1990 Leaf

Year: 1990

Card Manufacturer: Donruss/Leaf

Card Set: Leaf Baseball

Card Number:71

Card Type: Base

I'm sure most of you know that the Leaf brand was bought by Bryan Gray, of Razor Entertainment fame, in 2010.  Since then he's put the logo and the brand to work on a variety of products.  Most recently in Leaf's 25th Baseball product.  It celebrates the 25th anniversary of this set, 1990 Leaf, which was the first Leaf set issued that was not just a Canadian reissue of a Donruss product, like O-Pee-Chee and Topps.  

So I figured why not feature Robin's 1990 Leaf card.  Leaf was the higher end release for Donruss, like Stadium Club for Topps and Ultra for Fleer.  The metallic gray was suppose to look like silver, this was before the foil crazy remember.  Ultra did the same thing in the early releases and it fails, but the 1990 design has become kind of iconic.  The 2015 Leaf 25th also gives a nod to the gray by making it's base cards for all three materials, Acetate, Glass, and Metal, gray.

2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes #64 Red Jersey Parallel

Year: 2005

Manufacturer: Upper Deck

Set: Baseball Heroes

Card Number: 64

Card Type: Color Parallel Relic

Color Parallel: Red

Relic Type: Jersey

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered, Jersey Relic

Serial Number: 11/99

Ah 2005 the year of the parallel card.  2005 is the year that Robin had the most cards ever produced for him. According to the Trading Card Database Robin had over 1000 cards produced for him in 2005.  That's a lot of cards to chase. Donruss help with a few of their sets, but Upper Deck also put out some sets with huge amounts of inserts and variations and Baseball Heroes is one of those sets.

Robin has 5 base cards in the set, 61-65 and all the color parallels and relic and auto parallels that go with those 5 cards.  I think Robin has at least 80 cards in this set alone if not closer to 100.  

I've given up trying to get all the cards from this set.  But when a nice red parallel jersey card almost falls into you lap, well I'm not going to pass it up.  I also can't believe how cheap I got this card for considering how overpriced a lot of Robin's cards seem to me these days on eBay.

But it's a really nice card with a great jersey piece.  At first glace it may just seem like a plain grey swatch, but if you look close you can see a couple stitches running through the piece.  

2013 Topps Triple Threads Amber Parallel

Year: 2013

Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Triple Threads

Card Number: 79

Card Type: Base Parallel

Parallel Set: Amber

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 015/125

I ended up picking up a few Triple Threads color parallels I was lacking this Black Friday from COMC.  I really like the 2013 Triple Threads parallels. I like the design overall even if Topps used the this image for a 1000 other cards that year.  I also like that the color parallel is carried over to the back of the card. 

Triple Threads is a product that I have no interest in breaking.  Well let me clarify I would love to open boxes of Triple Threads I just don't have that kind of money to open a product that I doubt I'd get any cards I wanted in it.  So the only reason would be to break it and then try to resell what I got for a profit and that's always a losing bet with high end stuff like this.  But I will pick up the cards I want on the secondary market.  Sometimes I have to wait years before I find cards at a decent price.

New Yount Alert! 2015 Topps Strata Shadowbox Signatures

I was just looking though the checklist of this year's Topps Strata Baseball and noticed Robin has a card in the Shadowbox Autographs set.  That means 3 new cards with the parallels.  I'm sure the base auto is numbered as well, but that wasn't listed in the checklist so I'll update the checklist once this goes live.  I'm also going to use this page as an archival image gallery for the cards, as I'm sure I won't be adding one of these to the collection unless I get really lucky.


2015 Topps Strata Shadowbox Signatures SS-RY #d?
2015 Topps Strata Shadowbox Signatures SS-RY Gold #.25
2015 Topps Strata Shadowbox Signatures SS-RY Red #/1

1985 APBA Game card

Year: 1985

Manufacturer: APBA

Set: APBA Baseball

Card Number: NNO

Card Type: Base, player card

The only oddball I picked up on Black Friday was this 1985 APBA Baseball players card.

Not to be confused with the American Power Boat Association, APBA stands or stood for American Professional Baseball Association.  The company which is still in business puts out all sorts of sports games and holds yearly conventions and tournaments.  

This is the first APBA card I've picked up and I've never played the game.  I know it's kind of like Dungeons and Dragons for sports guys.  I also know from being part a few TTM groups on Facebook that there are a few guys that really like to send these cards our for autographs.  Personally I'm not a huge fan of cards that don't feature the players likeness and I also don't know if I've ever seen Robin referred to as Tito.  But I've had an APBA card for Robin on my personal want list for a while now and I can finally cross that off.

1990 Bandai Brass Coin

Year: 1990

Manufacturer: Bandai

Set: Super Star Collector Coins

Coin Number: NNO

The early 1990's really had some great oddball sports collectibles.  I always remember Bandai for  their video game titles for NES.  Bandai is still around, they merged with Namco in the mid 2000's.    A neat oddball set.  Bandai produced two coin sets.  One in 1990 and a second set in 1992.  The main difference in the coins is the 1992 set has the MLB logo on the front. I ended up picking up a large lot of the Bandai coins a while back just to pick the Yount out of the set.  I still have the rest somewhere.  The coins are nice and heavy, although the plating has a tendency to rub off.  I also found some original packaging I've included images below.  I guess you got two coins per package and one of those was a mystery.  The packaging also included a punch out coin stand.

1990 Topps Woolworth Baseball Highlights #1

Year: 1990

Manfacturer: Topps

Set: Woolworth Baseball Highlights Box set

Card Number: 1

Card Type: Base

I wonder how many people even remember Woolworth?  There were kind of like Ben Franklin's.  Pretty much they were everywhere in small and big towns alike.  The remnants of the old stores are still around, even here in Anchorage the old Woolworth's location is now a souvenir shop, but the building still has the original doors with the Woolworth name on them.

 Woolworths in the US eventually became defunct as the company closed all of it's old retail shops and focused on it's other business, Foot Locker.

Downtown Anchorage at 4th Ave and F St.

2011 from Google Street View

From 1985 to 1991 Woolworth teamed up with Topps to produce a store brand boxed baseball card set.  All the sets have 33 cards.  Robin gets two cards in this set.  This one commemorating his second MVP title in 1989 and card #22, which will be featured sooner or later, that celebrates him reaching 2600 hits.  Robin is also featured in the last Woolworth set in 1991.

1990 Ace MVP Pin

Year: 1990

What: ACE Novelty MVP Pin

Full card w/ 1990 Score 

I ended up picking this up along with my copy of Baseball America about a month back.  This was another purchase from Yount megaseller wfbookman off of eBay. I had been looking for one of these and it seems like all of a sudden the market was flooded.  And not just the pins but full unopened retail packaging.  This looks fresh from the box as the punch out for the hanging display is still intact.  As a bonus the pin was packaged with  Robin's 1990 Score card. I know from other examples that there is nothing on the back of the pin card.  

There are a ton of these to collect and every team has at least 4 players to choose from.  Might have to chase those other 3 Brewers to complete the set.  Robin is also included in the 1991 and 1992 Ace pin sets.

2015 Leaf 25th Baseball Yount checklist and gallery

I already chronicled his pre-production cards Leaf sold on ebay in October. I'll be tweeking the checklist if more information becomes available, but I think the publish checklist looks pretty good.
Robin is the only player not to have a Purple Clear auto in the set.  From the looks of it Acetate or clear cards are foil stamped on the front, the Pure or glass cards are hand numbered on the front, and Metal cards are foil numbered on the back.


1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Base Gray RY1 #/51 (Not serial numbered)
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Blue RY1 #/25
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Green RY1 #/10
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Red RY1  #/5
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Black Printing Plate RY1 #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Cyan Printing Plate RY1 #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Magenta Printing Plate RY1 #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Clear Auto Yellow Printing Plate RY1  #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Base Silver #/57 (Not serial numbered)
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Blue #/25
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Green #/10
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Red #/5
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Gold #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Black Printing Plate #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Cyan Printing Plate #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Magenta Printing Plate #/1
1990 Leaf 25th Metal Auto BA-RY1 Yellow Printing Plate #/1
Leaf 25th PURE Auto RY1 Base Charcoal #/49 (Not serial numbered)
Leaf 25th PURE Auto RY1 Blue #/25
Leaf 25th PURE Auto RY1 Purple #/10
Leaf 25th PURE Auto RY1 Green #/5
Leaf 25th PURE Auto RY1 Red #/1
1990 Leaf Buyback Auto Base #/40
1990 Leaf Buyback Auto Gold #/1

Metal Silver base, note no serial numbering on front or back

Green Metal

Purple metal

Green Pure (glass) hand numbered to 10, on the front

Clear Acetate Base Charcoal (no stamped serial number)

Clear (Acetate) Red #/5

Black Printing plate

Base buyback auto hand numbered to 40 on the front.

Hostess variations

Over the past few months I've come across a couple Hostess oddballs I wasn't familiar with and figure I'd share what I found and what I learned for histories sake.

First up is this 1978 Hostess L shaped panel.  I think most of us are pretty familiar with the three card strip panels found on most hostess boxes from 1975 to 1979.  It's interesting to point out that there's not a ton of information about these.  It's also interesting that for as popular as Hostess cards were and are there really isn't a good source of information about the sets.  I figured one avid collector would have put together a website or blog, but alas most of my information was gathered from forum threads and poking around the internet for images. So if there is a Hostess expert out there and you read this feel free to chime in and correct anything and everything I'm about to say.

So what is an L shaped panel?  It's like the example below where two of the cards are vertical and the third is below oriented horizontally.

From what I pieced together Hostess issued some L shaped panels like the one below from 1976 to 1979.  One message board stated that the L shaped panels, at least in 1976, were only put on cupcake boxes on the east coast.  From some digging I was able to find an image of an intact specimen of a 1978 cupcake box also with an L shape card bottom.  So were all the L shapes only produced on the East Coast and only on cupcake boxes?  Maybe.  1978 is the only year I could find that Robin is featured on one of the L shaped boxes.  All the auctions I've seen fail to state the source of the panels. But these panels are much rarer than the normal strip panels, but the standard catalog doesn't mention this variation in configuration.  This panel is currently (at least at the time of writing) up for sale on eBay with a $50 price tag.

1978 Hostess Cupcake L shaped panel

Here's another interesting oddball I didn't know about. This is a 1977 Hostess cupcake single card.  According to the Standard Catalog the complete 1977 set was printing on these single card cake holders.  But they say cards 1-30 and 111-150 are Twinkies panels and 31-110 are cupcake panels. Robin's card number in the set is 34 so he should be in the cupcake set according to the Catalog.  The uncut cupcake cards are longer and skinner than their Twinkies counterparts. But I know for a fact that he's also has a single Twinkie card.  I've include a scan of my 1977 Twinkie card below.  The explanation in the Standard Catalog is either wrong or I'm reading it wrong. Either way I found a great post on a Net54Baseball forum.  It's also interesting to point out that the post also describes multiple other single card sizes, although I don't think Robin has an example in those variations.

1978 Hostess Cupcake Single front

1978 Hostess Cupcake Single Back

1977 Hostess Twinkie Single front

Well there you go a few more Younts to chase in the Hostess sets.  Oh and the cupcake single recently sold on eBay for $26.

2003 Donruss Elite All-Time Career Best

Year: 2003

Manufacturer: Donruss

Set: Elite Baseball

Card Number: AT-20

Card Type: Insert

Insert Set: All-Time Career Best

I was a little surprised when I was picking up cards on Black Friday that I didn't already have an example of this card in my collection, but thanks the deals on COMC I picked one up very cheap.

The card celebrates Robin's Career Best 49 Doubles in 1980, a Brewers record until Lyle Overbay beat it in 2004 with 53, but Robin still holds the Brewers all-time doubles record with 583.

2005 Playoff Prestige Prestigious Pros Blue Parallel

Year: 2005

Manufacturer: Donruss/Playoff

Set: Prestige

Card Number: PP-19

Card Type: Insert Parallel

Insert Set: Prestigious Pros

Parallel: Blue

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 854/900

The 4th card of the 8 new Yount's I got from COMC's Black Friday promotion.  Oh the colorful rainbow that are the Prestigious Pros parallels.  So many to chase.  I won't complain though.  This is only the second Prestigious Pros color parallel I have in the collection, I also have a Red version.

My favorite color is blue so I guess this has to be my favorite parallel of the set.  I also like that it was one of the cheapest cards I picked up for Robin during my Black Friday shopping and a welcome edition to the set.  I actually think this counts as the base card for the insert as there is no unnumbered version of this card and this card has the highest production.  This insert set also features relic and autographed version both of which Robin has cards in.

1983 Fleer Stamps Unopened Package

Year: 1983

Manufacturer: Fleer

Set: Baseball Stamps

Number: Group 1 of 4

Attributes: Unopened Package

It's hard for me to pass up a cool, cheap oddball that's still in it's original wrapper.  Of course the main draw for me was that Robin is featured on the front, but there are three other Brewers visible as well.  Add to that great players like Fernando Valenzuela, Kent Tekulve, Mike Schmidt, and some guy named George Brett and it's a great find.  And there are an additional 56 players and/or team stamps not visible.

There are a couple areas in my collection I think I'm going to focus on more in the coming year and one of them is memorabilia and cards still in their original packaging, like this and cello packs and rack packs.

I also really like that the original price tag from Boscov's Department store is still on it.  Boscov's is a family owned chain based in the Northeast and New England area and they're still in business.  It's neat to see what these were going for back in 1983.

2014 Topps High Tek Disco Refractor

Year: 2014

Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: High Tek

Card Number: HT-RY

Card Type: Diffractor Parallel

Parallel Set: Disco Diffractor

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 18/50

We are on card 3 or 8 from the Black Friday haul over at COMC.  I picked this card up for a ridiculously low price which made me very happy.  When the set came out last year I jump early at the rarest of the base parallel variations, but really didn't bother with the diffractors or autographs because they were going for well more than I wanted to drop.  But a little patience pays off.  I recently picked up the Gold Diffractor, also off of COMC, a while back.  And now the next rarest diffractor falls into the collection.  The base cards from this set look great in hand and I have to say the diffractors do too.  I'm a little surprised how well this card scanned.  You can really see the detail of the shards that make the diffractor.  I was little bummed Robin wasn't featured in this year's set as well and even more bummed not a single Brewer made the set.  Well that saved me money anyways.

2013 Topps Museum Collection Asia Exclusive Turquoise Parallel

Year: 2013

Card Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Museum Collection

Card Number: 27

Card Type: Base Color Parallel

Parallel Type: Asia Exclusive Turquoise

Card Attributes: Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 27/50

This is probably the coolest card I picked up off of COMC for Black Friday and the most expensive. Actually I picked this up well before Black Friday and had thought about waiting to see if the price dropped, but considering I've never seen one of these card in the three years since it was released and to my embarrassment didn't even know this parallel existed.  Asia Exclusives aren't new.  Both Topps and Panini do them, but I'm not sure how I missed this.  

That being said in the end I scooped this card up.  I didn't want to wait and have someone else pick it up To be honest it wasn't that expensive, just the most expensive card I bought in my haul.  

The color parallels are subtle in Museum Collection with just the inner frame differing from parallel to parallel, but still a nice color variation and a great pick up.

2015 Panini Cooperstown Crown Royal Silver Parallel

Year: 2015

Manufacturer: Panini

Set: Cooperstown

Card Number: 82

Card Type: Insert Parallel

Insert Set: Crown Royale

Parallel Set: Silver

Card Attributes: Die-cut, Serial Numbered

Serial Number: 63/75

I've been building a small stack of cards in my portfolio over at COMC.  While good deals on Robin's cards can be few and far between they do happen and I've been steadily picking up store credit with their Challanges and picking up cards when I find a good deal.  I ended up throwing $20  in my account as well this year, an early Christmas present to myself and it helped me get over the 20 card threshold for free shipping during COMC's big Black Friday promotion.  I picked up quite a few cards for my player collections.  The majority were for Frank Thomas, but I did get 8 new Younts which I will be featuring.

First up is the this very shiny Crown Royale insert card from this year's Cooperstown set.  I have yet to add a base card from the set to my collection, but I now have a very low numbered insert.  You can see Robin's full card checklist from the set here and an explanation of all the confusing inserts here.

I'm pretty happy with this one.  It was the second most expensive card I purchased for Black Friday, but was still very reasonable.

2008 Topps Sterling #227

Year: 2008

Manufacturer: Topps

Set: Sterling

Card Number: 227

Player Card Number: RY11

Card Type: Base

Card Attributes: Serial numbered

Serial number: 203/250

So here we are the end of the road, the last card in the series.  Card #227 ends the 11 card run of Robin's base cards.  Card #228 features a run of 4 cards for Cal Ripken Jr.

This card just kind of wraps it all up talking about his time with Hank Aaron, the 1978 season Robin almost left baseball to play professional golf and his running the bases on his Harley-Davidson. No mention of his love of dirt bikes though.  But we have his 1992 Pinnacle card for that.

Thanks for sticking it out for 11 posts, but now there done and we'll start mixing it up again.  There are still the White Suede framed parallels to show off, but I won't make you suffer through those till later.