Celebrating The Undervalued and Quite Often Underrated Second Year Card

I love rookie cards just as much as the next guy or gal who collects baseball cards.It's a players first card.If your lucky enough to have picked up a players rookie card before his rise to super stardom,chances are you scored It In a pack or you paid very little for the single.On the other hand ,If  you had to see It to believe It, and decided to hold off until a particular player became an established star,then you probably ended up paying a fortune for his rookie card. I paid 70 bucks a couple years back for a 2001 set of Fleer Tradition,for the Pujols rookie.Then I sold It when I found myself needing the extra cash. I've since regretted getting rid of that Pujols  and while his rookie cards aren't nearly as expensive today as they were at the height of his popularity,I still wouldn't be able to afford one.Which led me to hop online and search for an earlier ,not quite as expensive as a rookie card but still a nice representation of  the Ruthian slugger a s a young buck. I came across a bunch of listings for Pujols's second year Topps card,a rookie cup card at that,all for about a buck a piece!What a difference a year makes,huh?It suddenly donned on me that this may become habit forming.From here on out ,I'm hunting down second year cards of  players whose rookie cards are just far too expensive to covet.A few names quickly come to mind.Vladimir Guerrero,David Ortiz,Alex Rodriguez,Mariano Rivera, and Rickey Henderson.I decided to dig through my collection to weed out  some of my favorite second year cards (In chronological order).

FRONT

BACK

Wait,what?!?Is that Placido Polanco on the back of the  great King Pujols's baseball card?!?No respect :( 

                                                                          

This Is one of my favorite Prince Fielder cards.The rookie cup logo and the full body shot shows how immense of a player Fielder was even In his younger years!

I recently picked up a Trout second year base card but had to pick up It's Chrome counterpart as well.  

This Is just an awesome shot of  Puig rounding the square bases ;) 

While still not an established super star,DeGrom Is well on his way.