A New Player Collection

I'm collecting a non-Cardinal. 

It's been awhile since I've made any updates to my "Player Collections" list, but I've been squirreling away a few of this guy's cards for awhile. I suppose it's time to let the cat out of the bag. I'm officially collecting George Springer cards, although he's at the very bottom of my list at present. I'm not sure why I like the guy so much, but I've always seemed to gravitate towards center fielders (e.g. Edmonds) and shortstops (e.g. The Wizard) and the Astros have sort of become my backup team to root for.

Yeah, I know, as an NL Central guy, it's kind of shameful. The Astros pretty much rebooted when they switched leagues, so while the memories of the 2004 and 2005 playoff rivalries, not to mention the horrible encounters with 'Stros fans while I attended a series at Minute Maid Park through the stretch run of the 2006, are still pretty fresh. These Astros seem different, and they even have a title to prove it. It helps a lot that they are not even in the same league as the Cardinals anymore, and were only both in the same division for a relatively short time (less than two decades). It also helps a lot that Erin's family is in the Astros local television market (though not Houston, fortunately), which has given them a fun team to root for. I'm also going to see both teams play each other again in about a month, which should be fun.

Back to Springer, though... he's a good player! I believe I pulled this /250 purple parallel randomly from a pack of 2017 Bowman, which may have been around the time I finally admitted to myself that I was stashing his cards. I did come across a couple of scans of Springer cards this evening that I must have regrettably traded away in the past, but that's okay. Again, this isn't ever going to be the main focus of my collection.

I haven't followed the guy his whole pro career or anything. I actually first heard of the name George Springer when I bought a few packs of 2013 Topps Heritage Minors at some hobby shop back in, I assume, 2013. I tried to find a little bit about him at the time, because I didn't understand why this particular card had a supposed list price of $20. It's a short print, but other short prints weren't getting this kind of treatment.

I suppose I'm kinda/sorta doing a Baseball Card Breakdown thing with this PC, but I've already got these in their pages... so here we go. Click to embiggen, as usual.

The design on the 2014 Donruss The Rookies set is pretty blah, but Springer's inclusion makes me glad I found the box set cheaply at a past card show.

I really like the refractor/chrome '87 tribute card. I also am starting to appreciate Panini Diamond Kings more and more, but Topps Gallery not so much. Is that weird?

To be clear, I enjoyed the 2017 World Series very much, but I'm not about to go out and buy an Astros jersey or anything.

Springer has lots of Big League cards.

So there we have it. My George Springer collection will continue to be updated here. If you have any of my needs, well... feel free to check out my other needs first, but I'll gladly add them to my collection either way.