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.

New Address PWE Round-Up

 

Loads of Cardinals, football players, pink cards and mini cards (and pink mini cards?)

 

If you hadn't heard, I recently moved after being in the same spot for more than seventeen years. It was quite a chore! Thankfully, everything is done now and I had a number of envelopes with cards in them sent to the new place. Let's check out a few of them.

First up is a stack of Cardinals cards from gcrl / cards as i see them. I'm not sure how he ended up with so many pink parallels from the 2019 Topps Mini set, but I'm certainly glad they were sent my way!

As you may have noticed, all of these cards are numbered to just 25 copies. I don't believe the print run for the base cards from this online exclusive set was all that high to begin with, but this is still really cool.

Speaking of low print runs, I also found this Sapphire Chrome card inside the envelope. This is a set that I would never join a group break of, let alone buy a box. It's so expensive! That's why I enjoy picking up the odd common Sapphire card every great once in awhile. They're just parallels (or parallels of parallels?) but they at least look nicer than when they just slap a foil logo on the flagship factory set and call it good.

I think they dropped these Walgreen's exclusive yellow parallels after a time, which is too bad, because the pharmacy closest to me just started regularly stocking cards.

Next up was a cool batch of Redbirds from Marc Brubaker, another long time trading buddy. I haven't bought any of this year's Panini baseball products since they lost their MLBPA license, so it's always nice to pick up some of those Cardinals through trading channels.

Speaking of stuff that I'm not buying, it's the new Allen & Ginter set. I finally put my foot down and decided to end my run of trying to put together this set every year. It's not that I don't like the way these cards look. They just don't really look like Allen & Ginter cards anymore, so what drew me to this brand seems to have been totally lost. If you slapped the dreaded GQ logo on these, I'm not sure that most would really notice.

Here's a couple of really nice minis. Pujols has the A&G logo on the back, and Walker is, obviously, a black parallel. 

Speaking of sets I've been avoiding, well... here's another one. This is another "art" set where they take a photo of a player and add some effects to it to try to make it look hand drawn or something. Instead, it kind of looks like all of the photos are AI-generated. Has anyone played around with Bing's AI image generator to try to make fake baseball cards? I know what I'm doing tonight!

It's AI Arenado!

This last group of cards is from the football realm and comes from buckstorecards. I have come to really appreciate these Draft Pick sets that Panini churns out year after year because they feature players in their college uniforms. I think that tends to diminish their overall value, but it makes it really fun to collect for me, especially as I've always been a bit lukewarm on the NFL game. Here Christian Gonzalez is showing off the Ducks eggshell uniform that they break out a couple of times a season.

On this one, Gonzalez is wearing more of a classic green. I do like the all green look and wish we'd see it a little more.

These aren't Ducks uniforms, but they are (former) Ducks players! I always love getting CFL cards from across the border, since I tend to never know who is in them. Apparently Upper Deck also does an e-Pack line of CFL cards, which is something that I wish existed for baseball. (Well, maybe.)

If you have any spare Dodgers (gcrl), Astros (Bru), or whatever the heck buckstorecards collects (he has diverse interests!), definitely consider dropping them in the mail to these guys.

Sunday Funday PWE Round-Up

Catching up with chunky cards from @sanjosefuji and more! 

 

I don't even want to get into how far behind I've fallen in card stuff here or what led to this situation. Let's just look at some cards! The first bunch came over from The Chronicles of Fuji. Fuji managed to cram a sweet stack of memorabilia cards and relics into a small envelope way back when, and I'm excited to finally show them off to you all.

Oooh, even Joey Heisman thinks these cards are pretty sweet!

Of course, Harrington only finished in 4th place in 2001, but he and his school managed to raise his profile enough that he went on to a decently sized (but not terribly successful) NFL career.

Here's a blast from the past -- it's Josh McRoberts, or McBob as he was affectionately known during his short time around here in Portland. This is one of those neat looking letter patches that I own so few of. It's even autographed! It's just a manufactured patch, of course, but it definitely resembles the lettering on the Blazers jerseys at the time during the Adidas days.

The Blazers hits just keep on coming. This signed sticker auto comes from decorated Spanish star Sergio Rodriguez, who spent the latter half of the '00s in the NBA before resurfacing stateside for a season about six years ago. He's still playing professionally these days.

Zach Collins is the NBA's only living and breathing vampire (that we know of.) He's currently a key member of the Spurs after starting his career with Portland.

I think we all know this guy, for better or for worse. There's kind of a strange cut-out for the jersey piece on this card to go along with the wood theme.

Ha is still apparently the only player from South Korea to play in the NBA, which is kind of a cool distinction as he otherwise didn't have much of an impact on the league. He tantalized with his size, but I don't know that the league had as much structure in place twenty years ago to develop raw talent that they do now.

I really liked Gary Trent Jr. while he was with the Blazers and it felt like his trade to Toronto was the beginning of the team's downward slide, even if we didn't know it at the time.

Next up, we have some goodies from long time PWE trader (and Dodger fan) gcrl. A couple of the online exclusive Topps Mini cards were on offer, including this insert from the 2017 set.

This one is even more special as it's numbered to just 25. Ponce de Leon has bounced around a few organizations after his last appears with St. Louis, but he hasn't resurfaced in the big leagues yet.

I also snagged some Allen & Ginter set filling needs from gcrl, including a couple of base cards and this Randy Johnson insert. Will we see a normal late summer release for this year's Allen & Ginter set? I haven't checked the calendars in a bit because my budget for cards has dropped off dramatically of late.

Here's a few more inserts from last year's Ginter set. I kind of want to burn the card at the top.

Lastly, I claimed a few random set fillers from The Angels, In Order back in the winter. (Yeah, it's been awhile!) Those Royals jerseys definitely scream early '00s to me.

The 2014 Topps Heritage New Age Performers design is one of my least favorites. It squishes the player photo over to the side unnecessarily. I get how they were trying to make this look like it should with with the 1965 Topps theme, but it doesn't work for me.

I also claimed this slightly smaller ("mini"...ish) parallel card of Mike Sweeney from the 2005 Bowman Heritage set. I've managed to add some Bowman Heritage cards to my meager set builds since I started trading on TCDB, but that area could still use plenty of work.

Thanks again to everyone who has sent me envelopes of all sizes!

Contest Results and More Cracked Wax

 

The March Radness winner revealed! Plus more @CrackinWax #CrackinWaxMailDay things. 

The big college basketball tournament is in the books and, as a result, we have some prizes to award. It came down to Baylor vs. Gonzaga in the final, two of the very best teams in the sport this year. Baylor steamrolled the team from Spokane giving them their only loss of the season, which means The Diamond King has taken the top prize in both contests this year. Congrats! In second place came Bump and Run, with Stadium Fantasium (aka bbcardz) taking third. Bringing up the rear was Ape Island, aka i.hate.espn, who must also hate picking winning teams. If your name is in bold, please contact me as you've won some sort of prize! 

The rest of you are probably here for the cards. I'm a bit behind on posting about stuff I've received in the mail, but there's a couple more rounds of Crackin' Wax breaks to get through. First up this time is a 2019 Topps Gallery break. I usually avoid this set because I really don't like most of the artwork, but I didn't get very close to finishing my team set whenever this first came out. The other incentive was that the Padres were only available as a random team due to Tatismania or whatever. I actually lucked out here and ended up with the Padres in addition to my actual team. 

Yeah, I'm not a fan of these. Supposedly that's Manny Machado on the left?

Fernando Tatis Jr. rookie cards were at insane levels when I joined the break. I'm guessing there's been a bit of a selloff since the scary injury news with him hit. I can imagine the Padres are probably sweating a bit now after signing him to that massive contract, along with all of the other spending and maneuvering they did this past offseason.

Unfortunately, the 2020 Donruss Optic break was short on cards for me and short on cards I needed. I did end up with this holo Goldie parallel for my collection. It seems like Panini baseball cards are starting to be taken seriously in the market right now, though, because... well, everything else is. Maybe I should start making my own cards.

I also bought in to another 2021 Topps flagship break. The Diamondbacks are often the team that gets dumped on me. This flashy 1986-style silver pack card of Daulton Varsho (guessing he's Gary Varsho's son?) will be headed to my trade box.

The best thing from these breaks was this Harrison Bader black parallel, numbered to 70. Even though they don't look nearly as nice as they used to, I always love the black parallels that Topps puts out.

From Behind Enemy Lines

A few Cardinals goodies from @WhiteMamba52 includes fishfractors and signatures. 

Sending cards to a fan of a rival team is almost twice as satisfying. Not only are you potentially making someone's day, but you also get to get rid of cards from that team you love to root against. That's what I assume Colt, who talks and occasionally sells a few cards on Twitter, was feeling when he sent some stuff my way earlier this year. I know him primarily as a regular in the Crackin' Wax group breaks that I've posted about quite a lot this year.

Inside the package were a pair of 2020 Topps Chrome prism refractors, which some of you like to call "fishfractors". Hey, maybe the name is finally starting to catch on with me?

I'll always feel a little nostalgic for the '80s Topps designs, because I start collecting cards in the '80s. I feel like Topps has done a better job with these the past few years than they have with Archives. There's something really off about the majority of the Archives designs, at least to me.

Topping off the bunch of Cards cards were a pair of autos from last year's Topps Chrome set. Ponce de Leon's eight COVID season starts were a bit of a mixed bag, but I still expect him to be in the mix to be a starter in 2021, especially with the budget supposedly tightening up quite a bit.

Adolis Garcia didn't work out with the Cardinals, but he popped up again briefly this year to log a handful of hitless plate appearances with the Rangers. This one is a refractor, numbered to the usual 499 copies.

Thanks again to Colt!