Chipping Away At The '93 Upper Deck Set

I've been working on putting together the '93 Upper Deck set slowly but surely; there has been a stack of them growing for the past couple of months as I neglected to sort them, take them off my needs list, and put them in order with the others. Most of them came form small team lots on Listia. Anyway, here are the ones I've accrued recently:

1. Tim Salmon Star Rookie
34. Kirby Puckett Community Heroes
40. Dave Winfield Community Heroes

 Speaking of Winfield, I wrote a piece on his first major league game about a week ago on the occasion of its 40th anniversary. Mr. Winfield somehow found out about it and was kind enough to tweet out the link and post it on Facebook. That was pretty cool to me.

42. Joe Carter/ Roberto Alomar
43. Paul Molitor/ Pat Listach/ Robin Yount

50. Kent Hrbek/ Kirby Puckett
60. Wilfredo Cordero
76. Kevin Brown
99. Mark Portugal

 Ah, now we're starting to get into what makes '93 Upper Deck the greatest set ever: the photography. Where else are you going to see a guy wearing aviators, sucking on a lollipop, and signing a glove? Nowhere. I wish I had a double of this to send Dime Box Nick. That's something I find myself saying over and over again while looking at these cards. I hope he has most of them already. If not, I'm sure I'll get dubs of some of them at some point.

102. B.J. Surhoff
105. Frank Thomas CL
112. Bip Roberts
114. Craig Biggio

I left both of these on my needs list because I could use copies for their player collections as well.

125. Roberto Alomar
138. Ken Hill
139. Ozzie Guillen

142. Delino DeShields
144. Larry Walker
147. Chris Sabo
158. Derek Bell
171. Doug Jones

 Younger readers might be unfamiliar with the object Doug Jones is holding up to his face. That's a camcorder. It's what people used to use to record video with back when phones were things that stayed attached to walls.

177. John Jaha
178. Luis Polonia
183. Eric Anthony

192. Darryl Hamilton
199. Ron Karkovice
207. Charlie Hough

 Like that! That's what phones were like back then. Also, it's interesting to see a team wearing a throwback hat with a current jersey.

219. Gary Carter
223. Joe Carter

226. Jose Rijo
231. Steve Finley
232. Dennis Martinez

 Pitcher batting alert! Pitcher eating an apple alert!

234. Joe Oliver
235. Chad Curtis
241. Dean Palmer
245. Barry Larkin
254. Chuck Knoblauch
256. Jeff Bagwell
263. Robin Ventura

 Nice shot of should-be Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell signing for a fan. That Ventura card made my day, though. Why? Look who's congratulating him as he's coming into the dugout.

272. Carlton Fisk
280. Lance Johnson
286. Brian Williams
294. Casey Candaele

 It seems like all of the Astros got great photos, at least on one side and usually on both.

305. Ken Caminiti
313. Kevin Tapani
333. Paul Molitor
344. John Olerud
348. Mark Gardner
352. Roberto Hernandez
358. Jimmy Key
362. Alex Fernandez
368. Tim Belcher
369. Steve Sax
370. Gary Gaetti

377. Damion Easley
399. Mark Guthrie
400. Dave Martinez
487. Dennis Eckersley AL MVP

 Am I the only one who saw that picture of Dave Martinez and immediately thought of Chris Denorfia? In fairness, Deno has actually been making the catch most of the times he dives these days.

489. Dennis Eckersley AL CY
656. Julio Franco
749. Todd Burns

I got about a dozen doubles from this stack, bringing me up to 41. I'll try to post those soon so anybody who's also building this set or just needs any of the cards can claim them. There are a few with awesome photography that are definitely Nick's unless he already has them.

Also, I got 127 Joey Cora cards in the mail earlier this week, some of which I didn't have copies of yet, so I need to post at least some of the White Sox and Mariners ones here since I'm going to do a post about his Padres cards over at Gaslamp Ball. I've been neglecting this blog for way too long and I'll try to start correcting that...