A Thursday PWE Round-Up

The latest batch of PWE's includes a @nightowlcards variety pack. 

 

It's Thursday night, which means we're already well into the preweekend if you're into that sort of thing. I have a few more envelopes of the plain and white variety to go through, so let's get it going.

First up is a pair of gems from gcrl. It feels like Alex Reyes is entering some sort of make-or-break season to determine what kind of career he's going to have, which makes it less than ideal that he's going to begin the season on the IL, an unfortunately familiar place for him. The blue Chrome rookie refractor card of his (numbered to 150) is really nice looking, though. I like the way the triangular patterns in the background were used on the 2017 Chrome cards, even if I never liked the design itself.

The other aforementioned gem is one of those heavy metal cards from 1996 Leaf Preferred. This Eckersley card is actually a gold parallel, which might well be a first for my collection. At the very least, I haven't seen many of these.

Next up is small pile of things from Night Owl. The rookie variations from last year's Allen & Ginter set just serve as a reminder of how much better the designs from the first few A&G sets from Topps were.

Randal Grichuk just got traded to the Rockies today, so this one is a bit timely. It's a gold parallel card of the always classic Arch-in-the-background shot.

Here's a new(er) one for my meager George Springer collection. I don't feel like I saw a lot of new Donruss Optic cards last year.

The end of the lockout means that Yadier Molina will actually get a shot at a full season in what is planned to be his final one. I don't know how pink became such a go-to color for Topps Chrome refractors, but I'm not complaining.

This is the first time I've added a card from the 2009 Topps Update Propaganda inserts set in quite a long while. This is right about when Manny Ramirez's career started taking a dark turn.

Night Owl also sent this nice six pack o' Turkeys from the first Topps version of the old cabinet cards.

Last up is a few (American) footballers from Trevor P. This is a really nice shiny 2005 Bowman Chrome refractor from the former Ducks star QB Joey Harrington.

I could have sworn I had this Dion Jordan rookie card already, but I must have been thinking of some parallels. It looks like Jordan is wearing Ducks gear here, but Topps Photoshopped it out of recognition.

Jason Fife only got one full season in as Oregon's starting QB after backing up Harrington before giving way to Kellen Clemens. I don't think he ever saw any regular season action in the NFL.

My Secret Santa Brought Me Turkey

A heaping helping of one of my all-time favorite sets from @cardboardgreats plus some Redbird needs. 

I entered this year's Secret Santa pool, currently operated by Jon of A Penny Sleeve for Your Thoughts (I happened to draw The Lost Collector). My Santa was Henry of Cardboard Greats, who is a fan of those New England area teams. You know the ones.

Turkey Red is a favorite of mine, and something that tends to get buried in my want lists as the primary sets from their revival are now well over a decade old. As such, it was very exciting receive a stack of these cards, all from the 2005 edition.

Here's one of an active(ish) player, with CC set to hang it up after suffering an injury in the playoffs this past fall.

I really love the color parallels in these sets, which is what made the 2007 set (and subsequent smaller releases) a bit disappointing. Eric Hinske isn't a name we've heard in awhile!

Here's Johan Santana on another red parallel. This one is a variation as it has the Turkey Red ad back instead of the usual text. It's interesting that Santana stuck with #57 for his entire career, considering most guys switch to a lower number once they begin to get established. It must have had some sort of significance to him.

I had never seen one of these gold parallels before. This card of the Hall of Famer (and current Nugenix pitchman) Frank Thomas is numbered to just 50. I didn't even mention these on my wants at the time, but will gladly take any of these. They are so much nicer than the Chrome parallels from the 2007 set.

Henry, er... I mean, Santa also knew that I am a big Cardinals fan, and hit up my want lists accordingly. I can't help but post a scan of every Fleer Greats card that I acquire, including this Dizzy Dean from 2002.

There were several cards from the 2005 Bowman Heritage collection included. David Eckstein will represent the bunch.

Flashing forward to 2019, here's an insert from the current Panini Prizm set. Can someone grant Panini an exception to the Topps exclusivity thing and get some logos on these cards? There's a reason Prizm is so popular in other sports.

And for the grand finale, it's a Paul DeJong 2019 Topps Heritage autograph. There's not much more to say here except that I love it!

I'll have a couple more holiday-related things to show off this week, and then we'll head back to catching up on stuff from the fall.

Trade You, Trade Me

Stats on the Back has a trade-a-thon going on right now. Name what you want, send him what he needs and reap the benefits of someone downsizing their collection. Hey, I'd do it, too, if I had any focus to speak of.

I mostly grabbed Turkey Red and Allen & Ginter, especially from older sets that are a lot harder to find/collect. A few of the cards were also needed for my Cardinals binder, including - surprisingly - this Jim Edmonds card from the 2006 set. Unfortunately, that means I still need a second cop for the set that I could theoretically put together someday.

St. Louis looks like a pretty smoggy place.

Mark Mulder's name is often invoked as a reminder of a blockbuster prospects-for-established stars trade gone wrong. I don't really refute this, but I still am in the (minority) camp of people that feel like it was hard to see Mulder's demise coming.

There were also a few Heritage cards to be had. Mo Vaughn really fills up a baseball card, doesn't he?

Finally, we go all the way back to the inaugural Allen & Ginter set, revival edition. Here's a German Emperor. You can tell he's an emperor because of the mustache.

"New to Me" Heritage and Turkey Red

NBC used to do some sort of promos for summer reruns that went something like "if it's new to you, it's not a rerun." Something like that, anyway. While their attitude might have been a little suspect (assuming that someone has not seen your show means it probably isn't very good) I think their selling point could easily apply to other things in life. Other things like... oh... I don't know... baseball cards?

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Cardboard Junkie's own dayf, who really needs no introduction, had some extra Topps vintage tribute cards (or is that tribute vintage?) and he found the right place to send them to. I have this rather insane idea of eventually putting together all Topps Heritage sets as well as the Turkey Red sets, and I got some extras from sets that came out before I was really aware and interested. Meanwhile, I have yet to complete a single set since I started this blog a year and a half ago.

I actually managed to pick up a healthy stack of 2006 Topps Heritage on the cheap at a card show this past fall, so I am in better shape with this set than the rest that I'm going to talk about here. There are some really nice looking cards in this set as some of them completely avoid the vintageification process and just concentrate on picture quality. One of the cards I received was a short-printed Pat Burrell card, which is highly appreciated.

Heading back to the start of the Heritage line, here's Izzy on the familiar 1952 design. My scanner decided to further accentuate the pinkness in Izzy's cheeks for some reason.

From a younger, fresh faced Jason Isringhausen to a cagey vet named Eric Davis. Eric the Red eventually became Eric the Redbird. For awhile in the La Russa era, it seemed like a lot of well-known '80s/'90s players made a stop in St. Louis before they headed off into the sunset. Ron Gant, Gary Gaetti, Dennis Eckersley, Will Clark, Larry Walker... all Cardinals near or at the end.

Moving onto 2002/1953, here's Larry Walker himself. With these cards, it looks like they started with player photos and sort of drew over them to make them look less photographic.

This design is far from my favorite design, although I'm not really certain why.

The backs look great, however. Without giving it too much thought, I might even be inclined to say that these are the best looking Topps card backs of all-time.

Did anyone know that Benito Santiago was still around in 2004? I certainly didn't. Santiago looks old enough to be a coach at this point.

I really think card companies should attempt to capture players in vintage uniforms on retro-style sets as often as possible. This Eric Chavez cards looks nice, even if the corresponding uniform may not have been used in the era that this design came from (1956?)

Now, it's onto Turkey Red. There was a nice, juicy stack of the 2005/2006 set (the numbering sequence that began with 2005 continued with the 2006 set and the design is exactly the same, so the lines are fairly blurry when it comes to which set is which) which included a handful of rookie logo rookie cards.

My only complaint with the 2007 set, which I am far closer to completing than anything else mentioned in this post, is that it was missing the colored parallels that were present in the first two retro sets. If there's ever a return to a full proper Turkey Red set (and I'm not saying there should be necessarily) then I hope that they bring back the red, black, white, etc. colored parallels.

Dayf was also kind enough to include a smattering of Cardinal goodies. I needed this Edmonds card for the player/team collection. In fact, I don't think I have any other 2004 Donruss Team Heroes cards now besides this one.

This is a Matt Morris Cracker Jack mini, which in true Cards on Cards fashion actually has a slightly larger than standard photo.

I would love to see a return of a Topps Archives or Fan Favorites type set in 2010. I think there's some sort of restriction on an all-retired player set now, though. I'm not sure if this carried over into Topps's new contract or not, but I would much rather buy something like this if it was released again than I would that Natinal Chiclets set.

Bazooka! Gadzooks! This card is more Cracker Jack than Bazooka, because it was definitely the surprise inside. I really like the newer Bazooka stuff and I do not have nearly enough bat cards to my liking, so this is great.

Thanks again to dayf. I hope to put another package to send again soon. But what do you get for the Junkie that has it all?

2005 Turkey Red

Want List:

4 Cliff Floyd

12 Lyle Overbay

22 Carlos Zambrano

24 David DeJesus

33 Andy Pettitte

53 Mark Teixeira

68 Larry Walker

79 David Newhan

86 Rocco Baldelli

89 Ken Griffey Jr.

91 Paul Konerko

98 David Wright

104 Brad Lidge

116 Jeremy Bonderman

118 Chase Utley

119 Troy Percival

121 Gary Sheffield

122 Jeromy Burnitz

124 Kevin Millar

127 Jason Schmidt

129 Kip Wells

134 Andruw Jones

152 Carl Crawford

157 Sean Casey

164 Jeff Bagwell

168 Mike Mussina

172 Edgar Renteria

174 Kevin Brown

186 Matt Cain

188 Zack Greinke

213 Kris Benson

227 Craig Wilson

231 Mark Kotsay

236 Michael Barrett

243 Omar Infante

249 Huston Street

250 Russell Branyan

283 Jeremy West

287 Melky Cabrera

303 Tom Seaver

(SP)

1 Barry Bonds (Grey Uni/Ad Back)

5 Roger Clemens (Blue Sky)

10 Sammy Sosa (w/ Name)

10 Sammy Sosa (No Name/Ad Back)

16 Mike Piazza (Blue Uni/Ad Back)

20 Manny Ramirez

25 Carlos Beltran

28 Rich Harden

55 Roy Oswalt

59 Wily Mo Pena

60 Magglio Ordonez

70 Jim Thome

75 Ichiro (No Name/Ad Back)

78 Troy Glaus

83 Eric Chavez (Purple Sky/Ad Back)

85 Scott Rolen

87 Joe Mauer

90 Alfonso Soriano

100 Alex Rodriguez (w/ Glove/Ad Back)

102 Adrian Beltre (Grey Uni/Ad Back)

106 Miguel Tejada

115 Curt Schilling

120 Vladimir Guerrero (w/ Bat/Ad Back)

120 Vladimir Guerrero (w/ Glove)

132 Carlos Delgado

149 Jason Bay

150 Albert Pujols

155 Pedro Martinez

160 Johan Santana (Glove on Knee)

160 Johan Santana (Throwing/Ad Back)

170 Tim Hudson

175 Nomar Garciaparra

184 Felix Hernandez

185 Zach Day

193 Jose Capellan

195 Steven White

199 Joel Guzman

214 Mike Gonzalez

220 Scott Kazmir

225 Mark Prior (Blue Sky/Ad Back)

230 Derek Jeter (Blue Sky)

230 Derek Jeter (Purple Sky/Ad Back)

233 Brandon Backe

270 Todd Helton (Yellow Sky)

The following is a list of parallels that I HAVE from this set. I am looking for anything NOT on this list:

Black: 171, 176

Gold (/50): 144
Red: 1 (Grey Uni/Ad Back), 2, 5 (Blue Sky), 7, 11, 23, 28, 29, 32, 41, 45, 53, 59, 86, 97, 102 (Grey Uni/Ad Back), 108, 116, 117, 120 (w/ Bat), 120 (w/ Glove), 124, 140, 156, 159, 160 (Throwing), 176, 178, 185, 194, 197, 198, 206, 209, 213, 214, 216, 235, 243, 247, 249, 251, 261, 264, 269, 271, 274, 278, 291, 298, 299, 306, 308, 314

White: 36, 76, 170, 211, 220, 270 (Purple Sky)

[updated 4/9/26]