Blast Off

 I've alluded to it before but one of the biggest benefits of collecting Colorado Rockies cards is that there's so little demand or interest for them that they're really really cheap and affordable, relative to what star players on teams that are actually worth caring about usually go for.

Going back to last summer I'd been assembling a small but highly contained collection of notable Rockies players by getting both a certified autograph and a really nice memorabilia card too. The memorabilia cards have largely been patches because why not go for the nicer cards?

The fact that the very names I'm after are both Rockies and players who left the game a while ago with what most could reasonably call less than Hall of Fame caliber resumes has made this very fun, very affordable and also very quick to put together.

Although there is one exception.

Todd Helton.

Among all of the Rockies who were around in the early 2010's, Helton has the best chance of getting Hall of Fame enshrinement. Which means if he gets in his autograph cards will creep up in price but smart people can simply wait a year because Topps will print more autograph cards of his and flood the market. This is more or less what happened when Larry Walker got into the HoF, you can easily find a certified autograph of his for like $15-30.

Luckily I already picked up an autograph of the Toddfather last year. Now came time for the accompanying memorabilia card. I did think of adding a nice patch similar to the other Rockies I picked up during my spree, but rather than that I opted for my first ever Rockies bat relic card.

Strangely enough I actually do remember opening a pack of 2004 Topps Bazooka baseball. I was ten at the time. My parents were running errands and we went to a Pathmark that we usually never went to and I guess there they had one pack that I must've said I wanted to try and open.

The contents of the pack and the Pathmark itself are long gone but I remember two things, one is that I pulled a mini of Jim Thome (not a bad player to get), the second is that the gum tasted like shit and I spat it out in the parking lot. It's truly a blessing that Topps doesn't put gum in their card products anymore.

Obviously I didn't pull any "hits" like this in that pack. I didn't even know what was in the whole checklist. Thanks to 2024 internet I now know that the hits were all just relics like this, but that strangely suits me just fine. I like this card, it's simple and colorful despite having a ton of gray and just being a piece of wood.

Plus in a hobby that appears to be dominated by people who grew up in the 1980's, I did appreciate seeing and getting a card from the 2000's which were my actual childhood for a change. That decade almost never gets shown, it's almost like every collector ever stopped collecting in 1998 and didn't come back until 2014.

Then again I didn't start until 2011 so :P.

So with the Toddfather now addressed, time for my mind to shift to other things.

For whatever reason (probably just nostalgia) the two most prominent members of the 2012 Rockies have been on my mind in recent times so expect Troy Tulowitzki and Carlos Gonzalez to make a few appearances in these next few posts. 

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