I've been a little bit more active on eBay and Sportlots of late. I'm sure this is due to the inclusion of Tim Wallach in the 2024 Topps Archives "Fan Favorite Autos" subset. My desire to find each of the variants led me to checking ebay a lot more ofter, where I have a general "Tim Wallach" search saved and sorted by most recent.
The big find was a 1993 Memphis Chicks card for the extremely reasonable price of a dollar. That card was one of my two "white whales" for decades. I knew of its existence from around the time it was printed as a result of seeing a photo of it (mixed in with other cards from the set) in one of the old black and white, newsprint card magazines. The memory as to which magazine has long since been lost to time. The first one I ever found (back in 2013) was autographed, which was something of a disappointment, but I was still thrilled to finally own a copy, even with the sharpie blemish. This is the 3rd copy I've added since, none of which are autographed. It's still a lot of fun to find one of these in the wild.
O-Pee-Chee has long been a fascination of mine. When I first started collecting cards, and Wallach cards, I knew about O-Pee-Chee and even had a small amount in my collection. But I didn't end up owning a single Wallach O-Pee-Chee until years after Wallach had retired and the advent of eBay. I still don't own very many, and when I saw a seller on Sportlots who had a good number of them, I took it upon myself to purchase them all.
There's a new documentary out about Dick Perez, who painted all the Donruss Diamond Kings cards. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm not expecting him to explain why Tim Wallach was inexplicably passed over for his entire career, never appearing as a Diamond King, despite setting nearly every Montreal Franchise record from 1982-1992. Wallach did however appear in the 1988 Leaf set as a "Canadian Great," which has long been a curiosity for me. Did Perez opt for Wallach in '88 only to be overruled by Donruss? Was it always the plan to use a different player for the Leaf set, and if so, which one got the "first choice?" Maybe the documentary will address it, but I'd be shocked if it came up. In any event, the O-Pee-Chee seller on Sportlots had a few of these available so of course I took them all.
Below are the current numbers.
Updated Totals:
Corey: I saw the Perez documentary at the National last summer. I do not recall any discussion on the particulars of the selection process of each Diamond King. I am sure if reach out to the producer Marq Evans at marq@marqevans.com he will provide some insight to you. He is a great guy. The film is really good. Bill Kearney
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info Bill.
DeleteAt least a few years ago Perez was pretty approachable online, you could ask him directly. My guess is that Donruss "experts" picked the subjects like they did for the rated rookies. For those the initial expert was a NY Daily News writer named Bill Madden.
ReplyDeleteBill Madden just became a Chris Sabo and Howard Johnson level villain in this blog's lore.
DeleteA. That Memphis Chicks card is cool. I checked out the checklist on TCDB and there are some big names on it. I'd love to track down the Medicine Man card for my collection.
ReplyDeleteB. I had a free pass to see an online viewing of that documentary last week, but I completely forgot about it. Kinda bummed, because I was part of the Kickstarter and really wanted to check it out.
Wallach never being a diamond king is nuts.
ReplyDeleteDick worked with Frank Steele to make the selections each year. Frank primarily focused on which player he thought collectors would most want. In the early days, this meant established stars with a path to Cooperstown. By the mid-80s, this meant a lot more hot young stars. And of course some years a team didn’t really have anyone particularly collectible, and they’d just pick “somebody.”
ReplyDeleteI’m surprised Wallach never made the list. Probably the biggest omission who was active the entire era was Dennis Eckersley.