More First Day Swag (and an Update from Reader Howard)

Bud from First Day Issue struck again recently, sending over another familiar manila padded envelope full of Cardinals goodies around the end of December. To give you an idea, that's about how close I am to catching up on the packages that people have sent me recently. I'm also not certain if I used the word "swag" properly. Feel free to point it out if I misused the word or if I could have found a more appropriate word.

David Freese is expected... er... projected to be the Cardinals starting third baseman next season after suffering terribly at the position in 2009. Troy Glaus had a really nice year at the hot corner in 2008, but he was pronounced dead about a year ago while no one bothered to let the Braves front office know.

Here's another serial-numbered card, this time of Mitchell Boggs. I have already forgotten all about the weird numbering scheme of the 2008 Stadium Club set and all of the variations and differences between the retail and hobby products. All I know is that I needed this card. Thanks!

Believe it or not, this is actually the first 2008 Heritage relic card I've managed to get. I don't think I've bought more of any single product since the junk wax era than I have of 2008 Heritage and the accompanying "high series". This is doubly nice to see because it's Jim Edmonds.

I opened a pack of the 2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes set awhile back but didn't get anything I wanted to keep, so it's nice to see a Cardinal here.

Ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuudddddyyyyyyy! The ladies love this guy. I'm pretty upset with the Blazers performance this week, however, so it's probably best to move on...

Chris Duncan looks so young here! And so awkward. He has some crazy spider legs.

As disheartening as this Blazers season has been so far - and I'm already on record having said that I don't think they'll make the playoffs following Greg Oden's injury - I am extremely happy that Nic Batum is back on the court. I imagine the same can be said for this guy. I don't think he's about to share any of his Chrome rookie cards, though.

Is there anything better than some goofy-sized head card of Albert Pujols? Of course, when it's a goofy-sized head card of Albert Pujols in a retro uniform!

I don't have a lot of Ducks basketball cards, but it's stuff like this that makes me want to get more. I love the old-school Ducks logo on the card, even though it's not appropriate for this era. I thought Chris Christoffersen (commence snickering...) would make a notable impact on the NBA once he got free of Ernie Kent's system which seems to hate post players, but it never happened.

Thanks again to Bud for all of the great Cardinals, Blazers and Ducks cards!

---

Finally, a number of you commented on my post the other day about some rare 2009 Heritage variations I obtained in a trade. Howard has left an interesting comment that I felt worthy of publicizing on the blog:

I found a few [Heritage blasters] in the Wal-Marts in this area. I went to five stores and found 4 of them, each store only getting one. [...] One of the blasters had something that I had never seen, each pack was practically identical. I got 6 or seven of the Glavine's, Smoltz's, Gonzalez's, Ramirez's, and two others. If anyone else wants to trade they can contact me and we will work something out.

I know a bunch of you also collect Heritage, so I encourage you to drop Howard a line. You can get his e-mail address from the comments section in my original post here. I have to say that find myself rolling my eyes at how Topps seemingly can find a way to take gimmicky variations that are already difficult to find and make them even more difficult by stuffing them all into the same blaster. Lucky for Howard, he found that blaster.