Stickers and Stuff from Scott

Cardinals-themed stickers and more from @INeedNewHobbies -- unpeeled, of course.

Before I get into the goodies, I want to do a plug for fantasy baseball. Scott from I Need New Hobbies (and other cool internet things) is looking for some fake baseball managers presently. I joined his league a couple of years ago and have managed to be not extremely terrible, so there's that. You'd be competing against me and a guy you've probably traded cards with at some point and some other cool folks. It could be fun!

Now, let's check out some of the stuff Scott sent me around the end of 2019. (We will be mentioning that year less and less around here as time marches on.) This bubble mailer was heavy on baseball album stickers, which my collection is pretty lacking in. The 1986 Topps sticker album is near and dear to me, but I'm not sure if it's still in my possession at this point and I never actually completed it. Now that I'm full on collector scum, I need copies of all of the Cardinals in each of these sticker albums, unstuck and tucked away in plastic cases. Something like that, anyway.

1986 was the first year I bought cards, and so the stickers eventually found their way into my hands when I realized they could be bought at the grocery store instead of the neighborhood makeshift card shop. My scanner cut off the white border on the left of this sticker of Ozzie making folks about to go crazy, but you get the gist of it.

John Tudor pops up again on another playoff themed sticker, this time from the 1988 set.

One of the stickers in the package was some sort of test issue that I'd never seen in person. These are on thicker stock, similar to the revival of the Topps stickers from the 2010s (before they went back to the full on Panini look.)

Unless you've held one of these in your hands, it's going to look the same aside from the much darkly colored backs.

Speaking of that Topps sticker revival, here's Waino from the 2013 edition. Last year Topps pivoted from the thin Panini-style stickers to a full sized sticker-plus-card sandwich, which I thought I'd end up liking a lot more than I actually did (or... didn't, rather.) I'm not sure what they've got planned for 2020, if anything.

It wasn't all about stickers (or sticker-card hybrids), however, as Scott included a bunch of non-sticker Cardinals. Check out this trio of green parallel Gypsy Queen Cards.

I love that Kolten Wong is an officially recognized Gold Glover, even as some are starting to diminish the importance of infield defense (or defense in general) with the way baseball is moving towards fewer defensive chances in general. I don't care, though... he's fun to watch play these days.

Perhaps my favorite things from the package were a couple of checklists, featuring the heads of Hall of Fame Cardinals. It's tough to find old checklists that aren't marked up and/or doodled on, and this one has a bit of that. There was really a guy named Bill McCool?

There's no marks on this one, featuring Orlando Cepeda and the 1968 set. Best name on this one? It's gotta be Zoilo Versalles.