2004 Donruss Diamond Kings Heritage Collection

Year: 2004

Manufacturer: Donruss

Card Set: Diamond Kings

Card Type: Insert

Insert Set: Heritage Collection

Card Number: HC-16

Donruss' 2004 Diamond Kings sets is one of those behemoth sets put out in the early 2000's that has just so many inserts and variations it'll will make your head spin and keeping track of it all can be a challenge.

Robin features very prominently in the set having tons of cards to chase including this insert set.  Like most of these types of insert it was designed with the relic and autograph variations in mind.  Robin has relic and an autograph variation in this set.  Although I've never seen one of his autographed cards from the set, there are only 5, I have seen some examples of the set and the auto sticker does tend to cover part of the player.  

It's still a great looking card and a card that would look great hard signed if you got the chance.

1990 The Face of Baseball book

Year: 1990

What: Book

Title: The Face of Baseball, John Wiess Photography

Keeping with the non-baseball card themed posts, I present the book: The Face of Baseball.  I picked this up recently during a visit to the Value Village near my house.  I try to stop in a least once a month to check out the selection.  The store has had a pretty decent selection of trading cards the last year.  Sure most of them are overpriced junk wax and some are beat up pretty bad, but every now and then I do strike gold.  But that's another post for a different blog.  I was looking though the book selection.  I love picking up cheap home improvement books and occasionally I find gold on the shelves as well.  To my surprise the books actually have some kind of order and there is a small sports section.  Lots of fly tying books and how to golf, but there were a couple books I decided to pick up.  First up was Larry Tye's Stachel Paige biography: Stachel and Jose Canseco's Autobiography: Juiced.  Both books I've wanted to read and next to those two books was this one.  I was intrigued.  But after I found Robin in the middle of the book I knew it was coming home with me.  

John Weiss' close up portraits are pretty spectacular. I only scanned Robin's for this post, but you can see examples on the cover.

Does anyone know if Weiss' photos were used for cards?  The book is pretty much a who's who in baseball in and around 1990.

I did a quick search for the book and it's not hard to find or expensive.  As a matter of fact I paid about what you could get one of these shipped off of Amazon or eBay and it wasn't much.  But still a great collection and one of these days I'll probably sit down and read the essay by Wilfrid Sheed interlaced throughout the book.

1977 Brewers Official Program

Year: 1977

What: Brewers Official Program from 1977.

I figured I'd keep the theme of magazines up with this great collectible from 1977.  I have two people to thank for getting this Brewers Program into my hands first is Johnny over at Johnny's Trading Spot for trading it too me and the other is Tony over at Off Hiatus Sports Cards for hooking letting me know Johnny had another copy to trade.

I wish I'd have scanned more of the interior as there were some great ads and some great articles in the program.  The cover features a young, 21ish year old, Robin Yount.

The interior article featuring him with a Kinney shoe ad.

The other scan was a spread that featured the food and drink prices at County Stadium in 1977.

Check them out.  A bucket of beer for $2.70!!!!  I wonder if these prices seemed exorbitantly high like they do now.  Still seems like a deal that you could get a steak sandwich, chips and 16 oz beer for under $3.

1990 Beckett #60

If you looked at my Yount Collection page you'll see 99% of the list is baseball cards.  But I do have a small collection of Magazines that Robin has graced the cover on and it's an area I really want to expand.   Robin has been featured on the front of Beckett two times, although it might be more it's just two times I know of.   The second time was in 1992 on issue #90.

I ended up picking this up for a whole 50 cents plus shipping, off of eBay.  It's wasn't advertised as mint and the seller sure didn't package it to keep it pristine, but it's a very clean, attractive and readable copy.

I love all the old advertisements from the 90's and all the business card ads for all the different card shops back then.  I even found a few for Anchorage that are long gone.  And look at this price guide.  The print is so big.  As a matter of fact  the price guide section only takes up about 35 pages of the magazine.

Let's see what Robin's rookie card was going for back in 1990.

2011 Topps Tribute Base

Year: 2011

Card Manufacturer: Topps

Card Set: Tribute

Card Number: 26

Card Type: Base

I've always really liked the Tribute base cards.  Probably because Tribute is a hit driven product the base cards are relegated as filler.  That's too bad because they are well done cards.  Shiny and printed on think card stock and of course they come in a rainbow of flavors.  I especially like Robin's 2011 card because it uses a photo that wasn't over used in production that year. I won't say Topps didn't reuse it, and right now I'm too lazy to find out, from what I can remember you don't see this image used too often. Plus it's a great mid 70's photos and he looks like he's going to bunt. Heck it could be from his rookie year.  Robin also has a few relics in the set and a really nice triple auto with Paul Molitor and Ryan Braun

1991 Fleer

Year: 1991

Manufacturer: Fleer

Set: Flagship Baseball

Card Number: 601

Card Type: Base

If there is a set the exemplifies the overproduced junk wax era it might be 91 Fleer.  Arguably the pinnacle of the era it's a set that has a few lovers (if I remember right there was a whole blog dedicated to the set) and a ton of haters.  For me I'm probably in the hates column, mainly because along with 87 Topps, 90 Score, and 89 Donruss this is one of the most used sets for filler for repacks.  The only endearing part of the set was the Provision inserts that were randomly included in wax packs.  But I remember it being super easy to scan packs for inserts since the base stock was white, the cards were yellow and the provision cards were black.  

Anyway,  Robin actually has two variations in the set.  It's subtle and neither card is worth more than the other.  I've included both cards here for the post.  See if you can spot the variation..take your time.

Did you find it?  Yeah the tip of the bat is cut off in the lower version.  I'm assuming this is just a relic of multiple printings this set went through.  It's not a variation that's often listed and I would never have know about it had someone not tried to sell it as special on eBay.  If you have a bunch of Robin's 91 Fleers laying around flip though them and there's a good chance you have both variations. I did manage to get the variation in the checklist over at Tradingcarddatabase.com


That being said the overall design is pretty par for the course for Fleer.  Fleer wasn't know for it's bold designs.  This does mark the first year that Fleer added a photo to the back.  I'm not sure why Fleer only started Robin's stats in 1977 seems like there's room for a few more years on the back.

1990 Score Superstars

Year: 1990

Card Manufacturer: Score

Set: Superstars Box Set

Card Number: 92

Card Type: Base

This cards came as part of a 100 card box set.  Much like the update sets put out by Topps, Fleer, and Score.  There are some great stars in the checklist and since this was 1990 this set was majorly overproduced and is still relatively cheap to pick up and so are singles.  This is a pretty typical Score card design from the era.  

Apparently Score didn't hire fact checkers, or they just didn't care.  The back of the card features a nice large head shot of Robin and a small write up.  Too bad Robin was not the starting shortstop for Angels at 18. At least they have him on the right team for this set.