Jay Gibbons, 2004 Upper Deck Twenty-Five Salute #S-4

Every time I dig through dime boxes of Orioles cards, I find at least a dozen mid-2000s Jay Gibbons cards that I need. There has probably never been a looser definition of the word "need". That is the curse of the team collector. By sheer inertia, the redheaded, injury-prone outfielder found himself representing the cruddy O's in an endless procession of meaningless sets, subsets, and inserts from several card companies locked in an arms race of proliferate irrelevance. At present, I own 84 Jay Gibbons cards and I haven't even scratched the surface. At least this insert set is so oddly specific that it seems to have a purpose. As you can see on the top and bottom borders, they've identified 10 players who wore #25 in the previous season and chosen to celebrate them. There's quite a mixed bag, with Hall of Fame hopefuls (Barry Bonds, Jim Thome, Rafael Palmeiro), guys who played at a high level for a number of years (Carlos Delgado, Andruw Jones, Jason Giambi)...and then the remainders of Troy Glaus, Jeremy Giambi, Gibbons, and Dmitri Young. Each has an interesting story, but you don't often see all 10 brought together in one place.