McCovey Monday #72 - 2005 Leaf Sportscaster

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1200 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 get super excited when Willie McCovey is included in a new release. Even though it is a Padres card, I am happy to see him make an appearance on an insert in 2015 Topps.  I see each new card as an opportunity to add another card to my collecting celebrating my favorite player.

However, during the 2005 season, things got out of control.  My McCovey checklist has 2643 cards listed as of right now (and I may be missing a few) and more than 800 of them came in 2005 - that is over 30% of all his cards. Rickey Henderson had something similar happen to him as well.  One of the biggest culprits was the Leaf Sportscasters inserts with 139 McCovey versions.  I have idiotically collected 47 different cards from this set and here is the last one I purchased:

I have had this card in my scan folder since 10/19/12 and am finally getting around to showing it.  This one is affectionately known as 30 Beige Fielding-Ball.  The 30 refers to the print run (this one is serial numbered 22/30), the Beige is the color of the top section, the Fielding refers to the image in the biggest box on the top right and the Ball is the top of the 2 smaller boxes to the left of the fielding image.  The print runs on these run from /5 to /70.  The colors include Beige, Green, Orange, Red, Teal, Yellow, and White. I am not going to take the time to count up the number of images used.  All the McCovey cards feature the exact same picture and everything is the same with the exception of the top tab color and the 3 images in the box.

If you haven't been able to decipher my disdain for this set from the tone of my notes above, I will be more clear - this is a stupid concept! The player collector in me decided to go after as many of these as I could but the more reasonable me has stopped since getting this one back in 2012.  Would I reject a new card, of course not, but I will not be pursing more of these.  I love thumbing through my McCovey binders but the 6 pages of these cards always makes me cringe.

Does anyone else have a part of their collection that they just don't really like yet keep?