On Not, or Kind of, Collecting Jackie Robinson

 

I have one undeniable card collecting truth.

            I will never own a Jackie Robinson card from his playing days.

            Okay, this isn’t set in stone.

            And it’s not undeniable.

            But it’s pretty damned close.

            I found myself perusing ComC the other day, as many of you might be doing right now, or after you read this post. I was doing what card collectors do: I was buying cards. My Henry Aaron post inspired me to actually begin building up my Aaron collection. I found a 1972 Topps Aaron, whose card condition I could live with. While on ComC I decided, for shits and giggles, to take a look at Jackie Robinson cards.

            That was a quick trip.

            For the record, whenever I’m on ComC I choose two filters. I choose “ungraded” and “buy now.” I don’t have any issues with people who choose to get cards graded. It’s just not my style. Nor am I a fan of “gambling” so I tend to want to buy my cards outright. I shouldn’t call buying cards on auction or bidding as being gambling. A lot of collectors get cards they want affordably by doing that. I tend to have a real Charlie Brown view of my life, and don’t view winning in most cases as being an option.

With Jackie Robinson cards from his playing days, it really didn’t matter how I filtered. Graded/ungraded. Buy now/auction. I wasn’t going to be able to afford one anyway. That ship has essentially sailed. The stuff I could remotely afford, even I wouldn’t want to buy the card in that condition.

And my standards aren’t too high.

A Clemente is a Clemente.

            And a pipe dream is a pipe dream, right?

            Still…

            I suppose I should answer as to why I’d want Jackie Robinson cards in my collection. Or maybe the question is, why wouldn’t a collector want Jackie Robinson cards in their collection? Jackie Robinson is baseball history personified. His statistics, historical documents of the times. His cards of that era, the same. This isn’t anything a baseball fan or a card collector doesn’t already know. Jackie Robinson is a cultural hero. He’s a hero to baseball as well. The sport retired his damned number! In a sport full of Ruths, Gehrigs, Aarons, Mays, and Clemente, Jackie Robinson still stands heads and shoulders above them all.

            Okay, maybe Babe Ruth is debatable.

            And I can’t afford his cards either.

            All the same because of his stature and talent, it be cool to have cards from Jackie Robinson’s playing days in my collection.

            But it’s not going to happen.

            It’s undeniable.

            At least right now it is.

            Maybe I’ll start playing the lottery today.

            If I want Jackie Robinson cards in my collection, I have to rely on cards like the one above.

            Or this.

            One of only two Project 2020 cards that I bought.

            I’ve said, more times than you want to read, how much I like post-career playing cards for players. I love seeing players like Henry Aaron, Jackie Robinson, or Roberto Clemente in the designs from my youth. I also enjoy seeing today’s young stars like Vlady Jr. or Yordan Alvarez on design from before their time. Their great in sets like Heritage and even more so in sets like Archives, that blend the past and present together on a number of designs.

            I even like seeing the old timers in Stadium Club.

            Like American Badass Eddie Murray.

            But I don’t collect a lot of post-playing day cards for old timers.

            I do with a few.

            Mainly Clemente, Willie Stargell and Henry Aaron.

            I won’t be adding this Will Clark card to my collection.

            Will Clark already had a 1987 Topps card.

            I do collect Jackie Robinson post-playing day cards, however. Or, if I don’t collect them, I at least keep all of the ones that I get as inserts in packs or in boxes, or I keep the doubles from sets like Stadium Club or Archives. The answer is obvious as to why. These cards are the closest I’m going to get to actual Jackie Robinson cards.

            And, yes, I do this for Babe Ruth too.

            But this isn’t a blog post about him.

            Admittedly my collection of Jackie Robinson cards is a modest one.

    

            My latest Jackie

            Yep, that’s almost everything.

            I even have some ephemera from when Jackie’s number was retired by Major League baseball.

            I forgot there was a reprint of Jackie’s 1948 Leaf card inside.

            I guess I own me a Jackie Robinson “rookie” card.

            July 12, 1997. That was when the Pirates officially retired Jackie Robinson’s number 42 in a pre-game ceremony in front of 44,000 fans. I didn’t attend this game, though I attended a good many in 1997. My old man did and figured maybe the items would be in good hands with me. I’ve held on to them for twenty-five years. The game was wild too. Francisco Cordova and Ricardo Rincon threw a 10-inning no hitter against the Astros, and won on a home run by Mark Smith.

            The 1997 Pittsburgh Pirates were dubbed “The Freak Show.”

            They almost won the division with a 79-83 record.

            1997 was the first season that I really got back into Pirates baseball after they broke my heart in the 1992 NLCS.

            I’d spent from 1993-1997 pre-occupied with college and women.

            I was probably having women troubles on July 12, 1997, if memory serves me correctly.

            But this isn’t a blog post about that either.

            Living in Brooklyn, there’s a lot Dodgers history still around. You can visit the one remaining wall to Ebbets Field at the Ebbets Field apartments. A number of homes that players owned are still around. One owned by Duke Snider is in the actual neighborhood where I live. The Mets jack Brooklyn Dodgers history whenever they can. And Jackie Robinson, himself, is buried in the Cypress Hills cemetery, here in Brooklyn. A long, long way from Pasedina.

            So, there is that aura that still surrounds him here in New York City.

            During the initial quarantine stretch of the never-ending pandemic, when baseball was supposed to be happening, but wasn’t happening, I comforted myself by reading a number of books on baseball and biographies on baseball players. One such book was Arnold Rampersad’s excellent biography on Jackie Robinson.

            Not only does Rampersad do an excellent job of showing what Jackie Robinson went through breaking into the Major Leagues as the first player of color, the book does a fine job of detailing Robinson’s post-playing life as well. Jackie spent more years as an executive for Chock Full O Nuts than he ever did with the Dodgers, and he had contact and connections with everyone from Dwight Eisenhower to Malcolm X.

            The Rampersad book pushed me deeper into Jackie territory and was the catalyst for me beginning to pull his cards from my insert boxes, and to put them in a proper player place in my PC. If it is undeniable that I’ll never own a true card from Jackie Robinson’s playing days, then it is almost certain that the Topps Company has put an over-abundance of Jackie Robinson post-career cards out into the collecting world. Archive cards. Stadium Club cards. Base Set Short Prints.

            Even Panini has gotten into the act.

            I don't often buy Panini products, but when I do it's Diamond Kings.

            It’s true we don’t know what Topps is going to do going forward since they were acquired by Fanatics after the licensing debacle of last year. I guess as collectors we can assume Topps base product will still exist. But what of the others? Over the previous weekend I was listening to John Newman’s Sports Card Nation. His guest for that show was Joey “Dub Mentality” Shiver.

            It was a good show.

John asked Dub what his hopes were for Topps going forward after the acquisition by Fanatics. Dub was pretty impartial and willing to give Fanatics and honest shot. But he said one thing that stuck with me. And that was his hope that Fanatics would pay attention to the Topps legacy. Now, I guess this can mean whatever you want it to mean. That Topps continues to put creative ideas into the base cards. That they come up with something new and exciting for collectors that still feels very Topps. For me, I hope that Topps/Fanatics keeps some legacy products going. I hope Heritage stays. I hope Archives stays too.

And keep those cool inserts coming.

My Jackie Robinson collection can only grow from there.

2022 Topps Series 1:

            Despite all of my talk about quality vs quantity, it was inevitable that I was going to buy a box of 2022 Series 1 Topps base cards. I’m glad I did.  I actually bought it from this place.

            I was a pretty big fan of the MLB Flagship store when it opened in summer of 2020. Of course, in summer of 2020 I was a fan of anywhere that I was actually able to get out of my neighborhood and go to.  The MLB Flagship store was pretty egalitarian at the beginning. You could find merchandise for every single Major League Baseball team. That has, sadly, since changed, and the store caters more to the New York/L.A./Chicago/Philly/St. Louis brands.

            But they do have a Topps section that sells cards at retail prices.

            So I bought this.

            First off, I’m a big fan of the 2022 base design.

It might be my favorite base design since I got back into collecting in 2019. The borders are crisp. The photos are sharp. You can actually read the player’s names this year.  I love the team color lacing as well, and how it makes the photos really stand out.  Just top-notch base work.

As for the bells and whistles, or what others like to call the inserts.

This showed up.

These two showed up in the same pack.

I’ve never pulled an auto in a Hobby box. I was waiting for my requisite game-used fabric patch card, but the Mr. Ryan showed up. That said, I’m not an auto collector. If retail boxes came out the same day as hobby boxes I’d buy them instead. I’m in it for the fun in opening and enjoying base.  With the Ryan, and even the Tatis Jr., well, I don’t sell cards, so I’m probably going to see if I can trade with someone. The problem with that is, I tend to want vintage. Clemente. Aaron. That kind of stuff. So I’ll probably be holding on to the Ryan and Tatis for a while.

These inserts get my vote for least essential cards of the year.

Overall it was a fun rip

Thanks for reading! Happy Collecting!

Speaking of the "Freak Show" the folks over at SABR have a fine little article about that July 12, 1997 game which you can read right HERE.

You can listen to the episode of Sports Card Nation with Dub Mentality right HERE

I actually found myself on a Podcast. I was on episode 190 of About the Cards. Thanks to Ben and Stephan for having me on! You can listen to that HERE.

NEXT FRIDAY: We're going back in time. I'm going to be talking about youth. Young love. Labor

disagreements. We're going back to 1994 Topps, baby!