Domestic Trading Card Day

The annual trading card holiday had a smaller footprint this year. 

 

Topps Trading Card Day was originally a collaborative effort between multiple card companies (remember those?) and was called something like National Baseball Card Day. I've never actually officially participated in this annual event, mostly due to a lack of participating shops in my area. I do usually hit the online markets to try to get what I want, and have managed to do just that this year.

In recent years, the annual event had expanded to multiple products beyond just baseball cards (and was briefly retitled International Trading Card Day), but it appears that it was scaled back to just baseball this year. Each team gets one player in the annual freebie set, and this year's Cardinals representative was Nolan Arenado. I managed to pick his card up in a TCDB swap.

The most exciting thing about this annual promotion to me, as a team collector, is the team-specific giveaways that you can find by going to the ballpark on a specific day. Each team has their own team set based on the Trading Card Day design. These have a holofoil finish that won't show well in the scans, as compared to the plain white card stock of the regular set. Each team set is distributed in five-card packs, and some teams have as many as ten (or even fifteen if I'm not mistaken) cards on their checklist, which means you would have to track down multiple packs to get the whole set.

Fortunately, things are a fair bit easier for Cardinals collectors, as for at least the second year in a row, the stadium giveaway set only contains five cards. Again, these have the same design but a holofoil finish, and you can also see that Arenado (above) got a different photo while Sonny Gray here appears in the expected Photoshopped St. Louis uniform.

Paul Goldschmidt has been a staple of past Trading Card Day giveaways, and he appears here in the 2024 team set as well.

Tommy Edman's presence is a bit of a downer, as he has yet to appear in a game this season and was recently traded to the dreaded Dodgers. I hope he does well there, but I don't want to watch it.

Youngster Jordan Walker rounds out the checklist. I'm hoping his career starts taking off again once there are sweeping changes in the coaching and front office ranks. (They are coming, aren't they? Aren't they?!)