Long Live the Streak

Some brief comments on the Cardinals season, plus a PWE round-up and @coffeebreaks40 nets me a stylish Bob Gibson card. 

 

Admittedly, I never addressed the Cardinals unprecedented seventeen game winning streak that launched them into Wild Card position because I didn't want to jinx it. I'm not that superstitious, but things seemed to be going along pretty well for awhile without me talking about it, so I just... didn't. In truth, this 2021 team never felt like it was worth talking about much. I see their big streak as sort of... regressing to the mean in reverse? (progressing to the mean?) This is a good team with good players that were just performing badly for a long stretch of time. Maybe it was due to continuing adjustments to barely playing anything that resembled baseball for all of last year or maybe it was something else. In any case, in the solidification of their 2-3-4 punch of Goldy, O'Neill and Arenado, the other bats started to come around as well, as they often do. Other pitchers were pulled off the scrap heap to put a stop to the endless parade of free passes. Suddenly, we have a team in a Wild Card play-in game. Let's check back in a couple of days before we get excited about the playoffs.

Here's the man that at age 40 will take the hill against the Dodgers. These cards come courtesy of cards as i see them, a fan of the team that has unlimited resources. When you already have the highest payroll in the game and then you go out and grab two of the biggest stars (Trea Turner and Max Scherzer), well that's... I don't know, some people like the Dodgers for some reason. I don't!

I won't throw too much shade, though, because I get great cards from this Dodger fan all the time, including a low numbered Mother's Day parallel of the Cards starting centerfielder. Harrison Bader is pretty ridiculous, and I mean that in a good way.

I also ended up with a nice assortment of old Heritage set filling needs. Many of these seem like Dodgers doubles. I think at this point, more than half of all of the expendable cards in my collection are Cardinals cards, so I know how this is.

Here's more Heritage cards from 2001 and 2002, including a guy I redacted (mostly because I didn't realize I'd scanned one of his cards until it was already done, and I thought it was funny to do this) and one David Jonathan Drew. Yes, that's right: J.D. Drew's initials are actually D.J.

Next up is an envelope stuffed with more Heritage cards and a needed Tommy Edman Holiday base card from Diamond Jesters. Matt is a big Red Sox fan, and his team faces the Yankees tonight in the AL Wild Card game. After all of the excitement this past weekend, I couldn't think of a more boring outcome than a Yankees/Red Sox game (and nothing else?), but I don't make the rules. I'm sure it's exciting for Red Sox fans, whose team wasn't expected to do a whole lot this year.

Here's a few cards for my 2021 set build. I've actually made some headway into all of these Heritage sets recently, but the cards are tied up in my COMC account and I haven't pulled the trigger on a shipment yet.

Of these six, only Aaron Judge advanced to the postseason.

Finally, because I didn't know where else to fit this, I recently participated in my first Coffee Breaks break, which was a baseball "mixer". (This essentially means that there's boxes from a variety of products rather than one specific set.) I didn't do so well, as is often the case with these things, but I didn't land this shiny Bob Gibson insert parallel from the 2021 Panini Prizm set. It's numbered to 99.

Enjoy the playoffs and Go Cards!

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.

Chasing Flaherty Again

Another week of @CrackinWax #CrackinWaxMailDay cards. 

I bought into a few more Crackin' Wax breaks, which should come as no surprise to recent readers of the blog. In my new found focus to go after all things Jack Flaherty, I wound up buying something I would normally avoid like the plague - one of those non-MLB college/draft sets. The box was a 2014 Panini Elite Extra Edition one, and while Flaherty isn't in the base set for some reason, he has autographs in this one. He seems to be more prominently featured in the Prizm Draft set from the same year.

I didn't land one of the coveted autos, but I ended up with 75% of the base team set, and did at least wind up with a Flaherty (Elite Expectations insert) as a consolation prize.

Next up were some Panini Chronicles boxes, which are always intriguing to me for their sheer weirdness and variety of designs. From the 2018 box, I ended up with a numbered Harrison Bader Donruss card.

I also finally finished off the 2017 base team set and added this Luke Weaver Donruss card. This confusing insert picks up the card numbering where the regular 2017 Donruss release left off, which threw me for a loop when I first acquired another card (Paul DeJong) from this in a trade. I couldn't find it on the Donruss checklist, you see. It was a weird moment.

My random team in the Chronicles break was the Orioles, which landed me this sticker auto that is headed for the trade box.

Not headed for the trade box is this Carlos Martinez Heritage Chrome card, my lone Cardinals need from a 2017 Topps Heritage High Numbers break. These aren't quite as nice as the refractor versions, but it's still a fairly tough pull.

Finally, there was a free box of 2013 Topps Museum Collection where the spots were distributed randomly to various participants from the week. I ended up with a spot and this Clayton Kershaw card was pulled. I'm sure I'll have no problem finding a home for this card along with all of the other Dodgers cards I seem to constantly pull.

Meanwhile, if you've got any Jack Flaherty cards I need (as in, something not on this list), feel free to reach out! Thanks.

The Card Community Sends Cards

Cards from @CommunityGum to pass the time, because there's a lot of time right now. 

I know whenever I see Jon from Community Gum's name on an envelope, it's time to drop everything and tear into some exciting baseball cards. This time was no exception. Another vast assortment of Cardinals cards and set needs were among the many cool cards I got to thumb through. Andrew Miller and a couple of friends represented the tough-to-find 2019 Walgreen's-exclusive yellow Topps card crowd, and there was certainly more to look at.

This black bordered mini of the Wizard? Not too shabby. Ozzie certainly seems impressed.

There was not one, but...

Two! Two low numbered Scott Rolen inserts from a long forgotten mid-'00s Donruss set. Ah ah ah!

Harrison Bader makes an appearance on a dazzling don't-call-it-an-X-Fractor Prizm parallel. (Seriously, what do they call this, then?)

I call this one the swirly-dirly parallel. Yes, that's its official name!

No scan will tell you how wonderful the Topps retro/throwback parallels are. You just have to see (and feel) them for yourself. I want all of these, seriously.

I recognize this one as one of those Trading Card History inserts from back in 2008, except in Chrome and Bronze form. Nice!

This one may be headed to my Blazers binders, but I was absolutely thrilled that Jon tapped into my 2010-11 Donruss basketball needs. I haven't touched that want list in years, and it desperately needed some attention.

Remember basketball? I miss basketball.

But I miss baseball most of all, especially this time of the year. I even miss Mike Trout, the big lug. Jon also sent a nice stack of 2019 Ginter needs, and with all of this extra time inside I probably should give my sets and collections even more attention. Just don't let me start collecting anything else!

Young and Patchy

Cardinals and Blazers gems from @CardpocalypseNC officially kick off "Catch Up Month". 

I'm finally back from two separate baseball-themed summer vacations, so it's time to get to work. By work, I mean, post about cards that have been sitting around for months. My goal is to be completely caught up before the month is over. (Where have we heard this before?)

First up is a slick batch of Cards on cards and Blazers on cards from Tim of I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning. The card of the recently demoted Harrison Bader comes from one of those fancy online-only sets that Topps likes to use to line our email inboxes with targeted advertising these days. It's a bit thicker and glossier than your average Topps card, which makes me think it's probably similar to the pricey Topps Now stuff they've been doing for several years now.

Meanwhile, the Yadi photo variation is always appreciated. Even though the 2017 design is one of the worst things I've seen slapped on so-called cardboard, it's always cool to see a memorable moment captured on a baseball card. This one is headed to Erin's collection.

The NBA offseason is so short these days that we're already talking about training camp, contract extensions and things of that nature. CJ just got paid ($$$$), extending his stay in Portland to at least five years by adding on three and one hundred (seasons and million dollars, respectively.)

Zach Collins is someone that a lot of people are excited about, at least in Rip City. Zach is entering his third season and figures to get a ton of minutes now with several frontcourt mainstays departing and Jusuf Nurkic expected to be sidelined for quite awhile yet. He did just suffer an injury in offseason workouts recently, but training camp hasn't been ruled out for him yet.

While shiny Prizm cards are all the rage these days, Zach's green rookie parallel is no match for this super cool (and thick) patch card. It's numbered 13 out of 25.

Thanks again to Tim!

Cardinals vs. Mariners: Game 3

Happy 4th of July, and Happy Baseball! 

It's time for afternoon baseball! I will be enjoying some form of hot dog today, I am certain, along with live baseball under the sun. Life is good.

Harrison Bader enjoys life. I think you all know that by now. Enjoy your 4th, everyone, and don't let the jerks get you down.

I'm going with the baby blue Willie McGee t-shirt because America.

Fortune Teller

Gaze into the crystal ball with another #crackinwaxmailday featuring Gypsy Queen. 

Back for its ninth iteration, the Topps Gypsy Queen set is by far my least favorite of their products of the many in its price tier. Sometimes, the cards do look nice, but it feels so unnecessary. Of course, I've heard of some of the same complaints about Topps Archives, mostly due to their endlessly recycled designs. The only time I've really paid full price for more than a couple of packs of this stuff was back in 2015, when I was temporarily hooked by Ozzie Smith on the pack wrappers. Still, I was more than willing to take the Cardinals slot in the Crackin' Wax group break. I ended up with multiple team sets (sans the short printed Mark McGwire) and some extra goodies.

There's a lot of tiny writing on these cards. I'm not sure what else to say about the design itself, though, but this indigo colored parallel (numbered to 250) does look nice.

Like most Topps cards these days, they take a closely cropped photo and apply some photo software filters on them to get the final product. This gets most of the Cardinals shortstop in frame, but unfortunately cuts him off at the ankles.

Box toppers are normal sized Chrome versions this year, but there's something strange about DeJong's card. They used an entirely different photo for it. This wasn't the case for the other Chrome box topper, which you'll see in a bit.

The reverse of the card that led off this post was Daniel Ponce de Leon's rookie card... except that it was actually this rarer parallel Bazooka back version. Neat.

This and its base counterpart are my first official Paul Goldschmidt Cardinals cards, which is pretty neat. I won't say the 'P' word, because I'm trying to keep things positive here.

I'm not a big autograph seeker as most of you probably know, but the autos in this set do look pretty spectacular. This makes me wonder if this was a rejected alternate design for the base cards. In any case, I was pleased to snag this Jose Martinez card as the centerpiece of my case break haul.

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.