The Waner Brothers BAT RELICS

I've been wanting to add more of the Pittsburgh Pirates HOF players relics to my collection over the past year and came across a handful of Panini relics featuring the HOF Waner Brothers.  All these cards below were added to my collection for less than $10 a piece over the past couple months.

Known as Big Poison (Paul) and Little Poison (Lloyd) were key pieces of the Pirates early success in the 20th century.

2012 Prime Cuts Biography BAT RELIC Paul Waner 87/99

Paul went on to collect 3,152 career hits (2,868 in a Pittsburgh uniform) and finished his career with a .333 career batting average over his 20 year career.  Paul also won the MVP award in 1927 (second year in majors) with his .380 batting average and 131 RBI.

2012 Prime Cuts Icons Bat Relic Lloyd Waner 74/99 BAT RELIC

Lloyd, Lil' Poison, was not as talented as his older brother but still manage to have a long and successful career himself.  He finished his career with 2,459 career hits and a .316 batting average.  What's most impressive of the younger Waner though is that he struck out only 173 times over his 18 year career.  5 players in baseball had more strikeouts last year than Lloyd had in his entire career.  That's insane!!! It would be nearly 45 plate appearances before Lloyd would strike out.  Only 2 players have better numbers in the history of the game (Willie Keeler and Joe Sewell).

3 New HOF Autos for the PTR

I've been adding to my HOF Pirates AUTO collection recently by picking up ON CARD AUTOGRAPHS of 2011 inductee Bert Blyleven and 2008 inductee Goose Gossage.

You can see those posts by clicking on the players name above.

In addition to Bert & Goose, I was looking to add to my autograph collection of 2 players who were more well known to the Pirates.  I'm talking about Ralph Kiner and Bill Mazeroski.

In 2005 Upper Deck released a limited print run of HOF players called "Class of Cooperstown". These cards featured bat relics that were etched with the players HOF year of entry along with a sticker auto.  The players photos were black and white on a blue background.  They looked very classy and were limited to only 15 copies per player.

I stumbled across the Ralph Kiner and Bill Mazeroski who were both being sold by the same seller.  The seller was asking $30 a piece with free shipping.  Some further research made me realize that if I didn't take this opportunity now, I would probably never be able to get them again.  Only one other copy of each had reached the secondary market in the past year. So I hit buy-it-now and now they are part of my permanent collection.

Ralph Kiner 2005 Upper Deck Class of Cooperstown AUTO/BAT 1/15

Bill Mazeroski 2005 Upper Deck Class of Cooperstown AUTO/BAT 3/15

After acquiring the above two cards, I came across this CUT AUTO of HOF Lloyd "Little Poison" Waner from 2008 Topps Sterling Cuts.  I used to have a Lloyd Waner that was part of my collection, but when my ex left so did that card.  Sad story I know.  

Personally though I prefer this CUT auto featuring Lloyd's HOF plaque over the signed check.  It cost me $40 which doesn't sound too expensive for a deceased HOFer. 

Little Poison debuts on PTR

Lloyd "Little Poison" Waner patrolled the Pittsburgh outfield with his brother, Paul "Big Poison" for nearly a decade in the 1920s and 1930s.  The Waner brothers have more hits than all 3 Alou brothers combined in addition to all 3 Dimaggio brothers.  The two brothers amassed 5,611 career hits between the two of them. 

He appeared in 1 All-Star game (1938) and finished his career with 2,459 hits and a batting average of .319.  Little Poison was a hitter with an extreme plate discipline.  His largest single season strikeout total was 23 in 1927 when he collected 223 hits while batting .355.  His career strikeout totals were 173 times over 8,334 plate appearances.  To put that into perspective, Mark Reynolds of the Baltimore Orioles had 196 strikeouts last year alone in only 620 plate appearances. 


Despite not having hit any of the milestone numbers, Lloyd was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1967 by the Veteran's Committee.  Sabremetrician Bill James has stated that Lloyd Waner is one of ten players elected into the HOF that don't have the statistics to warrant the enshrinement.  I strongly disagree with his assessment based on the fact of how well he hit and controlled the strike zone while batting.

It's always nice to add an autograph of a Hall of Famer to my collection, especially one that means so much to my favorite team.  Lloyd passed away in 1982 so it's very hard to find autographs of him and although it's numbered to 217 (not a very low print run for a deceased HOFer) I am very happy to add this Lloyd Waner AUTO to the ever growing Pirates Treasure Room.  I picked this up at a card show for $50 which is a steal if you ask me.