Cards from Oren and a Final Contest Reminder!

 

Don't forget to fill out your bracket! And let's check out some terrific cards from Oren. 

 

We're less than 24 hours away from the start of the big NCAA men's basketball tournament, which means it's time to get those brackets filled out. We're still taking sign-ups down to the wire, so check it out if you haven't already!

After the jump, because there is a giant amount of images to load, let's check out some cards from a trade with reader Oren that was put together over the Christmas holidays.

Stars and Stripes

Set filler needs and patriotic birds from the illustrious @nightowlcardz.bsky.social blog. 

 

I suppose I could have saved this post for a certain holiday that's coming up in a few weeks, but I received this package of cards from Night Owl way back in February, so it probably has sat around long enough. Even though I wouldn't consider myself the biggest flag-waving person around, I've always liked the Independence Day-themed parallel cards, especially the ones that Panini puts out under the Donruss branding. Part of this, I believe, is that the cards usually have more of a heavier "throwback" feel to them, using a different (and likely more expensive) card stock similar to what Topps did with their retail (Target) exclusives from 2009 through 2011.

These two Cardinals Indpendence Day pickups are great, but would you believe that I also have a secret stash of these parallels from players on other teams? I don't usually go out of my way to look for these, but I love it when I pull them from a pack or happen upon one for dirt cheap.

Night Owl sent some red birds on other flavors of cardboard, too, like this interesting insert from the 2022 Topps Gallery set. Arenado's been hitting well of late, but he left today's game after getting hit by a pitch. Injuries always seem to happen to the Cardinals just as soon as someone's bat starts to catch fire -- just look at Willson Contreras, for example. Sheesh.

Mosaic is probably my least favorite Panini brand. I'm not a fan of the way their parallels look at all, and they already have all of the chromium bases covered with Prizm, Optic, Select, and probably some other fringe products that I'm forgetting.

I wish these stamps cards from 2023 Topps Heritage were a super-common, one-per pack type of insert, because it would be really fun to peel these off and stick them on things. Like mail! These count as postage, right?

Among the big names to make their debuts last season with St. Louis, it's Masyn Winn and not Jordan Walker who really feels like the most essential young player in the organization right now. In fact, he already feels like the most important player on the entire team right now. I'm still pretty confident that Walker will put it together at some point, although the Cardinals have been rather dreadful at developing players, particularly outfielders, for quite some time now.

There's a blast from the past. I don't know how I don't have all of these blue Walmart-exclusive parallels yet, but I am sure that I am missing plenty.

Considering that this card (and versions of it like this one) is three years old, I am sure I've mentioned what a weird thing it is that they turned this photo into a horizontal card. Did Flaherty spill some spaghetti on his pants or something?

2022 was such a fun season. I just wish it hadn't ended so abruptly.

We're now onto the set-filler portion of the package. Up first is a pair of high number SPs from the low number portion of the set. Does that make sense? I hope so.

Here's a big block of Allen & Ginter minis. I'm guessing most of these were kicked out of Night Owl's mini binder at some point, although the James McDonald may well have been a Dodgers dupe. Many of these are the slightly rarer A&G back version.

Up next is a pair of cards from the very underrated 2003 Bowman Heritage set. Actually, I feel like Bowman Heritage as a whole is underrated. And no, I'm not talking about the recent Bowman Heritage revival that started with using the modern late '80s/early '90s design templates. These two cards show off three of the base card designs used in the set.

The third 2003 Bowman Heritage card in the package also shows off the third base card design. I believe these were a nod to some old test issues for Bowman that were never officially released. Duke Snider's card is joined by a 2004 Topps Heritage card of Andy Ashby, a name I haven't heard in quite a long time.

Green Cards

 

Happy St. Patrick's Day! 

In honor of the day, here are a few selected green cards I've acquired over the last six months or so. One or two of these may have already made an appearance here. I am not keeping track of these things!

Watching the Blazers lately has made their fans turn a particular shade of green.

Mmm, this one is kind of minty.

The Mosaic patterns, when scanned, always look like the card is sitting in the shadow of some beaded curtains.

Here are those beads again.

Mmm, green donuts.

Flaherty is an Irish name, if I'm not mistaken.

This would have been better if Duarte was in a green Ducks uniform.

Boosh!

Enjoy your weekends, everyone.

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.

Five Good Ones

Quality Cardinals cards from a quality Cardinals fan. 

 

When you're a team collector, you surely know the pain of ending up with heaps of doubles when certain people are always sending you their unwanted cards featuring your favorite squad. This is why it's always nice to have someone to trade with that's on your side, so to speak. Every so often I scour the collection of All Cardinals All The Time in hopes of offloading some of my own doubles, and I've had plenty of good Cardinals needs sent back my way in kind. Here's just a few of the Cards cards I received back in September.

This is one of those fancy "metallic snowflake" parallels from Topps Holiday. I'm not sure what makes them "metallic" - is it just the glitter? Nevertheless, I am compelled to collect all of these as the checklist demands it. How much will we see from Jordan Hicks in the future? Will there be any baseball at all in the future?

If I'm not mistaken, this is one of those retail chain exclusive colored parallels that I never see to be able to find on my own. Was this only available at Dollar Tree? Walgreen's? I know I haven't seen cards at a Dollar Tree in at least five years, and I only once stumbled across the fabled yellow (Topps) parallels at a Walgreen's store even though their pharmacies are all over the place in my neck of the woods. I need more elusive color parallels that are only available at certain stores!

Here's a nice little grey jersey swatch from Jack Flaherty on the always welcome 1986 design that was used through the 2021 Topps flagship sets.

We finish things up with an autographed card of the Cardinals backup catcher. This is on the 1985 design, which means it was inserted into one of the 2020 Topps sets. I didn't expect these to be signed "on card", so this is extra nice.

Summer Fun in November

 

A #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax features the late-arriving Topps Archives set.

 

For the past decade, the Topps Archives set has been a summertime event, adding some much-needed fun and nostalgia to an otherwise stuffy release schedule. It's a breezy set. It's not essential and not quite low-end, but it's affordable enough that almost anyone could collect it. I usually pick up a blaster or two, collect the team set and then mostly forget about it. In recent years, they've really packed in the nostalgia by adding classic movie tie-ins, an Expos feature, and metal discs that resemble the late '80s (and '60s before them) baseball "coins". This year there was really nothing on that grand of a scale that was added, and the set arrived very late in the release schedule due to the ongoing issues at Topps in their last days as a viable baseball card company.

It's new cards, so I must have them (for some reason.) I once again went to Crackin' Wax to fill my "new cards" need in a case break. I have a few extra team sets if anyone is looking for one.

To be fair, this year's set is still fun, if a little late. The 2011 design gets a nod here, and it looks nearly identical aside from the gold foil replacing the usual silver. I understand that changing the foil color is a good practice for distinguishing reprints from the original thing, but it seemed unnecessary here as none of these cards are actually reprinted from the 2011 set.

Next up is the 1957 design, last seen in 2015 Topps Archives.

And then there's the 1983 design, which... same. This is Topps shrugging and saying "you bought it six year ago, so why not?"

The 1991 design was used even more recently as part of the 2016 Topps Archives set. They just wanted to re-use this design so they could slap the new "70 Years" logo on some of these and call them variations.

The same goes for the 2001 set, except that I don't believe this design has ever been re-used outside of possibly whatever Topps does with some of their on-demand throwback products. This was a welcome sight.

I don't think Archives (in its current form) has used the classic woodgrain 1962 Topps design before. In the early '00s, a number of cards used this design, but those were actually in the style of reprints, which was the original "Archives" concept.

The less said about the "70 years into the future" design, the better. The amusing thing about this to me is that it was conceived long before Topps lost their MLB license, making Topps producing baseball cards in the year 2091 even less likely than it already would have been in the first place. I'd like to add that all of my Arenado cards were damaged in the same spot. I'm guessing there was some sort of issue with the sheet that these were printed on.

Inserts are fun, though! These "movie posters" inserts also have a box topper counterpart that is an actual mini-poster that you can unfold and stick on your wall. This one is just a normal card-shaped card, however.

Topps also went back to 1991 to honor their Bazooka set, which used a similar design as their flagship set.

I also landed a few numbered parallels in this break. This orange something or other Paul Goldschmidt card is numbered to just 15!

Jack Flaherty gets the red something or other parallel treatment with a card numbered 30 out of 50.

A more basic parallel came in the form of this Nolan Arenado, which basically looks like a holofoil card.

That's all of the Archives that I received. As a huge, huge bonus, however, CW threw in a whole team set of this 582 Montgomery Club exclusive foil-stamped factory set. Very nice! I won't subject you to another 21 pictures of flagship base cards with a stamp on them, however.

It turns out that even the bonuses have their own bonuses, because I also ended up with three cards featuring old supposedly lost designs that were part of a small set that was also exclusive to 582 Montgomery Club members.

This design looks fantastic in my opinion. I wouldn't mind seeing this get a wider release with a bigger set.

I'm not sure about this one, however. Was Topps really considering putting out a bright yellow bordered set in the black & white photo era? This seems more like it may have been a Bowman thing, although again I'm not sure I'm buying the yellow here.

Thanks again to Crackin' Wax for the extra goodies!