A Staggering Mess of Cardinals

It was about a month ago that I read that one of the finer sports card blogs out there was going on hiatus for awhile. I later came home from work that very same night to find a very large and very generous package from the blog's proprietor, Matt of Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius. Matt also runs the very excellent A Pack to be Named Later, to which I am one of the many contributors. The sheer quantity and quality of the cards that I received made writing this post very intimidating, which has a lot to do with why it took me more than a month to write about it. I could probably break this up into about 7 posts, but then I wouldn't finish this off until sometime next March and I really need to get these cards organized and placed into the rest of my collection.

I am sorely lacking in early-to-mid '80s traded set cards, which makes this John Tudor extra special to me. When I first started collecting, the Vince Coleman rookies from the '85 traded sets were pretty much unbuyable in my budget, but now the most difficult thing for me would be tracking down people who have broken up factory sets of this stuff. (Which reminds me... I need to keep working on my want lists.)

This card is refractor-like when shown in the light, which of course isn't captured by my scanner. But it looks really cool nonetheless. These were apparently random inserts in hobby 2004 Topps packs.

This is great. An Allen & Ginter short printed mini from a year where A&G cards are difficult (for me) to get.

This one is a borderless die cut parallel from 2007 Fleer. I wonder how Matt Holliday sleeps at night knowing he is wearing Jimmy's #15.

Once again, '90s baseball card hilarity has left me speechless!

I really like getting minor league cards, and there's an extremely low chance that I actually have them already. It's even better when it's a player I've actually heard of.

This set wastes entire too much card surface on something other than the photo. Motte has really struggled this year and looks nothing like the crazed fireballer that he did late last season and even the beginning of this one.

Here's a Yadi chrome card that I needed for my collection. I bet Erin steals it.

Matt sent along some Ozzie cards, including three that I did not have. O-Pee-Chee had distanced themselves from the copycat Topps design by this point in 1994.

This is an amazing looking card. The dark blue goes great with Ozzie's road uniform. These are numbered to 125. I already own a red framed Chris Carpenter Masterpieces card, so this will go great with it.

Even more generosity! This is a framed Scott Rolen jersey relic type thing from the 2007 Allen & Ginter set. I'm starting to really like these. They're kind of weird, but they're very beautiful (if sports cards can be beautiful.)

And here's a bat card of my favorite Cardinal of this decade. I'm not sure what I did exactly to deserve all of this, but I'm definitely not going to complain. I don't have a lot of bat cards, so they're always appreciated.

I probably should have gone out on that high note with the Edmonds card, but here's an always appeciated autograph of someone I've never heard of. He's wearing the Birds on the Bat, though, so that's good enough for me. Apparently he never made it past AA while the DNA tests are still under wraps to determine whether or not he's related to Kyle Farnsworth.

Thanks again to Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius! I will have to put together another package to send over soon.