McCovey Monday #16

  My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1100 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.

I took a week off of my McCovey posts due to my funk after a pretty decent streak.  Today I thought I would return with a recent pick up of a card that eluded me for way too long.  Check out this 2003 Topps Retired Signature Auto of my favorite player.

I can't begin to tell you how many of these cards I have bid on over the last few years trying to track one down for my collection.  I have lost out on last second snipes.  I have lost out forgetting about placing a bid when they went for far fewer than I was willing to pay.  I even lost out once when I wont the auction for a great price to have the seller tell me that he had lost the card - yeah right!

I like the design of this card, it is a rip off from the 2003 Topps base design but with white borders instead of blue.  While the auto fits great on the card and looks like part of the design, there wasn't a ton of space set aside for it to detract from the design.  The blue sharpie auto stands out.  We have a great photo of Willie Mac waiting for a throw at first prominently displaying his first baseman's glove and a nice small portrait of him in the baseball diamond.  The silver lettering looks a little nicer than it does on the scan and I like the Giants logo on the front, however it would have been even better to show the Giants logo from his playing day.  Overall a very solid card and design.

I also think this was a set done right by Topps.  Not a huge fan of the encased autos but on a product like this is makes sense.  There is a 110 card base set that has black bordered parallels serial numbered to 99.  There is a 120 card autograph set that has refractor parallels serial limited to 25 copies.  My only complaint would be why have 10 extra autos, why not just have the base set and auto set mirror each other.  I never had a chance to open this product, to high end at that point for me.

I am happy to have finally added this card to my collection!