Tis the season for Shyrone Stith cards (the 3rd of 4 COMC posts)

So I showed off a Seneca from Ebay, and then the randomness from COMC and my Rod Smart from COMC.  You can rightfully assume that there were no Seneca Wallaces that I needed on COMC (there never are...*sniff sniff*), so that leaves Quad Jersey pick ups and Shyrone Stith pick ups.

Today I feature the Stiths...and HOLY COW are there a ton of them.  I think I count 22 in all.

So in no particular order...

I love these Crown Die Cut cards now that I am an adult.  As a kid I hated them - it was way too easy to ding them up and "ruin" the card.  But now the alternate shape is pretty neat.  This one is the Dract Picks version /499.

Next is a gorgeous card from eX:

Yes it is semi-translucent, and it is also /1500.  Remember when I used to collect translucent cards and serial #'d cards?  That seems so long ago, but I still do appreciate getting both of those features on a single card.

A graded card...that is not in its shell:

The encased versions were always pricier, and I pull stuff out of cases anyways to binder them, so I decided to just buy this guy already freed.  It is out of /1325, and is a reminder of how nice a limited edition subset can look when done right (even if it does have all those wacky futuristic squares and junk).

A slightly crooked sampling of "Greats of the Game:"

Kind of a weird set name - you're labeling rookies and so-so vets as greats, which is so far from true.  But /1500, a nice looking card, and I love the little write-up on the left about James Stewart being gone and Fred Taylor looking injury prone.  It turned out Taylor shed that label in ensuing years, but I can definitely remember when it seemed like injuries were never gonna led poor Fred live up to his potential.

Here is a card from 2001, a rarity for Stith cards since the bulk (like 90%) are from 2000:

I grabbed the /55 premiere date version of this pretty recently...this is just a parallel /1000.

Omega...

This guy is /500, and looks dangerously similar to a few Private Stock cards you will see below, minus the green tint.

This one is one of my favorites, from Playoff Prestige:

Prestige always makes a pretty nice looking card, and this one is /2500.  I have mentioned before that I also love when they show draft picks on the back - I recognize a few of these names but who the heck is Joey Chustz?

Here is (are) the Private Stock cards I mentioned.  The backs are so much like the Omega, but the stock is...private-r:

/650 numbered on the back, /95 (premiere date) numbered on the front.  Both really nice looking cards - they do feel slightly higher end than your typical Pacific entry (not that that is hard to do lol).

Finally we get some Rookies and stars, a set I always love!

This is a little before they did the jersey cards with all the cutout windows, but I love the /1000 numbering, and I just always have dug that Rookies and Stars logo.  Decent little writeup too.

Here we have a fancy schmancy auto:

This guy is /50, the platinum edition.  The shine on the scanner is weird, but in person this card looks amazing!  I got it pretty cheap for a /50 auto as well, which is never a bad thing!

Here's another card I came to love - the Score Scorecard edition:

This one is just /2000, but I think it looks fantastic, albeit with a weird pic of a football on the back.  Score still does Scorecard cards, and the print runs can get REAL low (like /6, /10, /20) but the prices are always love as well.  I know people hate artificial scarcity, but I really dig some of the looks of these cards so I am always surprised they don't command more of a premium.

Speaking of commanding a premium, here is Stith's base SPX card from 2000, which always tends to be a higher end set:

It is /1350, and oh so golden.  The /25 version has been on Ebay, but the guy wants $9.99 for it, and I don't think it's even worth that much personally.  Maybe I will spring for it eventually though.

Next we have a few Fleer Tradition autos.  These two actually finish off my set, as I recently grabbed the rarest one, which was /50:

Just a great looking card, and you really can't beat an on-card auto like that!

The last auto of the post comes from Sage Hit, and I believe it is the Emerald version:

There is an Emerald, Emerald Die Cut, Diamond, and Diamond Die Cut.  They don't label them, so it is always hard to tell the difference, but I would say this is Emerald based on coloring at least.

Here's a nice little Fleer Focus card to go with the /750 I already have:

This one is the "base" version, /2499.

Then we have the only jersey card of this post...I have been waiting for a patch but this was so cheap and patch-ish that I had to grab it:

The white piece is thicker than your normal piece, so I like to think it came from something patch-y, even though it looks fairly regular.

Here we have a dual with Rondell Mealey of the Packers:

Mealey, like Stith, was a free agency fixture in Madden '04.  He was ranked a bit higher though, likely due to his two career TD's in three seasons with Green Bay (2000-2002).

Last three cards, and the first two are similar.  They are both from the MVP set, a personal favorite of mine as well, with one being the Silver Script edition:

I actually busted a ton of late 90's MVP baseball as a kid, as the nice stock and decent write-ups really appealed to me back then.  It also reminds me of the look of the Major League Lacrosse cards that came out around that time - I would not be surprised if the MLL was inspired by these simple but stunning cards for their inaugural (and really only ever) set.

Last but not least, a Fleer Mystique Gold card:

I know it is Gold because it says so under the numbering.  Thank you Fleer for doing this back in 2000 - why can't more card sets do this?

Seneca #226, because everyone can find your blog pages

It often feels like nobody reads my blog posts, which I'm sure is a feeling/thought I share with many of you.  Rest assured though, people do read your stuff, especially when you write about really weird crap.  Like my left handed QB page - even though I haven't updated it in forever, it's the only definitive list of its kind on the internet, and as a result it gets tons of hits from people looking for lefty QB info.  Or in the case of this pickup, my 2001 MLL Inaugural set page.

See, the 2001 MLL Inaugural set is super rare - so rare that I only found one reference to it in all of the internet before I wrote my post, and even that reference was incredibly vague and non-helpful.  The set isn't listed on Beckett and you can't buy a box on Blowout or something, so there's really no way to know which cards are even available in the set, let alone where to get those cards from!  So over the years I've sold some of what i have from time to time, since they command a few bucks from lacrosse lovers who also happen to enjoy cards.

Anyway, I received an email a few weeks back from a guy who found my blog post via Google and wanted to know if I still had everything listed.  I don't - I actually only had four cards, but he was still interested and wanted to work a trade out.  He showed me pics of some "hits" he had and let me know other goodies he owned, but nothing seemed to match up.  He then offered to buy me a Seneca if I wanted and I said that was fine, so he made a purchase, I sent off a package, and a few days later this was in my mailbox:

This SPX Winning Materials Team Logos card is almost exactly like the /250 version I have, but it's technically SPECTRUM which means it's /50 and has gold accents instead of silver.  It rounds out the last of my SPX needs for Seneca, which is pretty cool since I love finishing off an entire set!  And I think it looks neat, so that's always good too!

So here's to obscure blog posts and the readers who google them!  I know my Seneca Collection is +1 card due to that phenomenon!

2001 MLL (Lacrosse) Inaugural Season Set

Currently owned: 0/36

As some of you may know, there is a professional lacrosse league known as MLL. It's currently in its 11th year of existence, which is pretty impressive given that A) it only has 6 teams and B) only 3 of those 6 teams are leftover from the inaugural season. Kudos to them for sticking (unintended pun I swear) around despite limited fanfare!

Anyways, when the league started in 2001, they produced a card line to hype the teams/players.

(Sample Back and Front)

My brothers and I were pretty into lacrosse in 2001, so we bought a fair amount of these cards and probably had a complete set at some point. Fast forward 10 years and it turns out that these cards are really, REALLY rare. A guy reached out to me in 2021 with his website which agrees with me that there are only 36 cards in the set, and he says there may be only 300 set TOTAL!  Before his site, info on this set was basically nonexistent.

So here we have a set with little known about it, and a blogger to the rescue. It's my hope, from here on out, that this post becomes the #2 (Now that there's the better site linked above) information source regarding the 2001 MLL Inaugural Set. It likely won't garner a whole lot of page views, but it might help a few people out, and mostly it'll make me happy to figure this set out!

So here are the cards that I'm currently aware of in the set, listed by team. A question mark (?) next to the player's name indicates that I'm not sure if he's a part of the set or not.  I used to own almost all of these cards but I sold or traded them all away, so currently my cupboard is bare.  But if you know more than me about these cards (including where to buy them) or would like to learn more about them, feel free to contact me!

The list of cards:

Baltimore Bayhawks

Dan Denihan

Greg Cattrano

Josh Sims

Mark Millon

Rob Doerr

Tom Marechek

Boston Cannons

Billy Daye

Dan Radebaugh

Doug Knight

Mike Battista

Michael Watson

Ryan Curtis

Bridgeport Barrage

Brian Silcott

Blake Miller

Jamie Hanford

Mario Lopez

Matt Pannetta

Roy Colsey

Long Island Lizards

A.J. Haugen

Casey Powell

Gary Gait

John Gagliardi

Sal Locascio

Vinnie Sombretto

New Jersey Pride

Christian Cook

Jay Jalbert

Jesse Hubbard

Jon Hess

Steve Koudelka

Tom Ryan

Rochester Rattlers

Brian Dougherty

Jake Bergey

John Grant Jr.

Ric Beardsley

Ryan Powell

Tim Soudan