Cards from Across the Border: Cardinals Edition

A trade so nice I split it thrice.

Occasionally I'll get a package of cards in the mail so generous that I can't conceivably do it justice with my typical five-images-and-a-few-comments approach. A package arrived from Sportscards From The Dollar Store recently that felt deserving of a little extra attention, so I will be splitting it up into three entries. And since I am admittedly pretty stingy with baseball (and Cardinals) content this time of year, I am rolling out the Cardinals portion of this trade first. It does not disappoint.

Breyvic Valera was a name I'd never heard before I opened this package. A quick scan of his Baseball Reference page reveals that he was signed out of Venezuela at age 18 and has hit for average while playing all over the field in his 5 years of pro ball.

Siegrist, the super late round draft pick, basically had a lost season in 2014 after debuting last year as a flame throwing southpaw no one had heard of. It will be interesting to see if he can return to the level of promise he showed at first blush.

I was really excited to pick up a pair of Cardinals certified autos, including this Carlos Martinez card from last year's Bowman Sterling set. Martinez's friendship with the late Oscar Taveras goes way back, and he has switched his familiar number 44 to 18, which Taveras wore in his brief time in a Cardinals uniform.

The other autograph is from the same set and is of another Oscar. Mercado was a 2nd round pick last season and is a young shortstop that has years ahead of him to develop in the Cardinals farm system. The strange thing is that these two cards appear to be from the same set, yet one has an on-card autograph while the other is signed on that familiar shiny sticker. It's not like Topps has ever heard of continuity, though.