Orlando Cepeda and the Seven Wizards

I just have a quick post tonight. As I mentioned previously, I hit the card shop about a week back. I scooped up a small stash of Ozzie Smith cards for my collection. I actually started my collection of Ozzie cards before I got serious about starting an all-Cardinals collection, and he remains one of the few Cardinals who I make a point of collecting the cards in other uniforms as well. All in all, I grabbed eight cards for about $3 or $4. There were actually two "legends" types of boxes sorted by player name next to each other, and both had sections for Ozzie Smith. I continue to be baffled and confused by the organization of places like this. Let's just say that I have some fairly basic ideas about how places should be organized and friendly to walk-in customers and most card shops I've been to fail in that aspect. Actually, I've been to a number of record stores that are that way as well.

I actually bought a pack from this set on one of my prior trips to this shop, so this 2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes design was already familiar to me.

The foil on this is hard to read, but it is from Upper Deck and has a 2005 copyright on the back. It says something about Past Time and Pennants.

One of the more baffling things to me before I started getting sucked in to collecting cards again was the use of old designs or, in this case, just reprinting old cards themselves. It was one of the main things I thought I would always resist, but now I love stuff like this. I wish we could see another Topps set like Archives or Fan Favorites in the future, but they would probably have to contain 90 different Gordon Beckham cards and autographs of guys that haven't appeared in a major league ballgame since 2007 and likely won't again because they still have boxes of stickers laying around.

This is a pretty nice design (they don't call it "Legendary" for nothing) but there's something odd about Ozzie's beard.

This is some sort of offshoot of 2002 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classics. There's nothing that clashes more than black & white photos of players (who clearly played in a color photograph era) aboard glossy UV coating and slabs of foil.

I got a huge kick out of this. I almost held this out for a future Airbrushed Fridays post, but I don't even know who to blame for this 1993 Duracell card that was licensed by the MLBPA and clearly not the MLB. On the back is just a copyright from the MLBPA and another one from something called MSA. Could a collector reasonably tell the difference between this an an MLB Properties-licensed set? I'd like to think so.

Finally, I really liked the design when I saw Ozzie's 2004 Legendary Cuts card, and this Orlando Cepeda looks even better. All in all, I was pretty pleased to knock off 7 cards from my boundless Ozzie Smith want list and pick up another Cardinal HOFer in the process. Support your local card shop and all that.

A Panini Flip

I've already managed to flip one of my unwanted cards from my Panini Limited Box/Pack break and I'm quite pleased with the result. I was able to turn a low numbered Sam Young jersey/auto thing into a Dante Cunningham card, also autographed, thanks to fellow Blazers fan G_Moses over at The (Excellent) Basketball Card Blog. He sees something in the Grizzlies Sam Young that I don't see, although I tend to let my hatred of the vast majority of all non-Blazers NBA players get in the way of evaluating talent. I really like Cunningham card, even though you barely get to see Dante and with the knowledge that patch logo was made specifically for these cards.

There's far more of these out there than the print run of 5 Sam Young cards, but that's okay with me. I like the font on these cards for some reason. I can't decide if it reminds me of the '80s or something glitzy and more modern.

I also hit the card shop last weekend and found that they had discounted a ton of their Blazers team sets as everything seemed to be $1. I'm sure I've passed these up many times before, but suddenly $1 doesn't seem to be all that much to fill some gaping holes in my collection. I think all of the discounted team sets were from sets that did not contain any current Blazers.

I ended up buying two of the team sets - the 2004-05 Fleer Tradition set was one of them. It contained, among others, my first Blazers cards of Nick Van Exel and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. Van Exel was, randomly, a college favorite of mine while Abdur-Rahim's career pretty much fell off the cliff from the moment he became a Blazer.

I also bought the 1995-96 Hoops Blazers team set, mostly because this incredibly hideous looking Arvydas Sabonis rookie card was showing on the front. I know I had nothing previously from this set.

Gary Trent wants BRAINS!

Before P.J. Carlesimo was known as the guy that got choked by Latrell Sprewell, he was the screaming coach of the Blazers. He bridged the gap between the successful playoff runs of Rick Adelman and Mike Dunleavy.

And finally, for no reason other than that his team's game was on TV when I got home from work tonight, here's a Channing Frye card I pulled from a 2009-10 Topps pack recently. Frye's still a Blazer in uniform, obviously, but the card is labeled with his current team, the Phoenix Suns. This still goes in my Blazers binder because it's Blazers-related.

If anyone has any extra Blazers cards they want to get rid of, or if something other than Sam Young strikes you from my box break post, feel free to drop me a line.

Cards on Cards 250th Post Spectacular

I couldn't think of a good title for this post, so I was just going to go with whatever post number this was supposed to be and call it good. It would have been a lot funnier if this was, let's say, my 257th post. I had no idea that the number I chose would seem somewhat significant. I've never really been one to talk about personal blogging milestones or anything like that. (Incidentally, I don't count my want list posts as real posts, so if you're doing the math and you actually come up with 257, that's what happened here.)

If this blog was a TV sitcom, this would be a clip show. Instead, you get to see some cards I picked up at the old hobby shop the other day when I should have been shopping for supplies.

First up is my first ever 2002 Bowman Heritage card. I have no special affinity for Tino Martinez. I just wanted a card from this set. It looks like he signs his name Constable Hertz.

I guess Topps D3 is their answer to Sportflics, except that nothing "moves" on these cards. They're hard to understand. After scanning the image, it looks like the quality of an early-'90s GIF image file.

I really like the 1973 Topps design. It just looks exactly like the era it represents to me. And I like the little player symbols in the corner. I've seen others who are less than glowing about this set. This one was only a quarter and was in pretty good shape.

These Upper Deck "retro" cards that failed to actually use old-style cardboard stock are not very interesting to me. I felt compelled to buy it, however, because it seems like the retired Cardinals players that you can get in current sets are mostly limited to Bob Gibson and Lou Brock, with perhaps the occasional Hornsby or Ozzie card.

Here's an extremely flimsy Donruss insert that was marked down from $4 to $1. It's probably worth far less than that. I was always a big Matt Morris fan.

I picked up 4 Pujols cards for $1 a piece that I'm pretty sure I don't own already. I don't understand an "update" set that looks nothing like the set it's supposedly trying to update.

This is not my favorite photo, but it's a pretty decent looking card if you can overlook the fact that his legs fade away just below the knees.

Here's Pujols from the 2006 Topps Heritage set. He looks pretty ghostly.

If Donruss and Upper Deck ever collaborated on a card design, do you think the universe would eventually implode on itself? There would be lines and mirrors everywhere, and eventually the ball players would fall into some sort of baseball card black hole. I'm not way off base here, am I?

Finally, there were a couple of Ozzie Smith cards to add to the Ozzie binder.

Ozzie is attempting the rare behind-the-back no-look low five.

I've got some more trades in the offing that I'll post about in the coming days. Thanks to everyone who has contacted me recently about sending me/trading me cards.

Catching Up

There are stacks of unsorted cards all over my apartment. It's getting out of control. There's also numerous stacks of packs that I haven't done anything with, foolishly thinking that I'll someday get to posting them to my blog or A Pack A Day. I'm also behind on some trades. And yet, I still want more cards. Since I have no money to spend on cards this weekend, I am going to devote at least a few solid hours trying to catch up. This post features some of the cards I picked up at a hobby store in my area way back in January. I've actually been back since, but I put everything I bought the first time (minus the packs) in a stack in a corner of my living room and had long since forgotten about it.

The Keith Hernandez rookie was a nice find. It's not in perfect shape, but it was marked down to $3 which is fine with me. I need to work on getting some more (affordable) cards from before 1979, which is the earliest year that I have a lot of cards from.

I absolutely love this set, especially the borders. I am going to have to add the remaining Cardinals cards I lack from it to my want list soon. I don't really know anything about it - apparently it is 2004 Fleer Greats (Beckett calls it Greats of the Game. Whatever.) I got a Billy Williams card from the set in a junky repack thing once upon a time and I've been curious about it ever since.

Poor Lindy McDaniel. I actually put this card back after my first initial shock from seeing it, but Erin sensibly added it to my stack of potential cards to buy. It's not nearly as off-center as my scanner made it out to be. It decided to cut off the entire left border. It was only a quarter, so why not?

I got a number of Ozzie Smith cards to add to the collection (about 10 or so) and this was probably the nicest looking one. Once upon a time someone probably spent a ton of money to "bust" some 2003 Sweet Spot Classic, but I only had to pay a quarter to get a card I really like.

Hologram cards are great! I can just see some waitress bringing this out for some Denny's diner along with his check after he just polished off a Grand Slam breakfast. Or she. Does Denny's give baseball cards to females, or do they get the "girl prize" like they used to do at McDonalds.

Darryl Kile. I need more of his cards. Does this design look a little familiar?

Rick Ankiel v. 1

I'm normally not one to drop cash on a manager card, but this was only 50 cents and serial numbered. Upon further inspection, the foil from the Topps logo appears to be missing. Weird.

I also nabbed a few Edmonds cards, and this is a nice shot of Edmonds in Wrigley... his future home for a spell. GAHHHHH!

Finally, I own a 1959 Topps card. This is my favorite Topps design, but I sadly owned nothing authentic from this set. This was marked down to $1 for some reason and I have no idea why, as there are no serious flaws (for a card from the late '50s anyway.)


Now this is just silly. I should try to pay for a dinner tab with this sometime.


Here's the grand finale - jersey cards of two of my favorite players. I paid $5 each, but it's worth it. Someday when I'm over my self-imposed eBay ban, I'll look for more stuff like this.

Why is the Ozzie swatch dark brown? In tiny print on the back, it reveals that it was from an official Padres game. Why isn't he pictured as a Padre, then? I still love the card, though. The sad thing is, I didn't make this discovery until today.

The Hobby Store

Today was my first journey to a hobby store in nearly a year. The last time I went to one, I was with my girlfriend in Austin and she got barked at by the owner. There were a few tense moments there for sure. One of the things I like the least about those places is that the stores are generally very small and you can almost feel their beady little eyes peering into your soul, hoping to extract some blood, er, cash from your person. I should know - I used to work at one of these places. Well, to be honest, I was only in high school and got to spend a lot of my time sorting instead of dealing with customers.


There don't seem to be any hobby shops that deal primarily in sports cards in Portland any longer, so I had to venture out into the suburbs to go a shop I never particularly liked all that much. I always thought it was way too expensive. This time, I noticed that they had relocated into a smaller space in the same strip mall, and it was definitely a lot brighter and friendlier than in the past. I picked up 7 cards from the dollar bin (6 for $5, but I got carried away and bought too many), some supplies and a few random packs. I will post one of the packs on A Pack A Day soon (hint: it's EXTREME) as my initial post there. The Skip Schumaker Chrome card is the first card I ran across that was a keeper, and I'm pretty happy about it as I didn't have any of his cards yet. Skip is having a pretty solid season in his first full season of regular MLB action, but he's been absolutely atrocious against lefties (.158/.238/.179 versus a .351/.412/.504 line against righties.) Edmonds is one of the two players I collect, redundant as it may be considering that I collect all Cardinals in general. I've gotten several of the Ultra Diamond Producers cards lately, but none of Jimmy Cub (eww.)


Ozzie is the first player I ever started collecting. I grabbed three of his cards.


This is from some sort of fake rookie promotion that Topps did as the card is in the style of his official 1979 Topps rookie card, but the photo is different. I'd tried unsuccessfully a couple of times to get one of these off of eBay for cheap, so it was nice to see it in the dollar box. Every card shop needs a dollar box. For that matter, I wish more places had quarter boxes.


Here's one from a Fan Favorites set. I don't really know what those are all about, but they basically seem to be reprinted cards with a gold logo, slightly weirder card stock than the originals, and occasionally suspect player selection. (I got a hilarious "player" from this set in a trade with Ben from the Baseball Card Blog awhile back that I'll have to image and post sometime.)

This card is shiny. I don't know what else to say about it, except that I miss Rolen's glove, but not his dilapidated shoulder.


The future is soon for Wainwright. That is, he should be coming off the DL in the relatively near future. I really hope that the idea of making him the closer again was just a terrible idea spawned from Cardinals broadcast Al Hrabosky rather than something the team is really entertaining.

Side note: Check out Indians Baseball Cards. Always. for an awesome tournament that David is holding involving 1993 Triple Play scratch cards. I actually have some unblemished scratch cards in my collection including one of Oz.