1991 Upper Deck hi-series double box break

I picked up two boxes of 1991 Upper Deck hi-series for cheap, because why not? I've never opened this before, so it was a fun ripping.
Highlights:

Shinies!
Breakdown:
9 AL, 10 Yankees, 1 Indians, 8(!) Twins.
8 NL, 3 Cardinals, 5 Expos, 3 Braves, 3 Cubs, 1 Reds, 1 Phillies, 1 Pirates, 3 Astros headed Swlvguy's way, 4 Mets, 5 Giants, 4 Dodgers
Ignore the doofus with the purple shorts.
Funny story on the Aaron holograms, I got skunked on my first box, then pulled three in my second box. #90sCollation...




I was expecting there to be a ton of pre-high series cards and only a few 700+ cards. Just the way current sets have conditioned me, but I was pleasantly surprised to have equal sized stacks of pre-700 and cards between 700-800 ("hi-series"). Not pictured, I pulled both variations of the Rickey Henderson/Lou Brock "939" base, with and without date.






Huge stack of Twins to sort, resort, and triple check; as well as some "key" rookies. Cheepar being the highlight at ~2$, the rest under .50 cents.

Pulled a complete set and a half of Hank Aaron's Baseball Heroes inserts, two Nolan Ryan/Rickey Henderson SP2s. Much like the Aaron Heroes of Baseball, the two Ryan/Henderson's came from the second box.

Co-Franchise players(early morning ramblings...)

There's a relatively short list of players who played for both Senators franchises, the Twins edition(1901-1960) and Rangers(1961-1971). I'm working on an experiment-type sql database, and was curious how many players we shared, and after that I was curious if we shared any with the current Washington franchise, the Nationals.

Twins-Senators Twins Washington Senators
Roy Sievers   1954-1959 1964-1965
Camilo Pascual 1954-1966 1967-1969
Pedro Ramos 1955-1961 1970-1970
Johnny Schaive 1958-1960 1962-1963
Hal Woodeshick 1959-1960 1961-1961
Zoilo Versalles 1959-1967 1969-1969
Hector Maestri 1960-1960 1961-1961
Rudy Hernandez 1960-1960 1961-1961
Don Mincher 1960-1966 1971-1972
Marty Martinez 1962-1962 1972-1972
Bernie Allen 1962-1966 1967-1971
Jim Roland 1962-1968 1972-1972
Joe McCabe 1964-1964 1965-1965
Johnny Klippstein 1964-1966 1961-1961
Ron Kline 1967-1967 1963-1966
John Roseboro 1968-1969 1970-1970
Joe Grzenda 1969-1969 1970-1971
Brant Alyea 1970-1971 1965-1969
Jim Shellenback   1977-1977 1969-1974

Twins-Nationals Twins Washington Nationals
Hector Carrasco 1998-2001 2005-2005
Cristian Guzman 1999-2004 2005-2010
Matt LeCroy 2000-2007 2006-2006
Michael Restovich 2002-2004 2007-2007
Joe Beimel 2004-2004 2009-2009
Tony Batista 2006-2006 2004-2007
Ramon Ortiz 2007-2007 2006-2006
Livan Hernandez 2008-2008 2003-2011
Brendan Harris 2008-2010 2004-2006
Denard Span 2008-2012 2013-2013
Luis Ayala 2009-2009 2003-2008
Jon Rauch 2009-2010 2004-2008
Wilson Ramos 2010-2010 2010-2013
Matt Capps 2010-2012 2010-2010
Jason Marquis 2012-2012 2010-2011
Jamey Carroll 2012-2013 2002-2005
Josh Willingham 2012-2013 2009-2010

(Data: Baseball-Reference)

Interestingly, both other Washington franchises have almost the same amount of shared players. 19-17. One of these days I'll get around to how many players we shared with the original Washington Nationals/Senators, a list that includes many of our 1960s greats.

Who knew Edgar Renteria was a Twin in 1996?

Not that we couldn't have used him in 1996, with his .309/.358/.399/ for a .757 OPS, 3.3 WAR. and .979 fielding %...but who knew Edgar played for us?

(Image courtesy of COMC.)

I made a trade with @SouthPawKersh22 for Twins, and ex-Twins to even the trade. I was surprised to see this one among them. I have a pretty good photographic memory of Twins rosters, and didn't remember him playing for us. Obviously a printing error, but by now you would think Topps would have a way of pulling detailed stats reliably. They've only been doing this for 60+ years, and this is the digital age. Hell, I'll help them install a LAMP setup, with web/php queries if needed...

2013 Bowman Platinum Team Checklist

Here's the Twins checklist for this years Bowman Platinum.
Base: 21,32,77
Prospects: BPP7,BPP19,BPP51,BPP56,BPP62,BPP84
Chrome Prospects: BPCP7,BPCP19,BPCP51,BPCP56,BPCP62,BPCP84
Baseball America "Diamonds In The Rough": DIR-JP
Cutting Edge Stars: CES-JM
Top Prospects: TP-AM,TP-BB,TP-MS,TP-OA
Not listed: Autos/Relics

New player collections...

I always hate adding more things to collect, especially when I've already undertaken such a huge project, but I occasionally find some reason or another to add a player or set. My first player that I chased/am chasing was from my home town, after that it was my first player's nephew who had a much more successful playing career. Once I graduated high school, I noticed that one of my fellow JV teammates had been drafted by the Marlins. Just this year, my Twins(no less!) drafted our JV coaches son in the first round. He may not have cards yet, but you can rest assured I'll be collecting his stuff as soon as Draft Picks and Prospects(most likely) gets released. I quickly went from having a team to collect, to four players and a team! Now that I'm almost finished with college, I'm debating whether or not to add the players from my college - and there's a few...


Dave Owen
Steve Foster
John Lackey
Daniel Ortmeier
Ryan Roberts
Mark Lowe
Hunter Pence
Adam Moore
Dillon Gee
(source: bbref)

As well as a dearth of minor league talent that never made(or has yet to make) a major league roster. Where do you draw the line and decide whether this'll add fun to your collecting, or whether this is just more junkwax littering your hobby room? I'll let you know when I find the answer...

An Intro to Errors/Variations

The late 1980s and early 1990s over production nearly killed the card industry, but it also brought about interesting errors and variations. Since they're cheap pick-ups, and most are easy to spot and catalog, I love looking for these. For example check out these 1988 Donruss.

Ignore the conditions of the cards, complete-ists can't be choosers. =). Apparently in the same year, the changed the pattern orientations for retail(whether wax, cello, etc) and the factory sets.

Another retail/factory variation, 1991 Donruss, and I'm not even including the back variation of the one on the left. Donruss seemed to love to tinker with borders. Unlike the 1988 edition, these backs are noticeably lighter/darker.

Cutting Donruss some slack for a minute, here's 1991(a good year for these kind of errors/variations) Upper Deck's entry. That's right, three separate hologram designs - 1991 Upper Deck, 1990 Upper Deck, and strangely 1991 Upper Deck Hockey...

More to come I'm sure, I love these cheap pickups!

Favorites

As suggested by Mike, I should do a post on some of my favorite Twins cards. I'm sure I'll be adding more eventually, but here's some offhand.

2010 Bowman Chrome Joe Mauer

I'm pretty sure this photo is from this excellent heads-up play by Mauer. A great play by one of the best catchers in the league - also famous for these behind the back plays:

2008 Topps Classic Combos, Morneau/Santana/Mauer

What's not to like about three of the best Twins of the decade? Morneau the masher, Santana the bat cracker, and Mauer the slap hitting, AL average leading catcher? I'd like to get all three to sign one of these bad boys...

Speaking of signed cards of great Twins, I picked this one up at my LCS a few years ago, and couldn't be happier at the 10$ cost.

1989 Upper Deck Kirby Puckett with Mark McGwire inset. Signed by both!