Wantlist > Baseball > John Jaha

The following are the John Jaha cards that I need to complete a player collection. I may also need memorabilia pieces that you have that might not otherwise be cataloged. If you have anything from this list, please do not hesitate to drop me an email.

1997 Topps Pro Shooters Marble Checklist #1 (the one with Jaha on it

2000 Topps MVP Parallel #27

One-of-One Cards:
1997 Flair Showcase Legacy Collection Masterpiece Row 0 #169 (1/1)
1997 Flair Showcase Legacy Collection Masterpiece Row 1 #169 (1/1)
1997 Flair Showcase Legacy Collection Masterpiece Row 2 #169 (1/1)
1997 New Pinnacle Press Plate #23 (have Cyan back, need any others) 
1997 Sports Illustrated First Edition #151 (1/1) 

1998 Flair Showcase Masterpiece Row 0 #116 (1/1)
1998 Flair Showcase Masterpiece Row 1 #116 (1/1)
1998 Flair Showcase Masterpiece Row 2 #116 (1/1) 
1998 Stadium Club Printing Plates #142 (have Magenta, need others)
1998 Ultra Masterpiece #199 (1/1) 

1999 Ultra Masterpieces #128 (1/1)

2000 Stadium Club Printing Plates #104 (have Yellow, need others)
2000 Ultra Masterpiece #124 (1/1)
2000 Upper Deck Exclusives Gold #191 (1/1)

Not sure if these exist: 
1997 Pinnacle Certified Mirror Black #57
1998 Pacific Online Winners #398 

  

Negotiating the Contract

After much anticipation, this arrived in the mail today:

That would be a contract between Topps and John Jaha. The language suggests it's his second contract with the company, which makes sense as I missed out on another contract a few months ago.

The contract has all sorts of legal jargon that doesn't make a lot of sense and references a License Agreement. Overall, not very sexy stuff. But from a card collector's perspective - very cool. I need very few cards of Jaha's now and it's the more unique stuff that keeps my collection growing. Even my wife took a bit more than a token glance at this.

I bought the contract through the Topps Vault, which I've always wanted to use but they seemed to have a strict policy against bidders outside the US. So I went and lined someone up to receive the item (thanks BD) and proceeded to request before bidding ended that the contract be sent to someone else and they'd send it along to me. That was okay so I proceeded to bid away. I go and pay and low and behold, the Vault apparently can ship to Canada.

The contract was also accompanied by a nifty little certificate of authenticity just in case someone wanted to counterfeit a contract from a one-time AL Comeback Player of the Year.

Anyone know if these exist? (2000 Pacific Aurora Baseball parallels)

Over the course of the Christmas break I have been going gangbusters in organizing my John Jaha collection. Everything's been smooth except for Pacific and their subtle variations and parallels. I've since realized I'm missing a couple of cards I thought I'd had but no biggie.

I have come across a little confusion cross-referencing between Beckett.com's checklists and my Standard Catalog for 2000 Aurora Baseball. Both agree there's the base card and the Premiere Date parallels. However the Standard Catalog says there's also Copper (399 sets), Platinum Blue (67 sets) and Silver (199 sets). Beckett says these don't exist. eBay also turns up nothing, which makes me think these don't exist but I figured I'd check the masses in case they know. So if you have a yay or a nay, please let me know.

Thanks!

Collecting the Common Guy - Part 2

Upon embarking on a John Jaha collection, it was relatively easy at first. Although he was a decent slugger, he wasn't great and he played for the Brewers. Although Billy Brewer was getting a workout on the outfield slide every time Jaha knocked one over the wall, there wasn't a lot of collector attention.

I began by trading and trading and trading and trading. Then I traded some more. Autographs were just becoming commonplace and game-used cards were still a couple of years away. It was all about the shiny insert and the base card, both of which I had plenty of to dangle especially when I was looking for a lowly common.

My first trades focused on getting a mix of large base-card lots and a sprinkling of tougher inserts. In 1997 there were still very few collectors trading online so we were a nice little community. We looked out for each other, shared stories and cards. This was great for me as I had nobody to trade with in my hometown. It was all hockey in Victoria, British Columbia. To get a Jaha fix I had to reach for the mouse, type a message or two and head out to buy a lot of stamps.

As more collectors came online, I got more and more Jahas. I was able to compile lists of the existing cards and keep up with the new ones. The hardest thing to deal with was the influx of collectors looking to give me their commons (most of which I already had multiples of) for the hot rookies of J.D. Drew and Pat Burrell. Although not a stickler for book value and Becketts, it was (and still is) annoying dealing with "traders" blatantly going after things they would likely flip over in a sale.

As my wantlists became smaller, my completist side began to show more and more. Rather than getting a daily fix of new Jahas, weeks and even months would go by between "finds". As a result I began to completely ignore the books as to what I should pay. Over the course of my collecting, a couple other Jaha collectors have come and gone. Let's just say in the months where all three of us were overlapping in our collecting there were a couple of dealers who made a killing off of us. We were dropping $10-20 on the 2000 Pacific Prism variations!

Now my Jaha collection is pretty much stagnant. Last week I finally tracked down a 1996 Leaf Gold Press Proof and was ecstatic to land it for a whopping $1.99 plus shipping. I've got all of his base cards, endless parallels, a few fancy inserts, a handful of oddball items and even a couple of pieces of game-used equipment. I'm down to a small bunch of parallels (most limited to less than 25 copies) and a couple of oddball items I don't even know if they exist.

Collecting the Common Guy - Part 1

Back in the late 1990s the baseball card hobby was changing. More sets were coming out with fancier, rarer inserts. Being a completist I had to change my collecting focus. I was a big fan of Albert Belle at the time (he was just too entertaining in a train wreck sort of manner to resist) and realized I'd never be able to track down all of his cards so I retired and searched out a new player to collect. The criteria was this:

1) He had to be a common or very minor star. The big-name guys had too many cards and most were out of my price range. Therefore I had to set my standards a little lower. By collecting a common player I could afford to go after everything.
2) I'm a sucker for the long ball. So I started scouring the leader board. I narrowed it down to a couple of contenders and went from there.
3) Root for the underdog. I don't like being accused of jumping on a bandwagon. So I looked for someone who didn't have much of a chance thus far in their career.
4) Funny names are fun. Yeah, I know. Going after someone because their name rolls off your tongue sounds kind of lame. Maybe it is. But when you've got a handful of choices to go with, you start looking at gimmicks.

With those four criteria I found my player. And with that my collecting habits changed forever. My new guy back in 1996-97 - John Jaha.

I plan on chronicling my Jaha collection over time and will look at how I went about tracking down cards and memorabilia, the joys of the bidding war and the fun of tracking down the last cards needed for a master set (besides those pesky 1/1s).