Update Time

Closing out the baseball card year with a #CrackinWaxMailday featuring Tommy Edman. 

Once Topps Update hits the shelves, it means that baseball cards are pretty much done for the year. Sure, there will be other releases before New Year's Eve, but it's mostly peripheral stuff. A retail holiday promotion here, some high end stuff there. There's nothing left that I would pay much attention to, personally.

As the final release in my group break Crackin' Wax subscription, Topps Update leaves a bit to be desired for the Cardinals fan. With virtually zero trade deadline movement, a single All-Star Game participant and only a few rookies that didn't make the cut for an earlier set, there are only 7 Cardinals in the entire 300 card base set.

Paul Goldschmidt finally gets a non-airbrushed card, but even his inclusion wasn't all that necessary. Lane Thomas suffered an unfortunately late season injury and Andrew Knizner was relegated to third catcher duties, meaning that we only see three other playoff participants in the set, along with the requisite Paul DeJong ASG card. It would have been nice to see Tyler Webb in the set, but fairly anonymous relievers get overlooked even if they become a key component of a team's bullpen. Randy Arozarena and (probably) long-time minor leaguer Rangel Ravelo will end up getting held over as RCs until the 2020 set.

Here's a "150 Years" parallel of Paul DeJong's All-Star card. There are far too many parallels in this year's set.

I'm a huge fan of the hobby-only Topps Black parallels from over the years, so it was nice to get this Tommy Edman card numbered to 67. Along with his base and rainbow foil parallel, I went from zero Edman cards to three. Not bad.

More Rainbow foil parallel action. I feel like Goldschmidt has a lot of boring looking cards.

Here's a foil parallel of a guy who should be a key member of the Cardinals staff for years to come. Since he's a reliever, however, we probably won't see many cards of his in the future.

The 1984 Topps love continues. Here's a blue bordered parallel of an insert.

There was only one Cardinal in this set's silver pack promotion - the aforementioned Lane Thomas. Hopefully he recovers well for next season, because he was exciting to watch in his limited appearances.

More 150 Years of Greatest things... like Bruce Sutter. The design is a little busy, but I still don't mind these cards. I just wish there weren't parallels of them.

Thanks for reading!