Return of Card of the Week

1998 Leaf Fractal Materials #13
Jose Cruz Jr.
Materials: Wood and Cardstock

 
The Player:

Jose Cruz Jr. had a solid career.  He put up one stellar season in 2001 when he was with Toronto.  He posted an OPS of .857, stole 32 bases and got caught only 5 times, and hit 34 HRs and 38 doubles.  He also had one outstanding defense year winning a Gold Glove in 2003 with the Giants as a result of 18 assists and stellar play in Right Field.



The Card:

In 1998 Leaf created several parallels to their normal set, the most notable were Fractal Foundations, which was a refractor, and Fractal Materials.  Now each of the Fractal Materials parallels could be die cut to add another level of paralleling, but what interested me more than the cut was the four different materials used in this set: Nylon, Leather, Plastic, and Wood.  This particular card is one of the wood parallels.  Basically, the image is printed on wood and then the piece of wood is glued to cardstock so the back of the card appears normal besides the stamp indicating the run of the card.  Of the non-cut cards, I believe the wood cards had the shortest run.  It was a set definitely up my alley.  In the coming weeks I'll post cards with the other three materials from this set.  If anyone has any other wood cards from this set that they are willing to trade let me know!

Rain Out Theater: Clear Cut Card of the Week

2007 Topps Sterling #68 Framed White Suede

David Wright

Materials: Suede + Foil + Cardstock

The Card: I always find one thing especially difficult when buying cards from COMC.com, figuring out from the picture and description exactly what I am going to get. I took a bit of a chance on this one. Clearly from the card label as "Framed White Suede" I thought this would be an ideal addition to my collection of cards made of alternate materials. At the same time I have been fooled before by nice looking pictures and misleading labels. I took the risk since the print run was low and the 1/1 cherrywood cards from Sterling (which I am sure I will never get my hands on) were clearly made of cherrywood. Fortunately for me, this purchase had a happy ending as the card really is made of suede and so looks and feels great! The only think I enjoy more than cards of alternate materials are cards of players I collect made from alternate materials.

The Suede: So this is white suede with foil on the front of the card mounted on very thick card stock. The suede layer itself is no more than a few millimeters thick, about the thickness of a normal base card, but the card itself is a couple centimeters thick. The back is a matte finish cardstock.

Suede itself is sort of the opposite of normal leather, made from the inside of the animal hide rather than the exterior side and as a result relatively delicate rather than tough like traditional leather. Whereas leather is tanned with the addition of a chemical and/or heat, suede is produced by manually raising, or napping, fibers from the surface of the animal hide to give suede its characteristic napped appearance. While I am not sure of the natural color of suede, which I am sure does vary, I am reasonably sure that one must bleach the animal hide to get it to be this white.*

All in all, it is a nice card of Wright who I still think will end up having a great 2010.

Anyone know if 2008 Sterling "base" cards are actually made of black suede as well? If so, if anyone has any Mets for trade from that set let me know.

*Got my background information on Suede here

Card of the Week: John Maine Game Used + Autograph

2008 Ballpark Collection
John Main #SA-86

Construction: Cardstock, Game Used Jersey, Sticker Autograph

The Player:
As I mentioned at the bottom of an earlier post I have good reason to like John Maine. Actually, I forgot to write there that Maine also helped me win the first year of my current NL Only Fantasy League (2010 will be the league's fourth year). While I do not have him in this year's league, and he is on an opponent's roster, for the Mets' sake I hope he has another great year. This is no big news, but he an Ollie Perez will go a long way to determining how good the Mets are this year. I'll be rooting hard for both guys, but it is a bit easier to root for Maine who came up big down the stretch in 2007 by almost firing a no-hitter and has been inconsistent only because of injury problems rather than wildness. The nice thing about Maine is that his cards are inexpensive and yet he appears in some of the nicer sets, so it makes good looking cards like this one easy to add to my collection.

The Card: Now while I do believe that this is a sticker auto, it is way nicer than some of those silver foil ones from Topps. In fact, this sticker is barely noticeable unless one holds it up to the light at just the right angle. I think this type of sticker auto is not overly bad, especially since the card design has a specific spot for it. It just does not bother me and seems to fit well with the card design. While the jersey piece is a solid white, Maine's photo and the general layout of the card make up for the lack of a stripe. Needless to say I am a fan, though I bought it as a single rather than having this as my hit in an expensive purchase of UD Ballpark Collection, so maybe I am a bit biased.

Card of the Day: Anderson Hernandez Printing Plate

2006 Upper Deck Artifacts #88
Anderson Hernandez
Materials: Aluminum and Magenta Ink

The Card:

Now most Met fans never had serious offensive hopes for Anderson Hernandez, but I have to admit I always thought his hitting for average in the minors might translate to a better-than-Rey-Ordonez hitter. He has shown flashes of offensive competency in the majors, but at this point I don't think anyone believes he has enough skills with the bat to be more than a backup.

On the other hand, his skills with the glove were never in doubt. Too bad those skills led to injury in what was probably his best shot at winning the starting second base job and a significant piece of the Mets.

When this card was made there was still hope, at least in my mind, that Hernandez might be the next starting second baseman for the Mets. That was a simpler time, before the much maligned Luis Castillo came to New York and got an even more maligned four year deal.

Interestingly enough, Hernandez ended up back on the Mets last season playing SS in the absence of Jose Reyes and will likely remain with the Mets as a bench player or a minor leaguer waiting for an injury this season.

The Aluminum:

Aluminum is such a versatile material used so often in manufacturing industry. Who knew it would eventually be a part of the card collecting industry? It certainly is though, and since the printing plates are 1/1 issues they are quite valuable even when the player is a backup like Anderson Hernandez (though there are always deals to be had). There are actually five printing plates of each card, but only one in each color: magenta, cyan, yellow, and black.

For some additional information on elemental aluminum check out this site.

Some of the information on printing plates was obtained from this cool blog entry.

PS: Want a reason to actually root for or against a team in spring training? Check out the following contest over at The Great Orioles Autograph Project.

PPS: If anyone has a normal base card version of this printing plate up for trade, please let me know!

Card of Day #1

Todd Hundley E-X2000 1997 #85
Construction: Cardstock frame with blue sky style translucent plastic window


So why in a blog entitled "Clear Cut Cards" do I choose a card that is not really clear at all as my first choice?

Well, for one eX was one of the first brands that I became aware of as using non paper based materials well in card construction and I was hooked right away. Unfortunately, I did not have the means to purchase packs at the time, so I stuck to a few reasonably price singles such as this one. Happily, several of eX's subsequent releases continued to up the ante when it came to using plastic as the card's base.

Another reason is because Hundley, definitely my favorite Met of his era, worked in New York during the most productive part of his career while being from the Chicagoland area and I find myself in the opposite situation: being from New York while working in the Chicagoland area. So, I guess part of the reason for this selection is in way of an introduction. Hi!

Oh, here is the back of the card. You can tell that the card certainly has its flaws (missing thumb and cut off brim to the helmet), but it is interesting!

I hope to be updating the list of cards I have in the coming weeks. I decided to start with my Piazza collection, probably the largest of any player I own.