Anatomy of a Complete Parallel Set - Part 1

If you remember back to the $15 3200 count box I grabbed at the Expo about a month back, I did say that there were some almost-complete sets in it, along with one complete set of 1995 SP Championship Series die-cuts. Turns out, at least if baseballcardpedia can be believed, these die-cuts were inserts in the main parallel set, and they fell at one per pack. Sounds like a pretty tough set to assemble. There are some of the regular sets on ebay for about $20 before shipping, so I guess pulling a complete parallel one from this box is a pretty good deal.

Anyhow, I'll spend some of my next posts going through the set in 50 card increments. I don't know if I'll go all the way through with 4 straight posts, or work other posts into the mix over the next while. Probably the latter. Either way, here we go with 1-50.

1 Hideo Nomo - It starts out with the 20 card rookie portion of the set. I'm not sure about the Diamonds in the Rough category though, since Hideo, and many of these 20 players, didn't exactly come out of nowhere to make their debuts.

I would have chosen the photo on the back of this one as the one for the front.
2 Roger Cedeno
3 Curtis Goodwin
4 Jon Nunnally

5 Bill Pulsipher - Mets content!
6 Garrett Anderson
7 Dustin Hermanson

8 Marty Cordova - Upper Deck didn't fill this portion of the set generic spring training poses. This was the second of the bunt pictures in this, along with Goodwin.
9 Ruben Rivera
10 Ariel Prieto

11 Edgardo Alfonzo - More Mets!

12 Ray Durham - A nice double play card as well.
13 Quilvio Veras - And the back of this card also featured a bunt.

14 Ugueth Urbina - The less said about this Expos card of the machete enthusiast.

15 Carlos Perez - The second Expo among the rookies.
16 Glen Dishman
17 Jeff Suppan
18 Jason Bates
19 Jason Isringhausen - And one more Mets card! Generation K!

20 Derek Jeter - I figured if this set would be missing a card, this would be the one.

21 Fred McGriff - The next portion of the set is sorted by team. Each team portion opens with one of these cards. Bland front, but the back with the team's recent record is something a little different.

22 Marquis Grissom - The base card backs.
23 Fred McGriff
24 Tom Glavine
25 Greg Maddux
26 Chipper Jones
27 Sammy Sosa
28 Randy Myers
29 Mark Grace
30 Sammy Sosa

31 Todd Zeile - Ivy!
32 Brian McRae
33 Ron Gant

34 Reggie Sanders - Looks like a nice celebratory photo after a home run. The die-cut actually robs a little from this card, with the second hand being visible on the regular base.
35 Ron Gant

36 Barry Larkin - More ivy! Nice photo too!
37 Bret Boone
38 John Smiley

39 Larry Walker - Cancon!
40 Andres Galarraga
41 Bill Swift

42 Larry Walker - More Cancon!

43 Vinny Castilla - I looked at baseball-reference to see which player this is getting a face full of knee. Steve Wojciechowski did wear #39 for Oakland in 1995, but he does seem to be too pale to be the guy in the photo. Henry Mercedes wore it prior to the strike, but he was gone from Oakland in the 1994 off-season. Unless this is a photo from 1994, I guess my detective work in determining the player has failed.
44 Dante Bichette

45 Jeff Conine - For teams that weren't around for the previous years and have no 1969-1994 playoff experience, here's what their card backs look like.
46 Charles Johnson
47 Gary Sheffield
48 Andre Dawson
49 Jeff Conine

50 Jeff Bagwell - And the last of the 50 cards is a likely HOFer. A good way to wrap this up.

150 more cards to work through!