A Midweek PWE Round-Up

Envelopes spanning many months including @brian_d_oneal and @nightowlcards swaps.

 

I've surpassed 70 trades on TCDB this summer (55 completed and 16 in progress so far), which has pushed blog catch-up time even further to the side for the time being. One of these envelopes has been sitting in a box since February, which is shameful! Let's quit wasting time and take a look at these.

First up is that oldest of envelopes from Brian of Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. Brian sent an eclectic group of Cardinals cards, including this Matt Adams "fish-fractor" from an older Topps Finest set. At last check, Matt Adams had caught on with an independent league team. Good for him.

1980's hero Tom Herr and his signature make an appearance on this 1987 Donruss Opening Day boxed set card. There was a kid who used to live up the street from me who got ahold of this set back when it was new, and I was pretty jealous. That fancy box with the clear plastic lid was the perfect thing for people who liked to show-off.

This one was certainly new to me. It's some sort of stamps insert from the 2014 Panini Golden Age set. I wish Panini focused more on these weird / historic items than the stuff they've been churning out lately.

It's always a thrill to pick up a vintage/throwback parallel card. This one is numbered to 99. It's unfortunate that Yadi has to share this card with the other guy, but I don't make the cards.

Next up is an envelope from All Cardinals All the Time, which featured some nice Chrome-style Bowman cards. One of my future projects is to get all of my Cardinals doubles properly logged in TCDB, so maybe I can start pulling off more Cardinals-for-Cardinals trades with fellow collectors of the Birds on the Bat. (The Herrera card on the right is a refractor!)

Here's a few Altuves for Erin's collection.

I wonder if the one-per-pack retail insert will return in future years. I was a big fan of the Turkey Red cards in 2020, but have been less excited about the rest.

I rarely say anything good about Bowman, so I will say this: it's really fun to look back on the Talent Pipeline inserts and see which players panned out and which didn't. All three of these guys have seen MLB time this year, and it's only been a year.

Here's a stray Heritage short print. Mike looks a little less than thrilled.

All that's missing here is the "Presented by Camping World" ad.

The last envelope of the day comes to us from the venerable Night Owl, who is once again pawning off his unwanted Dodgers on me. At least the Bazooka blue border parallels are a good "color match" for his team.

I'm doing a nice job, relative to most years, completing the latest Topps Heritage set. It does feel like I was granted an extension with the High Series getting pushed back repeatedly. Here's a few more for the big set build.

The Cardinals must have been playing a road game in Cincinnati or Philadelphia here, because Paul DeJong is wearing a navy blue helmet. Supposedly they were to wear navy blue against other similarly colored "red teams", but I think they only bring them out against those two teams for some reason.

Ah, it's another Dodger. The prospect portion of the old Bowman sets is a laundry list of who's not who, like Jamie Hoffmann, who did apparently see a few at-bats with the big league club in 2009 and 2011. They misspelled his name on the back, sadly.

Someone from Panini must have slipped this insert name in a suggestion box anonymous at Topps HQ, because this honestly makes no sense, like most of their ideas.

We end things with a black bordered parallel from the one-and-done (in baseball) O-Pee-Chee revival. This was the set with the Topps Total vibes and the wacky (and sometimes off-putting) photos that represented some of the last years when baseball cards were still mostly fun... you know, before that whole monopoly became a thing.