Mouschi's Rolling Canseco Pickup Thread

[mouschi]

Today's entry features a very rare beauty. I consider this a card from "the lost years". I didn't collect in 2000 - I was too busy with friends and dating my now-wife to be bothered by cards. During my several year hiatus, the hobby that I had loved as a child changed so much.

When I got back into it, game used and autographs took up all the oxygen in the room for me, and these lesser known parallels went unnoticed until recently.

When I picked a collection, not only was there a nice 2000 base skybox Canseco, there was an identical card next to it, but with red foil: The Star Rubies version. COOL! I thought to myself, as I marked it off my checklist. But then, I saw there was another called a "Star Rubies Extreme".

???

This was # to 50. A 15 year old card #'ed to 50 is a tough grab. Not only does it have to be pulled from the bazillions of cards it probably got mixed up in, it also had to survive changing hands while being mixed in with junk era cards that were carelessly tossed about. It also had to be pulled ... AND not from a box that was stacked heavily upon in some humid garage for any amount of time - such is a disaster for having a brick of cards. I mean, who knows how many of these actually are around and available? 25?

The other day, I found it on ebay! I just got it in today, and it is ... no joke ... BEAUTIFUL in hand. The background POPS - this picture does it absolutely no justice. I think I'm in love.

2000 Skybox - 2000 Skybox Star Rubies - 2000 Skybox Star Rubies Extreme /50

[mouschi]

The year was 1989. It was a time of the ritualistic 1989 Donruss or Score pack for 50 cents every time my mom went to Target. It was a time to dream about what it would feel like to open up an entire case of baseball cards.

It was the birth of my love for baseball cards.

Every week, I was promised by my parents to go to the card shop and spend my allowance. One particular weekend, we ended up going to a dealer's shop who went to our church, instead of the Bullpen (the dealer was my hero!) I had my mind and heart set on a 1989 Topps Jose Canseco. Fresh off of his 40/40 year, Jose is pictured looking on, with a look on his face like he knows he's gonna do amazing things.

Dad and I went into the shop, and while dad was talking to Ronnie behind the counter, my eyes darted back and forth from all the cases.

No '89 Topps Jose.

I mustered up the courage to ask and Ronnie said "I'm sorry, we don't have one. But we do have a 1989 Score Canseco for the same value."

75 cents either way. I was hoping for a Jose who was gazing into the future, but instead, I'm met with Jose who looks like he is about to trip on something while playing whack-a-mole.

"But...but...I wanted the 1989 Topps Canseco."

"Well, you are just going to have to settle on the '89 score, or you won't get nuthin'!"

That is about as firm as dad ever got with me, but as a sensitive 9 year old child living a roller-coaster of a childhood, that was all it took to smack any sense of entitlement out of me. Lesson learned: Life just doesn't work out the way we want it to sometimes ... even with baseball cards.

I picked up the 1989 Score Canseco, and guess what? I loved it. I don't even recall how I picked up the 1989 Topps version, but now that I have 2, it is nice to have them in the collection - even though they are about a quarter each IF you don't have to pay $2 in shipping and find them in person.

[mouschi]

1999 Upper Deck Century Legends Top 50 Contemporaries Die Cut #/100

This is one of the many, MANY examples where I'm just not buying that there are 99 others of these floating around. I saw it online and clicked the buy it now because it was much too purty to pass up. Had you offered this to me for $25 3 months ago, I would have smiled and politely declined, but now, I simply couldn't give the money over fast enough.

It has it all:

- Holofoil [CHECK]
- Serial # [CHECK]
- From the 90's [CHECK]
- Die Cut [CHECK]

That does it for me! Very happy with this pickup.

[mouschi]

When I made the decision to be "all in" and collect Canseco, I had my reservations about collecting his 2014 cards. Flooding the market in 2014 with over 200 new cards of Jose just didn't seem right. One way I made it justifiable to make a big purchase of a former collector's collection was that I was planning on selling off all of those "un-authentic, icky" 2014 autographs.

I mean, who do they think they are anyway? They weren't much around from 2005-2013. Do they think they can just walk in again like the past decade never happened? I wasn't having it.

And then they came in the mail.

Turns out I WAS having it, and going back for second and third helpings. The cards are so nice looking. Here is my partial 2014 Tribute auto rainbow. I love them so much. I just checked also, and aside from the 1/1 I am only 2 away from the full rainbow ... cool!

[mouschi]

1998 Leaf 50th Anniversary cards. For those of you who are relatively new to the hobby, you may think that having multiple parallels of the same card is a fairly new concept.

Turn back the clock 17 years, and you would find these beauties. They appear to be a base, chrome, refractor, copper superfractor, copper superfractor die cut and a blue super fractor die cut.

These are the Fractal Matrix cards from 1998 Leaf.

I just got in the blue diamond axis, and absolutely love it! I remember seeing someone stealing it on ebay a year or more ago - I looked at it and thought gahhhh what a nice, nice card. It was just out of my reach though. I couldn't get myself to open up my wallet for a 90's card with no jersey or autograph on it.

Fast forward to this past week....I'm happy I got it!

[mouschi]

Ahh, yeah - the 1986 Topps Traded Canseco. The XRC. The First Topps card ever. Growing up, I only knew of one kind...the base kind. As it turns out, there was also a tiffany version. Then the procelain version someone put out later. Then in 2001, you could find the base, gold, chrome, refractor and superfractor.

Superfractor? They never made a superfractor!

Well, ok ... the superfractor is something I made, but I couldn't resist having it in this photo op! I never intended for it to be in my pc, because I didn't worry much about the cut, etc. but I think it looks pretty good with the others.

[mouschi]

I've had a LOT of awesome pickups recently, but here is a more unique one. I was cruising online to see if anyone had a nice lot of Canseco I did not have, and lo & behold, someone had something that I hadn't ever seen before.

Pacific Show/Expo embossed cards. They are cool enough w/out a back story, but the history of them make them definitely worthwhile.

You cannot really tell they are embossed until you tilt them in the light, and then they pop.

Back in the 90's, Pacific setup at card shows with a promotion where you could bring any Pacific unopened pack of cards to them of any sport, and for $3, you could get ONE card per pack embossed.

They had shows in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Toronto, Montreal, NY/NJ and perhaps other places as well. Try as hard as I could, and I was simply dumbfounded at the lack of information on these events ... forget about finding any embossed Canseco cards!!! I simply could not find any at all.

I love these types of cards. I love the story of how you had to open the packs in front of Pacific and how their stamps were used to emboss. It is a mystery at how many are out there, but I have a strong feeling that the Canseco supply is very, very limited. Not just because I simply cannot find any, but because of putting two and two together. Here is an example:

Say you are a dealer and you bring a box of Pacific to the table. It is going to cost you $108 to get one card per pack. You were not guaranteed a single Canseco in one box - (500-550 cards per box, but 660 cards per set by using '93 as an example) and even then, his card would have to compete with the rest of the pack. If the pack with Canseco was in the same pack as Sosa, McGwire, Bonds, Ripken, Nolan, Jeter, Griffey, Thomas, etc. the odds are the dealer would pass on Jose and have the other bigger card from the pack embossed.

Something else to keep in mind as well is the limited number of boxes opened in front of Pacific representatives. We aren't talking like a print run of 75 that was scattered throughout an entire product. We are probably talking about a VERY small piece of the production pie that even had a chance to get embossed. Coupled with the fact that if an unknowing collector doesn't tilt the card in the light at the right time to see the difference, you have made a very rare card much, much rarer.

The incognito effect.

I was fortunate to talk at length with a dealer about this who basically stalked Pacific in the 90's to get a bunch of cards done. I was very thankful to have met him and learn the story from him. I was able to pick up something truly unique for my collection!



But not only that - he sold me 16 different others. As you can see, there are doubles, but the stamps are different.



He was kind enough to throw in several fliers from the card shows as well. They state that you can bring any 1998 product, but in the end, they allowed for a pacific product of any year and any sport as long as it was in fact from Pacific, and was opened in front of them.

Some of the coolest cards I got from him were the ones stamped with the Super Bowl 33 Logo. 33 of course, being Canseco's number makes the player collector in me jump for joy.

So, with all that said, I'm officially hooked on these, and will continue to be looking for more!

[mouschi]

In the early 90's, I believe it was, a new, cutting edge type of comic book came out by the name of the Walking Dead. It was a very limited run. I was not into comics, nor am I now (though I do enjoy the thought of having them, plus, I've sold about 40,000 of them over the past 4 years or so.)

When the tv show hit, the prices sky-rocketed. Whenever I would sell a lot of comics, the first question was "Got any Walking Dead?" The answer would always be no. Why? Because they were very scarce ... EVERYBODY and their brother wants them! Heck, even those who didn't ask, would go straight to the "W's", and thumb through them to see what there was.

Card companies have put out some pretty cool parallels. Topps for instance, came out with the gold parallel. It has taken on a number of forms - from the early 90's that was merely gold foil over the names, to the now-more standardized gold borders.

Did you know that 2001 wasn't the first time the gold border was used by Topps? Sure, mainstream maybe, but did you know that they dabbled in it back in the 80's?

I have heard some stories about such a card before. I have even seen a few, which I absolutely loved the look. I keep thinking ... why on earth didn't they come out with these things before? Apparently, there is one "SHEET" of these that is known in existence (by me anyway). It is sheet "F" which means the Canseco All Star would have been on that sheet. So, either 33 or 66 of these cards (different players) are possible, but in sheet form, many can get damaged over the years with wrinkles, or trying to cut them out of a sheet, etc. So if we aren't looking at a 1/1 card, we are still looking at something incredibly scarce.

The other day, I was shown that the Canseco does truly exist! It was in the hands of another collector whom I suspected had it, but heard it was offered up for a large amount of money. After my first purchase with this seller, I asked again hoping to be offered it. Sure enough ... he offered!

I got it! I also got some other cool items. My first pic of it was in a bgs slabbed holder, but the buyer took it out to put it in his Canseco binder. I don't like that he did that, but honestly ... I'm not a fan of slabs anyway.

So, here it is: the great-great-great grandfather of the topps gold border parallels ....




I truly love this card. This is like the Topps version of the Aqueous, but I'd have to say cooler because not only may it be more rare; it is also significantly more different looking on the front instead of just a stamp on the back.

It is like the Walking Dead comics that were not popularized until the tv shows came along. I wonder if Topps threw this concept around and perhaps the higher ups just didn't like the look because it was ahead of its time. Perhaps it was too gaudy for them, I don't know. I think it is cool that this may have been the birth piece of gold borders.

Out of all the amazing pickups I've made over the past few months, this ranks up there as one of my favorites, if not my favorite!

[Bestdj777]

Originally Posted by mouschi

I think it is cool that this may have been the birth piece of gold borders.

Hi Mouschi,

As an FYI, Topps actually released a set of cards with gold borders in 1965. It was their Topps Embossed set. Not sure if they did anything between that and the issue of your card though--I only collect from 1951-1969 and don't spend much time on the 1980-present side of this board.

Chris

[mouschi]

Good call! I don't count them though as most of those types of cards were gold. But then again, maybe that is just an excuse for me to keep with the integrity of my article title

Originally Posted by Bestdj777

Hi Mouschi,

As an FYI, Topps actually released a set of cards with gold borders in 1965. It was their Topps Embossed set. Not sure if they did anything between that and the issue of your card though--I only collect from 1951-1969 and don't spend much time on the 1980-present side of this board.

Chris

[mouschi]

Greetings, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to this evening's edition of mouschipiece theatre ...

Tonight, we feature the forgotten jumbo card. It is forgotten, because it is in my closet, propped up by a wall, and was mostly covered by a 1980's Canseco punch out mask prior to my cleaning kick tonight.

I've got to hand it to Topps here. They did a top notch job on this. The fingerprints of craftsmanship are all over this. It truly has a unique touch.

The card? A mega 12x18 Topps Archives TOUCHED BY GREATNESS.

It is Hand Signed.
It is Hand Numberd.
and most importantly...
It is Hand Printed.



It is truly a great, great card. I normally don't dig oversized things, but Topps really hit is out of the park with this one.

[KCRfan1]

Really cool stuff! Have you reached out to Canseco to let him know what you are doing and how big of a fan you are?

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by KCRfan1

Really cool stuff! Have you reached out to Canseco to let him know what you are doing and how big of a fan you are?

Well, there was this one time I did ... http://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=206445

[KCRfan1]

That is F**KING amazing! Dream come true, only in real life you know! This is a story you can tell for the rest of your life. BTW, I hit a hail storm heading into NM about a month ago. Thought it was going to bust out my windshield, and made a bee line to an underpass, with 10 other cars.

[mouschi]

I had a picture of a nice new shiny rainbow autograph set I was going to post up today, but it will have to wait. Today, I got it a few squares that appear to have completed a neat little oddball chapter in my collection.

Based upon my research, these discs were produced by MSA (Mike Schechter Associates) for various grocery store chains and bakeries. MSA produced several sets of these in the 80's and 90's from Fantastic Sam's to give away for free whenever you got a haircut, to Hostess potato chips, to Iced Tea. You will see what appears to be the exact same disc several times, with different company brands on it.

Most/all (I don't know) came in 3 panel perforated form, and many had an offer to allow you to send in some discs along with money in the mail to receive a promotional press sheet calendar. depicting the entire set, full size These calendars typically had the disc artwork in square form.

As calendars are not too collectible, and difficult to store, many have been cut down to squares, and sold off. Many of the cut square backs have the exact same statistic information on the reverse side, just like the discs. Many try to sell these off as "proofs", but the fact of the matter is that they are highly collectible in cut disc form.

The discs and squares both range from fairly easy to obtain, to extremely tough to get your hands on.

To me, there isn't a mind-blowing story on these that I have uncovered. It is fascinating, nonetheless, to know how the discs were produced & distributed, and what had to happen to get the cut square promos. Here is what I believe to be the entire run of MSA discs/squares of Jose Canseco. If you know of any that I am missing, please let me know! (It looks like a King B disc / square pairing made its way into this evening's showcase as well...whoops!)







These are the ones that I don't believe to have had the calendar offer for, so therefore there are no sister disc squares to match them with. If you know this to be wrong though, let me know!

[swarmee]

Nice grab on all the bread cards; I have a small stack of Canseco's free to you if you PM me your mailing address.

[mouschi]

I have truly enjoyed the latest cards offered by Topps, Panini and Leaf. Though P & L are not able to show team logos, I love some of the stuff they put out. It probably "cheapens" the individual auto, but I am a sucker for rainbows, variations and color.

The other day, I picked up the last prizm color horizontal autograph, making it a complete run, aside from the 1/1.



There is the regular, checkered, camo, tye-dye, red/white/blue & the gold. I think they look great altogether!

[Mark70Z]

Really like the MSA discs and the associated square cuts. Reminds me of the MSA discs from '76 and '77. It continues to be fun trying not only to get all of the the regular back versions, but also trying to find all of the different stamped back versions. The Canseco one's you posted, to me, would be just as fun to hunt down just like the older versions.

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by Mark70Z

Really like the MSA discs and the associated square cuts. Reminds me of the MSA discs from '76 and '77. It continues to be fun trying not only to get all of the the regular back versions, but also trying to find all of the different stamped back versions. The Canseco one's you posted, to me, would be just as fun to hunt down just like the older versions.

Oh for sure! Heck I gother excited finding a few donruss and fleer variation cards the other day.

[mouschi]

About 16 years ago, you may recall Fleer putting out a set by the name of Brilliants. The base cards feature a chrome mirror like finish, and had a very premium look by itself. Very classy looking card. I remember seeing them from time to time whenever I would go through huge collections I purchased, and would find a Canseco. I would be ecstatic because it was so nice looking!

Later on down the road, when I got more serious into my PC, I sought out the parallels as well. They had a blue version, which was insanely beautiful - I was able to get my hands on that next, and they also had a gold version which was drop dead gorgeous. It was numbered to 99, and I think I've only seen one up for sale, which was from former Canseco supercollector @1st4040.



I LOVE these types of rainbows.

But, there is one final parallel to the set. A 24kt gold version with a rainbow type finish and numbered to /24. This was pie in the sky for me - especially when you have guys like Griffey selling for $1,500. Heck, even the Thome recently went for $400.

I've only seen 2 others, and they are from 2 other fellow Canseco super collectors who wouldn't give theirs up if their lives depended on it ... or for anything less than $500 I'd imagine

I just so happened to be having the right conversation with the right person at the right time. This person JUST pulled it from a pack! I made an offer and he accepted! Here is my precious ...



And now, all in a row ...



What's that you say? The pictures show my new treasure in different card holders? Well, I couldn't very well stage it with the others in a different holder, now could I? Don't judge me - you know you would do it too.

Anyway, I'm still mega hyped about my new pickup today. I didn't know if I would ever see one, and as it turns out - this particular copy has only been seen by the guy who pulled it, and me ... until now.

[KCRfan1]

That's GREAT! Was this one of the " whales "? Have you stumbled across any Canseco's that you did not know existed?

[ALR-bishop]

From 1984 to 1991 Topps produced Gallery of Champions "cards", small metal reproductions of 12 cards from the base set of that year. In most years the cards were produced in 3 forms, aluminum, bronze and silver and came in nice boxed sets. In most years, they produced a 4th premium card of one player which was given to dealers that sold a certain level of these products. In 1987 the player with 4 was Canseco. Below are images of the 3 sets from 1988 and the 4 Canseco's from 1987

[mouschi]

Originally Posted by KCRfan1

That's GREAT! Was this one of the " whales "? Have you stumbled across any Canseco's that you did not know existed?

Thanks! To be honest, I think I'd have to place this as a white whale. I live in a world where my oceans are filled with white whales. I am still relatively new at hardcore super collecting, so I've got a looooong ways to go. I have this one proudly displayed on my desk though, along with some others. So glad I got it!