2014 COMC purchases: Murray, O'Neill, and Simmons

My last group of baseball PC guys this time focuses on three pretty familiar players:

Heath Murray 1994 Stadium Club Draft Picks First Day Issue

First up is former Padre Heath Murray.  I only have one card of him to show off, but since he appears on just 30 overall, that's not too much of a surprise.  What I managed to find this time was a First Day Issue parallel of Heath's '94 Stadium Club Draft Picks card.  The standalone set did indeed get its own First Day Issue cards as well as the similar Members Only parallel, from which I still lack Murray's card.  Even a solitary addition is productive for his PC as I now own 22 of his 30 issues, good for almost 75%!

Michael O'Neill 2013 Elite Extra Edition Aspirations (#022/200)

O'Neill, who you may recall is a recent Yankees OF draftee, makes an increasingly common appearance here today with three new 2013 inserts.  First up is this cool die-cut (unsigned) parallel of his auto card from that year's EEE set.  Aspirations cards keep the same red color scheme as the base/autos and are numbered to 200.  As usual, I'm a fan of the Elite design and fun array of parallels.

Michael O'Neill 2013 Elite Extra Edition Bloodlines (with Paul O'Neill)

Because former Yankee Paul is Michael's uncle they were naturally paired on this Bloodlines insert, which also features the likes of Carl Yastrzemski and Ivan Rodriguez.  I never cared for the whiny, annoying elder O'Neill, but I'm sure he's the kind of guy you like when he's on your team.  This is a cool idea for a double-sided insert and executed well by Panini.

Michael O'Neill 2013 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks Prizms

Speaking of that brand, my final O'Neill from today hails from another Panini set, this time Prizm Perennial Draft Picks.  This Prizm parallel is clearly a ripoff of Topps' Refractors, but I guess if you call it something different there's nothing to get sued about!  I already have the base card, but I still need a few more inserts from the set, including a pair numbered to just 10.  While I work on those, today's trio bumps O'Neill's PC up to 8/40 for an even 20%, at least until he appears on more cards.

Brian Simmons 1998 Best Autographs Signature Series auto

Former (a WHILE ago former) White Sox OF prospect Brian Simmons comprises the bulk of today's post with six new additions.  First is this 1998 Team Best auto, which doesn't go towards his PC checklist since it's a minor league card, but it's still a fun addition, and it makes him player #23 in my baseball PC.  This is his only hit but at least it's an autograph, and an interesting signature at that.

Brian Simmons 1998 SP Top Prospects

Simmons was included in Upper Deck's '98 SP Top Prospects set, and I'm glad since it's definitely a very nice set to look at.  The photo UD selected does make me laugh a bit since he's being interviewed for a local news station and has a comically enormous earpiece in his left ear.  Ah, 1990s technology....  Anyway, the Birmingham Barons logo is also a nice highlight.

Brian Simmons 1998 SP Top Prospects President's Edition (#04/10)

Along with the base card from the set I was able to knock off this doozy, a parallel hand-numbered to 10 on the back, which made me decide to include it as part of the scan.  COMC also had a couple copies of this die-cut card without the numbering available separately, but I decided to go with what I consider the "real thing" here.  The gold-ish border and die-cutting make for a pretty cool card.

Brian Simmons 1999 Crown Royale

If this doesn't scream "1990s Pacific" I don't know what does, although in this case I don't mean that in a bad way.  The Crown design resulted in some interesting sets like this one from '99, and you can still see some influences from these earlier versions these days.

Brian Simmons 1999 Crown Royale Limited (#40/99)

Pacific was known for their parallels, and in general I think they were reasonably easy to spot, if not positively identify, but this one doesn't really fall into that category, at least not from the front.  The tip-off is a small red stamp above the "Rookie" designation towards the bottom-right of the card.  The back also features fuzzy digitally-printed serial-numbering (whar stamping, whar?), in this case out of 99.  I still need to track down the Opening Day parallel, numbered to 72 for some reason.

Brian Simmons 1999 Fleer Brilliants Blue

Lastly today we have this beautiful Blue parallel of Brian's 1999 Fleer Brilliants base card.  As poorly as the reflective silver base cards scan, I think Fleer should have gone with blue from the get-go, but then again I probably wouldn't have produced this set in the first place.  Gold (/99) and 24-Karat Gold (/24, of course) parallels wait in the wings.

The five new supercollection cards bump Simmons' PC up to a new total of 20/35, jumping yet another PC guy over the 50% mark to my great satisfaction.  Hopefully I'll have more of him to show off before much longer.

As usual, this was a very productive COMC haul when it came to my Michigan player collections, and I'll look to keep that momentum going whenever I next throw some money down on my favorite card-acquisition site.  Stay tuned for the final post in this series, covering football hits, shortly!