By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Homer painted a masterpiece against the Pirates Friday night.

While not quite perfect — the Reds had one error and he walked one — Homer Bailey did breeze through the game, winning 1-0 in Pittsburgh to up his season record to 13-10 and giving some collectors reason to examine his 2004 Rookie Cards.

He’s the 15th pitcher in Reds history to throw a no-no and it’s the first for the franchise since 1988.

Bailey appears on 544 cards valued at more than $2,600, according to Beckett.com. (Need a checklist or OPG? Click here.) He has 259 different certified autographs and just 13 game-used memorabilia cards, while 441 of his cards, or 81 percent, are serial-numbered.

Bailey’s most-valuable Rookie Card is his 2004 SP Prospects card, a signed card limited to just 400 copies that typically sold for $25 or less before the news. His cheapest RC is his 2004 Topps Traded card, which checks in at just 75 cents.

The most-popular first-year card of the former first-rounder from LaGrange, Texas, is his 2004 Bowman Chrome Draft Gold Refractor, a certified autograph limited to just 50 serial-numbered copies that typically sold for $120 or less.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Cincinnati Reds minor leaguer Billy Hamilton firmly placed himself in the baseball record books Tuesday night in Pensacola, Fla., by swiping his 146th stolen base of the season.

The mark topped the previous pro record of 145 set by Vince Coleman 29 years ago and is 16 more than the MLB record set by Rickey Henderson back in 1982.

Hamilton, a 21-year-old shortstop, has been caught stealing 33 times this season — a number that tops a more vital number for baseball card collectors, 15, which is total for certified autographs. (Need an checklist or OPG? Click here.)

Hamilton’s latest sig can be found in the 2012 Goodwin Champions multisport release that arrived last week from Upper Deck, while all of his other autographs were released by TRISTAR in three previous prospect-focused products, 2009 Prospects Plus and the 2010 and 2011 TRISTAR Pursuit sets. His first MLB-licensed autographs will come in upcoming Bowman prospects sets from Topps later this year, according to preliminary checklists that are subject to change.

Overall, Hamilton appears on 127 different cards presently valued at more than $1,400. His MLB-licensed card debut came in 2009 Bowman Draft and his Red 1/1 from that product sold for $600 on eBay back on July 14. More recently, a Gold Refractor version of his Chrome card from the product — graded a BGS 9.5 and limited to just 50 copies — sold for $499.99 on Aug. 9.

For the season, Hamilton is hitting .318 between two levels with two home runs, 44 RBI, 77 walks and 101 strikeouts. Baseball America ranked him the No. 2 prospect in the Reds organization after last season.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Barry Larkin will be the only living player taking the stage to be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday in Cooperstown, N.Y., where he’ll revisit the memories of a career, the memories of a lifetime dedicated to the sport that he made his profession.

You can do that, too, though his baseball cards.

Here are the basics on the baseball cards of the former Cincinnati Reds shortstop, as found in the Beckett.com (Need a Larkin-only checklist or OPG? Click here.) database. First, his cardboard statistics:

Total cards: 3,505     Teams: USA Baseball, Cincinnati Reds
Total value: $23,541.99*     Memorabilia cards: 552
Rookie Cards: 3     Autograph cards: 396
Serial-numbered cards: 1,575     (* not including cards too rare to price)

Get Olds’ picks for a few notable cards to track down … after the jump.

Rookie Card to Get: 1987 Donruss #492, $4. Sure, the 1987 Fleer card is twice as valuable — and people love those blue borders — but there’s something about the Donruss card that’s just more interesting. Maybe it’s the old silk-style coat or maybe it’s the criss-cross taped pattern on his bat. Aw, who are we kidding … Larkin’s RCs are so cheap you can afford to get them all, not just this one. (A copy of this one in high grade is a bit more impressive than the others, though.)

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Autograph Card to Get: 1997 Donruss Signature Autographs Millennium #79 /1,000, $50. Today, players have certified autographs sometimes years before they make the majors — if they even make it to The Show at all. In Larkin’s case. he’d been on cardboard for a decade before signing his first certifieds. While this card may seem plentiful based on its print run, it’s not as easy to find as you might think. A lot of these cards have been tucked away through the years. This was his first — and he hasn’t signed a lot of cards since compared to other stars of the era.

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Memorabilia Card to Get: 2010 Panini Century Blast from the Past Jerseys #7 /99, $10. We know what you’re thinking (What?!?) but this card isn’t really about its value as much as it is its story. Larkin is a true Cincinnati product, a 1982 graduate of the well-known Archbishop Moeller High School, which also produced Ken Griffey Jr., Buddy Bell and several other former big-leaguers. If you look closely, this Panini America card shows Larkin in his Moeller uniform while showcasing a swatch from a game-used Reds jersey. There simply aren’t that many cards out there that do that (other than those from this product) … and the design is pretty striking, too.

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Oddball Card to Get: 1986 Sportflics Rookies #34, $5. While prospects will have cards for years before making their debuts, Larkin actually doesn’t appear on a single minor-league card in the Beckett.com database. That makes this 1986 Sportflics card (from a boxed set, so not an RC), the closest thing to a pre-rookie or prospect card. In case you don’t remember them, these cards are printed on lenticular plastic so you can see a couple of photos of the player on the card’s front.

What are your picks for memorable Larkin cards? Tell us below — we may run a selection of answers in the next issue of Beckett Baseball.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

He’s the first and only player to win the MVP award in both leagues. He’s the only man who can say he was a social pioneer among MLB managers.

He’s also the only Prime 9 player for Week 8.

Topps has announced its latest HTA Prime 9 card of the year, and it’s Frank Robinson who is the newest player to be part of its hobby shop redemption card program.

All collectors who found a Week 8 redemption card in their 2012 Topps packs (two per hobby or HTA Jumbo box) can exchange their cards for the Chrome Refractor seen here at a participating hobby shop.

Topps will announce the remaining Home Run Legends each Friday.

RECAP
Week 8 — Frank Robinson
Week 7 — Ernie Banks
Week 6 — Alex Rodriguez
Week 5 — Mickey Mantle
Week 4 — Reggie Jackson
Week 3 — Hank Aaron
Week 2 — Babe Ruth
Week 1 — Willie Mays

Note: The card numbers do not coincide with the week of release.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor | Commentary

We all have our “common” players who we collect for varying reasons. We all have our local stars who made it or a college player who defied the odds and made it to pro sports from Smalltown USA.

I have a few of them from my collecting life — guys I casually collect when I find their cards but don’t necessarily hunt — but one from the University of Alabama chapter of my collection took an interesting twist recently as I discussed the hobby with a Japanese collector/dealer via Twitter.

My player? Former New York Yankee Andy Phillips. The twist? Recently discovering he has a certified autograph card — one that many of you have probably never seen.

For those who don’t know Phillips, he was drafted by the Yankees in 1999 out of Alabama where he was the school’s career leader in home runs, RBIs and hits — an All-American and the star of the program when I was there. In 2004, he was named the Yankees’ Minor League Player of the Year, and that was the same year he made his big-league debut. He homered in his first MLB at-bat — a game against the Red Sox — and, more notably, later played in 110 games for the Yanks in 2006, hitting seven homers (half of his career total) when Jason Giambi was injured.

From there, he played for the Mets and Reds before spending time in the minors for the White Sox and Pirates organizations. Then, he capped his career playing parts of two seasons in Japan.

His minor league totals? A .298 average, 141 homers and 518 RBI in 826 games — that’s a career, folks. He retired at age 33 in 2010 and is now an assistant baseball coach for the Crimson Tide.

In all, Phillips’ Beckett.com cardboard resume is a brief one — he has just 62 baseball cards, a lone short-printed Rookie Card from 2001 Stadium Club, and not a single memorabilia card. In all, it’s a collection that will cost you about $100 to own them all (not including those too rare to price) — if you can find them in the commons bins out there.

I have a decent number of his cards — though I have never really even gathered them all into one place (yes, it’s that casual). At my first National Sports Collectors Convention, I picked up a game-issue/used bat of his — an item found on accident. Recently, I added a game-used jersey from one of his later career stops to go with other Crimson Tide guys’ game-used MLB bats and jerseys in my collection. Long ago, I picked up one of the many Steiner Sports session-signed autographed photos from when he was a short-term Pride of New York. (A homer like that against the Sox does things to people in Pinstripes.)

And a certified autograph card? That’s nowhere to be found because one doesn’t exist — unless, of course, you’re a collector of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. That’s right, a team from the Pacific League of Nippon Professional Baseball. Thanks to Kazu via Twitter, I now know that if my Phillips collecting challenge ever looks like it is near completion it won’t be — Phillips’ lone certified autograph came in a BBM set released in Japan this year (seen above as provided by Kazu), and it’s limited to fewer than 100 copies … not an easy find.

Think about that. A guy homers in Yankee Stadium and is an everyday regular for much of a season but he has to go to Japan to get a certified autograph found in a pack of cards. You don’t hear about that often these days with an over-saturation of prospecting products and kids signing cards for USA and All-Star sets while still in high school. Phillips is pretty unique.

Like Phillips’ cards, I have casually dabbled in Japanese baseball cards from time to time — the differences and simultaneous similarities are an interesting way to look at the hobby in a much simpler way. (After all, I know very little — ok, no — Japanese.) It’s just interesting to see how one of America’s favorite pastimes is seen elsewhere, too.

But now, thanks to a tiny but more personal part of my collection, I have another reason to go hunting for some other types of baseball cards — those from a world away featuring a guy I once saw sitting nearby in a classroom.

Oh, what a hobby.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

Join Beckett Baseball’s Chris Olds and Brian Fleischer as they rip some 2011 Leaf Pete Rose Legacy boxes along with Leaf’s Brian Gray in this latest edition of Box Busters.

What will they find inside? What won’t they find inside? Watch and find out …

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Baseball’s career hits leader is one of the sports world’s most polarizing — and, yet in some areas, beloved — figures.

And that enigma that is Pete Rose not lost on Leaf as the company is readying a Pete Rose Legacy set coming in November, which will apparently be chock-full of autographs, memorabilia and more. The high-end offering will include signatures, game-used pieces (a bat and a game-used Montreal Expos jersey were used) and inscriptions … lots of inscriptions.

Because he was banned from baseball for betting on the game, Rose has not appeared on an MLB-approved trading card in a standard set since 1989. That has made his releases since then — there have been plenty from companies that are not MLB-approved — of interest to collectors who prefer to remember Rose for his achievements on the field, not his failures off of it.

Click on the images for a full view of the cards below if it shows a thumbnail.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor

Cincinnati Reds legend and Hall of Famer Johnny Bench is the first Topps Prime 9 player as announced Tuesday.

Each week, Topps will announce which players can be redeemed for Prime 9 cards found in packs of 2011 Topps Series 2.

Collectors can bring their Week 1 redemption cards to their participating hobby shops to turn them in for a card and be entered for a chance to win a trip to the World Series as long as they fill out the form on the back.

Each card is a Refractor and the cards can be found two per hobby (or jumbo) box.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball magazine. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an email to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.

By Chris Olds | Baseball Editor | Commentary

After I watched the news of “Macho Man” Randy Savage‘s unfold via Twitter on Friday morning  — first with an unusual one-word expletive tweet from one current WWE wrestler and then a I-hope-the-rumor-is-untrue tweet from another — I immediately started writing.

Summing up an iconic person’s life isn’t always an easy task, particularly within minutes — and I briefly pondered whether I really should include a Slim Jim reference in the story — but I brainstormed about what I knew of the former WWE champ and childhood icon of many. Former minor league baseball player. Memphis wrestling. Miss Elizabeth. WrestleMania III. “Ohhhhh yeah” …

I searched the Beckett.com database for Randy Poffo, his real name, knowing full well that he didn’t appear on a single baseball card — it was searched long, long ago under more casual and trivial times. One should really know better than to expect an early 1970s Rookie League team to have a card set, but I looked once again, anyway. I called up his baseball stats — half-surprised they were actually documented — linked and kept writing. Then I searched Beckett.com for “Randy Savage” where I found his stats as a wrestler, the most pertinent piece of information for collectors and finished up my piece.

Then, on a whim, I hit eBay, wanting there to be a long-omitted baseball card to be there waiting for me. After all, I had never even seen a photo of Savage as a ballplayer — it’s the stuff of Internet wrestling lore, kind of like that epic image of Triple H with 1980s Flair Hair. It’s out there — I’ve seen it — but I can’t seem to find it when I need it. (You know, I’ve got important emails that need to be sent.)

It wasn’t to be … but I did find something else for Randy Poffo.

I hit the Buy It Now button, knowing full well that I could be quite disappointed in an inexpensive but trivial purchase — but I wanted a piece of Poffo, the baseball player, to go with my 1994 Action Packed Macho Man autograph I picked up years ago. After all, it turns out, there has been plenty of interest in Macho as a baseball player in the days before his death. Read this quality story from Sports Illustrated.

For a mere $14 — including shipping — I bought a 1971 Tampa Tarpons scorecard (definitely not going to include Poffo but a 21-year-old Ken Griffey is on the roster for the Aug. 18, 1971, game), a 1974 Tarpons game program and a 1975 Tarpons program. Of the three, only the ’74 program might have been assured to have something inside … the only season among the three he was on the squad.

I opened my carefully packaged envelope that arrived today — quite quick shipping from across the country — and examined the 1971 piece first, not expecting much. I spotted Griffey but not much else on the card and its included roster.

Then, I turned my attention to the 1974 program, once folded in half during the action at Al Lopez Field in Tampa years before I was born. Inside the 25-cent treasure — at least its cost back then — was a mimeographed game notes roster printed with the kind of purple ink I vaguely remember seeing on papers in my early years of elementary school … before Savage was a more familiar name to me.

On June 7, 1974, the Tarpons — managed by eventual big-league skipper Russ Nixon – took on the St. Petersburg Cardinals in a game that followed a season-high 4,811 in attendance the night before. No. 9 on the Tarpons roster, tucked in between No. 8 Richard Counts and No. 10 Jimmy Lett was all I was looking for.

“9 Randy Poffo, cat,” the sheet reads.

The actual program itself, a 23-page tribute to the level of baseball known for a family-friendly atmosphere more than the constant flow of dreams that often die, merely shows photos of team officials, Nixon and even the ticket manager inside. (The most-expensive item at the novelty stand was a cap for $2.50 right ahead of the mascot doll for $2.25, by the way.) Inside, among the numerous advertisements was a tribute to Miss Tampa Tarpon Baseball Queen Bridget Hanahan, images of former Tarpon in the bigs — Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Dave Concepcion and more.

Also inside was a schedule, un-scored scorecards and, perhaps most appropriately, on Page 14 an advertisement for NWA Wrestling every Tuesday evening at 8:30 in the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory. That’s a spot where, apparently, if you know your wrestling history more than a few future wrestlers watched from the crowd at one time or another, including one Hulk Hogan.

Poffo was nowhere to be found among the Reds’ 1973 minor league review — he was still in the Cardinals organization — but that nearly 37-year-old piece of paper was good enough for me. I really didn’t have a place for it in my collection — though I guess it could go with my Bill Goldberg University of Georgia football media guide and my Dwayne Johnson Miami Hurricanes program. None of them are vital pieces by any means, but they have stayed with me here and there for trivia’s sake … no need for them to be jettisoned.

Then, I opened the 1975 program.

This game, which was played on Sept. 5, 1975, has Randy Poffo nowhere to be found — his career already ended by injury. However, I continued to carefully thumb through the program that’s older than I am just for the casual stroll through history. Inside, once again, were photos of the team’s officials and advertisements for stores such as Kash n’ Karry and Hudson Nursery and Spray Service before I arrived at Page 11 and did a double-take.

Taking up nearly the full width of the page was a team photo of the Northern Division Champions … the 1974 Tampa Tarpons. It’s the image you can see below.

Unfortunately, there were no names attached to the half-toned image, so I studied it as best I could, initially thinking that Poffo sat on the far left of the front row wearing a twenty-something uniform number looking a bit like his Reds uniform photo that ran with his SI story. I scanned it and enlarged it — still not sure. (Click for a closer look.)

I’m still not totally convinced it isn’t him — after all, uniform numbers can change like the Florida weather in rookie ball. But then I turned back to that first roster I spotted him on with the uniform No. 9 included. I checked the photo and there stands No. 9 in the upper right. Could be him as well, though I’ll fully admit that recognizing him without a beard and sunglasses is a bit tough. All I can compare it to is his SI photo.

Just like Randy Savage, the wrestler, there’s a bit of mystery to this piece of Randy Poffo, the baseball player. You never quite knew what he meant during some of his promos but you couldn’t help but watch … same for when he was in the ring.

Whether it’s him on the right or the left, I’m still not sure. Either way, just like when he was in the ring or in front of a mic, I’m looking closely.

Chris Olds is the editor of Beckett Baseball. Have a comment, question or idea? Send an e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com. Follow him on Twitter by clicking here.