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.

Time to Shine

These Affordable Group Breaks brought in some shiny things. 

 

Facebook group box breaks are pretty much the only consistent thing in my card budget at this point. (It's also one of the only reasons I haven't fired my Facebook account into the proverbial sun.) Let's check out some more goodies from some Affordable Group Breaks.

I began my time with this blog and my slow return to collecting cards on an even slower, but grudgingly acceptant trek towards appreciating shiny Topps Chrome cards. It's sad, and true, but I feel like I have an even bigger problem with how much I love clear acetate cards. This means that stuff like Topps Tek is right up my alley, but I don't think I'll ever be able to afford (or let myself afford) to open a box of it on my own.

This particular Topps Tek break (the 2000 set) was actually a player break, and I am certainly not regretting buying the Rick Ankiel slot. This die cut (basically, it's got round corners) Rick Ankiel pattern is numbered to just 10 copies. Nice!

Fast forward a couple of decades to land on the latest Topps Stadium Club release. The 2023 set was delayed into the early days of 2024, and I haven't heard of any news on a potential 2024 release, not that I'm really keeping up with card release calendars or new product press releases at this point. This one is a Chrome parallel of tonight's Cardinals hero Arenado, who hit a walk off grand slam to put the Brewers to bed for once.

This one rivals Ankiel's special gold card as the best of the lot. Alec Burleson basically carried the Cardinals through their early summer hot streak, but the team has come back down to earth and basically fallen through it since those days. Still, there's a lot to be encouraged about Burleson's work at the plate, and he is seen by some as a young option going forward at first base with a lot of other scenarios in play in the outfield.

I feel like Topps Big League inserts are pretty easy to come by, but at last check I'm still lacking the Paul Goldschmidt card from this very set.

The Affordable Group Breaks often offer up some interesting stuff from the past (which no doubt helps keeps things "Affordable".) This fancy looking thing from thirty years ago would have certainly been out of my price range if I hadn't dropped cards altogether for whatever the hell I was up to in the mid-'90s, but it looks pretty nice right now. The Gregg Jefferies card on the right is a gold parallel numbered to 10,000, which would make it more plentiful than almost every parallel these days. It's very challenging to find any numbered card from the '90s now, however.

It's almost football season, isn't it? Yikes.

Nacho Value Meal

Catching up with some @Nachos_Grande group breaks. 

 

The only reason I haven't deleted the Facebook app on my phone once and for all (it's been deleted a few times) is because I belong to a couple of active card breaking groups including the excellent one run by Nachos Grande. It's another affordable option where you pay for breaks as you go, and decide when you want to have everything shipped. It cuts down on money spent on all sides. I still have a stack that I had shipped back in September that contains stuff from even earlier in 2022 and I'll show a few of the highlights here today.

The nice thing about these groups is that they lean towards older products that the fat cats at Big Breaker LLC won't ever touch. That occasionally means Pacific cards, which are weird and great! A long with some base needs, I snagged a pair of light blue parallels from the 1999 flagship set. 

Bazooka, you say? Yes, please! Again, I was able to knock off some base needs here, and I picked up one of these chunkier silver parallels as well.

There was also a pretty nice Albert Pujols insert to be found in the Bazooka box. These aren't super easy to come by, so this will be staying in a top loader instead of being used as the "stand-up" card the way it was intended to be.

Not all of the breaks were throwbacks, though. Here's a pair of Cardinals from the extra-fancy 2021 Allen & Ginter Chrome set. I haven't heard anything about a 2022 A&G Chrome set, but I suppose that's just as well because this stuff was stupidly expensive.

Next up we have a fake 1999 Donruss card. After Donruss went through their first bankruptcy and were dormant for a couple of years, the company that bought them revived the brand in 2001 and then made up some designs for the "lost years" where there weren't any Donruss cards. This Rick Ankiel "rookie" card was actually issued in the 2001 Donruss set. This company also eventually went bankrupt.

Speaking of weird fake card designs, I believe this Chance Caple card from 2000 Bowman is considered a "Retro Future" parallel. It uses a TV design on foilboard that completely fails to show up when scanned, although it doesn't look like much in direct light, either.

Last up is a rare autograph from the delayed 2021 Topps Big League set. I only say rare because I just haven't seen many autographs from this set at all, at least in comparison to previous seasons. Unfortunately, it looks like the Big League brand might be dead and buried, which is too bad considering that while it wasn't always the most attractive looking set, it actually felt like Topps put more than half of a second of thought into card design when coming up with these.

Bird-Themed Teams

Bird cards from @forgotaboutblay because apparently that's all I collect. 

 

A comment someone Erin* made to me the other day made me start thinking about sports teams and their mascots. A lot of sports teams have animal mascots and nicknames. A lot of NFL teams do not. For whatever reason, I've ended up mostly gravitating towards bird teams (Cardinals, Eagles, Ducks -- not pictured). Dennis from Too Many Verlanders sent me another stellar batch of cards back in June that happened to feature those bird teams.

It's always exciting to add another Jim Edmonds card to my collection. I'm guessing somewhere out there is a version of this where all three players have their own memorabilia piece. Maybe there's one that just has Edmonds? Or just Rolen?

Rick Ankiel gets two memorabilia chunks of his own, both a bat and a snippet of his clothing. The default background for these cards show a row of batting helmets. I wonder if there are any embedded helmet piece cards.

Here's another card with multiple opportunities for jersey chunks, but only the white portion is real. Were these card companies toying with us?

This might be my favorite card of the lot. It's an on-card autograph from Topps Total on a design I'd never seen before. The "Signatures" script has a very '80s cafe look to it.

The NFL portion of the package contained this card of Michigan alum Jason Avant. Dennis probably has a few extra cards of Michigan players in the same way that I often end up with more dupes of the teams that I collect than anything else.

Finally, here's an interesting design concept. This "Freeze Frame" insert card contains something that looks like a slide in the middle. I would love to see more of these cards.

*A certain someone called me out for referring to her as "someone", so I have adjusted the post accordingly.

A Bounty of Birds

A whole lot of Cardinals from @beardedmahmood including a couple of personal faves. 

 

Back in March, I had some cards listed on Crackin' Wax and ended up working out a deal with a member of the community. I sent out my stash of Red Sox stuff and received a really nice bunch of Cardinals needs in return. These represent just a portion of what I ended up with.

Panini's silver Prizm parallels are a tough find and always look nice, even with the lack of logos. Will there be another, final (?) Prizm baseball set this season? Last season's basketball set still hasn't come out yet.

I wasn't as big on the Stadium Club design last year as in some years, but the Chrome (and refractor) versions still look nice. Let's hope DeJong figures something out in Memphis this season, although it's looking pretty bleak.

Here is the gem of the bunch. Anyone who has followed the blog over the years probably has seen me gushing over the old Topps Black bordered parallels. To get one of one of my favorite players is a huge plus.

Speaking of wishing that card things were the way they were, but now they're something else, I always love these framed Diamond Kings cards. Unfortunately, Panini's take on this set falls short, but they are operating with one hand tied behind their back without the MLB license.

Topps brought back the "1st Edition" concept a couple of years ago with their online-only exclusives. The 1st Edition cards from the mid-'00s seem to be fairly obscure. If you can't spot it, the logo is in the top left below the frame.

Another favorite card thing of mine, for reasons I can't quite explain, are the Panini Donruss Independence Day parallels. I have a very small collection of these from the past few years in a box, but this one is heading to the Cardinals binders.

I liked 1993 Topps (though not as much as 1993 Upper Deck.) I wasn't wild about those Black Gold inserts, though. I feel like I'm in the minority on this. That doesn't make this a bad design to bring back as a one-off, though. At least it's not another take on 1987.

Here's another example of old Donruss being better than new Donruss.

In case you couldn't figure out that these 2003 Bowman Heritage cards are in fact parallels, they made them thicker than the base, gave them a full black border and added a facsimile signature. I wish most parallels were this obvious.

Would Nolan Arenado make the list of Most Elegant Players in MLB? What would that list even look like? I guess Panini took its shot. This is kind of an interesting card that looks a bit like those expensive "color splash" inserts they've made recently for other sports.

To round out this excellent collection of Cards cards, here's a few Ginter minis. Two guys have bats, and two don't.

Nothing but the Hits

 

Only the best from @walktheplank82 with some St. Louis style hits.

When the 2020 Topps Archives checklist was announced, one of the first tweets I saw from card collectors was the excitement that Bob Walk made it to the Fan Favorites autograph checklist. Of course, that came from none other than Bob Walk the Plank, who sent me a stash of stuff back towards the beginning of the summer. It's always fun when one of your key players makes it into a set like this. Not that the blog was named after him, but I'm doubting Brendan Ryan will make it onto an autograph checklist in, let's say 2030 Topps Archives.

It's also always fun to get a new Jim Edmonds card, like this very on the nose "Shirt Off My Back" jersey card from 2005 Leaf. Memorabilia cards are still very much a thing now even if they aren't as sought after, but they've tended to veer away from the wacky names for sets like these.

I like this one a lot as well, although I'm suspicious about these so-called dual jersey pieces. They look exactly the same! I'm not sure if I have any other cards of Ankiel pitching for Team USA.

I've never been much of a Gypsy Queen fan, but these on-card autographs look really nice. I'll probably never be a big Stephen Piscotty collector because his time with the Cardinals was cut fairly short, but he's a solid player and I'm glad he got the opportunity he did in moving to Oakland.

This one is a Browns card, so it doesn't quite fit into my usual collection... but... it's really nice looking! And it's a bat card of a Hall of Famer, so it really looks like a keeper. I'll have to read up more on Mr. Ferrell when I get a chance.

Thanks again to Bob Walk the Plank! I hope you're enjoying some quality east coast craft brews when you get the chance.

Majors & Minors

Big leaguers and aspiring leaguers in the Cardinals system. 

Bob from The Best Bubble sent along another intriguing package of cards recently, which included a bunch of Cardinals cards and minor league affiliated Cardinals. Let's check out a few on this Thursday night.

Here I have Paul Goldschmidt's awkwardly Photoshopped picture in another version. X-Fractors are fun and were pretty much my introduction to what Topps Chrome actually is. I remember buying a Skip Schumaker 2006 Topps Chrome card around the time I started the blog, after passing up on some much more expensive refractor checkerboard looking things like this one.

Okay, fine, that's some revisionist history. It turns out I bought a pack of the stuff on eBay (?!) before my much more clear memory of paying something like $1 for the Schumaker card at a semi-local card shop. I'm starting to have a hard time remembering what life was like before all of the restaurants and bars closed down, so I guess it's not surprising that I don't remember something from twelve years ago.

This may not look like much, but it's actually an extremely rare insert from an extremely common 1989 Topps set. Apparently these were K-Mart jumbo pack exclusives, and I have no recollection of this whatsoever. I don't think I made many trips to K-Mart stores as a teen or else I would have been all over these.

Now it's on to the minor league portion of the package, which is always fun. Rene Arocha was one of the early Cuban players to come over to MLB, and was pretty good for his brief career in the States.

I'm just fond of the uniform and cap, I have to say. Steve doesn't really look like a ballplayer, but he looks very happy to be a ballplayer nonetheless.

Rick Ankiel is more of a household name, and this was a nice capper to the whole package. As you can see, it's a pretty low numbered card from the 2000 SP Prospect set. Not bad!

Card Show Foundlings

A dead indoor mall is the place to be one Saturday a month. 

I go through the motions about once a month, tempted to peruse the wares at the monthly card show but also wanting to sleep in as long as I want and generally be lazy after a long work week. Sometimes the card show wins the battle, as was the case this past weekend.

I'll start things off by showing the last cards I snagged. I was on my way out the door when I decided to look at one last table, and was about to pay for a stack of things I found in a 5-for-$1 bin when I decided to take a quick glance at a different, dollar box. Standing out from the rest of the bunch was a stash of Cardinals jersey cards -- these Cardinals jersey cards! -- and no others to speak of. I believe there was only one non-Cardinal card that got left behind. I am pretty sure I own at least one or two of these, but I decided (at the time) that these were meant for me.

Most of my pick-ups were for pocket change, though, like a pair of Allen Iverson Topps rookie cards. I don't collect him, but I couldn't pass these up. I'm not sure what I am doing with them yet, but I decided they might be useful to someone someday. Iverson always seemed like he was mad... even in his rookie year, apparently?

This is a special swirly parallel of a rookie card of a Ducks guy I collect. Bell wreaked havoc on the Blazers in the playoffs with the Warriors lineup a bit depleted, so it was kind of surprising to me that they moved on from him. I'll be seeing even more of Bell next season as he signed on with the Timberwolves, who are in the Blazers division.

Some of you may have seen me post a picture of this ridiculous card on Twitter over the weekend. Apple had already fazed out their old-school Macintosh font (Chicago!) by the time of this card's release (1999), but Fleer still believed they were living in the future here. A future of infinite J.D. Drews. This actually came along with its own screw down case, which was certainly worth more than the card itself.

I snagged a few interesting 1980-81 Topps cards in pristine shape for just a couple of dimes a piece. You might think the opportunity to get a dirt cheap card with Dr. J on it was my main incentive, but I actually wanted the card for the airbrushed ex-Trail Blazer Abdul Jeelani. You can see a portion of the Blazers team name showing on Jeelani's teammate behind him.

I actually bought quite a few newer Blazers cards, as this show started to buck the trend of me avoiding the (usually overpriced) cards of the local heroes in favor of baseball guys that are less of a local interest. I'm not really that interesting in dropping a dollar on a new Blazers base card, but inserts and parallels at five-for-a-buck? I'll take it!

I wasn't aware of this, but Fleer made an entire Albert Pujols insert set to go with their 2004 Showcase product, with each card numbered to 1000. I now own two of them. These also cost me $1, which is usually more than I prefer to pay for Pujols cards these days. The numbering didn't hurt, though. I'm sure there are thousands more Pujols cards that I don't even know about, though.

Back to basketball with another Ducks guy. Dorsey was traded to the Grizzles in the middle of last season and saw his playing time increase quite a bit.

I had to buy this card. No explanation necessary.

I'll leave you with this one from 51 years ago. I really need to spend more time acquiring older cards, as my collection has way more needs than haves in this area.