Topps #1 Club: 2004 Heritage Jim Thome (and a short print)

The Phillies recently posted their 2016 Wall of Fame ballot, Right at the top of the list is Slugger Jim Thome.

We are going to use this opportunity to extend our tour of #1 cards to include Topps Heritage.

 
2004 Topps Heritage #1b Jim Thome (sp)

In 2004 Topps put Jim Thome on card #1 in both flagship AND their heritage set. At the time Thome was coming off of his first season with the Phillies, a year in which he had led the NL in Home Runs with 47.  Not sure if it was a factor getting Thome on the #1 card but there was also a lot of buzz around Phillies as the team opened Citizen's Bank Ballpark in 2004 as well.

Near as I can tell the #1 Heritage Thome Card has no connection with the subject of the original 1955T card which was Dusty Rhodes.

1955 Topps #1 Dusty Rhodes (image swiped from Baseball Card Database)

Rhodes earned the top spot by hitting a pair of Home Runs and collecting 7 RBI while helping the New York Giants to win the World Series over the Cleveland Indians. Amazingly Dusty Rhodes didn't start a game in the 1954 Series and only played in 3 games, with 7 total plate appearances. But he made them count - one of the Homers was a Walk off in Game one. In game 2 he had a game tying hit in the 5th inning followed by a lead extending Homer later in the game. Those three hits all came off of future Hall of Famers (Bob Lemon G1, Early Wynn G2)

2004 Heritage #1

2004 Topps Heritage #1 Jim Thome (sp, b-side)

Returning to Jim Thome we post the back of his card and you can clearly see the #1 in the top left. We also have a minor connection to the Dusty Rhodes card - the cartoon/trivia Q on the Thome card does happen to reference Dusty's team, the Giants.

Short Print

2004 Topps Heritage #1b Jim Thome (sp)
2004 Topps Heritage #1 Jim Thome (base)

If you have been paying attention you will have noticed that the card we are discussing is a short print. The SP is the top card above with Thome shown holding the bat. The common #1 card is the latter of the pair with and action shot of Thome holding the bag at first. The Facsimile auto is moved a tad to better match the inset shot, other than that the Base and SP are identical.

2nd Flip

2004 Topps Heritage #1b Jim Thome (sp, b-side)
2004 Topps Heritage #1 Jim Thome (base, b-side)

And one final flip just to demonstrate the two cards have matching backs.  This is 2004 and Topps is in the pre-serial code era, that small print above the stats doesn't clue us in to which card is a base and which is a shorty. I pulled the two cards within a string of 3 packs or I may noticed myself.

Sources and Links
#1 Club
Jim Thome Player Collection
Baseball Card Database
Phillies
Baseball-ref

Player Collection Index: Jim Thome

This is an Index of our postings related to Jim Thome

2004 Topps Heritage #1b Jim Thome (SP - Batting)

2003 Donruss Studio #165 (Wall of Fame Induction) 

2004 Topps #1 (2018 HOF Candidate)

2004 Heritage #1b

 

2005 06 14 - Index to Posts related to Career HR #400

 

2008 UD X Xponential #X2-JT (500th HR 2007 09 16)  

2008 SP Authentic

2009 Heritage Hi Number

2011 Phungo Cards

2011 Topps Heritage New Age Performers #NAP-2 (2011 Heritage Hobby Box Break)

2012 Topps Heritage #296 (1963 Topps: 2012 Topps Value Box Break)

Cards that never were - 1955 Topps Richie Ashburn

I wanted to put up a quick post to direct your attention to Bob Lemke's Blog where he creates custom cards.

His latest project is Phillies Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn and the 1955 Topps Card that never existed. In 1955 Bowman and Topps were both fighting over the rights to produce cards of different players. Bowman had the rights to Ashburn in 1955 so there was no Topps Card.

Bob Lemke has remedied this situation. And has done very well - Giving careful attention to many minute details.

Bob goes into great detail as to the process involved in creating the card. It is an interesting read regardless if your a Phils fan or not and I am glad that Bob was good enough to share the card.

2004 Topps Heritage Faux Blaster - 1955 Topps Returns

The Phungo Faux Blaster is basically $20 worth of cards out of a single product or in a certain theme. Today we are examining 2004 Topps Heritage.

04 Heritage looks back at 1955 Topps, the first of the Topps Sets to feature Landscape/Horizontal cards. Here is one other link dedicated to 1955 Topps.

I picked up Five packs of the 04 Heritage at a show last month and opened the first pack over at A Pack to be Named Later. Recently Matt F of Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius has been busy opening a lot of quality 1980's and early 90's wax.

Here is what came out of the remaining 4 packs

Pack 2
304 Rocco Baldelli
1 Jim Thome
160 Carlos Quentin (early card but not a RC)
66 Kyle Davies RC
NPA15 Josh Beckett
67 Tim Salmon
270 Ramon Ortiz
103 Hideo Nomo

The Inserts (click to Enlarge)

Pack 3
86 Ray Durham
325 Alex Gonzalez
212 Darrin Erstad
133 Wes Helms
F10 Flashback Robin Roberts
4/4 Checklist (on some really thick cardboard)
277 Ty Wiggington
178 Shane Reynolds
322 Junior Spivey

Thome Short Print with Thome Base (Click to Enlarge)


Pack 4
353 Brad Lidge (Astros)
372 Eric Karros
189 Braden Looper
392 Jamie Moyer (Mariners)
1 Thome (SP)
76 Placido Polanco
285 Neifi Perez
199 Javier Vazquez

Phillies Past and Present

Pack 5
44 Jimmy Haynes
143 Brad Fullmer
280 Brian Giles
55 Brendan Donnelly
195 Flash Gordon
53 Jose Contreras
215 Randy Johnson
107 Jarrod Washburn

The five packs pretty much came up as promised. The lot didn't contain a "hit", four of the five packs contained either an insert or a short print. As far as I can tell the last pack does not contain an insert. The Short Print I pulled was of Jim Thome and 1 of the three inserts was of Robin Roberts - Very happy on the Phils meter. Pack four was probably the pick of the lot as it contained two Phils including the Thome SP, plus two future Phils who would make up part of the 2008 World Championship pitching staff.

Whenever I pick up packs in bulk from the a dealer at a show, I try and get a then to throw in some sort of a bonus. With the 5 packs of 04 Heritage I also picked up a pack of 2003 Fleer Tradtion which is featured in this post. That pack produced 10 cards the Highlights were a Sammy Sosa insert, Drew Henson SP, and an early Jake Peavy card.

Summarizing the 2004 Topps Heritage Faux Blaster: No big hits a couple of inserts and short prints. Who knows maybe the packs were searched, or I got the end of the Heritage box.

Overall I came away with 50 total cards broken down as follows:

36 2004 Topps Heritage Base Cards
1 Short Print Variation (Thome)
3 Inserts (Robin Roberts, Josh Beckett, Herb Score/Kerry Wood)

7 2003 Fleer Tradition Base Cards
1 Short Print (Drew Henson)
2 Insert (Sosa, Jeter Puzzle Piece )

The Heritage cards included 7 Past, Current or Future Phils of some significance which made the Faux Blaster a success, otherwise I would have considered it mediocre. Regardless, I think I would prefer this Blaster to a Blaster of 90 current topps cards.

1955 Topps

Lets take a look back at some of the other 1955 Topps related cards in the Phungo Collection:
1955 Topps #11 Ferris Fain

Ferris Fain played his first 6 seasons (1947-52) with the Philadelphia Athletics. During his career he posted an On Base Percentage of .424, which ranks 9th all time! Fain was basically a singles hitter (48 career Homers) with a lot of walks and it is doubtful he would have ever gotten consideration for the Hall of Fame. He also only played 9 seasons, one short of Hall of Fame qualification.

2004 is not the only time that Topps has recycled the 1955 design. They have done this as far back as 1975 when Topps had a subset featuring the Topps cards of the Leagues previous MVPs.


I am sure that most of you are also aware that Topps has used the design for a Mantle Subset and included a handful of 1955 style cards in their Fan Favorites Series:


2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites #84 Johnny Podres
2008 Topps Mickey Mantle Home Run History #HHR536 Mickey Mantle
(click to enlarge)