It Must Be PWE Round-Up Time

Checking in on the plain white envelopes, featuring a fancy one from @breakdowncards and much more. 

 

The contents of my mailbox recently has been inundated with PWE trades from TCDB (if you know, you know), but I still want to make time for the reader/blogger friends who continue to send me stuff. First up tonight is an all-Cardinals offering from gcrl (cards as i see them.) 

The other night, the Dallas Cowboys kicker missed his first four PATs in an opening playoff game, and I saw multiple people mention the name Rick Ankiel in reference to his misdeeds. That made me a bit sad. Those four lost points could have spelled doom for the football team, but the game ultimately was a blowout anyway. Ankiel's meltdown was even more costly, but the Cardinals actually went on to win their playoff game on that fateful day. Ankiel's pitching career never fully recovered, though.

These Artist's Proof parallels are a little too much, if you ask me. I normally can go for the shiny stuff, but I'm not sure about this.

Panini was still trying to perfect their formula when this Prizm design appeared. This red, white, and blue parallel design also contains that "mojo" pattern that certain collectors love these days.

Here we go into the murky depths that is the scanned foilboard card. It's hard to tell what's going on here. Eli would prefer if you just left.

While I wasn't much for the '97 Score Artist's Proof design, I do like this "sunburst" pattern (cool kids call it Dufex, I think) on these '94 Pinnacle Museum Collection cards. I could certainly use more of these.

The next batch of goodies included this two-pack of Red Turkey cards from the All Cardinals All the Time blog.

These rest of this batch must have fit into the unwanted Cardinals dupes category, which is certainly relatable. I am proud to say that I never bought a single pack of this Topps cash grab from last year, the "Platinum Anniversary" Chrome set that was apparently delayed from 2021. The cards will look great in my binders, but the set is massive and features an all too familiar design. (I'm still working on the team set, of course.)

Jordan Hicks seems to be the forgotten man in the Cardinals bullpen because of the injuries that have plagued him. Let's hope that he can put together a nice string of productive outings sometime in the not too distant future.

These early Opening Day sets had large logos on them and were much more identifiable than the most recent offerings. Eventually Topps settled in to making them look like dollar store versions of their flagship set.

I believe this is a black parallel version of one of the Topps insert sets from 2018. I really wish it was somehow illegal to make parallel versions of insert cards.

I'm dead sure I must have needed this Matt Adams card or it wouldn't be appearing in this space here, but if I had seen this in a random card bin at a card show, I would have certainly passed it up.

Matt Carpenter is going to look weird in a Padres uniform.

Last up is an envelope from Baseball Card Breakdown that apparently got lost in USPS purgatory for a stretch. Maybe some lonely mail carrier was tempted by this seriously fancy Stephen Piscotty autograph. (It's really fancy!)

Alex Reyes, the former top prospect who was actually an All-Star as recently as 2021 is still out there looking for work, but I'm guessing he'll catch on somewhere. He's got too much of an arm not to find another chance. This numbered parallel of his Bowman 1st will at least be a nice reminder of what promise he had, but I don't think we can close the books on him just yet.

Word association: Shirt thief. (Sorry, Mike, but that's all I've got.)

Gavin also sent a five-pack of Portland Pickles cards from 2019. I feel like I'm going to have to track down a checklist of this set somehow so I can get it added to TCDB. I'll have to make a point to get out to another one of our local college wood bat team's games again this summer, because they are definitely fun.