It’s hard to believe that it’s March already. And this piece is two months late… Between Topps and Panini releasing products right down to the wire, chasing down cards, and chasing down answers, it took me longer than expected to get this the way I wanted it. 2014 brought us the first cards, first autographs, and first memorabilia from the first Mets player to win the Rookie of the Year award in 30 years. It also brought us the last autograph card from the first person ever to wear a Mets uniform.
With all of the cards released across dozens of products in 2014, it can be hard to figure out what is worth collecting and what might as well be forgotten. What makes something essential? It’s a mix of collectibility, notability, and attainability. Popular brands/inserts and autograph debuts will dominate here, not big money low-numbered parallels or big stars. Just about everything mentioned here should still be fairly easy to find on the secondary market at reasonable prices.
Now in the second year of the post-black era, the Mets memorabilia offerings in 2014 were a bit more colorful than they’ve been in the past. Color has been hard to find recently, but new blue and orange jerseys and a renewed focus on pinstripes at home helped to turn things around. It was looking like a great year for memorabilia until the black came back courtesy of Panini. The plague of “event-worn” memorabilia has now spread to baseball.
With all of the cards released across dozens of products in 2014, it can be hard to figure out what is worth collecting and what might as well be forgotten. What makes something essential? It’s a mix of collectibility, notability, and attainability. Popular brands/inserts and player debuts will dominate here, not big money low-numbered parallels or big stars. Just about everything mentioned here should still be fairly easy to find on the secondary market at reasonable prices.
2014 continued the Mets prospect autograph explosion that started in late 2013, but that fizzled out late in the year. While that meant lots of autographs for many top Mets prospects who had previously been overlooked, it was bad news for the Mets’ 2014 draft class, which is still waiting for its first autograph card from Topps.
Part of the Donruss legacy from the Playoff years was innovation and diversity in memorabilia. To date though, Panini has been a bit inconsistent in its memorabilia releases. This fall, Panini brought the Immaculate Collection brand to baseball and brought with it some of what made Playoff/Donruss great. It also brought some of what has become controversial in the hobby and, until now, has been largely unseen in baseball products.
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Gypsy Queen just isn’t my kind of product. I’ve never been a fan of tobacco style products, though I can understand the appeal considering the popularity of that era among hardcore collectors. At least you can get proper toploaders and binder pages for the tobacco size minis, unlike most of the other minis that are plaguing the industry. And yet, even though I have no interest in building a set of these, I always find myself with at least the Mets autographs and relics plus a base team set. There’s just something about the distinct simplicity that makes Gypsy Queen stand out.
The formula for a Queen Design is pretty simple. Take some earth tones, add some fancy frame squiggles, and slap a big Gypsy Queen logo on it. This year’s version is similar to the 2012 design, which is a bit of an improvement over last year’s overly busy look. I’m not a fan of the heavy use of filters to give the photographs a vintage painting look. It’s not as bad as whatever went wrong with this year’s Turkey Red, but it looks less “vintage artwork” than “Hey look at this cool Photoshop filter I found!” to me.
Overall, 8 cards is a bit below average for a 350-card set, but the split between base and short prints is even more off. Only five Mets made the 300-card base set: Rookies Wilmer Flores and Travis d’Arnaud, Daniel Murphy, and newcomers Curtis Granderson and Bartolo Colon. Three Mets are among the 50 short prints: Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, and David Wright. While it is strange to see all of the stars missing from the base set and loaded into the short prints, it’s another absence that is most notable – retired players. Gypsy Queen is loaded with retired stars, more than 50 in total, but none of them are Mets. This is the first year without Tom Seaver in the base set, though you could just make your own by cutting out a 2014 Gypsy Queen frame and slapping the Seaver picture they use every year into it. If you were hoping for a full set of identical-photo Seaver Gypsy Queen cards, that’s the only way you’ll get it.
100 of the 300 full-sized base cards have blue (numbered to 499) and white (retail exclusive) framed parallels. Flores, d’Arnaud, and Granderson made the list here. These are always some of the nicest cards in Gypsy Queen and they’re common enough to be easy to obtain. On the mini side, all 350 mini cards have a full range of parallels including black (numbered to 199), red (numbered to 99), and sepia (numbered to 50). Despite the low numbering, many of these carry little or no premium.
Two inserts is actually pretty good for Gypsy Queen. Seaver shows up here, though I’m not liking the sepia treatment of the overly filtered photos. These would probably look more vintage without the filtering. At least it’s not the usual Gypsy Queen Seaver photo.
Matt Harvey and David Wright have all of the photo variants this time around. The full-sized cards get reverse negative variants (with different photos from the base cards to begin with…) and the minis get the usual photo variants that end up being far more common than the regular versions.
2014 continues the decline of Mets base relics in Gypsy Queen. After having four in 2012 and three in 2013, we’re left with just two this year, one full-size and one mini. And neither features a photograph that comes close to matching the material. Wheeler’s shows him in home pinstripes, but the material is from last year’s orange Los Mets jersey. Gee’s material is from his home white jersey, but the photo shows him in, um, black? Gee hasn’t worn a black jersey in a game since 2011, making the photo more than two years old. Apparently getting material from last year is easier than getting photos from the last two years… The Gee also has patch variants numbered to 10 and 5. Matt Harvey is the lone Met in the jumbo patch relics (numbered to 50 or less), though most of these do not feature patches as the name implies.
On the other hand, this year’s Gypsy Queen doubles the total number of Mets Gypsy Queen autographs that have been made. The first three years of Gypsy Queen gave us autographs from Angel Pagan, Jon Niese, R.A. Dickey, Jeurys Familia, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis. 2014 Gypsy Queen features the first certified autograph card from Jeremy Hefner, RC autographs from Travis d’Arnaud and Wilmer Flores, and autographs from David Wright and Zack Wheeler. Interestingly, the RC logo is on the d’Arnaud and Flores autographs after being absent on rookie autographs in previous years, proving that nobody has any clue what a Rookie Card is these days. Parallels include red (numbered to 49), gold (numbered to 25), green (numbered to 10), and purple (numbered to 1). Wright and Wheeler also have mini autographs (numbered to 10) and autographed relics (numbered to 25).
Mixed bag. On the one hand, the autograph checklist would be good for just about any product and there are a reasonable number of easily obtainable parallels and variants to chase. On the other, the lack of retired players in the base checklist (even just another Seaver with the infinitely-recycled photo) and relics that are little more than filler (the orange Wheeler jersey has gotten a lot of use so far this year…) leave considerable room for improvement. ‘Unbalanced’ might be the best word to use to describe this year’s Gypsy Queen from a Mets perspective.
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