Over the last month or so I’ve spent a good amount of time locating all of my Roger Clemens cards, sorting them, cataloging them on Trading Card Database, and then placing them in my binders.

The process has been tedious but fun. When I started this process I had an estimated 1,400 unique Clemens cards, which feels like good amount, but by the time I had most of the base, parallels and insert cards entered into My Collection on the site, I was sitting just under 10% of his entire run, which is like an artificial threshold that I felt like I wanted surpass sooner rather than later.

While I paged through the site and tallied what I had it became inherently obvious that a good chunk of the Clemens cards cataloged on the site were from 2007 and 2008 Topps Moments and Milestones, and from 1999 and 2000 Topps Tek.

Topps Tek has a certain following — and sometimes those base cards especially the early ones — can be tough to locate and quite pricey when they are found. While I intend to obtain some or all of those at some point, the Topps Moments and Milestones cards I felt might be a good place to mark off a good chunk of my checklist for relatively cheap.

For the record, I hate this set. I hated it when it was released, I hated it when I used to run into them while checking bargain boxes, and I hated it when I started this cataloging process. The only love I have felt is when I acquired 75 of the damn cards recently and started checking them off my checklist. My completion percentage seemingly rose by more than half a percentage point.

The reason I disliked the Topps release so much was because I felt like the company took the idea it implemented in 1999 with the Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire Home Run Record Cards and bastardized that cool idea over the next few years with Barry Bonds HR cards in 2002, and then those Mickey Mantle and Alex Rodriguez Home Run cards in subsequent years. And then in 2007 (and 2008) the company went all in on this idea of creating one card per any given stat hoping that player collectors would flock toward them.

I’ll merely speak for myself here, but I HATED the idea. So I stayed away. Hell, in the 12 years since the initial release I had managed to obtain just one card from the 2007 set — and it was a printing plate that I scored for under $20 like five years ago.

I’m sure there are people who loved the product, or others who feel like I do. But this one was just not for me. That said, I am looking for more Clemens cards from this set. If anyone has them available, I am seeking the base /150 and looking to pay about a quarter per card on the ones. I’d also trade for them as long as you’re not expecting Mike Trout or any hot players in return. I hate that I am soliciting for the cards, but this is the life of a player collector. I mean I don’t HAVE to have them … but I kind of do, if you know what I mean.

This entry was posted on January 25, 2019 at 8:36 am and is filed under Collcting Clemens with tags baseball, baseball cards, Player Collector, Roger Clemens, Topps, Topps Moments & Milestones. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.