A Yepez New Year

 

Group Break cards from Nachos Grande. 

 

This latest batch of Cardinals cards came from assorted group breaks held by Nachos Grande around the early part of fall. With one exception, these cards were mostly from breaks of products released in the past couple of years.

Juan Yepez was once an Atlanta prospect, but he didn't make it to the big leagues until he had established himself as one of the top bats in the Memphis Redbirds lineup, the Cardinals' AAA affiliate. While he had some bright spots in 2022 while Albert Pujols took him under his wing, Yepez didn't really get much of a shot last season and has since moved on to the Nationals organization. Of course, the framed Allen & Ginter mini card is going to get a lot more love than the generic looking Panini sticker auto, but I am happy to have added both to my collection.

Tommy Edman makes an appearance on another Panini product, this time a red, white and blue parallel from last year's Mosaic set. I don't believe there was a 2023 Mosaic baseball set as the number of Panini products in this sport dropped significantly after losing the MLBPA license.

The 2023 Finest break was one of the big highlights. I landed this Nolan Arenado green parallel that is numbered to just 99 copies.

Nolan's arm is bent at a very tough to look at angle here.

Another Arenado Finest highlight, this Headliners insert kind of reminds me of an old Fleer insert with a modern Chrome refractor flourish.

Apparently these 1994 style Draft Picks inserts from the 2021 Topps Archives set were quite a tough pull, landing at 1:24 packs or roughly one per box. I haven't found any Carlsons for sale on COMC since I ended up with this card.

It's back to the unlicensed realm here with a PPP (Purple Prizm Parallel.)

There's almost a good insert idea in here, but besides the obvious lack of MLB logos, there are some things I take issue with. I am not sure exactly what the weird angular pattern behind Goldschmidt's photo is supposed to represent, and that "Straight Fire" font is just hideous.

We travel all the way back to 2002 here with a second year Pujols card that mimics the original 1984 Donruss design. This would have been a fun set to collect back in the day, aside from it being marred by the typical short print confusion of the era.

I also added a numbered Stan the Man card to my collection from the 2021 Topps Gallery set. Gallery could be hit or miss for me (mostly miss), but I did like this particular year's design more than others.

Shiny Luck

A look at the new 2022 Panini Prizm baseball set from a @mikeyBcards group break. 

 

Panini's Prizm set is always one of the most anticipated releases of the year... except in baseball, of course. The lack of a league licensing agreement leads to logo-less cards and tends to turn a lot of people off, among those who aren't already pro-Topps and anti-everything else just for the sake of following the most iconic brand. I still think they produce some decent looking baseball cards, and they often can be found at a more affordable price than other options.

I signed up for a group break over at Mikey B Cards for a bunch of Prizm boxes. It was my second break with these guys and they seem to a pretty solid job at what's usually a thankless task. It also helps that their prices are extremely competitive.

Even though this is technically the first 2022 Prizm product, the design follows the template from the 2021 NFL and 2021-22 NBA sets. This was initially a bit confusing to me, because the design is extremely similar to last year's design. In other brands that span multiple sports, the baseball design is often the template that is followed, but that isn't the case here.

Prizm is known for its "silver" parallels like Nootbaar's card here. In other sports, these can be very expensive. The silver parallels originally were among the most common variants available, but apparently due to their demand over the years, Panini has made them a bit more scarce.

I ended up with three blue parallels in the break (versus the one silver). Adam Wainwright is really working the geometry here.

I'm already started to get sad about the prospects of no Yadi cards in future releases. I'm sure he'll end up being a featured retired player in certain sets at some point, but I don't think he's ever been a big autograph signer. If this is it for him in the baseball card world, he's had a good run.

Prizm has inserts, of course, because this is a Panini product. I think this is where the lack of an MLB license really hurts, as none of these designs really do it for me.

I think I like the Star Gazing card, but the giant stars and large font don't leave a lot of room for the player.

This break turned out to be a very successful one for this Cardinals fan. This is a silver parallel of Dylan Carlson's Debut Signatures autographed card. I am hoping that Carlson's offense takes a big leap forward next season, because I like the other things he brings to the field.

Lastly, here's a pair of Juan Yepez autographs. Yepez was the almost-hero of Game 1 of the Cardinals Wild Card round. That game came to an extremely painful end, and the ramifications were felt in the team's listless loss to close out the brief series the following night. Rough!