Building The '93 Upper Deck Set

I decided a couple (few?) months ago to build the 1993 Upper Deck set from scratch. It really was from scratch because outside of the Padres in the set, I only had a dozen or so others and some of those are part of player collections (Joey Cora, John Kruk, Scott Radinsky, and Tom Henke come to mind) so I'd need to get duplicates of those too.

I have actually never built a set before so this is a new experience for me. As soon as I decided to do this one I started snagging up '93 UD loosies and lots on Listia. The Rickey above was paired up with his '94 Collector's Choice card, which features a near-mirror image of him sliding headfirst on a horizontal card.

Another Listia pickup was an unopened Marlins team set. I promptly freed the cards from their home for the last 20 years and something immediately caught my eye as I began leafing through them.

They're all stamped with a gold "First Season Marlins" gold leaf insignia. I guess they're technically parallels and probably shouldn't be used as legitimate set pieces but I put them in the mix nonetheless. Well, except for one. I had to set this one aside:

That card alone made the purchase worthwhile. The fact that I also got to knock out about 1/28 of the set at the same time was just icing.

Accidentally stumbling unto a Trevor Hoffman rookie-year card was just the beginning of my '93 UD related luck.  Around a month or so ago I commented on a post by Dime Box Nick that featured some '93 UDs. He mentioned how great they are and remarked that somebody should have a blog dedicated to the set. I said something about working on putting the set together and thought nothing more about it. Then a day or so later I got a Facebook message from a reader of his who had some to send my way. I gathered up every Yankees card and all of the Rickey Henderson cards I had and sent them his direction. What I got back far outweighed what I sent.

I didn't know what to expect but I definitely didn't picture what I ended up getting. He sent a huge box and knocked a few hundred cards off my wantlist in one fell swoop. He also included a couple hundred Padres cards, a great deal of which I didn't already have.

Last weekend I finally got around to putting them all in order and weeding out the doubles. I also made a needs list for the set, so if you have any of those I'd be glad to trade for them. I believe I have the majority of Series 2 but am rather lacking as far as Series 1 goes.

I thought about making a set blog but I barely post here so that probably wouldn't have taken off. I'm sure a lot of my posts on here in the future will be set-related, though.

Thursday 33s

There is a grand total of 19 players who have worn 33 for the Friars. Gary Ross was the first, from 1969 through '74. In '75, he was traded for Bobby Valentine, who wore it partially through the next season at which time Tom Griffin took it and kept it through '77. Juan Eichelberger wore 33 on the classic '78 jerseys and through 1980. Nobody wore #33 for the Padres from '81-'89. After this long hiatus, Thomas Howard wore it in 1990 until being traded in April, '92. Gene Harris wore it that season as well and parts of the next two. Bill Kreuger also wore it in '94 and again in '95 along with Glenn Dishman, who wore it the next season too. Terry Burrows had it in '97, followed by Dan Miceli in '98 & '99 and Will Cunnane in 2000. Nobody wore it in '01. Wil Nieves and Mark Sweeney wore it in '02; Sean Burroughs took it in '03 and David Wells got it the next. Burroughs took it back in '05 after Boomer left the first time. Mike Piazza wore 33 in his only season in San Diego. Wells came back in '07 and wore it until he was released; Brett Tomko wore it later in the season. Cult legend Jody Gerut rocked the 33 in '08 & '09 and Clayton Richard has had it since 2010; he had worn 41 in late '09 after he came over in the Peavy trade.