Card of the Week: Fractal Materials Part III - Leather

1998 Fractal Materials #94
Edgardo Alfonzo
Materials: Leather and Cardstock

The Player:  For those of you that have followed my blog or my collecting interests, you probably already know Alfonzo is my all-time favorite player (that is why I have all these cards).  So what is there to say about him that I haven't already said?  Well since this is a leather card I thought it would make sense to talk about Fonzie's prowess with the glove.  Alfonzo played four positions during his 12 years in the big leagues.  He spent 889 games at second base, 549 at third base, 34 at shortstop, and 2 at first base.  Fielding is notoriously difficult to capture in a statistic, so I'll talk about his statistics in relation to the league averages.  His fielding percentage was incredibly consistent: while playing several positions he always kept his fielding percentage above the league average.  This shows how well he made the plays on balls he was able to get to.  His range seems to have been less stellar and slightly below average with the exceptions of 1996, 1997, and 2002 (his last year with the Mets) when his range was above the league average.  It seems, then, that he was a consistency-over-range player who had several years of very good defensive play over his career.

However, it was good enough to earn him a spot on one of my favorite Sports Illustrated covers ever (which is also depicted as a mural on one of the walls in Citi Field's new Mets Hall of Fame).

The Card:  The leather cards from the Fractal Materials parallel set were numbered to 1000 and again have the image printed on a textured leather card front with a normal cardstock back.  It is a bit thinner than the wood or nylon cards and I have to admit that it is not obviously leather.  The front could easily be confused with a 2007 Turkey Red Card front because of the similar textures.

The Material: Leather is sort of a sibling to the previously discussed suede. Leather is made from an animal "[h]ide or skin with its original fibrous structure more or less intact, tanned to be imputrescible. The hair or wool may, or may not, have been removed. It is also made from a hide or skin that has been split into layers or segmented either before or after tanning."  Now, I have no idea whether this card is made from real leather or some sort of imitation leather.  I do know that this card contains no hair or wool.  If you are interested in learning more about leather and the differences between real and imitation leather check out this site, from which I got the above quotation.

Card of the Week: Fractal Materials Part II

1998 Leaf Fractal Materials #50
Moises Alou
Materials: Nylon and Cardstock

The Player:
Moises Alou, son of Felipe who both played and managed, batted .303 with an on-base percentage of .369 and an OPS of .885 in 17 years in the majors, about 15 of which he played in most of the games.  Alou had probably his best year in 1998 by batting .312 and hitting 38 HRs driving in 124 and scoring 104 runs himself.  He even stole 11 bases that year, only getting caught 3 times!  He got MVP votes in seven different seasons.

He also did well well for the Mets when healthy, but injuries prevented him from contributing as much as he or Mets fans would have liked.


The Card: As mentioned in my previous post on this subset nylon was one of four alternate materials used by leaf in their Fractal Materials parallel of their anniversary set.  Nylon was the second least common material with cards being numbered to 500 rather than 250 as with the wood one.  Again, the image on the front is printed directly on the nylon which is glued to a traditional cardstock back.


The Material: "Nylon is a polymer obtained by the condensation of diamines with bicarboxylic organic acids, or from omega-amino acids. In more specific terms, it is a polyamide, i.e. one of a class of polymers whose molecular chains are formed by regularly spaced -CONH- amide groups.

The story of the birth of nylon is inevitably intermingled with the duPont de Nemours family and the E. I. DuPont de Nemours Company and its inventor, Wallace Hume Carothers. "



The story starts during the Reign of Terror portion of the French revolution and involves an inventor who would commit suicide in Philadelphia in 1937 before the patents for nylon were granted.  There are actually two stories about nylon's development, and if you are interested I would suggest you visit: http://www.caimateriali.org/index.php?id=32 which is where I got the quote above.

Congratulations Rangers

Thanks in large part to this man, who was involved in four of the six Rangers runs in the clinching game, I will now definitely have a rooting interest and reason to watch the World Series.  If the Giants can beat the Phillies, it should be really fun.

I actually just picked up this card the other day at my local card shop.  I have always liked the way Ginter does relics: a combination of plastic, card stock (I think), and the game used material which is wood in this case.

Thanks again Vlad!  With the way you rebounded this year, you could actually make it to 500 HR with over 2500 hits, and I think those are Hall of Fame numbers.

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 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!

Weekend Bonus Card of the Day: An Ambitious Start

2007 Upper Deck Elements #111

Jose Reyes

Materials: Acetate (PETG)

The Card:

So when Upper Deck came out with a set called "Elements" I was already excited by what eX had been doing and looked forward to getting my hands on some cards from the set.

As you can see in the scan, if you look closely, the card is translucent and made completely of the acetate (you can barely see the white rectangle containing the statistics on the back of the card through Reyes' torso).

I actually just purchased my first several of these cards at the end of the 2009 Baseball season, and I am pleased with them. I was quite happy to obtain this Jose Reyes gem along with some other nice ones.

Elements was an interesting set as you can see from this press release, which was the best information I could find on the set: http://sports.upperdeck.com/news/article.aspx?aid=2643. Each player had three different cards: one in acetate, one in foil board (which is textured), and one in light fx (which seems like a smother foil card). Each had its own distinct picture on the front.

I have to say, though, that the acetate cards were the most special of the bunch. I have all three versions of Johan Santana and while the foil board and light fx are nice, to me they do not appear much different from many of the traditional inserts. Though, they are all base cards. The acetate base cards are some of the nicer alternate material cards in my collection; however, I think Upper Deck could have made more use of the transparency of the acetate than they did in the design of the cards.

The Acetate:

Chemical Name - Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol

(aka PETG)

Brand Name - Vivak

Description - "VIVAK is a transparent thermoplastic sheet. In the point of purchase industry, VIVAK is the brand and market leader for all clear plastics. Among its advantages, VIVAK offers superior impact strength over acrylic and cost effectiveness compared to polycarbonate. VIVAK offers deep draws, complex die-cuts and precise molded-in details without sacrificing structural integrity. It die-cuts and punches easily and can be bonded or fastened with adhesives, ultrasonic welding or rivets. In addition, VIVAK is easily decorated by painting, silk screening or hot stamping. Easy to fabricate, form, bond and decorate, VIVAK is well suited for a variety of point of purchase and sign applications.

Applications: Typical applications include video tape shelves, greeting card displays, revolving merchandise racks, indoor signs, point of purchase displays, menu displays, photo frames and slat wall inventory displays."*

* This information along with additional technical information on PETG can be found in the following pdf file: http://www.plasticsintl.com/datasheets/PETG.pdf

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.