Today’s Card of the Day matches up to tomorrow’s history article. That’s because I want to cover someone different for tomorrow’s article, but I also noticed that I have never featured Tony Watson in our Card of the Day series yet. He’s a pretty big player to be overlooked for over three years. No worries though, I’m taking care of that on the day before his 38th birthday. Who doesn’t like an early birthday gift?
Today’s Card of the Day choice comes from the 2014 Topps Update Series. They put out a 330-card set later in the year. What’s interesting about this set is that there are actually two cards of Watson in the set. If you collected the early Topps Update sets, you probably never saw a player appear twice in am Update set before. The real kicker here is that Watson was in the set at all. He has a base card in the set, despite not being a rookie or on a new team. Then we have today’s Card of the Day, which is his All-Star card from that set.
The regular card is somewhat explained by the fact that he wasn’t in the 2014 Topps set. It seems like a bit of an oversight, as he was an established quality reliever going into the 2014 season. He put up a strong season in 2013, yet Topps left him out of their set. That led to two cards in the Update set, though I still think one would have been enough. Anyway, here’s a look at card number US-247 from the Topps Update set, featuring 2011-17 Pirates reliever Tony Watson.
Here’s the front of the card:
This photo here is an actual photo from the 2014 All-Star game. I’m going to spoil the back a little here by saying this was Watson’s only All-Star appearance and he retired the only batter he faced. This feels like it is him walking off the mound after the pitching change. If I didn’t tell you this was an All-Star photo, you would be able to tell by the hat he is wearing. You can see it’s not your normal Pirates hat from 2014, plus it has the All-Star logo right there facing you.
These cards are designed just like the 2014 Topps cards. As usual, they kept the same design for both the regular set and the Update. The All-Star logo in the photo tells you this was from the Update set, but it’s also a subset within that set.
Here’s the back of the card:
As I said, I gave a spoiler for the back. I wanted to set up the scene to describe they photo itself. The back has a National League logo, which in itself is cool looking. I was hoping to get one of those Pirates logos. At least you can see that sleeve logo on the front. The blue for the back matches with the traditional National League color for the All-Star game. So this doesn’t really have a Pirates feel to it, but they were going for the All-Star connection anyway, so it works. Plus you don’t need stats when he has a second card in the set.
There are variations of this card, besides the regular US-247, which is a $2 card delivered. There’s a signed copy that is authenticated/slabbed for $45, with a best offer. There’s another that isn’t authenticated for $9. There’s a black border copy for $13 that is numbered to 63 copies, but someone else has the same card for $6, with a best offer. There are Gold, Blue (Wal-Mart) and Red (Target) border cards that don’t go for much more than the regular card.
