Friday, February 25, 2011
Bryan Holaday 2010 Donruss Elite Extra Edition National Promo # 50 limited to 499
The National is an annual Sports Collectors Convention that is a massive show for sports memorabilia fanatics. This year, they gave out special packs of Donruss Elite cards (containing 2 cards each) featuring 50 different athletes from several sports. Bryan Holaday, the amazing catcher/clubhouse leader for the 2010 TCU Horned Frog team that made their first ever College World Series Appearance, was selected for card #50.
Who has the most cards? (And also kind of a FAQ)
So, one of the goals of the TCU Sportscard Archive is to give a nice catalog of all of the cards featuring former Horned Frogs. In doing this, it's also fun to compare which players have the most cards.
Now, I'll be honest... I have not taken the time to start the full catalog database (text) listing for two of the biggest alumni: LaDainian Tomlinson and Kurt Thomas. Now, I'm about 99% certain that LT runs away with the total... 10 years of cards of a major star in today's card market... well... he's got a bazillion. Kurt Thomas, at my current count, has 381.
This, of course, brings up the question: How do you come up with your totals? Well, I'll tell you. But first, it requires a little card history lesson.
Cards can trace their earliest versions back to the 19th century when somebody realized that people wanted some sort of souvenir of these newly formed athletic clubs (particularly baseball). Eventually, tobacco companies discovered that putting cards featuring individual players (as well as other stuff) increased interest... eventually because kids bugged their dads to buy a certain brand of tobacco to get cards. Eventually, tobacco companies stopped and candy companies started the same trick. Then it kind of went away for awhile but saw a resurgence after WWII.
Up until the early 50's, there was very little organization to the hobby and while there were often several different companies producing cards, there wasn't a whole lot of effort in design. But when it started to become an industry in and of itself, to started to see more organized sets from familiar names like Philadelphia, Fleer, Bowman, and Topps. Topps eventually outmaneuvered the competition and basically had a monopoly for quite awhile. Then in the late 70's and early 80's, Fleer and Leaf/Donruss managed to get the blockade broken and brought about serious competition. By the end of the 80's, Score and Upper Deck became names in the hobby as well and football became as popular as baseball in the hobby and then the floodgates opened and basketball, hockey, and pretty much any other sport you could think of started having collections of cards. The competition for market share caused companies to come up with more and more extravagant card sets. Eventually, the hobby ceased being for kids collecting cards of their favorite players and almost completely driven by speculators treating cards (especially rookie cards) as investment portfolios. Once this happened, the hobby was in some ways doomed.
Like the comic book world and Beanie Babies, the market collapsed. Combined with the ridiculous number of cards being produced and the advent of eBay, which opened up the "had to rely on local shops and guys who traveled around to big shows to get cards" atmosphere. Instead of having to rely on buying packs and hoping to get the card you wanted, it moved towards dealers buying the packs and then selling the singles to direct interest customers anywhere in the world.
Now, that leads us to the discussion about what constitutes an individual card. Up until the early 90's, most card companies would put out 1 card of each player. Just a basic card. Perhaps, if there was a special event to record, a special extra card would be made, detailing a highlight. There were also checklists and team cards, often combined, that might "feature" a player, but in reality was more about a team. So, you could, on average, assume that each player might have 3-5 cards per year if they were a "non-star" (the hobby term is "common") and perhaps 5-10 cards if they were a star. Basically, you had a very good chance (if you bought enough packs) of getting all of the cards of your favorite player, regardless of whether that player was Nolan Ryan or Scott Bankhead. Cards were mostly produced in the same numbers (although the infamous Topps '52 High Numbers Set is a pain) and you had fairly even odds of getting the cards in packs. Sure, if the set had 792 cards in it, that might require numerous 12 card packs to get the cards you wanted, but since the packs were usually fairly cheap (.25-.50), it allowed for kids to get a pack or two as they scrounged up change. In no time, you could be buried in wood paneled '87 Topps cards.
But then, things got ugly. Companies weren't content to just produce a bunch of cards that had largely the same supply even if the demand for some of them was higher. They figured out they concept of "chase" cards and "parallels." Chase cards were strategically limited supplies, often their own subsets, which were produced in less quantities and weren't even guaranteed to be in every pack. Or you had to buy a specific KIND of pack. You could buy 10 packs and maybe get three cards from the limited series, which meant that you were probably going to buy even MORE packs than normal trying to get that one super special card. Likewise, parallels were basically just "special" versions of the regular cards. Topps pretty much started this around '91 when they introduced cards that were trimmed in a shiny metallic gold color. So, you could have your regular (boring) Kirby Puckett, which previously would have been all you got, but now, you could hunt for the rarer gold trimmed Kirby Puckett. This doubled the number of cards hobby fanatics went after without doubling the number of cards produced.
Now, despite nearly destroying the industry with this nonsense during the 90's, the card manufacturers (that are still in business) have gone into complete and total overkill with the Chase and Parallel cards. Now, one card can be given any number of variations of border color, reflective coatings, and production run numbers stamped onto the card to basically take the exact same image and make 5 or 10 "unique" cards.
For this collection, I'm counting each "unique" card as a different card. So, when Jerry Hughes has, say, 6 Topps Chrome cards where 5 are reflectives with different borders and 3 of those are serial numbered, that counts as 6 cards. Make sense? Yeah, just go look at the albums and you'll figure it out. After being out of the card game for about 17 years and then starting this project, it took me months just to figure out all of the terminology. I'll do a future post that just breaks down the variation terms, as well as the notable card companies to be involved over the last 60 or so years. Trust me... that gets incredibly confusing.
Now there's one other bit that I need to cover. What constitutes a "card"? Well, since this is my project, I'm largely using my own rules. For this catalog, a card is pretty much anything that is of a cardboard or think paper consistency that features a player from a sport. Beyond that I don't get too picky. Cards will vary in size, some will be not so much trading cards as promotional items, but they will all fit the profile of being a "card." Basically, think of a postcard that comes in different sizes. Two exceptions off the top of my head are stamps and stickers. Topps used to do annual sticker sets with their cards and some companies gave away collectible stamps of athletes. Since they are similar to the card concept of featuring a player in an easy to collect form, I'm including them as well.
Sheesh... I hadn't intended on writing so much. Really, I just meant to post some card totals. So, without further ado, here's some stats followed by the list of cards that I know exist as of 2-12-11.
Right now, my ROUGH count is a total of 3,316 total cards. That breaks down to:
Football 1770 (note that this is very low because of the lack of a full LT list)
Baseball 1029
Basketball 492
Golf 18
Racing 6
Tennis 1
So, as far as individual players go, LT (not verified) is most likely the top dog. Kurt Thomas comes in second with 381 cards. Who do you think might be 3rd? Sam Baugh? Bob Lilly? Greg Townsend? Nope... the current 3rd place holder is Jerry Hughes with 165. That's right, Jerry Hughes in one year, thanks to the ludicrous way the card companies operate, has exceeded the LIFETIME totals of Bob Lilly (!43 currently) and Sam Baugh (136). Kind of silly, huh? The scary thing is that Hughes doesn't even have cards in some of the special insert series that other players have. Tim Tebow is probably close to 300 cards at this point.
Anyway, here's the breakdown. I've put it in numerical order, highest to lowest, for anybody I've found a card for so far. There are probably others, particularly former baseball players who have minor league cards I'm unaware of at present, that I hope to add to the archive database. If you know of somebody I've missed, be sure to let me know.
LaDainian Tomlinson A Bazillion
Kurt Thomas 381
Jerry Hughes 165
Bob Lilly 143
Sammy Baugh 136
Greg Townsend 108
Cory Rodgers 103
Andrew Cashner 102
Kenneth Davis 96
Aaron Schobel 95
Jake Arrieta 89
Kyle Clifton 83
Daryl Washington 81
Lee Nailon 76
Jeff Zimmerman 72
Freddie Benavides 66
Larry Brown 66
Jason Tucker 61
Lance Broadway 57
German Duran 49
Tracy Simien 44
Aaron Brown 43
LaTarence Dunbar 43
Jeff Newman 40
Glenn Dishman 34
Tim Mauser 34
Kyle Winkler 33
Adrian Madise 30
Chad Huffman 26
Jimmy Oliver 25
Matt Schobel 24
Jim Busby 20
Matthew Purke 20
John Briscoe 19
Sam Demel 19
Reggie Smith 19
Chris Eddy 18
Seth Garrison 18
George Layne 17
Royce Huffman 16
Reid Ryan 16
Lyle Blackwood 16
Mark Hamilton 15
Bryan Holaday 15
Randy Jackson 15
John Booty 15
Robert Pollard 15
Matt Curry 14
Andrew Walker 14
Phillip Epps 14
Mike Renfro 14
Brad Furnish 13
Derrick Cullors 13
Kerry Knox 12
Levi Robinson 12
Carl Warwick 12
Basil Mitchell 12
James "Tex" Carleton 11
Sherrill Headrick 10
Paul Gonzalez 9
Brian Ohnoutka 9
Norm Bulaich 9
Cedric James 9
LaMarcus McDonald 9
Jason Phillips 9
Ryan Tucker 9
JJ Henry (Golf) 9
Greg Holle 8
Norm Evans 8
Guy Moriss 8
Scott Atchison 7
Johnny Cardenas 7
Tim Grieve 7
Bernie Walker 7
Don Floyd 7
Robert Lyles 7
Jack Spikes 7
Clay Caruthers 6
Pete Donohue 6
Tommy Hardgrove 6
Scott Malone 6
Mitchell Benson 6
Reggie Hunt 6
Falanda Newton 6
Jim Shofner 6
Marvin White 6
Trey Brooks 5
Matt Carpenter 5
Jeff McCurry 5
Ryan Ridenour 5
Ray Rhodes 5
Malcolm Johnson 5
Charles Coody (Golf) 5
Larry Foyt (Racing) 5
Brent Allar 4
Jake Duncan 4
Matt Howe 4
Walter Olmstead 4
Brian Bonner 4
David Hawthorne 4
Fred Washington 4
Eugene Kennedy 4
Mike Jones 4
Eugene "Geno" Espineli 3
Brian Veilleux 3
Andy Dalton 3
Jason Goss 3
Davey O'Brien 3
Darrell Patterson 3
Casey Printers 3
Joe Robb 3
Barret Robbins 3
Stan Talley 3
Shannon Coulter 2
Toby Dollar 2
Justin Hatcher 2
Bryan Kervin 2
Terry Trofholz 2
Flint Wallace 2
Bert Coan 2
Linzy Cole 2
Roosevelt Collins 2
Keith Flowers 2
Lenoy Jones 2
Kent Nix 2
Bobby Plummer 2
Sandora Irvin 2
Angela Stanford (Golf) 2
Don Massengale (Golf) 2
Don Bodenhamer 1
Clayton Jerome 1
Keith Conlon 1
Chance Corgan 1
Kyle Dahlberg 1
Louis Drucke 1
Ryan Dunn 1
Chris Ellington 1
Ron Jackson 1
Greg Moore 1
Stuart Musslewhite 1
Warren Oliver 1
Mike Ramsey 1
Jeffrey Shaddix 1
Will Skelton 1
Matt Vern 1
Ki Aldrich 1
Bruce Alford Sr 1
Morris Bailey 1
Gil Bartosh 1
Lindy Berry 1
Tommy Joe Crutcher 1
Charles Davis "Charlie" 1
Darrell Davis 1
Zarnell Fitch 1
Curtis Fuller 1
Sonny Gibbs 1
Cody McCarty 1
Daniel Ray McKown 1
Cliff Patton 1
J.P. Stout "Pete" 1
Jim Swink 1
Stanley Washington 1
Richard Woodley 1
Shawn Worthen 1
David Pate (Tennis) 1
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