Christmas in Februrary

Secret Santa stuff from @Fixxxer37 in the @CrackinWax holiday gift exchange. 

 

We've reached the point in the year where I start to wonder why I'm still talking about last year. One of the best things to wrap up 2021 was my participation in the annual Crackin' Wax gift exchange. I waited until Christmas Eve to open up my package as I was flying out of town the next day, and couldn't believe the motherload of cards that awaited me.

I stared at this one for a bit and thought that there had to be something different about it. I finally remembered that 2018 was the year that Allen & Ginter had put some glow-in-the-dark minis into the set (some sort of monsters theme?) If you look closely, there's a slight pattern in the background of the card that becomes more noticeable if you turn off the lights, as one would expect from a glowing thing. I had never seen one of these before, so it was cool to see.

 

I decided it was time to give on the scanner at this point. I tried scanning this card awhile back (for TCDB) but wasn't happy with the way it looked. I don't think I have the type of scanner that can accurately scan anything with some depth to it.

I've been a fan of the Archives Signature Series cards for awhile, but as I'm always at odds with myself over whether or not collecting autographs makes sense, I've never pulled the plug on buying any of them for myself. (The plug, it seems, has been pulled for me.)

Here's a few more "hit" cards. Walmart exclusives are always welcome because I don't really Walmart, and I've always loved Topps Heritage signed cards.

A large, large chunk of the holiday package was dedicated to my Topps Heritage want lists, and not the low-hanging fruit. These are stacks of inserts and short prints, those thorny thorns stuck in the side of everyone who collects these sets.

This was a very considerate lot of cards for my collection. I hope everyone else got something fun for Christmas -- assuming you can still remember what happened two months ago.

Dollar Days

Trophies from the card show dollar bin. 

Even though Google Maps tells me I am more than two thousand miles (31 hours of travel time!) away from Busch Stadium, Cardinals cards seem to be in somewhat short supply around these parts. Recently, I took advantage of a $1 bin at the monthly card show that actually had some things of interest for me. I came away with 12 things (for $10 if you bought 12), some of which will end up in future trade packages. Here's what I kept for myself.

This Sweet Spot Update Chris Duncan card, circa 2006, boasts of "game-used swatches". There's absolutely no reason that's not just one big piece of cloth behind the scenes now, is there? This seems silly. All of the pieces are the same color and the threads are running in the same direction.

Josh Pearce is a local guy who got into a few games for a few seasons, but I don't really have any recollection of him. It's always fun to get bat relics of pitchers, though. (ABOLISH THE DH!) This one is numbered to 150.

I was about 80 to 90 percent sure I had one of these, and now that I've scanned it I am 100% sure.

I also have one of these Mulders, something I wasn't really prepared for. Both cards were acquired in 2010 according to my image date stamps, so I guess my excuse is going to be that it was eight years ago?

Here's a fun card of two guys who would be traded straight up for each other about five years later. This is an odd one, of course, in that only Troy Glaus (and not Scott Rolen) gets a jersey piece here.

There often aren't a lot of autograph cards of players who actually played Major League Baseball in these bins, so I was happy to get this 1996 Tom Urbani signature, even though it notes that he had moved on to the Angels at this point. Urbani is a guy who I first heard of when I started playing Triple Play 97 on my PC. I doubt I had any idea he had already been traded when I dragged him out of my bullpen when Mike Timlin inevitably ran out of ammo.

Like the weird Rolen/Glaus mash-up, Upper Deck's Ballpark Collection was notable for pitting a lot of different players together, sometimes with strange results. This is a strange pair indeed. Wood's 2008 would be the year he was reinvented as a reliever and made his second All-Star appearance, while Mulder was more than two years deep into his nightmare of not being able to figure out where he should put his arm to release a baseball. This isn't the first card to incidentally feature a Cubs player relic in my collection, and it almost certainly won't be my last. Thanks, baseball cards!

The Future is Bright

It's also shiny, and occasionally serial numbered. 

I'm still working my way through documenting groupings of cards received back in November. This one was particularly shiny and full of low-numbered things I collect. Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown (and new Twitter account @PadresBreakdown -- note to self: starting a side social media project might be a more effective way of getting rid of the eight thousand or so excess Cardinals dupes you own) handed off to me another stellar bunch of cards I needed for my various collections. This one was heavy on Cardinals content, which is a boon to this blog considering its namesake.

Carlos Martinez as the Cardinals ace is still something I'm getting used to. He is tremendously talented, though, and earned his second All-Star nod last season. This purple refractor is numbered to 75.

The Cardinals made a key trade this offseason (Marcell Ozuna) without giving up any of their top prospects, including Jack Flaherty. While Flaherty's results in his brief time with the big league club were, frankly, not great, there is still plenty of optimism for him. It was great to get this silver 2016 Bowman parallel as I've not done well with Bowman parallels of late.

I have a soft spot for the old gold Topps flagship parallel cards, but my appreciation goes up tenfold when looking at these rare hobby-only black parallels. I only have a handful of these in my collection and would love to get my hands on more. Assuming they are still making these, I'm sure I would be pretty disappointed in the black parallels from the past couple of sets considering what they've done with the golds.

Considering my love for the flagship 2003 Topps set, I really ought to think about putting together (or just buying) the Retired Signatures set from the same year. It uses the same design, only with white borders. I wish we could still have all-retired sets. I don't even remember why this isn't allowed anymore. I'm guessing it probably has something to do with The Great Rookie Card Reform of Ought-Six.

Topps Pack Wars was post-MLB Showdown, pre-Topps Attax and was something I totally missed. Scrunching the player photo down to such a small space on the card doesn't really make this super collectible, but the foil backing and low serial number certainly help.

Scott Rolen has been getting a lot of positive attention from the baseball pundits about his Hall of Fame candidacy, even though I expect his vote totals to be low. Hopefully he can stay in the collective consciousness long enough to make a run at the Hall a few years down the road.

Surprisingly, this 2014 Finest parallel does not come with any seizure warnings on the back.

Yadi more or less confirmed what we all suspected yesterday when he announced that he expected the final season of his current contract to be his last season as a player. It's hard to imagine the Cardinals now without Yadier Molina. It also makes me feel really old. It doesn't feel like his rookie year was all that long ago.

Along with the low numbered (/75) "blue wave" refractor above, here's Yadi's base card from the most recent Topps Tribute set. I would never in my wildest years buy a pack or box or whatever configuration of this stuff, but the base cards are great card show finds when you can get them.

It's been a little basketball heavy around here, but I couldn't sign off without at least one Blazers card. I remember James Edwards as a Pistons player (center on those "Bad Boys" teams) but have no recollection of him as a Trail Blazer. My mind is a pretty good resource for even the more obscure Portland players over the years, but the mid-90's P.J. Carlesimo era is a bit fuzzy.

Speaking of fuzzy, I have totally neglected this 2012 Topps Archives 3D insert set along with some of the other smaller collections (Opening Day Stars, Turkey Red, etc.) I should probably check out some of the sites that other blogger people write about to fill some of these holes.

Airbrushed Fridays: 2008 Topps #290

These next four days will determine the true fate of the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals. It's been a long, strange year - mostly strange - and the Cards sitting 4.5 games back in the wild card race and 5.5 games behind in the NL Central has to feel like a disappointment compared to how the season began. The health news surrounding Matt Holliday is less than encouraging. Four games against the Phillies, on the road against the team with the best record in baseball should seem like an impossible task. I just don't think that playing up to the competition has ever been the Cardinals problem. If anything, that Astros series finale looms large as the scariest one to me if we're still talking about magic numbers by late September.

Edgar Renteria is a shortstop who has manned the shortstop position for three World Series clubs, winning two. He was both a walk-off World Series winner (Florida, 1997) and the final out of the season (St. Louis, 2004). And last season, of course, he was the World Series MVP with San Francisco. Throughout his long career, he's provided above average offense for a middle infielder to go with mostly above board defense. To date, he's won two gold gloves and appeared in five All-Star games. To no one's surprise, he's important to me for his six seasons with the Cardinals, the most time he's logged with any club.

Why did Topps airbrush Edgar's photo? Renteria was with Atlanta in 2007 when Yunel Escobar was starting to gain traction in the Braves system. Edgar was shipped off to Detroit for a package that included Jair Jurrjens following the season, which precluded his appearance in a current uniform in 2008 Series 1.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? I think whoever applied the Detroit logo to Edgar's shirt was intoxicated, as each letter seems to be aligned at a slightly different angle.

If you are interested in obtaining a card featured here, please send me an e-mail. If you have a card you would like to nominate for Airbrushed Fridays, please get in touch as well. I will require that I am able to see the card in person, either on loan or as a donation, so that I can examine the card and experience it in all its cruddiness.