Double Whammy

Affordable group breaks from @flywheels take us back to 2005, while @walktheplank82 sends a bunch of current year needs. 

 

We're getting close to the end of the year, so let's double up on today's look at some Cardinals baseball cards. As part of Cardboard Collections' ongoing Affordable Group Break series, I called for another shipment of stuff that I had allotted to me from past breaks. As a coincidence, all of the big time keepers happened to be from 2005, including a low numbered (13/30) Sportscasters insert from the 2005 Leaf set. These cards remind of the more squarely-shaped educational cards I saw as a child that usually featured some sort of wild animal and some factoids about said creature.

A second Albert Pujols need from 2005 Leaf came in the form of this Gamers insert in the popular foilboard style of the day.

Another set I completely missed out on was yet another attempt at gamifying the baseball card experience (or baseballifying the gaming experience?) in Topps Pack Wars. The vertical representation of the stats here is pretty tough to look at, but I'm guessing the Pack Wars game itself was probably pretty simple. (It... was a game, wasn't it?)

It's back to the present with a bunch of cards I received from Bob Walk the Plank in a surprise mailer this summer. I wasn't able to buy my usual amount of flagship Topps blasters this year, so I'm very appreciative of receiving any of the commemorative patch cards that are exclusive to that particular retail configuration.

I believe I've mentioned this before, but the difference in this year's patch cards compared to the past is the alarming change in weight. Usually, these cards are fairly heavy, depending on what's embedded in them, even when it's something non-metal like a cloth rookie card reproduction. These are not weighty at all. It's almost like they were made with Styrofoam.

Topps put "Redux" inserts in each of their flagship sets, apparently for people who couldn't get enough of Topps Archives or Topps Heritage. It seems very lazy and wholly unnecessary, but the cards at least are a decent reproduction of the feel of the original sets.

Bob (not actually his name) also sent over a couple of newer Bowman inserts, including this special "Mega Box" version of the Dylan Carlson Rookie of the Year Favorites. Considering that I never saw any regular variety Bowman on the shelf this year, let alone any so-called mega boxes, this was a welcome treat.

Matthew Liberatore's Scouts Top 100 insert has to settle for the indignancy of being a plain old insert. No "mojo" for Liberatore. At least the card is shiny, though.

A special box loader also fell off the plank and into my collection. I recall that these were actually inserted loosely into Stadium Club blasters, almost as an afterthought. The card inside the frame is much smaller than the regular base card, which sort of renders the idea of it being a "master photo" rather foolish. It instead ends up as a tribute to earlier Stadium Club sets. Hopefully, if you pulled any of these, they didn't end up with dinged corners. I was a bit alarmed when these fell out of the two blasters I ended up buying this year.