Let's Play, What Is This From?

I have had this card in my collection for a bit over a year before researching where the relic could have came from.

I have looked up countless throwback and alternate jerseys to find it's origin.

At first I thought it might be a holdover from a Team USA World Baseball Classic jersey since I knew they used a bunch of patches from that jersey for 2017 Museum.

Nope! Blue Letters on back

Maybe the 4th of July 2017 uniform Topps used

Nope!!! Again blue letters on back

How about any of the Negro League uniforms?  Oh wait, none of them have nameplates on the back.

Then I realized this jersey is actually from 2016.  It is the nameplate from the 4th of July jerseys worn in St. Louis.

Above you can see the red letters on the back of the Josh Harrison jersey which match the layout of this jersey perfectly.

Topps has used an image from the game for their cards in the past.

All week long I will show off some cards as we celebrate America!

National Sunglasses Day

June 27th was National Sunglasses Day. Details can be found here.

2013 Topps released a photo variant subset of top players wearing sunglasses.  Some of the names included were Prince Fielder, Felix Hernandez, Yu Darvish, Bryce Harper, Tim Lincecum, Mike Trout, Adam Jones, and Justin Upton.

 To celebrate National Sunglasses Day here is a card of Cutch wearing sunglasses.

Some More Gypsy Queen Parallels

I joined a player break for six cases of 2019 Gypsy Queen.  In addition to a very large stack of base, I also got a Logo Swap and a short print autograph (which I will show off later in the year).

Below are some of my other Gypsy Queen parallels for Cutch's base card I have accumulated thus far.

Logo Swap, Green Retail, Base

The Green Retail was purchased on eBay for $2 delivered.

Trying to keep up...

I haven't updated my spreadsheet in almost 9 months.  During that time there has been so many high end releases to finish out 2018 along with a small sample of cards for 2019.  It is a goal of mine to eventually get caught up and I am hoping that maybe around July I will have a fully functioning checklist of all the cards in my collection.

Another item I have been trying to keep up with is Cutch 1/1s equal to homeruns he had with that team.

Here is how the homerun tracker breaks down
PreMLB debut 43
Pirates 203
Giants 15
Yankees 5
Phillies 10

He also hit a HR in the 2015 All-Star Game

Here is another one of my 1/1 cards of Cutch so far as a Phillie.

This is the 2019 Big League Baseball Blank Back Topps Vault 1/1

My First Twitter Purchase

I have only been on Twitter for one week and have already made a super sweet purchase AND received it in hand.

This Twitter thing might work out nicely.

Above is a 1/1 Jumbo Bat Nameplate of Cutch from 2019 Topps Museum.  In terms of hits of Cutch in that product, this is THE grail to own for Phillies cards thus far.

This is only my second bat barrel nameplate of Cutch I own.

Thanks to @Gravytrain61 for selling it to me.

I will be running a contest next week to announce my Twitter arrival.

Be sure to follow me @CollectingCutch

Series 2 Player Break Results

I participated in another pick your player group break.  This time it was 2 cases of Series 2 Topps Flagship.

I got a few cool cards in the break.

The best was this photo variant of Cutch fielding.

These aren't nearly as rare as they used to be in year's past unless you hit a SSP rookie.  Then they are rare AND expensive.  Look up the Vlad Jr for proof of that statement.
I got 22 base cards (nice number!) and one foil parallel.

The back of the base card doesn't have any fun facts about Andrew like in the past.  Instead it just shows the first half of his hopefully Hall of Fame career.

With his limited 2019 season, he now sits at 48.8 career WAR through just over 10 seasons.

I didn't get any base 1984 Silver Pack parallels, but did score this black numbered to 199.

Bowl of Serial: Little Bull Friend

Today I will do a spin on my Serial History where I look at the serial numbers and look at how they compare to current members of the Phillies based on the serial number of the card

The card I chose is a 2019 Gypsy Queen black and white parallel.


The serial number 37/50 can be found on the back.

Odubel Herrera wears number 37.  He is nicknamed El Torito, the Little Bull.  He got himself into some trouble with an alleged domestic violence case around Memorial Day.  Since the incedint he hasn't played.

Hector Neris wears number 50.  He is called Happy Hector or Compa H (compa is Spanish for friend).  He started out sharing closer responsibilities at the begining of the year, but has since solidified himself as the relief ace of the Phillies and closer of the team.

Super Cameo

Meh, you know it's just another 1/1 I have had sitting around waiting to show off.

This may look familar

Last year I showed off my first (and only) Superfractor autograph of Cutch.  It isn't on card and features him in a Giants uniform.

For those on Twitter you may have seen ONE of my recent 1/1 pickups.

I grabbed the unsigned version as well.

Here they are side by side.

After a decade of ignoring Twitter I have finally joined. You can view me @CollectingCutch

This latest pickup brings me to 13 Superfractors of the former MVP.

This Day In Cutchstory: 1st HomeRun

Topps Tribute has lost a lot of it's luster as a super high end set over the years in part because more and better high end sets have been released over the years.

2015 Topps Tribute had some issues upon initial release due to lots of autographs bubbling and smearing.  It even lead to a recall of the merchandise.

With all that being said there were some pretty cool relics and the design for 2015 in general was very nice looking.

When I saw that Topps was releasing a set of cards using baseballs from games with milestone moments, I knew I wanted to snag of the very limited cards produced honoring Cutch's 1st career MLB homerun.

The MLB Authentication shows HZ274399

Which shows that it was a swatch removed from ball LH224482

10 years ago today Cutch hit his first career homer off Twins ace Francisco Liriano.

Happy Father's Day

Last year I wrote a story about why my dad is my hero and how he is the greatest role model to me.  I also showed off some Andrew McCutchen related Father's Day Cards too.  Go check out those cards as Cutch was a frequent athlete used for Panini's Father's Day release each year.

Last year after a brief hiatus of not being used for Panini's annual release, Cutch was back.  He represented the San Francisco baseball club and proudly wore his Cross armband as he so often does.

Proverbs 20:7
The righteous man walks in his integrity; His children are blessed after him.

I chose to use this verse to help get me back on track with Scripture Sundays.

3 out of 4 ain't bad

A few days ago I showed a trio of 1/1 printing plates from the 2012 Archives Cloth Sticker insert.  While sorting through my 99 printing plates I realized I had a few other partial rainbows that I have never shown off before. 

I only have one true complete printing plate rainbow where I have all 4 plates used to create the card.  I also 4 sets where I have 3 of the plates. 

I showed the cloth sticker trio plates here.

And waaaaaay back when I showed another trio of Allen & Ginter plates when I was missing Mandy Moore "like candy" as part of my Save Second Base event.

Here are the other two sets I am trying to complete.
2016 Bowman Chrome missing black plate
2015 Topps League Leaders missing black plate

The Irony Of It All

Andrew McCutchen will be going in for surgery today. Prayers for a speedy recovery so that he may recover and be ready for next year's Opening Day.

Lots of players with torn ACL have been making headlines lately.

Alex Morgan scored 5 goals for women's Team USA versus Thailand in the World Cup.  The US Women's team completely dismantled Thailand in a 13-0 routing.  Morgan, the team's most famous player had torn her ACL several years ago.

Golden State Warriors superstars Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson both suffered injuries in games 5 and 6 of the NBA Finals. Both are expected to miss most of the 2019-20 season.  Durant confirmed he has a torn ACL.

Mike Moustakas hit a game winning homerun for the Brewers in the 14th inning versus the Astros a few days ago.  He is having a career season this year with 21 homers already and 2.4 WAR.  He had missed most of the 2016 season with a torn ACL and has had his best seasons of his career since returning.

Despite missing the past week and half, Cutch is still in second place for National League in walks.  It's doubtful he will finish in the top 10 with missing four months of the season, but that just shows how good his eye and plate discipline was prior to the injury and likely that won't change after he returns from the injury.

I received this 2019 Topps Top of the Class insert in the mail yesterday and since it is graduation weekend for most of the schools in my area, it makes sense to show off this card.

The back reveals a rather ironic name in a fact about how good Cutch has been at the top of a batting lineup since his 2009 debut.

Ian Kinsler is the only active person to score more runs than Cutch since his debut.

Of course Ian Kinsler is the player who intentionally dropped Jean Segura's pop up so that the Padres could start a double play which lead to Cutch tearing his ACL.

The Topps of the Class is a rather neat looking set if they were all horizontal like this McCutchen card.  Most of the cards I have seen from the set are vertical though and are not nearly as good looking. 

The Mystery of Dirty Dishes?

The past few days I have been organizing my card collection and it has been a daunting task.  While going through the collection I have found things about the cards I never noticed before.

Take these three printing plates for example.

At first glance they appear to be just three more 1 of 1 printing plates for the collection, but if you look closer you can tell that these plates didn't fully dry prior to being cut up and grouped together.

Now the back of magenta and black plates both show signs of a wet press of cyan ink.  The cyan plate clearly shows signs of a black plate with wet ink on it.

In addition to that there is a clear 001 that appears to the right of Andrew's face on the cyan plate.

I adjusted the color so it can be more visible.

The same numbering appears on the back of the magenta plate in stamped black ink when flipped upside down.

More mystery surrounds these plates when looking at the top right corner of the black plate where there is clearly a banner for First Base.

The black plate in general appears to have finger prints on it.

The magenta plate shows a lot of streaks on the front.

There appears to be some mystery surrounding how these plates were stacked after printing was complete to make the finalized 2012 Archives Cloth Sticker

As you can see from the image above, Cutch's face got the same treatment as that "other guy" on Frank Thomas' 1990 Topps card.  His face appears to have been airbrushed.

A Hero Answers The Call

June 12th is National Superman Day

When I think about superheroes wearing capes, I immediately think of the DC Comics characters.  Heroes such as Batman, Superman, the Spectre, Shazam!, and many more of the Justice League/Justice Society wear capes.

However, when Stan Lee was cocreating the Marvel universe he used the idea of that and flipped it upside down. Stan wanted his villains to wear the capes to rival what DC had created.  So when characters like Loki, Magneto, and Doctor Doom were being created Stan was insisting they wear capes.  Stan's Marvel Heroes didn't wear capes except Thor. 

I have always been more of a Marvel fan than DC Comics fan, but when I think of caped characters it is the heroes that stand out.  Batman, Superman, and Spawn immediately come to mind before anyone else.

Heroes wear capes...

Back of this National Treasures 1/1 card discusses Cutch's heroic act on May 29th when he wore a cape to save the city of Pittsburgh from a loss against the Snakes.

Complete recap of the walkoff can be seen in the video below.

Cutch would strut into home with a lil extra swagger

With that HR he joined Hall of Famers Willie Stargell and Ralph Kiner as the only Pirates to have 6 walk off homers in their careers.

The More You Know: Double Ear Flaps?

Do you see what Andrew is wearing in this 1/1 Uncirculated Glossy Auto?

The helmet he is sporting as a teenager playing for the Gulf Coast League Pirates has double ear flaps.

Currently, the only player I can think of that wears the double ear flaps is Jed Lowrie who enjoyed an All-Star season last year for the Oakland Athletics.

I decided to research some cards on COMC to see if I can see a trend of when the general players association stopped wearing double ear flaps.

The A's don't keep players for very long, but I thought I could use Rickey Henderson and his many stints with the A's as a foundation.

1984 Topps Highlights of the 83 season

Still only 1 flap...

1981 stickers. Still only 1 flap...
Ok, maybe we need to go back further?

What happened to most players wearing the double ear flap helmets?  I remember I had no choice but to wear the double ear flaps when I was playing in little league during the 80s and 90s.

That makes sense because while researching this, I learned that minor league players are REQUIRED to wear double ear flaps.

In 1983 it became mandatory for major league players to wear at least one ear flap unless they were grandfathered in prior to that mandate.  When Tim Raines retired in the 2003 season he became the last player to not wear ear flaps on his batting helmet.

Did you know that double ear flaps are required for all players in the minors and college ranks, but not required at the major league level?

Who likes buttons? BUTTON SHOW OFF POST

Who likes buttons?

I do.

I currently have 10 button cards of Cutch and scanned them in two lots.

5 are designed vertically

And 5 are designed horizontally

Sorry for the upside down scan of Marte dual button.  I didn't notice it until I had already begun this post.

The button cards range in rarity to /6 to 1/1s.

Here they are all individually.