Catching Up With Trade Posts

Shiny Cardinal cards from a Red Sox fan.

Last month, my stash of Topps Chipz was the impetus for a Red Sox-for-Cardinals trade, this time with Catching Up With Collecting. It was my first time trading with CUWC, and it did not disappoint. (To be fair, I can't remember a trade I've made through this blog that was disappointing. You guys are all pretty great.) I got some much needed Chipz in return, but as they're not very exciting to scan, I will instead show off a few more rectangular looking objects.

The Cardinals have had a rotating cast of right fielders in recent years. After replacing some combination of Rick Ankiel and Ryan Ludwick with Lance Berkman and finding huge success in 2011, Carlos Beltran came along and kept things rolling for two really nice seasons. Production fell off a cliff last year, however. The juice completely ran out of Allen Craig's bat last year and now the duty falls to Jason Heyward to restore what had been a pretty productive position for this team.

Here's another Beltran, of the chromed up and serial numbered variety. If this looks a little weird, it might be that you're used to the base card version. I can only surmise that it must take longer to manufacture the chrome parallels than the base cards, giving Topps extra time to work their Photoshopping "magic" on the base cards. This is all a guess, though.

This looks like some fake Topps Tek. What do you guys think?

Although I'm not really a fan of the manupatch cards per se, I kind of liked what I'd seen of these when they were doing tributes to famous rookie cards. This isn't a rookie card, though. It's still a fun card of Stan the Man.

I do hope they never stop making stickers.