Dispersing The Hoard #2 - Common Ingredients

Before I start breaking down each box, each year, and each set contained within, I thought I'd present the big name players that keep showing up in quantity across the board, and the level of star power, insert and rookie content, and occasional serial numbered stuff that appears in the average batch.

Now not every single group from every product is going to have the same number of cards in general, nor are all of them going to be composed of just stars, inserts, and rookies.  I have integrated my existing dupes into the first few years (2000 - 2004) of this "collection", so there are some pockets of commons mixed in.  But the typical philosophy of the new stuff is to grab the stars, inserts and at least hot rookies from the boxes or packs that were opened.

So for those that are star player collectors during the 2000s, you'll want to see if your guy is here (and he probably is in at least some of this stuff) and send me your want list.  I would say that the majority of the star cards are regular base cards usually in multiples, plus some inserts here and there, so please limit your lists to that.  Ask Gavin from BBCard Breakdown - I sent him about 100 Pedro Martinez cards (and still have a decent number left available).

Team collectors who are missing a lot of the stars and rookies from various sets will be interested too.  Link me your list site and I can fill 'em out for you.

And later, in successive posts, I'll be breaking down each year into which products are available, and then showing what kind of selection there is in most of the significant stacks.  I'll give approximate counts, but I'm trying to avoid exactly counting six entire monster boxes and listing every name of every card in a whole row or more at one time. I'm just trying to generate trades, not become an unpaid data entry clerk.

So here are the major names I keep seeing in all this stuff:

Ken Griffey, Jr.
Greg Maddux - probably the most common pitcher.  Glavine & Smoltz tag along often too.
Randy Johnson

Roger Clemens - he probably has the most total cards of all the big stars except maybe Vlad.
Chipper Jones
Vladimir Guerrero - there are a lot of rookie Vladdy's in his initial year.

Frank Thomas
Manny Ramirez
Pedro Martinez - depleted compared to the rest, but still a bunch in there.

Rickey Henderson in his last couple years of journeyman status.  I think he switches from active player to join the ranks of the all-time greats somewhere around 2004 or so.

One guy that was done before the 2003 season, but can be found in the earlier years - Tony Gwynn.

Jason Giambi
Barry Zito

And I'm sure I will want to append this list later, with guys like Craig Biggio, Lance Berkman, Alfonso Soriano, Edgar Martinez, Jim Thome, Mike Mussina, Larry Walker, Tim Raines, and Mike Piazza.  So ask me about them too.

So now let's look at a couple batches of particular sets.

This is 2002 Fleer Focus.  It's a small stack, but you can see it breaks down into base stars, rookies, and inserts.  There are dupes of each kind.  Can't help you with commons, but here's a nice selection of the good stuff.

And here is a bigger batch of 2000 Skybox.  Again, nothing but stars, rookie prospects, inserts, and in this case, a few parallels too.

Looking closer, there are the same names in the base - mostly Hall Of Famers.  And a couple red parallels.

Tons of prospects.  Some nice names in there too.  Lugo, Wells, Gagne, and duplicates as well.

 Star inserts, some more plentiful than others.  A few dupes to spread around.

Here you can see a couple parallel prospects and an insert, plus a parallel insert that I missed in Gavin's batch.  (Sorry dude).

And finally, these are from 2002 Best Of Donruss Fan Club, which I've determined is a complete parallel set to a separate product.  I'll do a complete tour of this batch later, but I just wanted to show the rookie and star card serial numbered inserts.  This is one of the largest lots of s/n cards in the batch.  If there was a more complete starter of the base set (or someone has one to trade me) I'd build these myself, just because they are there. But they probably make better trade bait since this would still most likely prove to be a "list camper" for a long time.

I hope this has once again whetted your appetite for trade bait.  Stay tuned for the breakdowns of the first half row of the first box - cards from 2000.