What Do I Do With This?

One thing I completely failed to mention in my write-up of a package I got from dayf of Cardboard Junkie awhile back is that he sent over an unopened pack of the postcard-sized 1986 Donruss All-Stars set. As you can see, the packs come with 3 cards, one "pop-up" card and a few Hank Aaron puzzle pieces (featuring Hank Aaron.) The primary reason I was sent this, I'm sure, is that there's good ol' Osborne Earl Smith showing on the front of the pack in all of his pop-up glory. It turns out that I already have this "card", so now I'm stuck with a minor dilemma. Do I save the pack as some sort of extra Ozzie memento. Obviously, I'm not considering being like one of those creeps who sends in packs to Beckett or other companies to get them graded (what fun is that?) But I could hang onto it in its pristine shape. Keep in mind that I was one of those kids who could not even fathom leaving anything in the package. I frequently have a difficult time making it home before opening packs when I buy them.

Another motivating factor might be that I used to love these large sized cards and the mid-'80s sets are what I started in on collecting in the first place. I have fond memories of all of the 1986 sets, from Donruss and Fleer right on down to those silly Kay-Bee Toys glossy cards that they used to sell in tiny boxes at Newberry's. At one point I had a pretty healthy stack of the Donruss All-Star jumbo cards from 1984, 1985 and 1986, but they are not easy to store and they eventually were purged when I started dumping things en masse that were not in passable condition. (What was I thinking?) Anyway, besides the Ozzie pop-up card, I can see that the top card showing is a Brewers card (I was assuming Robin Yount at first, but when I look at the checklist I think it's gotta be Cecil Cooper) and the last card is most definitely Sparky Anderson. What could the middle card be? I am positive that I don't own the Ozzie Smith card itself from the set, so that possibility is always there.

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I'm going off the grid for a few days, so there won't be any posts here until Monday night at the earliest. I do want to take the opportunity to plug http://sruchris.net/. I recently completed a feature-length trade with Chris and just haven't found the time to post about it yet. He's got quite an extensive want list (and trade list), so those of you who like to do the card-swapping sort of thing should definitely check out his website and go work out a deal. I will give this its proper due next week, I promise.

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For those of you that have digital cable or one of those dishy things, now is a great time to scope out MLB Network. They've been running game 1 of the 1968 World Series in its entirety the past couple of days. I just watched Bob Gibson strike out 17 pesky Tigers, which made me feel better about the Cards dropping the final game of their 3-game series last night. I'm not sure where else I've ever seen full replays of games that old before, and it was fun to listen to Harry Caray call a Cards game before he became a permanently belligerent Cubs Fan / Bud Man.

Upper Deck is Lazy

I understand Upper Deck's approach with Series 2, don't get me wrong. They like to throw in a few stars (sometimes even mid-level guys like Adam Wainwright) to beef up the set even if those stars also appeared in Series 1 and didn't change teams, uniforms or anything else worth mentionining. Who is going to complain about an extra Albert Pujols card, right? While Topps usually holds out a few guys for their Series 2 run, Upper Deck doesn't really worry about continuity and just rolls with whatever players they feel like. And I'm okay with that. But, come on, this is just lazy.

Take a look at the back of the cards. The only thing different about these is the text. Nice.

Surprise Package from Padrographs

Is there anything better in the world than getting a surprise package full of baseball cards from your favorite team? I'm hard pressed to think of many things. Along with street corner Mexican food, donut shops that stay open all night and very hoppy beer, this has to be one of life's best little pleasures. Or perhaps I'm just giddy because I just watched the Cardinals put up 11 runs on Justin Verlander and the Tigers.

Warning: This is going to be a very J.D. Drew-heavy post. I didn't really realize this until I was finished scanning all of the cards. The first card is from a bilingual Pacific set called Invincible. All I can think about is that if J.D. is so "Invincible", what's he doing playing baseball in what looks like some sort of heavenly vast expanse? Perhaps he was unable to dodge all of those batteries from Phillies fans and got knocked out.

I like receiving Pacific cards because there's only a very slight chance that I actually own the card. In fact, I am not sure I owned any of the cards in the package before, which is rather impressive considering how many Cardinals binders and boxes of dupes that litter my living space.

Like Eric Davis before him, Will Clark is another Cardinal who you probably either did not know donned the Birds on the Bat or just never picture him wearing a St. Louis cap. Larry Walker (not pictured) also fits this category. I need more of all of those guys.

Yes, here's J.D. again. I'm not sure how he sneaked his way in one more time.

I also got a handful of 2009 Bowman cards. I don't know who Miguel Flores is, but apparently he was last year's 16th round pick and enjoys working on cards. This is his gold parallel card. Also included was his chrome card, which is nice.

This card is so hideous looking that it seems like it might be a joke. I think I love it.

Albert Pujols survived the 2009 Goudey test. This set is so hit and miss with the drawings.

This David Freese card from Series 2 Topps conforms to the Cardboard Junkie cropping standards. Who is David Freese? Oh, he's the guy that Jim Edmonds was traded for. He's been hurt for most of the season, unfortunately.

There were several new Topps cards and several new Upper Deck cards as well. Brendan Ryan is captured here sans high socks, which is rare these days. Ryan is starting to settle in as the everyday shortstop, which is somewhat surprising.

I am far too cheap to buy stuff like Finest, so I'm in the position of relying on others to get Cardinals from this set. To be honest, though, I don't understand why both this and Topps Chrome co-exist.

A big thanks to Rod from Padrographs. I will be sending him a package back along with a requested reading recommendation.

My Topps Series 2 Story

Like the last kid on the block to get a Nintendo, I finally managed to track down some Series 2 Topps packs on Saturday. The unfortunate thing is that I had to go to Wal-Mart to get them. The card show I went to recently had hobby boxes, but I just wanted some packs. I'm not trying to collect the set or anything, but I do like this year's Topps for the most part and I want to get all of the Cardinals and the Turkey Red inserts. Plus, it's nice to get new cards to look at and eventually send off to people in trades/packages. I bought 4 loose packs, a jumbo pack and a cereal box. I'll post the jumbo and cereal box at a later time and for now will talk about the $1.99 packs.

Pack 1:

659 - Torii Hunter (This is actually fairly normal for a Torii Hunter photo, but it's still a bit on the goofy side.)

345 - Stephen Drew (Drew isn't really building on his success from last season which is not helping my fantasy team so much.)

581 - David Purcey

638 - Eugenio Velez

584 - Ron Washington (If Upper Deck Series 2 is the Backup Catcher's set, then Topps Series 2 is the Managers set. Actually, I really like this photo.)

LGCB-TS - Tris Speaker Career Best Legends (These aren't bad looking inserts, but they seem to be kind of redundant since there's already Legends of the Game inserts.)

LLP-19 - Christy Mathewson Legends of the Game Wal-Mart Platinum (The Wal-Mart exclusive LOTG cards look great in Series 2. In Series 1 I couldn't really tell the difference from the non-store-exclusive LOTG cards aside from the photos being different.)

TTT37 - Justin Upton Topps Town

553 - Jeff Karstens

428 - Jamie Moyer

547 - Jack Cust

602 - Carlos Gomez (Alright, not bad so far...)

Pack 2:

572 - Michael Bourn

508 - Kenji Johjima (This is one of those "who is the real subject of this photo?" situations.)

437 - Austin Kearns

389 - Garrett Olson (I have no idea who this is and I hear about the Mariners quite a bit, living in their local market.)

LG-TGL (I don't even like Glavine and it still ticks me off the way Glavine's career ended with Atlanta.)

TTT27 - David Ortiz Topps Town

482 - Jason Jaramillo (RC) (The Pirates need to ditch red as a secondary color, permanently. Not a good look.)

551 - Tim Redding

620 - Ryan Zimmerman (Hey, come on, Nationals. We need a third basemen and your team has no future. Let's get this done!)

346 - Mike Cameron

654 - Brian Schneider

608 - Cristian Guzman (Another Nat in this pack, just to spite me.)

Pack 3:

379 - Howie Kendrick (Argh, Howie Kendrick! The one thing you've done throughout your entire career, no matter how injured you are or how limited your playing time is, you've hit the baseball! And now that I finally caved in and drafted you, you've completely forgotten how to do that. Now you're a Bee. A Salt Lake Bee! How do you like that?)

332 - Chone Figgins (Figgy for Erin. At least Figgy knows what's up.)

412 - Taylor Teagarden

445 - Joe Nathan

614 - David Murphy (Nice shot of David Murphy after he finished rounding the bases after a HR. At least, I'm assuming he hit a HR. Did Josh Hamilton leave him hangin'? Is Hamilton pulling his hand back because Murphy just flied out and he's congratulating him in jest?)

511 - Chad Qualls

568 - Greg Reynolds Gold 1560 / 2009 (I'll have to find a hardcore Rockies fan to pawn this off on.)

TTT38 - Kosuke Fukudome Topps Town Gold (Anyone want this?)

383 - Everth Cabrera (RC) (This Padres rookie was apparently a Rule V draft pick, which explains why he never played for Portland.)

521 - Dana Eveland

493 - John Lannan

436 - ??? Some Cubs Guy ??? (Wait, where did his name go? Is this an ERROR card?)

Pack 4:

353 - Derek Jeter (Topps takes the "let's hold some stars back for Series 2" route. Upper Deck seems to just print extra Jeter cards for fun.)

527 - Jason Isringhausen (Sadly, I just saw Izzy throw what was possibly the last pitch of his career the other day. Now he's getting Tommy John surgery and he knew right away that something was seriously wrong as soon as he let the pitch go. For some reason he's still pictured as a Cardinal here. I think he skipped spring training and had a late start to his season with the Rays, which might explain why Topps didn't have a current photo.)

629 - Lyle Overbay

616 - Koji Uehara (RC)

342 - Gerald Laird

LG-AP - Albert Pujols Legends of the Game (Pujols is the closest thing to an active Legend of the Game that I can think of.)

TR76 - Jay Bruce Turkey Red (I'm collecting these. Just a reminder...)

TTT32 - David Wright Topps Town

499 - Edwin Moreno (RC)

467 - Chris Volstad

374 - Kevin Kouzmanoff

348 - Tony Pena (Arrrgh! It's looking a lot less like intended "variation" and more like cheap printing defect and lousy quality control. They still manage to get foil on the Topps logos, but none at the bottom of the card. You can see some indentations where the name, team and position should be, so it seems like maybe they attempted to "foil" these cards but the machine was out of "foil". I have no idea how any of that works, so I should probably not attempt to guess.)

Be Kind to Your Local Troll

I'm finally... finally(!)... making some headway on my 2008 Topps Heritage set. A huge thanks goes out to The Collective Troll, who was more than willing to unload his extras on me. I had no idea what I was in for when he first contacted me. Not only did he make a huge dent in the base set and (silly) black back parallels, but I also got a ton of inserts that I needed. Of all of the packages I've received from fellow bloggers in the past year that I've been doing this, this was one of the most pleasantly surprising lots of cards that I've taken in. It was difficult to narrow it down to just a handful of images to scan, but I managed to do it.

One of the first things I decided to collect, separate of the base 2008 Topps Heritage set was the Target minis. I couldn't get enough of these from the first pack that I bought, and now I am finished with these as I was sent the remaining five that I needed.

I'm not a Wal-Mart guy, so it's been really difficult for me to collect any Wal-Mart exclusive inserts that I look for. It's not just that I despise the place, but the only stores that exist in my area are pretty lousy about their sports cards selection. It was nice to get a couple of the Wal-Mart inserts, but I still have a ways to go on these.

Infidels!

This is obviously the best of the Baseball Flashback inserts.

Included was a huge stack of base cards and the aforementioned black back parallels. Ankiel's card is one of those said parallels. Ankiel's bat has finally caught fire as he seems to now be fully recovered from that head-on center field wall collision awhile back. This week is really the first time he's looked like himself all season.

There was also a stack of assorted Cardinals cards thrown in for good measure. This is always appeciated, of course.

There were two shiny rainbow foil cards from 2007 Bowman Heritage. These are one-per-pack inserts, but I am fairly confident that I did not have either Carp or Pujols. I'd have to say that I'm a pretty big fan of both players.

I actually miss Topps Opening Day sets this year. I wasn't really thrilled by any of the older Opening Day sets, but I liked the white (instead of black) look of the 2007 set and the red (instead of white) colored 2008 cards. Thanks to the Troll, I am finished with the Cardinals base team set.

2006 Bowman Heritage was based on the 1949 Bowman design. Everything about this set looks really murky. I think they did a pretty good job with the photos to make the new cards look somewhat authentic. Anthony Reyes is not only done for the year, but may be heading for Tommy John surgery which would likely cause him to miss a healthy chunk of the 2010 season as well. I've always rooted for the guy and I know that Erin has always adored him, so it comes as sad news to me no matter what uniform the guy puts on now.

This Pujols cards looks a lot like 1949 Bowman, but where is the Bowman Heritage logo? It turns out that this is a Wal-Mart insert from the 2007 Topps set. I guess these are similar to the Trading Card History insert cards that came with the 2008 Topps hobby packs. I have a few copies of the Jim Edmonds card from this set, but this is the first other card I've seen from it.

And finally... buttons! I remember seeing these back in the day, but I didn't remember a thing about them. They're almost as cool as the Topps coins that used to be sold in my neighborhood. I wish I still had the coins, actually, but I think all of them developed some kind of rust on them. I'm impressed that these buttons, from 1984, look to be in pristine condition.

Thanks again to The Collective Troll. He's got a Tampa Bay Rays package heading his way soon.

Reaching Deep Into the Archives

I've been feeling rather uninspired lately. Even though I have plenty of material to go through, I was just having trouble coming up with something to fill up this space. (This is the best way to start a post, isn't it?) I'd talk about something topical like the MLB Draft, but I have no idea who any of the kids are that got picked and therefore have no basis on which to analyze how the Cardinals did or how any of it went. The NBA Finals are going on, but a post about that would be very short and look something like "I hate the Lakers. The end." The Stanley Cup Finals seem like they've been pretty entertaining, but my hockey knowledge generally ends with mid-'90s EA Sports games.

Instead, I reached into the old oddball binder and pulled out this 1989 Topps box bottom 4-card panel. I have several of these: a couple from '89, some '88 and even a mini 2-card 1987 Topps panel. All of them are pretty beat up. They're scratched like crazy (they did make up the bottom of a junky pile of wax packs) and there are some creases here and there. This is the type of thing that I have no idea what to do with now. It's not Cardinals-related, it's not in good shape at all, but I have a hard time just tossing it. There should be a market somewhere for abused but worthless treasures.


Anyway, I ended up choosing this panel because it was clearly the best as far as player selection. When Jim Rice is your weak link, you know that you have a pretty solid group of ball players. I had an irrational dislike of Cal Ripken growing up, but I always liked Nolan Ryan and Mike Schmidt. Does anyone dislike Mike Schmidt?

Embracing the X

I was asked recently why I buy stuff from sets that I dislike. I'm not sure if I have a great answer for that question. Part of it could be me just purchasing what is available to me at the time (versus purchasing nothing, which would be the smarter thing) and part of it might just be overall boredom. With this year's Goudey set, I can at least say that I like the idea of the set and probably at least 30% of the cards look really nice. It's just that when that set does something bad, it looks awful.

So how do I explain why I bought an Upper Deck X blaster? It was partly out of frustration from not being able to find Series 2 products on the shelf, still. And then there was the shiny 50% off price tag. And finally, I told myself that there is an "on average" memorabilia card in each box. Truth be told, I didn't know it at the time but one of the possible memorabilia cards is supposedly Chris Carpenter.

Bear with me while I go through a blaster of Upper Deck X. I decided to take a break from posting stuff from the card show and stuff I've received in the mail lately, but there will be plenty from those departments in the coming days.

Pack 1:

91 - Albert Pujols (This is what the base cards look like, in case you didn't know. This is the only one I'm going to scan.)

73 - Frank Thomas

80 - Adrian Gonzalez (He has a league-leading 22 HRs and he plays at the spacious Petco Park. HE MUST BE ON STEROIDS. QUICK, SOMEONE CALL BOB LEY!!)

YSL1938 - Yogi Berra Yankee Stadium Legacy (In some products I'd be annoyed that this replaced a base card or insert that I would have rather had, but I have no complaints here.)

X2-JA - Conor Jackson Xponential X2 (Despite the hilariously awful name, these insert cards are decent to look at, provided that you can handle shiny cards and cutting edge X-themed designs. They're almost as thin and flimsy as the base cards, however, so no one is going to mistake them for something high-end.)

34 - C.C. Sabathia Die Cut (These are exactly the same as the base cards, only with triangles cut out from the edges. Sometimes.)

Pack 2:

70 - Derek Jeter

77 - Chase Utley

52 - Vladimir Guerrero

38 - Troy Tulowitzki

X-NM - Nick Markakis Xponential (There are X, X2, X3 and X4 versions of these in increasingly short supply.)

48 - Alex Gordon Die Cut

Pack 3:

7 - Chipper Jones

42 - Magglio Ordonez

59 - Justin Morneau

69 - Chien-Ming Wang

X-JO - Chipper Jones Xponential (Insert "X-JO" joke here. It's a double Chipper pack.)

55 - Rafael Furcal Die Cut

Pack 4:

28 - Ken Griffey Jr.

98 - Alex Rios

27 - Jim Thome

48 - Alex Gordon

X3-MR - Manny Ramirez Xponential X3

90 - Rick Ankiel Die Cut (There's only two Cardinals in the base set. I have both, but I didn't have either Die Cut version. Both Albert Pujols and Rick Ankiel have Xponential inserts on various levels, of which I only own the X4 Pujols card. I guess I should add this stuff to my want list just for kicks.)

Pack 5:

14 - Jonathan Papelbon

49 - Zack Greinke

34 - C.C. Sabathia

41 - Gary Sheffield

X-DJ - Derek Jeter Xponential

6 - John Smoltz Die Cut

Pack 6:

56 - Ryan Braun

21 - Alfonso Soriano

55 - Rafael Furcal

1913 - Vic Raschi Yankee Stadium Legacy

X2-MR - Mariano Rivera Xponential X2 (This box is pretty Yankee-heavy.)

43 - Hanley Ramirez Die Cut

- UpperDeckKids.com code

Pack 7:

35 - Grady Sizemore (Currently occupying a DL-slot on one of my fantasy teams.)

15 - Josh Beckett

90 - Rick Ankiel (Ankiel needs to start hitting. Actually, the whole team does...)

6 - John Smoltz

X-BU - B.J. Upton Xponential

78 - Nate McLouth Die Cut

Pack 8:

36 - Garrett Atkins

22 - Kosuke Fukudome (RC) (I believe he's the only rookie in the set, which was probably not a great selling point.)

76 - Ryan Howard

21 - Alfonso Soriano Die Cut Gold (This basically looks like a First Edition version of the die cut cards. These are apparently pretty hard to get, but that doesn't stop them from looking uninspired.)

X4-DO - David Ortiz Xponential X4 (These ones are vertical rather than horizontal and look pretty nice, I guess.)

64 - Johan Santana Die Cut

Pack 9:

99 - Ryan Zimmerman

UDXM-PA - Jonathan Papelbon "Memorabilia" card (Just to remind me that I'm not spending my money wisely, my memorabilia card ends up being of the closer from one of my least favorite teams.)

(As you can see, Upper Deck plainly refuses to say what kind of memorabilia might be embedded in the cute little X window.)

50 - Howie Kendrick Die Cut

Pack 10:

29 - Adam Dunn

62 - David Wright

97 - Vernon Wells

YSL1888 - Allie Reynolds Yankee Stadium Legacy

X-VG - Vladimir Guerrero Xponential

1 - Randy Johnson Die Cut

As usual, pretty much all of these cards are up for grabs. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone if you want them.