Them 60ths

 The specific era of major league baseball that I grew up with was 2010 through 2012. I've blogged about it before but I didn't grow up caring much for sports, it wasn't until halfway through my high school years that I got into baseball because it was great background noise when I got high.

As far as cards go two sets will always bring me back to my earliest days in the hobby and by extension the last of my teenage years.

2011 Topps and 2012 Sega Card Gen

I've been fortunate enough to continue blogging about Card Gen a bunch and will continue to for as long as I'm able to pick up new pieces from it whenever I can find them.

2011 Topps is something I rarely blog about but with me feeling sentimental and looking back on the last decade "Zippy Zappy" has been around I've been dabbling in it a little more and I figure it's time to talk about it just a little.

Mostly it's just been a cavalcade of coincidences and pick-ups that have had 2011 Topps refusing to leave my headspace.

The seeds for this revival was sort of planted two years ago when I went to a card shop named American Legends. Every now and then they luck into sealed older products and one of them was a hobby box of 2011 Topps Series 2. Seeing Joe Mauer on what was one of the first packs I ever opened was nice. I didn't buy it because I didn't have any use for a whole box, but the product did seep into my mind because of that.

Then later on in that year I got a bunch of cards signed by Hunter Pence. An assortment of both Card Gens and a shiny 2011 Topps parallel which later prompted me to pick up a Topps 60 autograph from 2011. It had to be from 2011, Hunter Pence from 2011 is a really key figure to me.

He was the first ever homegrown superstar type I ever saw get moved. It didn't matter that I wasn't a fan of the Houston Astros or Philadelphia Phillies, or that the trade in the long term didn't do much for either team, he was still a big name being talked about at the time.

After that brief reunion(?) with 2011 Topps S2, I thought about celebrating it a bit more but a blogpost never materialized and my mind went in other directions. It came back with 10x as much vigor in 2023.

Like here's another superstar who got traded in 2011 in Ubaldo Jimenez. I briefly showed off this and three other die-cuts in my burnout haul post. To this day I find those die-cuts cool, partly because I was lucky enough to get one myself (a Roger Maris!) back when the promotion was going on. I'll never build the set because it's too big but there are so many good names that teleport me back to 2011 in it. Roy Halladay, Felix Hernandez, Wandy Rodriguez, Tim Lincecum, etc...

From this point forward I will keep the focus more on autographs of specific players. I was in the market for ink of these players and when I saw that they were on that familiar and sentimental (only-to-me) Topps 60 insert design I picked these over other options.

Like Jeff Francis. Not the flashiest name ever but this is still an autograph of the first pitcher in Colorado Rockies history to start a World Series game for them.

Regarding the card itself though it's kinda funny in how it does two things wrong.

The first is that whoever applied the sticker just botched it because it's weirdly crooked and placed slightly more to the left. The fact that this is the older silver autograph sticker only makes that even more noticeable.

The second is that with a header that reads "All Time Colorado Rockies™Wins Leaders" on an autograph card you expect Francis to be the franchise leader in pitcher wins as of 2011.

But when you flip it to the back you see he was merely third all time. Apparently that's good enough to justify this card's existence.

Josh Johnson, remember him? He was a big name back then. 2011 was unfortunately when injuries started derailing him, and he'd throw his last pitch as a major league just two years later in 2013.

Early Craig Kimbrel was a force. Years of causing heart attacks in San Diego, both sides of Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia have made people forget but in those first few years of his career (particularly 2012) he was insanely good, practically striking out half of the batters he faced. He was so effective that nerds started tinkering with the idea of openers and doing wacky things with the best arms in the bullpen. Though ironically I feel like Kimbrel's been deployed the least in those strategies.

Also Kimbrel was the only one I got but 2011 was a good year for Atlanta Braves in these autograph checklists since you can also find Freddie Freeman, Jason Heyward, Tim Hudson and Julio Teheran.

And finally we reach the end with what's really felt like a full circle moment. With this one autograph that wasn't a Topps 60 autograph but, well, this...

Received On: 10/17/2023

This Rollie Fingers card on its own might not seem super special, but to me it was the first "oldest card in my collection". As part of the Diamond Dig Contest I was able to unearth this card from 1982. At the time I was in Japan but Topps only sent stuff to Japan if it was to fulfill redemptions, not these promo cards, so I was content to just let it be lost to time. But luckily Ryan from This Card Is Cool was just moving to Japan around that time and I had him redeem this and my Maris die-cut on my behalf and had him bring them over.

Since then it's remained with me through all of my crazy cardboard turnover. Also deep down I've been wanting to get it signed at one point, a sentiment which was further emboldened by how Fingers is someone who makes a living signing autographs across the country now. It was just a matter of waiting until he came to a local-ish show. Now I feel like I've been able to fully get the absolute most out of that initial ensemble of packs and cards from my early years in the hobby.

I know that there is a lot more to 2011 Topps than just Series 2, the autographs and promotional stuff, but for me these are what I've found interesting in recent times.

Going forward though I'm not sure how much I plan to reunite with 2011 Topps. I'm not going for a full set because I have no use or space for 900+ cards. I can already feel my interest in this all wane again the moment I hit the Publish button on this blogpost. Nostalgia's great but also fleeting since you are always brought back to the present, as you should be. But then again it's also very cyclical and can/will come back later.

I think the likely outcome would be for me to continue to just casually pick up whatever I feel like if I ever get the itch for specific players who happened to get cool cards in that set. It's what sparked this post and the pick-ups above, I can see it happening again once in a while especially as the odd cool card I didn't get around to the first time rolls around.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).