1973 Topps Ron Cey Rookie Card

If you bid on a card enough times, eventually one of them arrives at your doorstep.  You bid, you get outbid, you lose interest, you come back, you bid on another, so on and so forth. 



With the Ron Cey/Mike Schmidt rookie card, it was always a matter of time and a matter of saying, this will cost more than a blaster.  In fact, I think it costs more than any other 10 cards I've bought for this set, possibly 20, since I ended up getting good deals on 1973 Topps cards throughout the last two years.  The key is to purchase large lots with stars, which is how I ended up with a couple of really cheap Ryans and other fine stars. 

The downside to purchasing the rookie card of the best third baseman of all time is that I am out of excuses for not finishing my 1973 Topps set this year.  There are no difficult cards stopping me from finishing the set.  No extravagant purchases left.  While there is a Ruth and a Phillies team card with Mike Schmidt from the high numbers, there are no stars to stop me. I have to go to shows, search on eBay and find the last 34 cards to finish the set.

So, by year's end, the set will be completed.  The pages full of cards and images of ballplayers from years gone by.  The album bursting with cardboard, ready to sit next to the other album of 100 year old flag cards will be full and put away, with I satisfied in the knowledge that I've put another set to bed. 

Great Scott!

The pun will only be marginally funny the first time, but by the time we get to 20 or so tries, the pun will be fantastic, I swear. 

Aside from Mike Scott being my favorite modern player growing up, what is great about collecting his cards is the lack of competition for a player with a fairly deep set of cards.  Rare is there a Mike Scott card I want which requires more than one bid over minimum to take down an auction on eBay and whenever I get very serious about expanding my collection, I often have little problem winning what I want.  And what I want is 2005 Topps Pristine Leading Indicators. 

The one you see above is my fourth.  The fifth is already en route and a sixth is likely to be joining this one shortly.  As someone who generally prefers patches to autographs, these cards are really the only Mike Scott relic cards you can buy from his career.  There is also the 2005 Topps Celebrity Threads jersey cards, but one of those is sufficient for my needs.  Every time I am confronted with the opportunity to purchase some of these cards, I instinctively do, like Pavlov's dog responding to the bell.  When I made my first COMC purchase in 2010 of essentially Mike Scott cards, I purchased three of them.  I am strongly preferential to the orange cards and will usually go the extra dollar or two needed to bring one home, but can't say no to a white swatch either.  More importantly, while researching this, I learned there is a refractor version limited to 25.  None of the ones I've purchased to date are numbered to 25 and knowing the existence of this card has given me another card to chase after.



It also allows me to pick up some real oddball pieces as well.  I know very little about the above pins.
 They are small, about 1 inch by 1.5 inches.

• They are small, about 1 inch by 1.5 inches. 
• They are metal with bronze-colored backs. 
• They are pins.
• They have All Star on the front.
• They are supposed to be from 1986.
• The Mike Scott looks like a Fleer card.    

There is scant information available about these pins on the internet.  I was able to find the original auction and nothing else.  They are not like any other cards I've seen and not part of any set I could easily identify.  I had to buy the three pin lot, which left me with two extra pins (Jesse Barfield and Mike Schmidt) that don't exactly fit my collection.  In the unlikely event that you know something about these pins, I would be interested to know more, especially for cataloging purposes in my Mike Scott list.

Otherwise, I am quite pleased with the latest additions to my Mike Scott collection, as the fulfill my favorite card to obtain and my need for more eclectic issues.