Totally Raz!

@chonk34 sends along a huge pile of Cardinals cards (and more!) 

We jump start the second "half" of the MLB season tomorrow with a spotlight on the Cubs/Cardinals rivalry. For good luck, and to dig out of the hole I put myself in, I'm taking a look at a bunch of cards sent my way from The Raz Card Blog back in April. Yes, April was a long time ago... shut up, I know what I'm doing, etc.

A solid chunk of the cards were from the online exclusive 2017 Topps Mini set, which was allegedly printed "on demand" this time around. I didn't even know it was a thing, so it could very well be that not many of these cards were printed. There were the usual base cards from Series 1 and 2, and also the '87 style inserts like doomed Alex Reyes here.

Harrison Bader is a player I'm very excited about right now, and I've already begun to build up a base of his nicer cards. Is there anything nicer than an on-card Heritage autograph? No, of course not! This is one of the things Topps does well, even if Bader looks like he's 15 here. He was actually injured in the final game before the All-Star Break (aka Post-Matheny Era Game 1), and I haven't heard a word about him since. Hopefully, in this case, no news is good news?

Raz included some shiny Chrome parallels from last year's Bowman Draft set. I don't really know these names, but it should be fun to dig these back up in a few years and see how the dudes are progressing. I'n guessing Kramer will get a haircut at some point.

'80s slugger Jack Clark is somewhat lightly represented in my collection (63 unique cards so far), and this is clearly one of the best that I own now. Unfortunately, he was somewhat famously sued by Albert Pujols for making PED allegations about him on a radio show and just generally seems like kind of an obnoxious character. Sometimes I stop focusing on the baseball aspect of collecting player's cards, which is frustrating.

Here's Matt Carpenter, featured on a Bowman Chrome card from last year that throws back to his first, weirdly cropped Bowman card.

I wish Matt Carpenter had made the All-Star team. Unfortunately, Cardinal fan apathy had hit a new low right about the time people were supposed to vote for players. Also, I love Tek/Hi Tek! I wish I could afford more of it.

Dexter looks anguished. Dexter should feel better now that Matheny's gone. I'm hoping for a big final couple of months for Dexter.

It's former Cardinal Randal with One L on one of those super thick Topps Inception cards. (I never really understood how the name of this set fits.)

This is kind of a goofy looking card, but it's a nice addition to the collection.

2008 notwithstanding, the 2014 Stadium Club set was the official return for the populate product. They didn't go full borderless until 2015, which makes this look like a bit of an outlier. This Ozzie Smith card is a foil parallel. It's kind of subtle.

Raz is a big Houston Rockets fan, and the majority of the stuff I've sent him has ended up being basketball. I have a lot of excess basketball cards. It was cool to get some Blazers stuff back. This past season's Optic set was one of the first looks at the new Nike uniforms on cards.

Unfortunately, one of Panini's problems is their seemingly unlimited thirst for parallels. This is a special Mega Box parallel of Blazers rookie Zach Collins. I like Zach, though, and am definitely looking forward to seeing if he can improve on his rookie season as he's already showed some promise befitting of a lottery pick.