TribeCards Cards Represent, Represent-sent

 

A pile of free cards from an old friend. 

 

Back in August, I received a large box of cards from TribeCards central. David is part of the old-school realm of baseball card bloggers, and as a team collector is someone I can identify with from a hobby perspective. The cards were actually from a giveaway he started way back in 2020, so there were surprises all around.

Here's a couple of Cardinals pitching prospects that I added to my collection. The dude on the right is a bit more familiar than the one on the left. Alkire's card isn't technically a Cardinals card, but he was a Cardinals draft pick and I usually end up throwing these types of cards in my binders even if I don't seek them out. Ankiel, of course, features on a Cardinals minor league affiliate card, which was definitely on my want list.

This was a clear number one for me in terms of the keepers. It's a fairly tough to find photo variation from the 2018 Topps flagship set.

If I recall, you could request multiple teams in this very generous giveaway. I decided to see what was behind door number 2, as in the one that was labeled with a certain green bird on it. This is a 1988 Topps NFL stickers card, which aside from the red background and yellow/black border, is very similar to its MLB counterpart. These also have the Superstar Sticker backs. I ended up with another Steeler on the reverse.

The bulk of the Eagles loot was early '80s Topps base. These are nearly a decade before my time (of actually paying attention to the Eagles), but I added most of them to my Eagles box. I picked the name I'm most familiar (Jaworski) with to represent that lot.

I do love a good Action Packed card. I've added a few of these Monday Night Football themed cards to my collection recently.

The lion's share of the package was actually made up of Astros cards. This must have been during the days when I was still collecting George Springer cards (when he was still with Houston.) I did find a number of Jose Altuve cards for Erin's collection, though.

Here's another 2018 photo variation. It looks like this is more commonly found than the Wainwright card above.

I've already added the rest of the Astros cards I ended up with to my trade list, but I'm sure I'll find a home soon for this Justin Verlander gold parallel from 2020 Topps.

The big prize ended up being this Kyle Tucker Immaculate Collection card from 2019. It features an on-card autograph and five distinct (?) jersey swatches. Even though it's a Panini thing, this is quite a card! It's been earmarked for a certain Astros collector out there.

Thanks again to Dave for keeping the ol' card blog thing going, and for the free cards, obviously!

More Heritage, Finally?

Yeah, these aren't so bad.

It had been a good while since I'd busted open a blaster of anything, so a trip to the red bullseye store on Friday made sense to me. I had saved my coupon from an earlier box of something or other and was able to score one of these 2014 Topps Heritage boxes for less than $15. Not bad. Rather than scan a bunch of cards that I'm not trading anyway, I just thought I'd show off a few things that caught my interest.

Jon Jay has taken the early lead on the center field job that many were expecting Peter Bourjos to lock up. Bourjos can't hit but is very speedy with the glove. Jay can hit at times but his defense can leave something to be desired. Can't we just glue them together to make a Frankenplayer and call it good?

Here is my ("on average") one per box Target quasi-parallel. Kimbrel has struggled a bit this year for essentially the first time in his career.

Dodgers fans are hoping the Koufax/Kershaw comparisons end somewhere before Kershaw gets his career cut drastically short due to injury. I definitely dig the diamond design.

This card is more '60s than the '60s themselves.

Chrome cards are again a very difficult pull this year according to the odds, so this was nice to see. It's also up for grabs, as are virtually any of the Chrome cards from Heritage because I have to at least put some restraints on my collecting madness.

I was also suckered in to buying a blister pack, mostly due to not having seen what the exclusive inserts would look like. For $9.49, you get three packs and 3 of these black border Chrome-less Chrome inserts. Don't tell anyone I said this, but this design suits the Pirates well. I also snagged Francisco Liriano and non-Pirate Max Scherzer.

Here's another Chrome card. Two short prints came out of this blister as well, beating the odds.

Shockingly, in addition to the (1:31) Chrome pull, I also pulled a Chrome Refractor (1:49) of the one known as Aroldis. Crazy stuff. My bang-to-buck ratio was off the charts with this one. Like Desmond and Verlander, this is also up for grabs.

More '60s. Before the draft existed, I just assume that the Yankees got first crack at every single player and the rest of the teams had to line up for table scraps or something.

That was quite an ending! Here's one of the two cards I can somewhat bear to look at in the World Series subset.

I'll get to that want list eventually. I already have doubles, folks. Sad to say.