Yellow Gold

Weird parallels. 

Retail exclusives are nothing new, but this season's Walgreen's exclusive deal with Topps was weirdly executed. There's a Walgreen's in my neighborhood, and while I can't say I frequent it even once a week, I've definitely been in there quite a few times during the baseball card year. So it was a surprise today that I ended up finding a single hanger pack on the rack for the first time this year. With the Update Series having already come and mostly gone, it was also strange that this was a Series 1 pack, but I can't really complain. I haven't seen any of this.

If this is all new to you, and there's no reason it shouldn't be, these unmarked boxes sold at Walgreen's contain special exclusive yellow parallel cards. Target and Walmart used to have something like this, and Toys 'R Us had their own incredibly overpriced parallels for awhile until they went out of business (something called Meijer took over the expensive purple parallel business.) And here we have special yellow bordered cards, because Walgreen's and, I don't know, jaundice go hand in hand?

I won't have any trouble finding a home for this one. Baez is the one Cub that I could honestly say I'd probably be a fan of if he didn't wear the dippy duds of the north side Chicago team.

Are there any Orioles fans anymore?

Rafael Devers was probably the "pull" of the pack as far as these things go.

Somebody on the street told me the Washington Nationals won the World Series and I told them to stop smoking that rock.

I never figured out to say this guy's last name.

This is probably going in the Night Owl stack.

There were a few other interesting things in the pack/box, including the requisite inserts. One of the better things about this year's Topps flagship set are these Greatest Moments/Players/Seasons inserts.

Here's another parallel, but you don't have to shop at a certain retail outlet to get one of these.

Is this some sort of ad or... what? It has a card number on the back, so I guess not. It just seems incredibly stupid to show another baseball card framed (askew) on a card and then expect people to care about it.

I'm pretty sure this guy has been almost every pack I've opened since this time of the year in 2008. I'm pretty tired of it!

Breakin' Series 2: Electric Boogaloo

This #CrackinWaxMailday is rated G for Gold. 

Topps has been doing this phased rollout of its flagship set for quite a few years now, but the second series always seems to fall short of the initial excitement of the first. We already know the design, and we already know what most of the inserts are going to look like. Still, we need the rest of the set, don't we? Or, in my case, we need the rest of the team set, which is why I've been signing up for pick-your-team group breaks of late. Here are some of the highlights of my stash of Series 2 Cardinals, which came from another Crackin' Wax case break.

Dexter Fowler's photo is heavily zoomed in and laser focused on the player, which has been one of my chief complaints of recent years. I tend to like a variety of photos, okay? Fowler's arm seems to be in a weird position here.

Did I mention I snagged a small handful of gold parallels? John Gant has been one of the Cards most valuable pitchers since he was called up last season, and his success has translated well to the bullpen for this year (just don't look at last night's box score, please.)

Marcell Ozuna is putting up MVP type offensive numbers right now after an injury-weakened debut season in St. Louis. Maybe it's actually because he ditched this horrible neon compression sleeve.

Yairo Munoz has been a replacement level utility guy since he joined the big league club last year. I think that's about where you need a utility guy to be, to be fair. You get the feeling that he might string together a solid stretch of games if he just got consistent playing time, but nah, it's not gonna happen.

Speaking of not happening... RIP Jordan Hicks's maximum pitch speed. He was diagnosed with a torn UCL today, which means he's headed towards the dreaded Tommy John surgery that is so popular with the kids these days. While most pitchers seem to regain their original velocity after this surgery, it seems super doubtful that anyone will tell Hicks that it makes sense to try to throw 105 with some random replacement tendon in his elbow. Also, RIP my fantasy team. The Cardinals bullpen will probably be okay, though, with Gant in there along with Carlos Martinez and John Brebbia. (And sort of Andrew Miller.) It's the rotation that I'm worried about.

Anyway, this is a cool black parallel of an insert that is numbered to 299. Of course, I still need the base insert and probably a whole host of other color versions.

Like the Hicks card above, I missed noticing that this Big Mac 150 G-g-g-greaaaatest Moments is a black parallel numbered to 299 until I had taken at least a couple of passes through the stack of cards. Once again, I need the normal version of this and many other inserts from Series 1 and 2.

Crackin' Wax is super cool about including the extra hobby bonus packs in their breaks, which meant that I was able to add a couple more "silver pack" Chrome 1984 style cards to my collection. Daniel Ponce de Leon may actually be one of the answers to the rotation problem, but it seems like the team doesn't want to ruffle the feathers of the broken Wacha (or the ghost of Wainwright, or whatever's gotten into Mikolas...) and actually do something about it.

The Case Break Ship Came In

It's a #crackinwaxmailday as we look at my case break goodies from 2019 Topps Series 1. 

Crackin' Wax is easily my favorite case breaker site out there, even though I feel like I haven't been able to take advantage of their services nearly enough. (The Cardinals are a popular enough team that their slot is often gone when it's a PYT (pick yo' team) break.) They do a lot of things for charity and just generally seem like some good people. I did sign up for a year long prepayment program for some upcoming Topps and Bowman breaks, so this won't be the last you see from Crackin' Wax.

If I really want to enter this sweepstakes, I guess I need to find another one of these cards. I don't want to scratch off the code. Of course, I could probably use a code for a player who I don't make a collecting priority.

Man, gold parallels keep somehow getting more and more disappointing. Long gone are the days of the shiny metallic gold finish. In its place are some ovals or something.

This is another one of the gold parallels (numbered to 2019, of course.) Ponce de Leon's elbow got lopped off by my scanner, probably because it was angry that the card is actually slightly crooked. How does that happen these days?

Here's Harrison Bader's Rookie Cup card on the Topps Vintage Stock parallel. It's numbered to 99. As I always say, I wish all of these cards could be printed on so-called vintage stock like this.

In yet another one of those endless parallel scenarios, Jack Flaherty's Future Stars card appears on the same design as the gold -- only this is blue. Apparently it's for Father's Day. It wasn't released on Father's Day, however, so it just seems like a confusing name. (It's numbered to 50. Cool!) Flaherty was great last season and hopefully avoids any sort of a sophomore type slumpy thing.

The case break left me just one short of the 1984 tribute insert team set. I still need Miles Mikolas, if anyone has one to spare. A lot of Molina photos that are used show him in his catching gear, so it's nice to get a bit of a change with this one.

Another cool thing that Crackin' Wax does is include the cards hobby promo packs (aka "silver packs") that they earn by spending $$$ on hobby stuff. I think other breakers probably do this as well, but I still think it's nice. It's another shiny Ozzie for my collection.

Patrick Wisdom finally got his shot at the big leagues last season and played reasonably well, at least with the bat. Of course, with the glut of hitters who aren't known for their defensive skill at a particular position, he promptly got himself traded this offseason for utility guy Drew Robinson.

This was one of the biggest hits of the break, which of course makes it all the more disappointing that Wisdom is with the Rangers now. I don't really want to bust out the checklist now and whine that it wasn't Player X or Player Y, though. It's always awesome to get a low numbered autographed card on my favorite team. It's certainly not something that happens to me often, especially when dealing with the luck of the draw.

The Only New Baseball Cards on the Shelf

More 2019 Topps because it's there. 

While I wait for my case break Cardinals to arrive, I dipped my toe into the 2019 Topps pool once again. On Friday, I picked up a $9.99 box that was hanging on the rack at the local Fred Meyer store while everyone else in town was preparing for a snowmageddon of unimagined proportions. (Seriously, people bought every single last organic banana. Why?! Also, it turned out there was nothing to freak out over weather-wise.)

The Chris Sale jersey card came from the box, as did this Al Kaline reprint. I'm really not interested in reprints of vintage cards when they're on the thin glossy stock of present day Topps, so this does nothing for me.

Topps is paying tribute to their 1984 set this year, as we all know. I think they did a solid job with the fonts on these, for what it's worth.

This is one of those Rainbow Foil parallels of a Reds player. I'll probably see Winker 20 times this season because of MLB's unbalanced schedules.

There were Cardinals to be had in the box as well, including this 'RC' of Adolis Garcia. I'm not sure he'll play a lot for the team in 2019, which fits with a lot of rookies that end up in Series One, typically.

Former Cardinal Luke Weaver appears here on his 1984 tribute. This is my second Cardinals insert so far from this set, which is nice because the rumor has it that all inserts are a tough pull relative to their overproduced base brothers.

Matt Carpenter gets the rare 1B/3B designation here. His annual position change takes him back over to 3B to make room for Paul Goldschmidt.

During an errand run on Sunday, I snagged some more cards -- one of the $4.99 jumbos. With loose packs rising to $2.99 this year for the first time (more cards, I guess, but still...), these seem like a better option. The gold foil stamped 150 Years parallels are fine, but I wish they would have just replaced the rainbow foils. We definitely don't need more parallels.

There were even more Cardinals to be had in Sunday's pack. This feels like an important year for Paul DeJong in terms of finding out if he's going to be a star or just another cog in the machine.

Finally, here's Yadi! After I pulled this card, I realized his "face mask close-up" card that was circling the Twitters when this set was first released was actually his short print (or super short print? so dumb.) variation. This is the actual card I will end up with piles of.

It's a New Year of Cards

On release day, I bought my first Topps flagship pack since 2015. 

As some of you may recall, I had so many complaints about the annual Topps flagship set that I gave up on it altogether. I was never a set builder, but I used to buy my share of the stuff (hey, it's cheap) as an annual ritual. I quit cold turkey with the hideous 2016 set, and those same issues I had never really went away in subsequent years. However, this year's set has a design that actually appeals to me, with one glaring issue... and it is a very glaring issue. I also heard through others that they righted a great wrong by restoring full stats to the back, after back to back years of getting the '80s Donruss treatment: just the five most recent seasons' worth of stats.

The first card out of the pack was Votto Joey, and yes, I'm going to be reversing the names of these players all season long. Why, Topps, why? I wasn't super excited to see Votto come out of the pack first, but I don't control the universe.

Here's a good look at Bader Harrison and his rookie cup card. Topps is still using very heavily processed and closely cropped photos for their cards, but a solid design (with one glaring exception!) does well to cover that up.

It looks like Topps is paying tribute to each team's stadium with their team cards this year, which is a nice look. I'm one of those guys who is jealous of everyone who made it their life's goal to visit every MLB stadium.

I like that Topps is documenting the team's starting lineup and pitching rotation for the previous season. Are the Team Leaders stats chosen at random, or does every team just have OPS and Saves?

Didi, comin' in hot!

Another close-up of a Cardinal. Again, the last names first thing looks even worse when the last name is significantly longer than the first.

Ah, the backs look really nice, though! This is an especially good looking color scheme for St. Louis, with the Cards bringing back the baby blues this season for the first time since 1984. And, look at all of those stats! We get more than a decade's worth of stats for a guy who bounced around all levels of professional baseball before finally getting his big break.

Here's a slightly overhead forward-facing shot of the Cardinals sudden ace of 2018, Mikolas Miles.

My one an only non-base card was an Albert PUJOLS Greatest Seasons card. One out of thirty-four? That seems a little low to me.

Springer is a guy I semi-sorta stealth collect. His friends call him George.

I bought into a case break, so I probably won't be going nuts on these packs in the future. I am not hating this, though. I do wish they'd finally take a long look at switching up the card stock to make these feel like classic baseball cards again, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I will have plenty of extra Cardinals team sets in the future, if you're a fan of that team.