Nineties! Nineties! Nineties!

The awesome power of the '90s, unleashed!

I've had a hard time finding any group breaks to join of late, but I did manage to stumble upon a rather unique one back in September. Thorzul has been known to scour the lots of eBay in search of interesting wares, and this time he hosted a group break consisting mostly of '90s baseball inserts. The Cardinals are almost always a hot ticket in group breaks, but the '90s wasn't exactly a great time for the club that everyone seems to hate these days. My collection isn't really brimming with '90s inserts, however, so I didn't hesitate to sign up.

The Legend of Rick Ankiel was more of one of infamy, although his return to the game as an outfielder in 2007 has been known to induce chills among Cards fans. Ankiel was a '90s draft pick, but this card falls just outside of the decade.

Rene Arocha wasn't around long, but he was one of the early Cuban defectors to really make his mark.

1992 was kind of a dead period for me and card collecting. My busiest year of high school fell around this time, and my social calendar must have been pretty booked or something. I came back around for a last hurrah at some point in 1993.

This might be my first serial numbered Cardinals Diamond King. It's strange that a card numbered to 10,000 is harder for me to track down than something numbered to 99 from the last few years, but here we are. Dick Perez seems to have given Brian Jordan an extra tall cap.

Once again falling outside of the '90s, but still honoring the decade's ridiculousness with its design is this 2005 Own The Game insert.

I was able to add a few cards to my Edmonds collection thanks to this lot. I'm now up to 497 in the ol' collection, if anyone was counting. Anyone besides me, that is.

I think I got Bipped here, guys. I ended up with 16 of these. That's a lot.

Black Gold Topps cards were short lived, thank goodness. These were supposed to be the freaky-deaky ultra cool cousin to the Topps Gold parallels, but they ended up being not much to look at. I wish I could tell my '90s self about this so I saved some of my drool for something more worthwhile.

Finally, there was some weirdness that seemed really out of place in this lot. I received a couple of David Freese 2013 Topps Chrome "Connections" Die Cuts that were a little different than the one I already owned. Both of the cards are apparently unsigned certified autograph cards. If you zoom in, you can see the "Topps Certified Autograph Issue" banner on the front, and similar verbiage is on the back. I'm not sure if the QC at Topps is just that bad or if Mr. Freese decided to send a bunch of cards back to Topps HQ stamped "return to sender". Someone on COMC is trying to get $200 a piece for a couple of these sad cards. I'm keeping one and have an extra to do something with, I guess. Something tells me I'm not getting $200.

A Crazy Idea?

Matt Holliday playing first base doesn't seem far-fetched to me.

I didn't plan on making consecutive posts about the Cardinals Lego-headed star, but with Matt Adams being lost for the year due to injury my mind has been wandering about how this problem will be addressed. With Peter Bourjos finally starting to approach his potential, Randal Grichuk's light tower power on display, and Jason Heyward sometimes doing Jason Heyward things, it seems like the Cardinals have a glut of outfielders and a shortage of quality corner infielders. Holliday is 35 and certainly in the age range of a player who is moved to a more stationary position to keep his bat in the lineup as often as possible. Is baseball the only pro sport anymore where teams are hesitant to approach their aging stars about career changes out of respect or whatever? I'm a huge fan of the man, but it's not like his defensive skills in left field are irreplaceable. Local media, however, seems to have dismissed this idea as nonsense. I don't get it, and I'm not eager to see Mark Reynolds at first as an everyday thing. He's been solid so far in a utility role, but that's where I'd like him to stay.

On to the cards! The always excellent Junior Junkie sent me an outstanding group of cards some time ago, including this synthetic canvas-like Brian Jordan card from the 1997 Leaf set. I'd never seen one of these inserts before. The '90s continue to surprise.

A bunch of Jim Edmonds cards were in the mix, pushing my unique Edmonds card total into the 470s. This shiny thing is number 94 out of 100.

My scanner sort of munched this card's border, but it's still evident that this is a silver signature parallel of Jimmy's 1995 Collector's Choice card. Even Edmonds even played 1B a little bit, also as his Cardinals career was nearing its end.

I'm not going to sugarcoat this. This is an awful card. This was early on in Panini's baseball run, where they evidently were terrified to show even the tiniest indication that the subject plays for a team and isn't, say, an amateur chef in training.

I don't know what this is at all, but it's numbered to just 30 and reminds of some informational cards I had as a kid that showed safari animals and little factoids about each. It's awesome! I need more like this.

Somehow I completely missed 2013's 75th Anniversary Topps set (must have been a Hobby only thing?), but the buybacks have been trickling out in trade packages of late. If you put this in a time capsule it would probably confuse the hell out of someone down the road.

Finally, here's a swell looking Tulo jersey card for Erin's collection. Erin is still holding on to some hope that Tulo will someday be a Cardinal, but for the time being that position is pretty locked up by a Peralta guy that could be headed to the All-Star Game this year.