Junk Wax Prospector - Kevin Maas - New York Yankees

Been a while since I wrote a new edition of my Junk Wax Prospector series. This was meant to highlight players that I "invested" my meager minimum wage job income into, back in the Junk Wax Era. Looking back after 30 or so years, at how their careers went. 

Kevin Maas was NOT one of the players I collected back then. Nothing personal, just in 1990 his skill set didn't impress me. That's not even anti-Yankees bias, as the Yankees were probably the team I collected most. After Minnesota anyway...

Maas popped into my mind as a good Junk Wax Prospector subject, as I was sorting old Yankees cards. Last month, I finally finished the first part of my great re-sorting project. Which officially started in April of 2020. Completed when I finished placing the New York Yankees in their new album home, a few weeks ago.

Derek Jeter was a key player in my Junk Wax Prospector binders. Since he was such a success story as a player, I have virtually zero interest in writing about him today.

New Baseballcardland is the name I gave to the large basement room of the house where I keep my cards. It's a 22 foot by 10 foot rectangle, with no windows. Cards take up about half of the room, with The Home of Happy Playthings (collectable toys) taking up the other half. Sounds great right? Well, that would be, except it's horribly unorganized and very cluttered. The entire room needs to be put in some sort of order. And I subconsciously decided to start with the baseball cards first.

The massive sorting plan involved first taking all of the new pre-2020 additions, and sorting them by year. 2020 to recent cards are boxed up and set aside. I'm not dealing with those until I'm caught up through 2019.

Cards surviving the initial elimination round numbered around 6,000. Here they are sorted by year. Ready to be set aside until I need them. Eventually, some of them will be blended into these boxes, if they don't make the album round.

Flashing back to the Englewood, CO, Luxury Apartment in the Sky, at the end of 2017. December 31st, 2017 to be exact. About 25 years ago, my dad made this cart, specifically for holding Monster Boxes. (I love this cart and wish I had more.) Five of these boxes are team sorted, penny-sleeved stars, inserts and rookies (again, from 1957-2017). The other box is about 3,000 commons. Sorted by team and not sleeved.

Some of these cards are duplicates over what is already housed in albums. Some of them would be better placed in albums. Some of them just need to go away. But who has time to figure out all of that? 

Watching these boxes grow has became a motivating factor in coming up with something better for a system. One that will allow a serious thinning of these boxes. 

And it's going to take years to fix...

So how about some Kevin Maas?

Whatever...

The Top 23 Kevin Maas Cards in my Collection!

Why 23? Well, in 1991, the New York Yankees hoped Maas would eventually take the place of Don Mattingly. An absolute fan favorite in New York, despite injuries slowing his production.

Who wore #23!

See how that all works out!

(I should have scanned a card that showed his jersey number...)

******

#23 - 1990 Fleer - George Canale - Kevin Maas

The Columbus Clippers jersey ruins it for me. As does Maas’s pile of hair extending into the border. Never was a fan of 1990 Fleer. The design was very basic and the photography was blurry and grainy. I think this may have been my first Kevin Maas card that I pulled from a pack. He'd not yet made the Major Leagues, and I didn't know anything about him at the time. It has a dinged corner, which bothered me in late 1990. Now, I really don't care.

Safe to say, this is also probably George Canale's most collected card!

#22 - 1991 Topps Record Breaker - Kevin Maas

Maas set an MLB record for the fewest at bats needed (72) to hit his first 10 home runs. I'll keep a card to represent that home run mark. It's still a notable achievement, even if things didn't work out in the end. For the 1990 season, Maas had hit 21 home runs in 79 games, finishing second in the Rookie of the Year Award voting to Sandy Alomar Jr., of the Cleveland Indians.

#21 - 1990 Bowman - Kevin Maas

Every Kevin Maas card in my collection came from packs or a complete set. I've never once bought a Kevin Maas card, even at his height of popularity. While doing some very minimal research into this story, I found that Maas has several certified autographed cards, in various Topps and Upper Deck sets. Probably wouldn’t go out of my way to find one, or pay a great deal for it, buy I could see myself spending a few bucks to get one. Given his place in Junk Wax History, owning his autograph seems like something I should do.

******

Alright, Kevin Maas is boring me right now, so let's look at the next segment of the great resorting project...

The shelves of card albums! Or at least how those shelves looked on July 3rd, 2020. 

Arranged in chronological order, by set, from 1957 through 2019. Each album is filled with an assortment of 100 or so cards from each brand. Whatever I felt best represented that particular set. I'd always kept my lower tier -but keeper- cards like this, but I've never been wild about the arrangement. 

The two top shelves were 1957-1996, second two shelves, 1997-2011, with 2012-2019 on the third left. The complete sets (both in boxes and albums) on the lower shelves, are irrelevant to sorting at this time, and will be set aside. So I'm mainly concerned with the top two shelves for now. Which wouldn't include anything newer than 2004 either. But that leaves the tens of thousands of these cards, and where they should fall in my collection. 

All of the Twins, Expos and Rockies cards have homes in albums not in that picture. (Also kept in chronological order, duplicates in sleeves, blah blah blah...) Unless they fell under the Top Loader criteria, or were sleeved in boxes, my cards from those three teams were stored in albums,

But those albums aren't important right now.

So what kind of cards make up all of these other teams albums?

1993 Upper Deck Fun Pack - Ken Griffey Jr.

Hall of Famers who happen to be my all time favorite players.

1988 Score Rookie & Traded - Dan Quisenberry

Other players I collect for whatever reason. Solid veterans, but non-superstars.

1984 Fleer Update - Mark Gubicza

Rookie cards of solid Major Leaguers.

(Although, this card was one of many that were promoted from pages to Top Loaders, during the sorting process.)

1996 Flair Diamond Cuts - Mike Piazza

Attractive Hall of Famer insert cards. (This one may need to be promoted to a Top Loader as well...)

1992 Stadium Club - Wade Boggs

Of course the Hall of Famers that I don’t make a regular habit of collecting.

1995 Score - Kenny Rogers

And cards noting a historical event.

1994 Ultra League Leaders - Chuck Carr

Low level insert cards that I like for any given reason. In Chuck Carr's case, it's the Montreal Expos cameo!

1996 Pacific - Vince Coleman

Veterans in uniforms of teams you don't normally associate them with.

1996 Ultra - Bernard Gilkey

Veteran semi-stars in cool photos.

1991 Bowman - Johnny Ard

Failed prospects of note. (Many with ties to the Twins, Expos or Rockies.) Or any of the prospects I once collected, hoping they'd become superstars. For example, most of the Junk Wax Prospector cards.

1993 Stadium Club - Orestes Destrade

Floundering veterans of note, on cards with a picture I like.

1984 Donruss - Doug Gwosdz

Players with wacky names!

1996 Upper Deck - Pedro Munoz

Ex-Twins with their new teams.

1994 Pacific - Jeff Innis

Of course, Jeff Innis!

1998 Fleer - Rolando Arrojo

And lots and lots of rookie cards of Major Leaguers that quickly fizzled after hype.

I decided that 2020 would be the year that I get all of this mess under control. At the new house, I have a lot more room to store the ever growing card collection, than I've ever had before. Since I'd be going through all of the work of re-sorting them, I may as well go the extra mile and change the arrangement from chronological to by team. Since it has been bothering me for years, may as well fix it now.

With no idea how long resorting all of this would take, I began the laborious process of removing all of the cards from each of the albums, to be sorted by team. I chose 1974 as the starting point. That was the first year that Topps issued their set as one single series, so I figured that was good enough for me. All cards between 1957 and 1973 will stay in chronological order. (Earlier than 1957 are oversized and don't fit in 9-pocket pages. Those are kept in Top Loaders.) Using all of the available Monster Boxes I had (7 of them), by the time I was at 2004, I had to stop. Those 7 boxes were full of nearly 35,000 cards. 

By April of 2020, I was starting to remove cards from the albums. Working on 1985 Donruss and Fleer, according to this picture. Wouldn't be long before I was emptying the albums that contained Kevin Maas cards!

Some of which were:

#20 - 1992 Studio - Kevin Maas

Kevin Maas has a really big poofy hair helmet on this card. Which is odd because it's cut rather short. 1992 Studio was a huge improvement on 1991 Studio. 1993 Studio was better than 1992, and 1994 was better than 1993. Then Studio went off the rails and became credit cards in 1995...

#19 - 1994 Score - Kevin Maas

Maas got a nice head shot card for the 1994 Score set. Unfortunately, he was no longer a New York Yankee when the packs hit the shops. The Yankees released him on March 29, 1994. Maas signed with the San Diego Padres, on April 13, 1994. The Padres released him on May 23, 1994. On May 27, 1994, Maas signed with the Cincinnati Reds, who kept him in AAA Indianapolis through the season. He didn't get all call up to the Major Leagues despite hitting very well over 78 games. Had there not been a strike in MLB, I wonder if the Reds would have given Maas a shot?

The Cincinnati Reds released Maas on December 1, 1994. Three weeks later, he signed with another Major League organization. But I'm not going to say which one for now. 

Gotta make a Kevin Maas countdown at least somewhat compelling!

#18 - 1991 Ultra - Kevin Maas

That's certainly a card...

Yeah... I’m more interested in looking at how I accomplished that massive sorting project

Not long ago, I only had two "sorting tray" boxes, both of which date back to the late 1980's. A few years back, when I was still living in Colorado, I looked for a third, but never found it at the card shops out there. Soon as I moved back to Minnesota, I found my nearby LCS always had them in stock! You simply have to have three 10 bay sorting trays for any major MLB card sorting project. A set of handy homemade team-labeled divider cards helps too!

First, I had to sort all of those "new additions". Cards that have arrived to the collection since I put these albums together about 12 years ago. 

April 30, 2020. Starting off with 2019-2018 cards.

By the next day, I'd gotten all the way through 1992!

Forging on through 1959, and I'm finished sorting the new additions, in just a couple of days! 

Or so I thought... 

These cards were finished up on May 1st, 2020. Four days later, there was a devastating fire at my parents house. I didn't sort much over the next couple of months, as a great deal of that time was spent digging through the ashes to find any items worth saving. Most of my mom's card collection had been boxed up, and stored inside of other boxes, and were pretty much unharmed.

Others were not as lucky...

We moved the boxes of cards (and everything else we saved) to my garage, to await further going through. She kept what she wanted, I picked out some more that I wanted, and the rest of the cards were tossed into the recycling bin.

Now I had to add even more stuff to the new arrivals box. A few of them may have even been Kevin Maas cards. Not these next few though, I know that I already had these...

#17 - 1992 Bowman - Kevin Maas

My love of 1992 Bowman has been covered before. But this is just a pretty standard card, nothing special.

#16 - 1992 Leaf Black - Kevin Maas

Always amuses me to see a player listed as a Designated Hitter, while the picture shows them fielding. (Edgar Martinez seemingly has hundreds of them.) I really didn't like 1992 Leaf very much. The gray borders bored me. However, the Black Gold parallel set was very nice looking.

#15 - 1992 Donruss - Kevin Maas

This one is probably ranked too high. But I have a soft spot for 1992 Donruss.

#14 - 1991 Topps Rookies - Kevin Maas

Fairly recent addition from a Fairfield Re-Pack. Even though those things are just ripe with Junk Wax Era worthlessness, occasionally you are surprised with something like this. I never bought any 1991 Topps Jumbo packs that contained these inserts. So when Fairfield gives me one (or 7 Kevin Appier cards) from this set, it's new to me. And would have been pretty special in 1991. 

Oh, it's still absolutely worthless!

So how's all that sorting going? 

By April of 2021, the album-pulled cards were all pulled out and placed into their own Monster Boxes. I then gathered the team sorted penny sleeved cards (from those 6 Monster Boxes), the previously boxed up commons, and piled them into my office. Knowing the even more time consuming project comes next...

The new additions boxes were sorted and standing by. Divided into two groups; 1974-2004 and 2005-2019. Taped together used and/or damaged Top Loaders served as the barrier between them.

Attention now turned to the six Monster Boxes full of cards taken from albums. Those were still in chronological order, and needed to be divided by 30. (Well, 27.) After each third album's worth of cards, I stopped to sort them down into teams. That way, the second part of the process wouldn't become too difficult, had I tried to do more than 3,000-3,500 at a time. A process that took several months of off and on attention anyways. 

For ease of sorting, I went through each box three times. This photo, from April 28, 2021, shows the progress of 1990 Upper Deck. Angels through Giants, going alphabetically...

Two weeks later, we're doing 1993 Finest, Cardinals through Padres.

Reaching 1993 means that I'd already sorted these Maas cards, placing them with the rest of the familiar Junk Wax Yankees.

And you can’t get much more junky than 1991 Fleer!

#13 - 1991 Fleer - Kevin Maas

Why yellow, Fleer?

It's been 30 years and the choice of yellow is still baffling to me.

#12 - 1990 Topps Traded - Kevin Maas

Topps didn't include Maas in their 1990 flagship set. Upper Deck, Fleer and Score all released Maas cards before he played one game in the Major Leagues. But Maas had to wait for that ugly 1990 Topps Traded set for his first Topps card.

#11 - 1991 Stadium Club Charter Member - Kevin Maas

Another Fairfield Re-Pack arrival. This is from one of the Stadium Club mail-in sets that were available if you joined the actual Topps Stadium Club in 1991. I never joined, but I did buy the additional sets to include with my 1991 Stadium Club binder. 

I've been collecting cards since 1987. Meaning I -like too many others- jumped on that bandwagon in the early stages of the Junk Wax Era. Unlike many of those people, I never really stopped collecting. There have been a few stretches where I haven't bought as much unopened product as others, due to purely financial reasons. Either way, over the last (near) 35 years, I've accumulated a ridiculous amount of cards. 

Knowing that I couldn't (and shouldn't) possibly keep all of them, I've periodically gone through "organize and eliminate" stretches. Notably in 2003, 2007 and 2017, when I rid myself of well over 300,000 cards combined. Each time, I further refined what I was keeping in the permanent collection, and how I wanted to store them. 

The prized singles, consisting of notable rookies, low serial numbered parallels, autographs and relics, etc., are all stored in Top Loaders. Also sorted by team and player, and housed in shoe boxes. Safe and sound in one of those great shoe box condominiums.

It occurred to me after starting this story, that I'd never taken a picture of the shoe box condo specifically. And I can't now, since I'm actually in the middle of photographing and sorting those. In order to include it in this story, I had to zoom in and crop it out of a much larger photo. So it's all blurry and stuff, but you get the idea...

You know who has zero cards in Top Loaders?

Kevin Maas!

Oh look! We're up to the Top 10 Kevin Maas cards now!

Must... stay... focused...

#10 - 1991 Upper Deck - Kevin Maas

Probably Maas's most attractive card, and probably should have been ranked higher. After all, I used it for the header image of this story. (Which has shockingly little to do with Kevin Maas...)

#9 - 1991 Topps MLB Debut - Kevin Maas

I bought this as a complete set, but I somehow lost all of the big names from it. I know at one point I did have the Frank Thomas card, but shortly after buying the set, I did not have the Frank Thomas card. I don't remember selling it or trading it, so I've always wondered where it went. I still have the Kevin Maas card. Which has another picture of Maas as a Designated Hitter.

Guess what?

Kevin Maas never played for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Believe me, I looked...

Using the chronologically sorted album-pulled cards as a base, they were then sorted by player. I'm going to use the Toronto Blue Jays as my example here. Mainly because they were the team I was sorting when I first decided to write this story, 8 months ago. (Back when it had nothing to do with Kevin Maas...) The Angles, Astros and Athletics (from 1974-2004) were completed by this point, so the Blue Jays were up next.

Once those album-pulled cards were sorted by player, they would then be cross-checked with the team sorted penny sleeved cards. Represented here by the box in front of the sorting tray, and the second from the left two spaces in the sorting tray. A very small (less than 10) stack of Blue Jays commons sit in the spot to the left of them. Other spaces in the sorting tray include recent Top Loadered hits, that need to be filed into the Top Loaders boxes, and additional new sleeved and unsleeved miscellaneous cards. these would be filed in as I made it to their teams. Plus the obligatory spot for new Twins, Rockies and Expos.

If you squint very closely, you'll see a Ubaldo Jimenez Allen & Ginter jersey card (from 2010 or 2011, I can't remember). This card was included as my 1 in 8 box hit, from a recent Walgreens Fairfield Re-pack! It was the only one in the store when I picked up a prescription. So I have to buy that... Come on... There's a special kind of awesome to finding a hit for a team you collect, in a Fairfield Re-Pack. Doesn't happen very often. Although, I have even pulled an Expos autograph from Fairfield, on two separate occasions! A 1995 Signature Rookies JJ Thobe, and a 1995 Signature Rookies Brad Fullmer. 

You shouldn't remember 1995 Signature Rookies. That stuff was TERRIBLE, even in 1995!

Sorting this mess down to players. Many of these were previously paged with their brothers-in-brand, but the motivation of seeing all of my Dave Stieb cards in one place seemed better than one here and there, spread across nine albums. 

Is it better?

Does it matter?

Well, I like it better this way.

So there.

This is the end result. I can think of no better example for how I want to view my albums, than a page with 7 Junior Felix cards on it! And yes, I'm 100% aware that Junior Felix rookie cards are 1000% worthless today. (Who would even have these in an album in 2022?) With as specific as I'm being in sorting the cards by team, you'd think I'd have a set formula for how the player sorted clusters were placed in pages. Nope. Once the collection has been brought down to this level, I want semi-chronological order, with a generous hint of randomness. 

These are cards that I still like, for Whatever reason...

Of course the Blue Jays ended up with a larger share of the album collection, given their higher ranking of which teams I love and/or hate. Put Junior Felix on the Red Sox, and he may get 1-2 cards displayed. 

Yet I have 22 Kevin Maas Yankees cards...

Some more of which are...

#8 - 1990 Upper Deck - Kevin Maas

I bought a metric fuck-ton of 1990 Upper Deck wax, but I didn't get many Maases for some reason. Seemed like my boxes were heavy on John Olerud and Dean Palmer. That bothered me for the brief period of time that everyone wanted this Maas card. In the long run, I'll take my 17 1990 Upper Deck John Olerud's over my 2 1990 Upper Deck Kevin Maas cards, any day.

#7 - 1990 Score - Kevin Maas

His 1990 Upper Deck card was more popular, but I liked his 1990 Score rookie card better.

#6 - 1991 Leaf - Kevin Maas

Massive drop off from the groundbreaking 1990 Leaf set, but I've always liked 1991 Leaf. I still feel the photography was better, and the "photo corner" borders are distinctive, without being overpowering. 

#5 - 1990 Leaf - Kevin Maas

But I have to say the 1990 Leaf Kevin Maas is a better card. For a very short time, this Maas was the hottest card when Series 2 packs came out. Though that was quickly outpaced by the Frank Thomas rookie. And all of the other cards in the set that quickly became more popular than Kevin Maas.

Even Junior Felix...

******

March 12, 2022. I'm nearing the home stretch of the sorting project.

Detroit Tigers cards, from 1974 to 2004 have been pulled out of the sleeves box. 

Column on the left consisting of Tigers cards (1974-1990) that were pulled from the old chronological albums. The middle column are Tigers cards from the sleeve box, and the one on the right is just commons. (Looks kinda like his name is Ray Barf...) In case I had one that needed to be promoted to album or sleeve, for whatever reason.

Sorting the Tigers took about the least amount of time of all the teams. (At least the ones that existed since 1974.) Not that I have any real animosity towards the Tigers, they just haven't had a lot of players I collect. 

Next it's on to the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees.

I have a decent amount of White Sox, and a whole lotta New York Yankees cards...

Some of them are cards of this guy!

#4 - 1991 Stadium Club - Kevin Maas

1991 Stadium Club is one of my all time favorite sets. Mainly because of the memories it brings of the time of it's release. I wrote about it several years back, and it's still one of my favorite set specific stories. Maas did get a pretty nice photo for his card in the set.

#3 - 1992 Classic Board Game - Kevin Maas

Somehow I ended up with two complete 1992 Classic Board Games, in the big style board game box. The game included 200 MLB licensed player cards, with trivia questions on the back. One of them was opened to raid the singles, the other one is still sealed on a shelf. Overall, the set is rather dark, both in design and photos, which earns bonus points with me. Had this been a full 660+ 1992 card set, it would have ranked above a few of the mainstream sets that year.

Even more bonus points for getting the Expos in their new uniforms!

I may have mentioned before that I collect Expos, Twins and Rockies cards. (Don't know if I ever did, I'll have to work on making that clearer in the future.) 

#2 - 1995 Fleer Update - Kevin Maas

December 22, 1994, Kevin Maas signed as a Free Agent with the Minnesota Twins. It was just a minor league contract, since the MLB Players Union was still on strike for another three and a half months. Minnesota was looking for a (cheap) left-handed power bat to replace retiring longtime Twin, Kent Hrbek, at first base. 

Maas was given a fair shot, playing in 22 games for the 1995 Minnesota Twins. He posted a slash line of: .193 / .281 / .316, over 57 at-bats, with 11 hits, 4 doubles and 1 home run. He scored 5 runs and drove in 5, with 7 walks against 11 strikeouts. But Minnesota had seen enough and released him on June 30, 1995. Maas signed a minor league contract back with the New York Yankees the very next day. He spent 1996 and 1997 playing in the minor league systems of the Brewers, Astros and Reds, but he never appeared in the Major Leagues again.

After retiring from baseball, Kevin Maas has worked as a financial consultant in California.

As far as I know, this 1995 Fleer Update card is the only one showing Kevin Maas as a Minnesota Twin. 

Too bad it's absolutely hideous, but that’s 1995 Fleer’s fault, not Maas's.

******

Before we get to the Number 1 Kevin Maas card in my collection, let's see where I left things...

All the new team sorted albums are stacked high on the top two shelves. They didn't all fit into this picture, and I didn't bother shooting one that did. Since all of these albums end at 2004, they will need to be redone after I do the next wave, which will include 2005-2019. Anything newer than 2019 has never been sorted, so that will take even longer...

Underneath that shelf is where I've been tossing the new 2021 and 2022 cards. These are mostly unsorted, unless a notable hit was Top Loadered quickly after opening the pack. This shelf, along with two additional Monster Boxes, full of 2020 and 2021 cards, sitting to the left outside the frame, are the newest arrivals. All of this will most likely be tackled after finishing the 2005-2019 segment of collection restructuring. 

2024 Topps Series 2 will probably be pretty hot by the time that happens. 

The collecting world will likely have moved onto Marcelo Meyer Mania by then.

And I'll be quickly sick of it...

New Baseballcardland has a small closet that was divided into shelves, before we bought the house. The top two of which are the staging area for this time consuming resorting project. Underneath that is the wax box boneyard. 

Obviously, this needs some attention. I've been tossing empty wax boxes onto this shelf since late 2018, and don't even remember if there's anything buried underneath it. Most of these will go into recycling, but I want to scan some of the box art first. There are a few boxes in here that I plan on keeping intact. That 2020 Bowman Heritage wax box is an absolute keeper!

Then there's dealing with all of this...

Baseball Memorabilia, Magazines, Newspapers, Books, Autographs and all sorts of stuff that I sorely need to make sense out of. A lot of it will be easy to get rid of once I find the time. I have no longer have any interest in keeping 100+ Beckett magazines from the 1990's. 

Of course there is the issue of just finding the time to deal with all of this.

I need to pick up the pace.

Perhaps after I finish this ridiculous sorting project?

Probably around 2025?

Well, I'm not done ignoring it yet!

I'd talk more about all that, but there's maybe a couple of readers out there, just dying to find out what the Number One Kevin Maas Card is...

Oh, and it's gonna be a let down!

#1 - 1993 Leaf - Kevin Maas

Probably didn't expect this one... But I really like the photo. It's one of my favorites in 1993 Leaf. A set that I bought a lot of, but the pictures are pretty blah. This one stood out. I've always thought this shot was taken at Royals Stadium, but I'm not certain of that. There's a lot going on here. You have Maas stretching over the tarp, with both feet off the ground. You also have the tarp. And there's a tubby umpire chasing Maas.

And then there's all the fans behind Maas.

That warrants a closer look...

Enhance!

Going right-to-left, you have a guy ready to chop the ball away from Maas's glove. (He must be a Royals fan.) Next to him is teal polo shirt guy. He's probably a Marlins fan. There's a soccer fan next to him, who is next to a Doors fan man! The kid next to him couldn't commit to an identity, so he just went with solid white shorts and t-shirt. He's lucky enough to stand next to a guy who just wanted everyone to see his nipples.

And we all get to smell his armpits!

So there you have it.

The top 23 Kevin Maas cards in my collection. 

And a big buncha the mess of my collection.

Well, I tried to make it exciting...

It just really wasn't...

Yup, just like Harley living his best life...