Series 2, I See You!

A @CrackinWax #CrackinWaxMailDay times two: bringing in the goods from Series 2 and a few other things. 

After much consternation, I was finally able to find some 2020 Topps Series 2 in the wild.

Just kidding, of course. I had to make the virtual walk of shame to eBay to pick up a couple of blasters. Fortunately, while I had to pay a bit over retail for the blasters, after shipping costs there's no way the seller came out ahead on this transaction unless they picked up the blasters at a wholesale price. Nothing super notable came out of the blasters, but one of my two promised "medallion" cards was Yadier Molina (yes!) and I also acquired my first 14 Turkey Red cards from the second series.

My first cards from Series 2 actually came to me earlier in the week from Crackin' Wax. I was able to pick up a slot for my team in a half case break at a decent prize, and knocked off the team set with plenty of extras. I won't bore you with all of the base cards, but they're a mix of nice photography with just one bad Photoshop (Kwang-Hyun Kim) in the Cardinals mix. There are plenty of other bad Photoshopped cards in the set overall. I guess they were saving the spring training photos for Update or something?

It's nice to see Harrison Bader get some more insert love a couple of seasons after his rookie card year. It seems that most players get forgotten after their RC year, when every set explodes with guys you may never hear from again. This is especially prevalent in basketball, where people only care about rookies and maybe two other players.

The Decades' Best cards are back for this series, and a bunch of them feature the Cards. Here's a look at those rare jerseys only used in the 1956 season, the ones that didn't feature any birds on any bats.

It would have been cooler if the '80s Cardinals were all climbing out of DeLoreans or something.

Some of these feature only a single player, like Bruce Sutter here.

The low numbered gods favored me with this break, as I snagged a black parallel of Carlos Martinez numbered to just 69. I won't make my frequent complaint that these don't look nearly as cool as the black parallels used to. I just won't.

Hobby flagship boxes usually mean silver pack promos, and I was lucky enough to hit one here with the longtime Cardinals catcher. Like most refractor designs, this looks a lot cooler in hand than in my scanner bed.

I also entered a Bowman Mega Box "mixer", which consisted of boxes from the last three years. I didn't pull anything of note aside from another Shohei Ohtani base rookie card (I already had a few.)

Last week's breaks landed in my mailbox earlier this week. I bought into yet another Panini Prizm break, and knocked a couple more cards off of my team set needs.

One of those needs was a silver Prizm (i.e. refractor) variation of Dakota Hudson's second year card. The silver Prizms are made in increasingly rare quantities compared to past sets, but I don't think they've really caught on yet. Something about those logo-less cards really keeps a lot of people away.

I'm always up for a Heritage break, and I'm always up for minor league cards as well. Why not combine the two? The only complaint I have with this card is that I have no idea what sort of "fantastic feat" it was that Nolan Gorman pulled off. (According to the back of the card, it was "extra-base hitfest", whatever that means.)

Aw, well, I think I missed out on my chance to be a Trash Panda for a day.