Dollar Days

Trophies from the card show dollar bin. 

Even though Google Maps tells me I am more than two thousand miles (31 hours of travel time!) away from Busch Stadium, Cardinals cards seem to be in somewhat short supply around these parts. Recently, I took advantage of a $1 bin at the monthly card show that actually had some things of interest for me. I came away with 12 things (for $10 if you bought 12), some of which will end up in future trade packages. Here's what I kept for myself.

This Sweet Spot Update Chris Duncan card, circa 2006, boasts of "game-used swatches". There's absolutely no reason that's not just one big piece of cloth behind the scenes now, is there? This seems silly. All of the pieces are the same color and the threads are running in the same direction.

Josh Pearce is a local guy who got into a few games for a few seasons, but I don't really have any recollection of him. It's always fun to get bat relics of pitchers, though. (ABOLISH THE DH!) This one is numbered to 150.

I was about 80 to 90 percent sure I had one of these, and now that I've scanned it I am 100% sure.

I also have one of these Mulders, something I wasn't really prepared for. Both cards were acquired in 2010 according to my image date stamps, so I guess my excuse is going to be that it was eight years ago?

Here's a fun card of two guys who would be traded straight up for each other about five years later. This is an odd one, of course, in that only Troy Glaus (and not Scott Rolen) gets a jersey piece here.

There often aren't a lot of autograph cards of players who actually played Major League Baseball in these bins, so I was happy to get this 1996 Tom Urbani signature, even though it notes that he had moved on to the Angels at this point. Urbani is a guy who I first heard of when I started playing Triple Play 97 on my PC. I doubt I had any idea he had already been traded when I dragged him out of my bullpen when Mike Timlin inevitably ran out of ammo.

Like the weird Rolen/Glaus mash-up, Upper Deck's Ballpark Collection was notable for pitting a lot of different players together, sometimes with strange results. This is a strange pair indeed. Wood's 2008 would be the year he was reinvented as a reliever and made his second All-Star appearance, while Mulder was more than two years deep into his nightmare of not being able to figure out where he should put his arm to release a baseball. This isn't the first card to incidentally feature a Cubs player relic in my collection, and it almost certainly won't be my last. Thanks, baseball cards!

Phungo Pack Break 2013

The (not-so) new year's first pack break.

I haven't been bustin' packs and crackin' wax so much lately, so it was nice to see a well-constructed pack arrived to me by snail mail. Phungo packs always seem to be suspiciously tailored towards my collecting habits, but I'm not one to complain. That company called Topps likes to stack my packs full of guys like Alex Rodriguez and Rickie Weeks, so I was bound to catch a break. The new design for 2014 is already out, by the way.

3 - Jaime Garcia (2012 Topps Gold Sparkle) - I unfortunately scanned this one too close to the pack wrapper, so it came out all blurry because lasers or something.

150 - Ryan Ludwick (2010 Topps 206 Piedmont Mini) - I wonder if there will be a new retro set this year from Topps. They did 206 for 2 years, National Chicle for 1 and Gypsy Queen has had a 3 year run. I'm not huge fans of any of those, but I'd have to say that the 2010 Topps 206 set had the cleanest design.

US93 - Adam Wainwright (2013 Topps Update) - I'm still mad about this game. The NL team played like absolute garbage as the offense was virtually shut down. The game was boring. And Wainwright didn't even pitch, because he had started just a couple of days before the game. A certain team I like could have used the home field advantage.

510 - Ryan Ludwick (2009 Topps Gold 0043/2009) - Lots of gold in this pack!

536 - Khalil Greene (2009 Topps Gold 1646/2009) - I wasn't able to find out much about whatever became of Khalil Greene, who reportedly struggled with Social Anxiety Disorder. I saw him play with the Portland Beavers and was excited when the Cardinals brought him aboard, but it wasn't meant to be.

429 - Skip Schumaker (2011 Topps Gold 1586/2011) - Cardinals legend Mike Shannon recently re-upped to continue on as the radio voice of the Cards. I miss him talking about the "Schu Man", even though Schumaker's performance on the field is fairly replaceable.

212 - Jim Edmonds (2006 Topps Allen & Ginter's) - Yeah! Great player in the modern debut of a great set.

19 - Carlos Beltran - Here we get into the meat of the Phungo cards.

41 - Scott Rolen - I don't think Rolen has retired yet, but it seems like the announcement is looming.

62 - Jose Molina - Ahh! I feel like I narrowly missed out on a Molina brother that I collect.

Halladay vs. Holliday - Here's one of those special black framed inserts that the kids are always talking about. I wonder if Phungo got any shots of Roy in what proved to be the final season of his career. I guess I'll have to wait until I get to open a 2014 Phungo pack.

43 - Adam Wainwright (2013 Topps Chrome Orange Refractor) - Well, this is glorious.

477 - Yadier Molina (2013 Topps Heritage Black Retail) - Let's just pretend that's not a piece of hair that got stuck to the scanner tray.

54 - Jaime Garcia (2013 Topps Target Red) - I'm crossing my fingers that Jaime will be able to bounce back this season from some more bad luck with injuries.
 

21 - Yadier Molina - I didn't miss out on Yadi after all!

The Diamond King Delivers

Cards. On Cards. With Numbers.

Last month I received a pile of cards from The Diamond King. He believes in card collecting projects, something I find rather admirable, and his latest one is called SCAM. The cleverly coined acronym basically means '90s PED users, and there was a fairly big named one who wore the Birds on the Bat. I'll come back to that later, however.

A bunch of the cards in the package were serial numbered Cardinals goodies, including this mid-oughts Donruss Jim Edmonds card. Like many cards from 1995 to roughly 2005, it didn't scan well. Someday, card companies will produce cards with scanners in mind... sure.

This card isn't technically serial numbered, but the back of this Gregg Jefferies insert claims that it is a mere 1 of 10,000. So limited!

Matt Lemanczyk, a former 10th round pick, is virtually unknown to me outside of baseball cards. Apparently he was quite the speedster in the minors, but his B-Ref.com page doesn't list any stats beyond 2005.

Chrome parallels seemed to be rather hard to come by in this year's version of Topps Heritage, but there were several of them in this package. This is the slightly more rare refractor version.

And this is the basic version. This year, the basic chrome parallels were numbered to just 999 instead of the year that the main set was aping (i.e. /999 instead of /1964). That probably doesn't make these cards worth a ton more than they otherwise would have, but I found it interesting.

Ludwick has had horrendous luck throughout his career with injuries. It seems that he's a free agent now, so it will be interesting to see if he can catch on with another team after spending most of last year hurt/ineffective.

The world needs more Larry Walker Cardinals cards.

There were other gems besides the serial-numbered cards, including this Matt Holliday 2013 Topps Heritage black retail parallel.

I know very little about TCMA cards, and have very few of them as well. I'm always excited when I see them, because I rarely consider the alternatives to Topps cards prior to the '80s.

He looks so weird in a non-Cardinals uni.

Speaking of weird, I generally just don't go for the unlicensed stuff. Panini Prizm looks like a perfectly reasonable Chrome-ish product, but I can't bring myself to care about it. Fortunately, generous people willing to trade with me sometimes send stuff like this, which is nice.

Finally, the King unloaded a bunch of Big Mac cards on me. He probably had lots of doubles leftover from the SCAM project thing.

Unfortunately, that isn't Cooperstown calling for Mr. McGwire. It's just a telemarketer.

That's some awfully sparkly tape.

Well, he did lead the league in something. I guess that can't really be taken away, no matter what he took to do what he did.

Whither Brian Fuentes?

Jason from Hobbs' Knights (which I'm not sure is being updated any longer) took an interest in a Cal Ripken/Tony Gwynn UD Masterpieces card that I posted last month and proposed a trade that netted me a new jersey card for my collection. But for starters, a few base cards were tossed my way, mostly from the relatively new Topps Update set. Brian Fuentes pitched all of 5 innings last season with the Cardinals as a late season acquisition before permanently leaving the team for "personal reasons". He was last spotted at some sort of autograph signing in California, apparently.

Rafael Furcal has a Cardinals contract that extends through next season, though it remains unclear how much the team will be able to rely on him. He had a hot start to 2012 which found him on the All-Star team.

I think this is my first card of Scrabble as a Cardinal. He was an integral part of the bullpen during last year's miraculous run, but this season proved to be disappointing more often than not.

Here's the big payoff - a Ryan Ludwick All-Star jersey card to add to my collection. Ludwick had a huge year for the Reds this season, by far his best season since becoming an All-Star in 2008.

Giant Trade

A huge box of goodies arrived in my mailbox earlier this month from ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession. While I had promised to send him "all of the Giants" or something close to that, I think I fell a bit short on my end. I'm still hopeful he found some of the stuff useful, as it was doing me no good to hang on to it.

This was the first pure Cardinals package I'd received in quite awhile. I am always working on various sets and sometimes I get cards from said sets, but with this trade I saw nothing but dudes on my favorite team. Not bad.

I may have got an entire team set of this 2002 Donruss Fan Club "Best Of" set. I had never seen these before, and they are the exact kind of card that doesn't scan well at all.

Who knew that Pete Kozma would suddenly become the Cardinals every day shortstop? I'm sure Jeff Luhnow was thinking that was a real possibility back in 2007 when he was drafted, but Luhnow is in Houston and Kozma hasn't proven to be very effective at anything in the minors. Yet, somehow Ryan Jackson's backup in Memphis this season is starting everyday in place of Furcal even with Jackson on the big league roster. He's getting some hits, too.

I don't really go for the unlicensed MLB-ish stuff, which is why you won't see Goodwin Champions on my want list any longer in the post-licensed era of Upper Deck. However, that doesn't mean I don't like to get these in trades. I just consider them oddballs in a way.

Go crazy folks! This isn't just a garden variety Ozzie mini, it's a Gypsy Queen back. You'll, er, have to trust me on that one.

Here's a much needed varation of the Colby Rasmus Topps 206 rookie card where he tries not to look too interested in much of anything.

They didn't leave much space for a photo on this card.

I got a pair of Bowman flashback style Shelby Miller cards. Miller was called up late in the season and so far has played the role of a low leverage reliever and potential long man.

Miller had a really rough first half to his season but seemed to straighten things out later in the summer. Hopefully he will be a staple in the rotation for years to come.

I don't think I have any of these white serial numbered parallels from the 2008 Opening Day set. I couldn't have even told you what they looked like before I received this card. It's kind of weird seeing the 2008 base design without the circles.

I actually liked the Topps Unique set, which made its lone appearance in 2009. I did have a bit of luck with it in a group break once upon a time, so there's that.

Here's one of those Yer Mom cards that I didn't already have. I'm actually still missing a ton of these, which is sad for a 2010 Topps product.

Finally, there were some nice bat cards in the box. Bat cards are still worth something, right? Or has everyone lost confidence in their authenticity as well? Personally, I always found bat carts to be a bit more fun as they seem to be a little more scarce.

There was also a pair of 2004 Bazooka Blasts bat cards, this one featuring Scott Rolen. I think it's awesome that Rolen is still in the league. I just wish he didn't play for those dreaded Reds.

So Taguchi retired from professional baseball this year at the end of July at age 43. I can always say that I his first MLB game in person, even though the game itself was very forgettable and So's presence in the lineup meant that I was denied seeing Jim Edmonds on the field. (I never got to see Edmonds play unless you count minor league games that occurred before I really knew who he was.)