I haven’t added any cards to my Mike Schmidt collection, which I’ve been growing and holding on to since the early 80’s. Most of the cards I got were newer. The only two career-era cards I picked up were the 1987 Donruss base to go with the ’87 Highlight card I think I pack pulled in ’87 and the 1987 Fleer “Baseball’s Game Winners” card. The one serial numbered card I picked up is a 2005 Donruss Classics “Membership” out of 1000. The lot also had a couple nice early ’00’s Upper Deck cards, but I’m really excited about the Topps additions to the collection. The 2011 Archives that breaks out the rookie triple shot card with Ron Cey and the other guy into a single ’73 style look and the 1985 35th anniversary subset Schmidt with that awesome maroon & grey design looks great as a newly(ish) printed card. The shining star of the lot, though, has to be the 2011 Gallery refractor. I’ve got a bunch of Gallery digital cards in Bunt, but the physical card is a nice, crisp, thick card.
These cards showed up at such a great time. I qualify for a COVID vaccine here in Massachusetts as a phase-2 qualifer. And the last two days my fiancee’ and I have been refreshing the sign-up page like we’re trying to hit the Spring Training ticket lottery. So being able to relieve that stress by just tearing up my Phillies PC binder and completely reorganizing & resleeving my Schmittys is exactly what the doctor ordered for today.
Nice lot! I always liked that Upper Deck set – might try to pick some more down the road.
When I got back into collecting I initially shied away from retirement-era cards, but these UD cards are turning me around on them.