Future Baseball Plans

The new Cardinals... maybe not the same as the old Cardinals.

I've tried not to dwell on this too much, but my interest in baseball in general has fallen off of a cliff in recent times. When you combine this with the streamlining of baseball card products in the Fanatics era, I could also say my interest in baseball cards is also starting to crater. I can't dispute the idea that the Cardinals lack of success on the field since the end of the 2022 season has contributed to this, but I still think I would have most of those negative feelings even if the Cardinals had been playing more at the level of their 2010s rosters.

While I won't get into my feelings about the state of MLB in general right here, I will show off some cards that Night Owl sent over back in July. Remember the summer? I miss it already. I guess I'm just having those December feelings right now.

I haven't really prepared any changes in the way I'm going to consume baseball games (or not). I haven't really dramatically changed how I collect cards, either. I'm still going to watch Cardinals games, of course, especially as long as there's free MLB TV access to T-Mobile subscribers, although it appears that deal's days are probably numbered with ESPN's pending acquisition of the platform. (Gross.) There are interesting players on the Cardinals roster on any given day, including speed demon Victor Scott II, shown here on the first "true photo" variation I've added to my collection. I wish these weren't such a tough pull, honestly.

I do nearly all of my trading via TCDB and have managed to add a bunch more Cardinals Topps gold parallels in the past year. The original gold bordered look still reigns supreme, as shown here on Miguel Cairo's card from 2004 Topps.

Will Panini continue to run out its zombie baseball products in 2025? What about the other sports? I know that Panini has a lucrative contract with the WNBA that has been extended by several years, so the company itself won't be going away any time soon. Fanatics supposedly has no interest in acquiring them, and I'm doubtful that they would suddenly start cranking out fully licensed Donruss cards even if they did. If anything, Fanatics seems to want to focus on it's core brands and do the laziest thing possible by applying the same design templates to a million cards a year.

Considering Paul Goldschmidt's Hall of Fame track and the six seasons he spent with St. Louis, I don't think the Goldschmidt want list will ever have a finite endpoint, even though he is no longer a Cardinal.

With Willson Contreras moving to 1B this past season, Pedro Pagés has actually caught the most games the past couple of seasons for the Cards. The entire catching situation is a bit murky right now, though, with Ivan Herrera showing star potential as a hitter and next to zero potential as a backstop. Toss in a couple of prospects on the rise and a cult hero in Yohel Pozo, and you've got a quandary on your hands.

JJ Wetherholt is the prospect of the moment. I honestly thought he would get a late call-up last season (maybe in the 40-man September active roster era), and he certainly has a chance to make it difficult to keep him down much longer if he has a big spring. Will the Cardinals be dreadful again next year? Absolutely. The most frustrating thing about this rebuild is that they should have started it years ago, if that was truly their intentional all along.

Night Owl also tossed in some more set-filling needs, including these inserts from the 2025 Topps Heritage set. Of course, they look very similar to cards from other Heritage and Archives sets, but Fanatics (or whoever) apparently decided they needed yet another insert set of random players on old designs.

We end things in true Night Owl trade envelope fashion with a few more minis from Allen & Ginter sets. Each of these names are of players I haven't thought about in a few years.

A Thursday Night PWE Round-Up

Some extra-stuffed white envelopes leads off with some @BoRosny miscellany. 

 

Tonight we have an envelope from October, one from November and one from December. I'm finally starting to get through the backlog of stuff I have to post about, which means I'll probably get itchy and start up a bunch of trades again.

First up is some more good stuff from Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life! I always think that I finished off 2003 Topps ages ago, but I do still need a few more. The Nomar card put me a little bit closer.

Here's a nice color-appropriate Eagles card from the 1999 Topps set. In some years Topps used the baseball design in their football set, but in other years -- not so much.

Hey, it's a Portland Beavers card! You don't see those every day. I believe this is from the 1989 AAA All-Stars set. I don't know if these sold as well as the team sets, but I remember seeing them once or twice at the Beavers games back when I used to go.

Here's a few more minor league guys. These are all Cardinals-affiliated, if you hadn't already guessed. 

Bo also set some vintage Cardinals cards, which are always appreciated, like this trio from 1968.

There's been more Curt Flood cards on the blog of late, and that's definitely a good thing.

I'm not sure a card from a Tigers victory in the 1968 World Series belongs in my collection, let alone one where the Cards were walloped 13-1. However, I'm not in the habit of tossing out cards from the '60s, so my binders might have to give this one a chance.

Next up is another batch of the good stuff from gcrl (cards as i see them). Along with a new Waino from 2021 Topps Update, there was another healthy grouping of set needs.

It had been so long since I added another card to the 2012 Topps Archives 3D collection that I had almost totally forgotten about it. For a few years there, Topps was putting out little batches of lenticular cards in one fashion or another, but it seems like they've dropped that for the most part. I'm sure they're not cheap to make.

The rest of the envelope was dedicated to 2012 Allen & Ginter. At some point, I need to make it a priority to finish off all of these A&G insert sets, but I've been more focused on Heritage inserts of late.

This is easily the dumbest and less essential insert set in the whole Allen & Ginter line, but for whatever reason I still decided to make a list and keep them. I suppose it's telling that Topps hasn't really tried anything this elaborate in the years since.

I really have no idea what happened here. I'm sorry about that.

Last up is a big batch of Philadelphia Eagles cards from Elliptical Man. Graham has spent his whole career (12 years and counting) with the Birds and has already played for four different head coaches (interims not withstanding.)

Brian Westbrook was a favorite of mine back in the day, when the Eagles had the triple threat ground attack of Westbrook, Staley and Buckhalter.

More Westbrook! This was right after Panini took over the Donruss brand.

The aforementioned Duce Staley checks in with this overly busy metallic version of Upper Deck's Victory brand.

I should become a Jeff Feagles supercollector. I wonder how many cards he actually has. He was the Eagles punter in Tecmo Super Bowl, which automatically makes him a legend. Plus, his name was  Eagles with an F in the front.

A couple of cards in this Eagles stashed were actually numbered, which is really cool. Donovan McNabb was QB1 for the bulk of the Andy Reid era, and while that never led to the ultimate prize, they were a fun team to watch.

The other numbered card is this Zach Ertz Longevity parallel from the 2017 Panini Rookies & Stars set. It's really nice and makes me wish that Ertz had been able to stick around.

A Monday PWE Roundup

Good things, small packages, etc. 

I've got quite a backlog of plain white envelopes of cards to show off here, so I thought I'd knock a few out each Monday for awhile, until I either completely forget I was planning on doing this or until the envelopes stop coming. (Don't stop the envelopes from coming!)

First up is my prize from The Big (!) Fun (!) Game (!) over at Johnny's Trading Spot (extra exclamations added by me.) I tend to have a hard time keeping up in real time with all of the games and prizes going on over there, and elsewhere as it turns out, but I was able to focus enough on this particular Friday to claim a prize.

It was a stolen prize, in fact -- a nice little stack of Allen & Ginter minis. While I am still holding out secret hope that this set is cancelled this year, there's always a special place in my collection for minis, even though I'll never have them all. And the set is probably not going to get cancelled, considering how Topp$ is raking in the $$$$ right now with no baseball going on.

Batting second is an envelope from Matt at Diamond Jesters. Matt is a big Red Sox fan and you should definitely check out his blog if you have any extra Boston cards... or even if you don't!

He sent a couple of really nice inserts of Cardinals faves and PC guys (Flaherty is still unofficial right now, but it's just a matter of time at this point.)

Fellow PNWer Cardboard Jones is just one of the latest to help me out in my Turkey Red 2020 quest.

I'm now down to just 11 cards needed for the Series 1 set, with this envelope knocking down the list by another 5 pegs.

Thanks to all of you reading and keeping the Postal Service in business.

Animals, Materials and Humans

Baseball cards are weird. 

Red Cardboard had some extras to unload on the card collecting world recently, and I was quick enough to snap up some goodies. Along with a few random set needs, I also put my name in the hat for some Allen & Ginter minis -- the best kind of minis in my opinion.

Erin decided to collect the omnipresent 2012 Panini Triple Play set back in, well, 2012. She's mostly taken a less than passive interest in cards since then (we have too much stuff and not enough space at the moment), but I have continued to try and help her complete this set quest. The last few cards have been difficult to nail down even though packs of this stuff have been in repacks for years. It probably doesn't help that the cards are short printed as you get close to the end of the set, or that there are these weird memorabilia cards that belong to unspecified players from an unspecified league. (There is an MLBPA logo, at least.) Furthermore, some of the memorabilia cards are scarcer than others, with the jersey and bat cards being the most common, naturally. (I have a number of extras of those.) We're down to needing three Hall of Fame cards, a pants (yikes!) card, and a batting glove card. And then, I will never speak of this set again.

MOOSE!

I wonder what the mayor of Miami thinks about the whole Marlins situation. I don't know why people are all that surprised about their fire sale. This is a franchise that has always gone through cycles of overspending and then burning it all down. The only thing that's really changed is that there's a different ownership group.

A fair share of the mini extras (or extra minis?) were of the Cincinnati Reds variety. You're bound to accumulate these things when you're a Reds blogger, after all. Here's former Cardinals star Scott Rolen late in his Cincinnati days.

Speaking of Cardinals, I also was able to acquire my first Topps Fire cards of the year. This set doesn't appeal to me in the slightest, but that's never going to stop me from adding more Cardinals cards to my collection. Oh had a rough second season with the Cardinals, but I would still expect him to catch on somewhere with a major league deal sooner than later.

It was a big surprise to see Edgar Renteria in the checklist (and as a member of the Cardinals), so maybe this set isn't all bad. After all, it is one of the sets that sees the 2017 return of Jim Edmonds to the checklists after a nearly 6 year absence. (Still need to track down that 2017 Topps Archives Fan Favorites auto of his...)

Scatterbrained

Five cards that don't really have much to do with each other, except that they were sent by the same person a very long time ago.

There are times when I feel like I am spending all of my free time dealing with a bunch of baseball cards that I have lying around the home, and there are times when I feel like everything I own is collecting its own little layer of dust. This is one of those dust times. With apologies to Sportscards From the Dollar Store, and everyone else that's traded with me (or is attempting to) lately, I present you some cards that I misplaced that were starting to build up a layer of funk.

It's every scanner's little secret that they like to turn the Topps Archives gold parallels into their own weird shade of green for no apparent reason. Topps has probably done the pointless parallel thing a little better than this, but I still need to collect all of the versions of things that I collect.

This season was just not the time for the breakout of the Cardinals Number One Prospect. Taveras had season ending ankle surgery recently after missing a large chunk of this season, and he'll likely get some more time at AAA before he puts on a St. Louis uniform in a game that counts. 18 rookies have played for the big club this season, including 11 that made their debut, but Oscar won't be among them.

I also received a lot of nice set builder stuff from Buckstore Cards, including this SP of the most dominating pitcher of 2013.

A few Blazers were included, the best of which was a card of a personal favorite of mine. Sheed is attempting to be an assistant coach next season, which should prove to be very interesting. He didn't strike me as the most "coachable" person during his playing days.

Trading with The Dutch Card Guy

I pulled off my first international trade in awhile late this past spring when I swapped cards with The Dutch Card Guy. I sent over (wayyyy over) some Yankees and cards for his player collection, and I received some my-te-fine Cardinals cards in return.

This rare black bordered David Freese card is a thing a beauty, or at least as much as a baseball card can be one of those things. I really need to own more black bordered Topps parallels. I only have a few and they are really impressive.

I'm pretty lukewarm on the blaster manupatch cards, but this is an Ozzie card, so it's automatically amazing.

I can't even begin to talk about how awesome this card looks. It's has blinding streaks of light that don't begin to show up on a scan. If you don't own any of these Passing the Torch cards, you're really missing out on something special.

Speaking of something special, Adam Wainwright appears to be in the lead as far as NL Cy Young candidates go. He has a chance to go for victory #13 (for whatever that's worth) on Sunday, which means we won't be seeing much of him in the All-Star Game.

This deal wasn't exclusively Cardinals, however, as I received a nice chunk of Allen & Ginter cards to boot. Balut apparently involves boiling a fetus, which is somehow less disgusting than the other Culinary Curiosities card that I received. Betcha can't guess which one that was! (hint: maggots.)

I'm really not a fan of most of Ginter's sketch cards, or many sketch cards in general, but this isn't the worst thing I've ever seen. I don't know if they are part of the 2013 set or not, but I wouldn't miss them. It's nice to knock a couple more of these off my want list, however.