Trading with JayBee

I recently completed a trade with JayBee of bdj610's Topps Baseball Card Blog. JayBee is an avid collector of all things Topps. Basically, if it exists and Topps made it, it's on his list. I sent over some Target Legends of the Game inserts that I got in some 2009 packs that I purchased and he was kind enough to send me a small stack of cards from my want list.

About half the cards were from 2006 Topps, which is nice. The Cardinals must have more cards in the 2006 set (Updates & Highlights inclusive) than any other team, due to their World Series title run and a number of trades/acquisitions made throughout 2006. This is back when the Updates & Highlights set would come out after the World Series was over so that it could include highlights of the playoffs. I'm not so sure of the need to say "Carpenter Blanks Bengals..." however. It just sounds like football.

Here's another one of the 2006 Topps cards that I can cross off my list. Both Pujols and Carp look awkwardly cropped. Horizontal multi-player cards work much better - just see this year's entries from Topps and Upper Deck.

I also got a couple of Own the Game inserts - Chris Carpenter and Albert Pujols from 2006...


...and Pujols from 2007. The whole concept of "Owning the Game" is pretty silly, but it gives Topps and excuse to put a bunch of shiny stuff in their inserts and they keep doing it. Sadly, no Cardinals "Owned the Game" in 2008 according to Topps, Albert's MVP notwithstanding.

I also got a couple of 2008 K-Mart Rookie Variations. I had completely forgotten about these K-Mart exclusives. It's easy to forget that K-Mart exists, frankly.

And finally there was a 2004 Topps 1st Edition Blake Hawksworth. 1st Edition cards were apparently exclusive to hobby stores that were part of Topps' Home Team Advantage program. HTA jumbo packs are notorious for containing some incredible stuff (at an appropriately steep price) but these cards were just found in regular 10 card packs that contained no inserts whatsoever. The "advantage" was that each card had the 1st Edition foil stamp. I'll have more on this later.

Thanks again to JayBee - make sure you check out his blog.