02 Ovation. The first two feature very nice designs while the latter is very easy on the eyes thanks to the combination of colors from the pairing of the stadium scene and sky border. A couple Donruss brands and a one-and-done Fleer offering--Rookies and Greats--from 2003 round out this group.
This last scan is dominated by Upper Deck, producer of five of the eight cards you see here. Classic Portraits (2003) was an interesting if brief experiment. I'd argue that Sweet Spot didn't look nearly as nice as that '01 version in terms of the 2004-05 versions (cards #2 and 5, respectively), though I still appreciate the product's cool autographs. I'm glad Diamond Kings spawned a whole set of their own like the one seen above from 2005. Flair Showcase looked especially nice in 2006 and I believe a throwback to this design has been used in other sports lately. Lastly, the horizontal cards are a tale of two UD products 20 years apart: a 1992 Team MVP hologram insert and 2002's Piece of History, a fun set I broke back in the day.
That's 35 new Maddux cards for me and he seems to be one of the few guys that didn't hit a new milestone marker this series. Still, it was a very productive purchase for his PC which now stands at a solid 643 with more surely to come soon. After all, there is a card show this weekend....
Stay tuned here and over on TMM in the next couple days for the final posts in this series, after which I'll get to COMC pickups from late last year, then likely other stuff such as show purchases and maybe even a surprise large pickup!
