Once upon a time, Craig Biggio was an All-Star catcher who looked like he might develop into something of a potent stick, too.
Not a magical formula for rookie card prices, but Houston Astros fans were starting to get happy with him.
Then the Astros moved him to second base in 1992, and he became … well, he became an All-Star again.
And then a Gold Glover and a Silver Slugger and an MVP candidate and a Killer B.
Ultimately, Biggio put up more than 3000 hits and almost 300 home runs, and he beat longtime teammate Jeff Bagwell to Hall of Fame enshrinement by two years.
And all of that?
Yeah, all of that was enough to whip up a goodly and sustained interest in Biggio’s copious rookie cards.
Here’s the rundown of those now-dusty relics …
1988 Fleer Update Craig Biggio (#U-89)
Biggio made his Major League debut just about a year after the Astros took him with their first-round draft pick in 1987.
And about five months after that — and after a rookie season that saw him hit .211 with three home runs and catch 50 games — Fleer included him in their 1988 Update set.
By adding Biggio to their late-season mix, Fleer got the jump on most of their competition, even if it would take a few years for the future Hall of Famer to make them look good.
And, while 1988 Fleer is no great shakes overall, the Biggio RC shakes a little better than most of the rest.
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1988 Score Rookie and Traded Craig Biggio (#103T)
Pretty much the same story here as with the Fleer card above, except this Biggio was part of Score’s first ever Rookie and Traded set.
Though I still think the 1988 Score set is sort of flat, it was pretty popular at the time, and it represented a big leap forward in terms of photo quality … especially on card backs.
Sort of a stepping stone between, say, 1981 Donruss and 1989 Upper Deck.
Anyway, the Biggio RC features a nicely framed batting shot and orange borders that work well for, you know, an Astros player.
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1989 Astros Lennox HSE Craig Biggio (#24)
This is a team issue sponsored by — this is gonna surprise you — Lennox heating and cooling, and HSE (Home Sports Entertainment).
You won’t find this card very often, but when you do, you’ll be looking at a taller than normal pasteboard of a kid ballplayer who looks as ready for a Babe Ruth game as an MLB game.
Oh, on the back, you’ll also learn that Biggio was the first non-pitcher from the 1987 to make it to the Majors.
Cool story, bro.
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1989 Astros Smokey Craig Biggio (#6)
I know this card exists, because it’s on a few checklists around the interwebs, like here at Beckett.com.
But it’s elusive, at least in photographic form. That same Beckett link will take you to a picture of the Dan Schatzeder card from the same set, though. Looks like a fire/safety card from the 1980s.
Which, I guess, is what it is.
The Biggio is, too, or would be … if you could find it.
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1989 Classic Craig Biggio (#51)
Classic was back for a third season in 1989, with a design that was decidedly less classic than its predecessors and decidedly more 1980s.
Biggio falls in the 100-card “blue” set that forms the base of the issue and was included with the actual Classic trivia game itself. The design is simple, but the pink-to-blue fade of the borders, the solid blue background, and the bright yellow typeface are garish exemplars of the decade.
Biggio almost looks wrong smiling back at us with anything less than Cyndi Lauper hair, like a time traveler out of sync with his surroundings.
The Anachronistic Astro.
Still a cool card, though, and one that plenty of collectors have broken away from the original full set. It won’t break the bank, in other words.
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1989 Donruss Craig Biggio (#561)
Another Biggio rookie card that won’t break the bank is the 1989 Donruss base issue. This card is the first one on our list that collectors could pull from real, live wax packs across the land.
And, coming as they did in the midst of the Junk Wax era, those wax packs were all across the land.
The 1989 Donruss design has never been a collector favorite, but the top and bottom yellow-to-red-fade borders work well with the Astros colors, and the action shot of Biggio in his tools of ignorance is one of the best offerings in the entire set.
Still, there are enough of these floating around out there that you could probably tile your basement with the Donruss Biggio rookies lurking within a mile radius of you right now.
You might be a tad disappointed with the durability of the surface, though.
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