Why Are We Writing on Cards Again?

The long time affordable group break host Cardboard Collections held a box bust of fancy cards from more than a decade ago, which is also how things usually become affordable in the first place. It seems that no one was able to squirrel away large sacks of lucre with dollar signs on them by investing in Topps Gold Label or, shockingly, something called Pacific Online. The former looks classy and attracts fingerprints like crazy while the latter looks hilarious dated and kind of terrible. I am all about terrible cards if they are Cardinals and not already in my collection, so I jumped at this opportunity. And now I have landed. With cards.

My "other team" in the break ended up being the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in their salad days. I now have a couple of early Josh Hamilton cards to trade. I don't know if there's much of a market for his early stuff as it was a dark time for him and you can barely connect Josh Hamilton the Burned Out Prospect to Josh Hamilton the Very Well Paid Angel.

This one is an insert. These are both headed to the Trade Bait pile, which I still need to work on getting live on the blog.

It doesn't seem like McGwire has had much of a positive effect on the Dodgers since taking over as their hitting coach. I also read this article (column?) and wondered if the LA Times is still a real paper.

Ah, Pacific Online. I don't really even know what to say about this set other than that I've heard rumblings that it's huge and daunting and scary. All I do know is that it prints two URLs on the card, one that redirects to a better known address and one that has probably been defunct for a decade.

I'm not positive, but I think this might be my very first Lance Painter Cardinals card. If it's not, I know that I don't have many. Painter was one of the first Cardinals I got to know better through video games than from actually watching on TV. T.J. Matthews was another one of those players. I miss my old MLB PC game.

Colbey often sends me extra Cardinals cards (which reminds me, I need to send something back!) and this time was no exception. The hand-numbered Allen Craig Heritage mini was icing on the cake, but I still feel weird when I look at this card. I love getting a rare Cardinals card, and one of an excellent first baseman at that. I get that hand numbering cards is supposed to be a sign of a precious rare item, like a little craftsman touch or something. So why do I get a weird feeling when I see this, like what the hell kind of teenager was given a coffee and a sandwich and made to sign a bunch of baseball cards over at Topps HQ? I never got these feelings when I first got a hand numbered Allen & Ginter mini, but these just seem weird. All I can think of is some poor intern drawing on cards for no pay whatsoever.

Another part of me is very happy to own this, of course, and wonders where the other 99 are at.