It's been a long time coming that this Jeff Bagwell card is finally in my hands. Years ago when I was looking for something new, something different to collect I stumbled across the dirt relic cards from 2001 Stadium Club. I thought it was a pretty cool idea and surprisingly, one that has been reused before...at least to my knowledge.
The cards themselves were only seeded 1:10 packs, however they were exclusive to Home Team Advantage stores. This in itself limited the audience of collectors that would even have a chance of pulling on of these cards. Seeking out the cards several years later I found that some of the cards weren't that that hard to find. Most of the "common" cards could be had on eBay, while others I had to look a little harder for, a little longer for. Turns out that several of the cards in the 10 card set were packed in as exchange cards and I'm guessing many of the cards went unexchanged.
Jeff Bagwell, #PP06 was one of those exchange cards. Makes sense now of why it took me so long to find this one last card I needed to complete the set. Also turns out that Chipper Jones' card was mislabeled as #PP06, but his card too was an exchange card.
I find these cards to be a good conversation piece with non-baseball card collectors. I've had several friends and family members who've seen these cards in my collection ask me about the cards, why putting dirt inside a baseball card makes it so collectible and so on. I know these cards (and their brethren, Kings of the Hill) don't "book" for much...but I stopped collecting cards for their value and looking through Beckett a long time ago.
Now that this set is complete, I can shift my focus to picking up the Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez Kings of the Hill dirt relics to finish off that set. I also can't wait to actually find the rest of these dirt relic cards so I can put Bagwell amongest his peers.
