Surprise Visit from the DK

 

...no, not the Donkey Kong. 

 

A few months back, I got a surprise knock on the door from local area not-blogger The Diamond King, who dropped off an incredibly generous selection of Cardinals goodies. I had included my childhood (H)akeem Olajuwon rookie in a mailer sent his way sometime in the past year or so, but certainly wasn't expecting anything in return. We're lucky to have a semi-monthly card show in the area where I suspect at least some of these cards were procured from, and it reminds me that I wanted to make a concerted effort to go to more shows this year (I've already missed the first one.)

Heritage seems like it has such a high print run these days, so I'm always taken aback when I run across a variation like this B&W Arenado, as I never seem to pull stuff like this out of packs anymore. It seems increasingly likely that Arenado will be around for at least the first half of the year with St. Louis now, but I wonder if this card marks his final All-Star appearance with anyone.

The goofy, AI-"enhanced" 2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary whatever is the gift that keeps on giving, apparently. They really went nuts with the parallels on these. This one is numbered to just 25. Carlson still hasn't caught on with anyone for the coming season as far as I can tell.

Here's another one of the wacky parallels. This one with the free flowing hair of Ted Simmons is numbered to 75.

This Bud Smith card has an imprint with the National Sports Convention logo on it and is numbered 2 out of 5. Rare stuff here! I've always wondered how "official" some of the past cards with stamps from card conventions on them are, but they've mostly been treated as such by the major publications and databases I suppose.

Angel Rondon may have only had a cup of coffee with the Cardinals, but he still makes for a nice looking autographed card. Of course, almost anyone would look good on an Inception card like this.

Daniel Ponce de Leon was once seen as a key cog in the Cardinals stable of pitchers, but he had some tough breaks along the way including a much publicized scary head injury. When standing next to a comparable Topps high end card, Panini's unlicensed warts are pretty visible, though this does contain a nice chunky patch-looking thing in it.

We're back to the AI set here with a more normal parallel pattern. I think this is gold? This will look nice in my Waino collection and is numbered to just 50.

The red ice(?) sky on Lou Brock's card makes this one a bit apocalyptic looking. It's numbered to 100.

Last, but certainly not least, is this pretty slick looking bat card from the 2019 Topps Tier One set. I can't believe it's already been six years since the Cards brought in Goldy. I hope he does well with the Yankees. The Cardinals are really going to miss his defense at 1B more than anything at this point.

If you've got some time, I'd definitely suggest checking out The Diamond King's blog especially if it's been awhile. It looks like he's been generously giving out some impressive stuff, so I'm sure he'd love to get hooked up with something of his own interest.

Weekend PWE Round-Up

Good baseball cards sometimes come in small packages. 

 

Although the bulk of the stuff I receive in the mail these days is from TCDB trades, I still have a few friends of the blog who like to exchange blind letters and packages of cards. And they are still very, very fun. Here's a few fun ones, including this offering from late June by Night Owl Cards.

Night Owl tossed a couple of current Cardinals my way, including a screaming yellow Willson Contreras card and this Jordan Walker Prizm insert. We're at the point where it's difficult to see what the Cardinals will look like come next season, but I'm guessing they're going to try to reestablish themselves around a young core which will likely include Walker.

Along with the current guys came a pair of recently retired legends. Adam Wainwright is now trying to balance full-time dad duties with part-time broadcasting and singing pursuits.

Albert Pujols on a 1989 Topps design is always going to look weird.

Speaking of legends, we go back all the way to 1970 with this one. No Heritage here -- this is the real deal.

Night Owl always has a stash of minis seemingly at his disposal, and he was once again cool enough to help me out with some of these Ginter weirdos. Bill Walton will now have a new patch celebrating his life on the Blazers jerseys this coming season.

Next up is another PWE from another Dodgers fan. If you've been here before, you can probably guess that it's going to be a gcrl/cards as i see them envelope. This Matt Carpenter pink parallel comes from the online exclusive Topps Mini set, which I think they stopped making a couple of years ago. I don't think it was terribly popular (or necessary.)

Inception! That's fun. Cho spent the entire season at the High-A level, and while his bat hasn't seemed to have come around yet, he is very young still.

This is a great collection of Heritage inserts right here. Pong! Hammerin' Hank! A future HOF Cardinal!

Parallels will undoubtedly be the death of any team collector, but it was great to snag a couple more of these yellow things from the mystery envelope.

We end the gcrl envelope with a minor league autograph card. It's Adam Kennedy! A lot of players from sets like these aren't terribly recognizable years after the card has been out, but Kennedy had a nice career that included a World Series ring and ALCS MVP award with the Angels in 2002.

Our third and final envelope comes from the one and only Lost Collector. I've always been a huge fan of these framed Diamond Kings cards from the mid 00's. This Bud Smith card is numbered to just 400.

I've made some good headway this year into collecting all of the various Topps gold parallels (Cardinals) since these became an annual thing back, I want to say, 2001? The less said about this subject, the better, but at least this is one more to tick off the list.

The lone non-baseball card need in these envelopes came in the form of a Sage HIT parallel of Devon Williams, a Ducks receiver who left two years of NCAA eligibility on the table when he opted to enter the 2022 draft. As far as I can tell, he got a look from the Ravens initially but hasn't shown up anywhere prominent in a couple of years.

Thanks, as always, for these fun blind trades!

Sports!

We've got baseball players! Football players! Basketball players! 

 

In all likelihood, this is the last blog post here at Cards on Cards that will be auto-posted to my Twitter feed. I'm gearing up, mentally at least, to leave behind the most popular and most obnoxious social media platform, even though there's a huge card collecting community over there. You can always contact me via TCDB, Bluesky, e-mail and, of course, through the blog here itself. I don't know what the future holds in terms of my participation in social media, but I'm long overdue to make some changes for the sake of my own sanity.

With that out of the way, let's check out my end of another stellar trade exchange between buckstorecards and myself.

If I was into the NFL enough to be a set collector, the 2005 Topps set would probably be at the top of my list. I remember these packs having the same promotion as the 2006 Topps baseball set, where they would insert some old "vintage" cards in each (rack?) pack. This Reuben Droughns card is from the 1st Edition version of the set, though. Those packs probably didn't have any old cards in them.

This card had me stumped, and it wasn't just because of Mr. Nunez's signature. I'd actually just never heard of him. I'm not sure what prompted Panini to get signed cards of an A-ball non-prospect pitcher into one of its premium sets, but I'm certainly not complaining. I love the obscure corners of my team collection, and I'm glad that this card made me do a quick Google search on its subject.

On the decidedly less obscure side is this Jordan Walker card from last year's Topps Heritage Minors set. The Springfield logo very much looks like it was Photoshopped. The photo was most likely from the previous season, where he was in A ball.

I can almost always count on a CFL card or two in buckstorecards mailers, and my first ever Boseko Lokombo did not disappoint. It makes me wish I followed the former Ducks players pro careers in other leagues besides the NFL a little more closely.

More CFL goodness here with a throwback to an '80s Duck who played before I went to school there.

"Rolls Royce" is a far more contemporary Duck. This is a really nice patch on his Rookie Threads Donruss Optic card. It's numbered to just 50, most likely because they included one of the more interesting parts of the jersey he might have worn at one point.

Royce is here again with another entry into the lackluster signature department.

I'm sure I've said this quite a few times over the years, but part of the reason that younger players tend to have such skimpy signatures is that there's just no real life practical use for signing things anymore -- besides silly sports cards, that is. It's rare to find someone these days with a good looking auto because, well, why would they practice that?

 

Ducks hoops was well represented as well, with a four-pack of Chris Duarte RC logo adorned cards from Panini Chronicles. The lower left one is a silver Prizm parallel.

Last but certainly not least is this trio of dudes from the Philadelphia Eagles. Pretty much all of my pro sports teams fell on rough times in the past year or two, but not the Eagles. They're soaring!

The Beaniest

Cardinals and more from @beansbcardblog include a bunch of retail store exclusives.

When I think of the name Bean's Ballcard Blog, it always makes me think of a certain Futurama episode where Leela became a Blernsball (not at all like baseball) player.

This doesn't really have much to with anything, but it serves as an introduction to a post about a bunch of cards I got from Kin of (you guessed it!) Bean's Ballcard Blog.

I always love getting minor league cards, and that goes doubly so for what goes down as my oldest Paul DeJong card, tying it with the one copy of his "paper" 1st Bowman card from the same year. I need more DeJong cards in my life.

Shelby Miller is one of the cursed Cardinals mega prospects of this decade. I hope he figures it out or gets it together or whatever it is that these star athletes can do, someday.

Adron Chambers, the human victory cigar from the Cardinals run to the 2011 World Series is looking absolutely celebratory on this X-Fractor.

My favorite part of this package, however, was the slew of retail exclusive parallels from a three-plus year run where there was a bit of an incentive to buying regular old Topps flagship packs from Target (and the dreaded Walmart).

Kin also sent over a few set needs, like this floating head Chris Carpenter sticker from 2012 Topps Heritage. Good stuff all around.