Have a Heart

 

David Eckstein gets a new baseball card for the first time in awhile. 

 

One of the nice things about the internet (there are, actually, a few of them) is that it helps me gain access to regionally produced cards that I would probably never seen in my lifetime. A new David Eckstein card is one of these. It looks like this was an SGA ("Stadium Giveaway") from earlier this season. The card design looks like it comes straight out of Eckstein's playing days, so it took me a bit to figure out that it was actually something new.

The card is for a good cause, of course. If this saves even a few lives by putting the word out there, it was all worth the while I would think. I wonder if there are any other cards like these out there in the wild in 2023.

In da Club(house)

 

Another big batch of Cardinals cards from @flywheels Affordable Group Breaks. 

 

While the Cardinals season continues to circle the drain, I have continued to focus on piecing together my card collection, even though baseball as a whole hasn't been all that fun for me of late. In April, I had another bunch of cards from Colbey shipped my way, and there were lots of goodies to behold!

A number of Panini products were involved, including the always flashy Prizm set. Certain configurations (Quick Pitch?) have these numbered "donut" parallels, and I was fortunate enough to land a couple of them.

Donruss Optic, of course, has all kinds of colored parallels including this blue Goldy numbered to 149.

More numbered Goldy! Goldy Donut Goodness. This is numbered to 199.

Panini's Mosaic set is sort of a knockoff Prizm set. The International Men of Mastery set has the player's national flag in the background and this is a "mosaic" parallel of the regular insert.

Colbey likes to open a lot of older stuff (how else can you consistently keep it "Affordable"?) which resulted me in picking up a couple of these fancy looking base cards from the 1997 Flair Showcase set.

More logoless Panini stuff here. Dylan Carlson has a billion cards on the market for someone who has only been in the league since the pandemic-shortened season.

Speaking of players who have a billion cards, I snagged a couple of J.D. Drew insert cards from the 1999 Pacific set.

I'm definitely grateful for breakers like Colbey, because not many people out there will go near Pacific stuff. How else would I get a cool die cut crown card like this?

The latest and greatest at the time was the 2022 Stadium Club Chrome set. I never managed to find any at retail, but I think there's only 3 cards per pack, so it was probably out of my price range anyway.

I ended up with at least a half dozen base card needs, but my favorite was this Albert Pujols card from his infamous pitching appearance last season. Last season was so fun! This season... yeesh!