Spicy Breakin'

An assortment of Cardinals cards from @Nachos_Grande group breaks. 

 

I've mentioned it here before and on Twitter that longtime blog Nachos Grande has a really good break group going over on Facebook. If you ask me, groups are really the only worthwhile thing on the beleaguered social media platform these days, and are honestly the only reason why I put the stupid app back on my phone.

Well, that's enough about me and my social media issues. Let's look at some cards! These are all sorts of things from Nachos Grande breaks over the past summer that I had saved up and shipped to me a few months ago.

It seems like everything is a parallel these days, but back in the early to mid-'00s it seemed like more of the parallels were numbered. This 'Xtra Points' gold parallel from 2003 Playoff Prestige is numbered to 150.

Here's one of the inserts from the most recent Panini Diamond Kings set. This goes to show you that if you just strategically chop up Stan the Man's photos you can trick yourself into thinking you haven't seen the same image on a million different cards. I think that's what Panini was going for, anyway.

When I think of Pacific Private Stock, I usually think of those weird (and slightly ugly) T206 sized minis and not the actual base cards. It turns out that I needed a number of base cards, including this Fernando Tatis card with the facsimile autograph.

Before this year's surprisingly impressive (and also expensive) Stadium Club Chrome release were the inserts you could find in the standard Stadium Club product. They all look really nice. This is actually a refractor version numbered to 99.

From the 2018 Panini Diamond Kings comes this Luke Weaver sticker auto. This is also numbered to 99. Not bad!

This might be my favorite of the bunch, however. These are game used bases (base chunks?) I wonder how many Hall of Fame votes Jim Edmonds would get this year if he hadn't fallen off the ballot immediately.

Like Luke Weaver, this one is another ex-Cardinal autograph. Optic's surge in popularity in the basketball market hasn't really translated well to the baseball market, although you wouldn't necessarily know that just by looking at box prices.

The rarest card of all of these breaks, however, is likely this Yadier Molina Downtown insert from the 2020 Diamond Kings set. Apparently these are case hits, which is why you aren't likely to see them on card show tables. The design is a lot more... New Yorker?... than a few of their NBA counterparts that I've seen.

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.