Want List, Obliterated

I need a brand new 10 Most Wanted list, thanks to @chonk34 and a package that arrived today. 

My 10 Most Wanted list always feels like one of the more underutilized features of my blog, possibly due to the fact that it's only visible to desktop users. I may try to make it more mobile-friendly in the future, but I kind of like how it quietly sits there. We're now up to 53 cards acquired since I added the widget, thanks in large part to a package that arrived today from The Raz Card Blog. Due to the timeliness of this arrival, I decided it best to post about it tonight rather than put it in the lengthy queue of stuff I need to write about. After all, I do need to get to work soon on a new list.

Most of the cards on the list were either the last card I needed to fill a particularly tricky team set, or at least something that was going to put me close to a goal. Flaherty was brilliant last season for the most part, so it was great to not only finish off last year's Gypsy Queen set, but it also increased my Flaherty RC total -- always a good thing.

I am always tempted to fill my list entirely with Junk Wax Era cards, because it's just illogical that I don't have some of these things yet. This finishes off the Classic "Game" set from 1991 (I think these came with an actual game board), but I still need something from one of the add-on sets that year. Yeesh.

A couple of '80s Update/Traded set cards made the list, including Lonnie Smith here from the 1982 Topps Traded set. The Ozzie Smith card, his first with the Cardinals, was one of the first cards I sought after when I returned to collecting. For some reason, I never picked up the considerably less expensive card of the "other" Smith.

I don't recall the order of all of these on the list, but I do know that this Matt Carpenter card was at the top. It's a retail exclusive parallel that Topps has done for several years, and for whatever reason it was tough for me to find. I wonder if Carpenter and Troy Tulowitzki are cracking up about how often Tulo ends up on the DL.

I kind of broke one of my own rules here, because I wanted to keep the want list Cardinals focused. Still, I really found it frustrating that I didn't have a copy of this reprinted Ozzie Smith card from the 2016 Topps Berger's Best insert set. There will always be Ozzie Smith cards that are considered "most wanted" for me. And I can't guarantee that I won't break my own rules again.

I bought a decent amount of Cracker Jack boxes when I was a teen, so it was pretty surprising to me that I didn't have Pedro Guerrero's card from the first 1991 series. Well, now I do have it.

Technically speaking, this was the one card sent to me by Raz that I didn't need, as I had finally picked up a copy in a trade package just a couple of days ago. Still, it was pretty astonishing that it took me this long to finish off the base 2018 Topps team sets. This is also one of the better Cardinals cards of last year, at least in terms of photo selection.

2014 was officially the year that Allen & Ginter broke me, and I pretty much forgot all about it until summer had passed. I'm still trying to finish off this set, but I also needed this one last (short printed, of course) Cardinals card for my team set.

Finally, as is often the case, I end this with a Yadi card. This is one of those cards where I swear I've seen it about one hundred times, but I could never find any physical proof that I had this in my collection. I can now consider the matter of the 2013 Bowman Platinum set closed.

Except for those pesky inserts and parallels.

And autographs.

And parallels of inserts and autographs.

Why do I do this, again?