Cards on Cards: Let's Get Crackin'

Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Let's Get Crackin'

There's new grass on the field.

Did you know that actual, factual baseball will be played as soon as this weekend? We may still be knee deep in one of the worst weather winter's we've had in quite some time, but baseball doesn't care about your stupid calendars. Spring Training is here! It's time to get excited about baseball, Ron Gant style! Julie from A Cracked Bat recently exchanged our first volley of baseball cards, and I'm here to show off a few of those things in anticipation of finally being able to follow box scores again.

This one just kind of blends right in with a white background, but I think there's something really elegant about this card design. Those Fleer Greats sets of the '00s are a favorite of mine, and every year seemed to have a completely different design.

Hobie Landrith is just a great name. This is just my seventh '58 Topps card for my Cardinals collection, but it's the first Hobie I've ever owned.

From rustic and old to shiny and new, here's a trio of Topps Tribute luminaries. Can baseball cards be considered "rustic"? Sure, why not?

I'm not quite sure how purple these cards are, but the internet tells me that these are purple Gypsy Queen minis. The backs tell me that they are each numbered to just 250 cards. The fronts tell me that these are players I've heard of. The things you learn!

Julie also sent a whole heaping helping of Cardinals cards from the 2015 Topps Mini set, a thing that I did not know was an actual thing. Sure, the image is scanned to scale, so you can't tell it's a smaller version of its main counterpart, but the lack of foil shows that there's something a little different about these. I assumed, wrongly, that Topps gave up on their retail only Mini sets after 2014. Apparently they just shifted to a cheaper, boxed set model.

Yadi Extension Watch 2017 is officially on right now. With one of the top catching prospects in baseball right on his heels in Carson Kelly, many (including me) are still holding out hope that Yadier Molina will retire a Cardinal. With his bounceback season at the plate in 2016, he surely seems to have some value left beyond just his amazing handling of the pitching staff.