Red Turkey Red

@pennysleeves delivers some Turkey Red Red. Red Red Red.

I'm not sure I've ever seen as many of the same Turkey Red colored parallel in the same place as I did when I opened a package from Jon of A Penny Sleeve for Your Thoughts back in January. He discovered through another trade post that I was a big fan of the Turkey Red sets, and the colored parallels in particular. If I had the sports card budget I have these days back in 2005 or 2006, I suppose I would have a lot of this stuff already, but I barely touched the stuff back then.

I scanned a few cards from the big stack of red parallels I received, including this card of "Too Many" fame Curtis Granderson.

Rookie Hanley! I have to admit, I don't miss the old official rookie card logo.

Kendry(s)! Somehow these ghostly baseball players shown in front of empty fields is pretty apt for these current times.

I wish that Matt Morris had been able to somehow hang on and also stick with the Cardinals for their 2006 championship, because he was really good when he was healthy.

Uggla! Another blast from the past.

And here's Omar Vizquel. You would think that this was from the twilight of his career, but he would somehow stick around for another six seasons after this. Crazy.

Ugly But Useful

As a follow-up to last night's post about a giant package I received from The Sandlot, I thought I'd come back around and show off the meat of the trade, which allowed Joe to dump a massive amount of cards from a set nobody seems to love. I got into collecting Bowman Heritage cards mostly because the 2007 set, it's last to date, was still everywhere in stores and was really affordable. Heritage cards are usually thick and "cardboardy", and stand in such stark contrast to everything else that is released now that I can't help but gravitate towards them even though they can be so gimmicky. I've slowly acquired cards from previous Bowman Heritage sets, and after picking up a bunch of packs of the 2006 stuff at a card show, I felt compelled to put together a want list. That's where The Sandlot came in, and now I really feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Casey Janssen is an under-the-radar closer for the Blue Jays that I thought I'd be all sorts of clever about and pick him for nearly all of my fantasy teams. The Jays added a ton of players and I thought that wins would come with those acquisitions. They haven't really gotten there yet, but Janssen is still their closer so it's not yet a total calamity.

Getting back to this particular set, though - I'm struck by how ugly it is. Is this the real reason that Bowman Heritage ran its course and no longer exists, or is it just because they ran out of designs? I'd love to see Topps bring back Bowman Heritage (and ditch Gypsy Queen at the very least) just so I could collecting something new and cardboardy again. Surely they could come up with a mild tweak on an old design, or perhaps use something that Bowman did once that's a little more obscure.

Speaking of ugly, I don't miss the old Devil Rays uniforms. Evan Longoria's prospect card is one of the key cards in this set, so it was great to be able to pick it up in a trade.

In addition to the foil parallels that will never scan well, there are mini parallels all over this thing. The Cards just finished up a four game series with the Phillies, and I have to admit to being a bit surprised that Chase Utley looks to be finally back to 100%. If he was a Cardinal, he'd be due for an oblique strain right about now, but he's not. And, allegedly, he's what's known as a "gamer".

Joe also tossed in a healthy portion of 2006 Turkey Red set, which is always a treat. Put side by side with the Bowman Heritage set from the same year, I'd choose this stuff every time, even if it's thinner and less cardboardy. I just feel like a lot of care was put into each individual card in the Turkey Red sets, even if they aren't all winners.

Retired players just look better on Turkey Red than their present day counterparts. I never really got to see Palmer pitch as he was in full underwear pitchman mode by the time I was hitting my formative years.

Trade You, Trade Me

Stats on the Back has a trade-a-thon going on right now. Name what you want, send him what he needs and reap the benefits of someone downsizing their collection. Hey, I'd do it, too, if I had any focus to speak of.

I mostly grabbed Turkey Red and Allen & Ginter, especially from older sets that are a lot harder to find/collect. A few of the cards were also needed for my Cardinals binder, including - surprisingly - this Jim Edmonds card from the 2006 set. Unfortunately, that means I still need a second cop for the set that I could theoretically put together someday.

St. Louis looks like a pretty smoggy place.

Mark Mulder's name is often invoked as a reminder of a blockbuster prospects-for-established stars trade gone wrong. I don't really refute this, but I still am in the (minority) camp of people that feel like it was hard to see Mulder's demise coming.

There were also a few Heritage cards to be had. Mo Vaughn really fills up a baseball card, doesn't he?

Finally, we go all the way back to the inaugural Allen & Ginter set, revival edition. Here's a German Emperor. You can tell he's an emperor because of the mustache.

Two Trade Combo Platter

I usually try to give each package I receive in the mail its own fair share of space, but I've decided to do a timeshare with a couple of trades tonight, due in part to the volume of each trade. First off, some Turkey Reds showed up out of the blue from up north about a month ago courtesy of Emerald City Diamond Gems. As far as set collecting goes, these feel like they are my number one priority. Yet, I should probably focus on more attainable goals such as the last few Allen & Ginter sets.

Danny Haren is back in the American League these days, so he can no longer provide as frequent of a reminder to the Cardinals as to what they lost when they acquired Mark Mulder. After being pretty dominant for Arizona recently, it'll be interesting to see if he can put up strong numbers in the less pitcher friendly league again.

Many of the players in the 2006 Turkey Red set had team variations. You can also find Delgado as a Blue Jay on this same card, I believe, but they are both considered SPs.

This Jermaine Dye from the 2009 insert set provides a contrast between the years that used the same design. The 2009s are a bit brighter (and shinier, especially if it's from Series 2) but they use a standard Topps logo on the front instead of the somewhat vampiric Turkey Red logo.

Finally, The Lost Collector sent over just one shiny card: a Chone Figgins refractor from 2010 Topps Chrome. Even though he's really my girlfriend's guy (waaaaiiiit a minute...) I'm hoping Figgy has a better year this season. He's a fun player to watch when he's on his game.

Incoming / Outgoing

There were a ton of packages stuffed with cards in my mailbox tonight. I was expecting, possibly, one package at the most, but somehow ended up with four. This distracted me greatly during tonight's draft for the inaugural fantasy NBA league season (I'm pretty sure I have at least one of those words out of logical order) sponsored by The Basketball Card Blog. I won't use it as a crutch in case my season goes awry. I'll instead use my lousy draft planning and unfamiliarity with the auction draft system. I also sent out a couple of large packages today and have a few more in the works, but for tonight's post I'll take a look at a stack of stuff I got from Thorzul a few weeks ago. Thorzul has become the go-to guy for quality group breaks these days from what I can see. Usually the buy-in is a bit too rich for my blood, but that has more to do with my reduction in financial allocation to buying cards this year than anything else. Even though I won't be participating this time around, I believe there are still good teams to be had if you're into that sort of thing.

Tony La Russa re-upped with the Cardinals for one more year, which means that Aaron Miles can't be far behind. I don't know what to say about this really except that it should prove to be another entertaining year's worth of griping and sniping to read over at my favorite non-card-related blog, Viva El Birdos.

Here's where I have to hand it to Cliff Lee. I may not like the guy a whole lot, but he's surely at the top of his game (and everyone else's) right now. These first few cards were from a healthy stack of 2006 Turkey Reds that I have thus far neglected to add to my list of "haves".

Here's a topical comic... thing. These aren't really a card. They're like thick contact paper or something. I'm also highly interested in the 2006 Bazooka set and its wacky bunch of parallels and inserts, as that collections grows by drips and drops.

I had wondered what the 4-in-1 sticker cards looked like from this set, and now I wonder no more. Did they make a little mini album for these? Does anyone know? What good are stickers without corresponding things to stick them to, anyway?

Coming up later this week... at least one box break and a weekday Ducks post. Enjoy!

"New to Me" Heritage and Turkey Red

NBC used to do some sort of promos for summer reruns that went something like "if it's new to you, it's not a rerun." Something like that, anyway. While their attitude might have been a little suspect (assuming that someone has not seen your show means it probably isn't very good) I think their selling point could easily apply to other things in life. Other things like... oh... I don't know... baseball cards?

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Cardboard Junkie's own dayf, who really needs no introduction, had some extra Topps vintage tribute cards (or is that tribute vintage?) and he found the right place to send them to. I have this rather insane idea of eventually putting together all Topps Heritage sets as well as the Turkey Red sets, and I got some extras from sets that came out before I was really aware and interested. Meanwhile, I have yet to complete a single set since I started this blog a year and a half ago.

I actually managed to pick up a healthy stack of 2006 Topps Heritage on the cheap at a card show this past fall, so I am in better shape with this set than the rest that I'm going to talk about here. There are some really nice looking cards in this set as some of them completely avoid the vintageification process and just concentrate on picture quality. One of the cards I received was a short-printed Pat Burrell card, which is highly appreciated.

Heading back to the start of the Heritage line, here's Izzy on the familiar 1952 design. My scanner decided to further accentuate the pinkness in Izzy's cheeks for some reason.

From a younger, fresh faced Jason Isringhausen to a cagey vet named Eric Davis. Eric the Red eventually became Eric the Redbird. For awhile in the La Russa era, it seemed like a lot of well-known '80s/'90s players made a stop in St. Louis before they headed off into the sunset. Ron Gant, Gary Gaetti, Dennis Eckersley, Will Clark, Larry Walker... all Cardinals near or at the end.

Moving onto 2002/1953, here's Larry Walker himself. With these cards, it looks like they started with player photos and sort of drew over them to make them look less photographic.

This design is far from my favorite design, although I'm not really certain why.

The backs look great, however. Without giving it too much thought, I might even be inclined to say that these are the best looking Topps card backs of all-time.

Did anyone know that Benito Santiago was still around in 2004? I certainly didn't. Santiago looks old enough to be a coach at this point.

I really think card companies should attempt to capture players in vintage uniforms on retro-style sets as often as possible. This Eric Chavez cards looks nice, even if the corresponding uniform may not have been used in the era that this design came from (1956?)

Now, it's onto Turkey Red. There was a nice, juicy stack of the 2005/2006 set (the numbering sequence that began with 2005 continued with the 2006 set and the design is exactly the same, so the lines are fairly blurry when it comes to which set is which) which included a handful of rookie logo rookie cards.

My only complaint with the 2007 set, which I am far closer to completing than anything else mentioned in this post, is that it was missing the colored parallels that were present in the first two retro sets. If there's ever a return to a full proper Turkey Red set (and I'm not saying there should be necessarily) then I hope that they bring back the red, black, white, etc. colored parallels.

Dayf was also kind enough to include a smattering of Cardinal goodies. I needed this Edmonds card for the player/team collection. In fact, I don't think I have any other 2004 Donruss Team Heroes cards now besides this one.

This is a Matt Morris Cracker Jack mini, which in true Cards on Cards fashion actually has a slightly larger than standard photo.

I would love to see a return of a Topps Archives or Fan Favorites type set in 2010. I think there's some sort of restriction on an all-retired player set now, though. I'm not sure if this carried over into Topps's new contract or not, but I would much rather buy something like this if it was released again than I would that Natinal Chiclets set.

Bazooka! Gadzooks! This card is more Cracker Jack than Bazooka, because it was definitely the surprise inside. I really like the newer Bazooka stuff and I do not have nearly enough bat cards to my liking, so this is great.

Thanks again to dayf. I hope to put another package to send again soon. But what do you get for the Junkie that has it all?

2006 Turkey Red

Want List:

#586 Mickey Mantle

(SP)
#316 Alex Rodriguez (Mariners)
#325 Magglio Ordonez (White Sox)

#332 Joe Mauer

#350 Ichiro Suzuki

#375 Derrek Lee

#390 Jim Edmonds

#392 Morgan Ensberg
#395 Greg Maddux

#400 Barry Bonds

#410 Andruw Jones
#430 David Ortiz (Red Sox)

#430 David Ortiz (Twins)

#444 Jose Reyes

#450 Derek Jeter
#466 Tim Salmon
#467 Mark Buehrle
#476 Nick Johnson (Yankees)
#521 Ervin Santana
#532 Scott Rolen

The following is a list of parallels that I HAVE from this set. I am looking for anything NOT on this list:

Black: 537, 592
Gold: 356, 444, 488, 529, 629

Red: 316 (Mariners), 316 (Rangers), 316 (Yankees), 323, 324, 325 (Tigers), 326, 330, 331, 332, 335, 336,  343 (Brewers), 346, 348 (Astros), 352, 353, 357, 358, 362, 367, 370, 372, 373, 374, 376, 378, 379, 380, 383, 384, 386, 387, 388, 390, 396, 397, 398, 399, 403, 405, 412, 414, 415, 417, 418, 421, 427, 433, 434, 435, 439, 440, 442, 450, 451, 452, 456, 457, 458, 459 (Mets), 463, 467, 468, 469, 470, 475, 476 (Nationals), 476 (Yankees), 477, 478, 479, 480, 481, 487, 489, 491, 492, 496, 499, 501 (Yankees), 502, 505, 510, 515, 516, 517, 518, 519, 520, 522, 524, 525, 530, 531, 534, 535, 536, 539, 546, 550, 553, 557, 559, 560, 561 (Giants), 561 (Nationals), 562, 563, 567, 574, 576, 578, 579, 580, 585, 588, 592, 594, 595, 596, 597, 598, 599, 600, 601, 602, 604, 605, 606, 607, 609, 614, 615, 620, 621, 622, 626, 628, 629

White: 316 (Mariners), 322, 330, 343 (Brewers), 347, 367, 414, 418, 453, 488, 501 (Nationals), 502, 520, 535, 559, 578, 606, 624, 626

[updated 7/11/26]