Collect the Mets

Jerseys, autographs, no-nos, and boxes overflowing with cards, oh my!

I’m sitting here with about half a dozen pieces about 90% finished, so of course I skip over all of those and crank out another mailbag feature! It’s been a big month or so in the hobby with new releases every week, so here’s an update on the important issues facing Mets collectors.

Tilly wrote:

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Don’t get too excited about the Matt Harvey jersey cards in Pro Debut, they aren’t from the Mets jersey Topps obtained in Spring Training. Remember last year’s Bowman Chrome Draft Picks & Prospects, which featured Futures Game jersey cards for Matt Harvey and Jefry Marte? Only the primary color of those three-color jerseys made it into the cards back then, so what happened to the rest? The good news is that you can now get all three colors for both Harvey and Marte in 2012 Pro Debut; the bad news is still no Mets jerseys for either of them. For Harvey, it’s clearly only a matter of time.

Segota wrote:

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Things have turned around a bit from last month in the Mets representation department. Archives and Pro Debut each featured eight players in their respective small base sets, plus several more in insert and parallel sets. Topps Series 2 increased the diversity of Mets featured in the insert sets, though most of them were still either retired players (Seaver, Ryan, Carter, Strawberry, and Gooden), former Mets (Pagan), or David Wright; the only others were Museum Collection holdovers Dillon Gee and Ike Davis, plus a few Jose Reyes 1/1 letter patches. While the base set situation seems to have sorted itself out and the inserts are getting there (some game-used from new players would be welcome…), the lone remaining area of concern is prospect autographs. Between Bowman and Pro Debut, two sets that focus heavily on prospects, only Jordany Valdespin and Brandon Nimmo have been featured on autograph cards. Adding in Panini’s “2011” products from this year gives you Chris Schwinden (playing for [insert team here] this week) and a few more 2011 draft picks. That leaves a huge gap between the 2011 draft class and the Buffalo-to-Flushing shuttle, or basically all the hope for success in 2014. While a lot of them had autographs last year, guys like Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, Matt den Dekker, Jeurys Familia, Jefry Marte, Wilmer Flores, etc. are no-shows (no-signs?) so far this year; heck, Matt Harvey still hasn’t signed his cards from 2011 Bowman Platinum! I had to go to a game to get an autograph from Jefry Marte (many thanks, Jefry!) and that’s not practical for a lot of fans.

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Don’t expect much of a hobby reaction to Johan’s no-hitter. Between the lead time to produce cards, two perfect games so far this season, and Santana losing a bit of his luster with a couple of sub-par starts following the no-no and being outshined by a more dominant but imperfect R.A. Dickey, there’s not much hope for a big celebration of the Mets’ first no-hitter in this year’s products. If you want something to commemorate the occasion and don’t want to spend big bucks on reproduction tickets or whatever else the team is selling, I would recommend The7Line’s HI57ORY shirt.

SWLVguy wrote:

I might have a few of these….got any doubles of decent 90+ Gary Carters?

Oh, you have no idea… And, frankly, neither do I. I likely have a lot of base cards from Topps and Upper Deck, but I wouldn’t know where to even start looking. Too many old cards around here… I could always use some help thinning out the collection a bit, but even charities that give out cards to kids don’t want stuff as old as my excess commons. Anyone willing to give some old cards a good home?