Grande Group Break

A @Nachos_Grande group break delivered the goods. 

Literal Fan of Reds, and known Cardinals-hater Chris from Nachos Grande hosted another super group break a couple of months ago, and I was a happy participant. I'm always interested in the breaks that favor team collectors instead of hit-chasers, and this one had a nice variety of stuff from the '90s and '00s.

1997's (Leaf?) Limited set is an interesting one, as most of the cards are dual-sided "Counterparts" cards featuring two players who are not even teammates at all. This ends up being kind of a weird thing for team collectors, but hopefully there are enough cards to go around to keep everyone happy. (It also means I now have a card headed to my binders that has Roger Clemens on the back, which is kind of gross.)

Here's a head shot of Izzy, brand new to the Cardinals at the time. This was one of a handful of 2002 Topps Total cards I needed from the break.

One of the biggest attractions to the break was the ultra shiny and suave 2001 Topps Gold Label. This is a Gold version of J.D. Drew's Class 2 card, numbered to 699. Someday, I will have all of the shiny things and variations and retire as the King of Baseball Card Mountain.

Here's another numbered card, from 2016 Panini Donruss, which I believe was a bonus to the break. These Black parallel cards look good when contrasted with Cardinal red.

I am pretty much up for any break that includes Pacific products, because I don't have a lot of their stuff and they always seem to have a million parallels, something that seems to have rubbed off on Panini when they inherited their rights.

In a mild upset, there was actually an Ozzie Smith base card that I needed. This is from 1995's Score Summit set. It's pretty Score/Pinnacle looking, but the thickness of the cards adds a nice touch.

Back when I was actually still collecting, Topps issued a full reprint set, under the now ubiquitous Topps Archives name, of 1953 Topps. I must have completely ignored it, because I was generally uninterested in anything older than I was at that particular time in my life. Ah, youth. In any case, it was nice to pick up a bunch of cards from this set.

Finally, here's a collecting dilemma, although I'm not really going to lose any sleep over this one. I pretty much add anything Cardinals related to my collection, but I might have to draw the line at this one. As you may know, a number of the cards in the 1995 Summit set have the wrong logo foil stamped on the front of the card. (I have a Terry "Not The Famous Quarterback" Bradshaw card with a Brewers logo stamped on it in my collection, for instance, even though he never belonged to that team.) Mr. Unroe, if that is his real name, was never a part of the Cardinals in any capacity, so it's hard for me to consider including this in my collection.

I also had the Baltimore Orioles in this break, so if you are a fan of that team and have some needs from any of the sets shown here, feel free to let me know! A numbered Brian Roberts card may be in the offing for you.