1969 Topps

I think for any player collector the holy grail for the collection is the player's rookie card.  Nowadays that could be anyone of thousands of cards, but collecting players who had there rookie cards in the 60's and 70's that means usually only a handful and of course Topps was king.  Rollie also has a rookie card in the O-Pee-Chee set.  Like a lot of rookie cards from the 60's and 70's Rollie has to share his card with a couple other guys. Rollie is by far the attraction on the card, but lets see what's up with the other two guys.

Bob Floyd played with the Orioles and later with the Royals leaving MLB in 1974, Bob would go on to manage in the minors until 2006. Bob's claim to fame was that he ended up pitching four innings for the Lynn Sailors, allowing only one run even though he'd not played professionally for six years and had never been a pitcher.  

Larry Burchart has the distinction of only playing in the Majors his rookie year. He appeared in 29 games in 1969 and had 26 strike outs.  The Indians sent Larry down Triple A Wichita and after the 1971 season he retired from baseball. 

Rollie's looking pretty good next to these too guys.

Oh and I apologize for the tape in the scan. It's on the top loader not the card don't worry.

2004 Upper Deck Ultimate Collection

Back in the mid 2000's Upper Deck set the bar pretty high with it's high end offerings. Between Sweet Spot and Ultimate, Upper Deck really had the corner covered when it came to higher end baseball cards. But since Upper Deck lost most of it's major licenses it's become a side note, unless your a big hockey fan or enjoy seeing your favorite stars in college uniforms.  

What I like best about this card is that Upper Deck gave Rollie card number 34, his number. However they feature him in a A's uniform, but all the information and stats are from his time with the Brewers.  That's something Topps would do. Actually Topps would feature Rollie in a A's jersey and list him as an A and then put a gigantic piece of a Brewers or Padres uniform on the card.

Still a nice card here though. And even though low serial numbered cards are the norm now, it's nice the base card is limited to just 675 copies. 

2005 Donruss Signature Series

Another set by Donruss in 2005 that featured HOFers and active players and had a crap load of parallels. Besides different color and proof parallels there are a bunch of relic, autograph and relic autograph parallels to chase. Working at Donruss in the early to mid-2000's must have been hell for the checklist guys.

While the overall appearance of the card is nice, it's obvious that the card was designed with the relic and autograph parallels in mind. Why else would Rollie be so off center of the card?

Back in 2005 a hobby box had 4 packs and 5 cards per pack with 7 autos and one relic per box on average. That's also not counting parallel base cards. I have no idea how many parallels you got per pack, but if you think 8 of your cards are hits and I'm sure a few of the 12 other cards in the box were parallels of some sort, that doesn't leave a lot of room for base cards. So putting a set together would have been tough, but since base cards tend to be the least desired cards out of the product like this, that scarcity doesn't really translate to worth. That being said I think I got this card for about 75 cents in my COMC Black Friday shopping spree. And a quarter of that was COMC handling. 

2003 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic

I still love picking up base cards of my favorite players. Even if they are issued well after the player has retired. The early 2000's was littered with issues that featured retired players and Hall of Famers. Donurss Classic, Topps Retired, and of course Sweet Spot Classic. I think the nice part about these sets is that they have a place. Sweet Spot at the time was one of the premium issues. And of course the big draw was the autos and relics in the set, but Upper Deck was always good at putting out a nice base card and 2003 Sweet Spot Classic is no different. A great picture of a young pre-mustache Rollie with nice gold foil accents. Boxes of this still go for over $100 and  this is before Sweet Spot morphed into the one pack per box super premium issue.