Near Mint Cardinals from Nr Mt

Strange and interesting things are afoot across the world wide webspace. Do people still call it that? Erin alerted me to the recent decision about the MLB Properties vs. Upper Deck case by way of a glowingly positive press release from UD. Panini is promoting its new Adrenalyn (sorry, spellchecker, you'll just have to trust me) XL basketball product right now and wants to send us blogger types out to check out their tour. And Thorzul is organizing the masses once again, this time in an attempt to stick it to The Man. I'm afraid that I have some dissenting feelings about the latter (and it's not what you're thinking), but that will have to wait for another time.

This post is all about the nice stash of Cardinals cards I received from Nr Mt about a month back. This was my first trade with Nr Mt, and unfortunately I somehow bungled it all up by pulling a bunch of Turkey Reds from his want list only to find out that by the time I lazily got around to sending them, he had already knocked almost all of them off of his want list. I've probably done this to others before, so feel free to speak up if you're one of those. I'm trying to be better about e-mailing people with what I'm sending instead of leaving everything up to the surprise factor. I love surprises on both ends, though.

I received two of the Ring of Honor insert cards from 2009 Topps, which is great. I don't think I ever pulled one of these, which probably means that I'm missing something and that they were hobby-only. Cepeda looks great in a Cardinal uniform and is the first Hall of Famer that I ever received a certified autograph of.

This is my first Topps Unique card. I'm not sure what is so "unique" about the card, other than the fact that it is remarkably black. It reminds me a bit of the Oregon Ducks black-on-black uniforms that they use for basketball sometimes. There's probably a fancier name for them, but they basically end up being black nameplate on top of black jerseys.

It's sad seeing Rick Ankiel as a pitcher, let alone as a Cardinal. I like him, but I completely understand why it was time for him to move on. He had become a liability on offense by the latter half of last season and I certainly hope he turns it around, as much as seeing this makes me cringe a bit.

I realized that, prior to the 2006 set, I have a hard time picturing any of the Fleer base designs. It seems like there were at least 10 different Fleer sets for every year going back 10-15 years before Upper Deck drove Fleer into the ground, but aside from Ultra, Platinum, Tradition and the other small sets, I don't have a lot.

I also received a much-needed non-Cardinal card from 2008 Heritage. That's one more thing to cross off the lengthy list.

Ditto for 2009. I was happy seeing the familiar dark grey card back, designating this one a short print, when it came out of the package.

This is becoming a pretty Ankiel-heavy post all of a sudden. I'm a sucker for the gold serial numbered cards, as I seem to mention every time I get one of these. I just wish the other parallels (like the black ones) were easier to obtain, because those look awesome as well.

Ludwick cards were some of the hardest for me to get my hands on in 2008 during his breakout season. It's nice to get a gold version of his Updates & Highlights card. I really hope he has a big year this time around. If everything goes well, the Cardinals could have one of the best outfield trios in all of baseball.

Finally, here's a jersey card from 2007 Upper Deck Masterpieces. Er, um... it's a "piece of memorabilia" according to the back of the card. I hope this is something I shouldn't feel creepy about showing off to others, since there's no mention of what sort of memorabilia this could be.

Thanks again to Nr Mt! And by the way, I have no evidence that any of the cards that were sent to me were anything but mint condition. Just so you know...