Buzzin' Cardinals

A pack of Cardinals cards from @CardBuzz includes a buyback, a messy signature and more. 

 

With more and more news coming out about the Fanatics deal and what seems to be the imminent end of card collecting as we know it, it's nice to look back at some cards that were sent to me through the mail earlier this year. It's becoming increasingly doubtful that I'll continue to collect cards beyond next year (if that long), but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate what's right in front of us. This latest bunch came to me from Card Buzz back in May.

That is quite the autograph from the former infielder turned reliever Sam Tuivailala. He does have an interesting set of letters to work with in his last name, but that just looks a bit goofy.

Topps killed off the old Topps Total set a long time ago, before recently bringing it back in a more understated (and more expensive!) online-exclusive form. This, of course, removed insert cards from the equation. The inserts were never a big part of the set, but there were some interesting looking "Award Winner" cards.

I think the old Topps gold parallels look nicer than any Bowman Sapphire madness you want to throw at me.

There are a lot of memorabilia cards from the 2000s, so it's impossible to be familiar with every design. Still, this was one I'd never seen before. It's from the 2003 Flair set.

People sure seem to like their dufex technology, which made it intriguing when Panini briefly brought it back with their one-off Pinnacle set from 2013. It still doesn't scan well, though.

There's one glaring error with this manupatch card commemorating the 1967 World Series. Can anyone spot it?

I'm guessing Fanatics will focus more on creating card sets like Museum Collection and less on something like Topps Total, which is really too bad. High end cards look nice, but most people can't afford to have more than a few of them. I guess we'll all free up some space in our homes if we don't have piles of cards laying around anymore, though.