A Jumbo-Sized PWE Round-Up

 

Catching up on plain white envelope contents from this summer. 

 

I'm getting ready to move (down the street) in the coming days, so it's high time I get totally caught up on posting about cards mailed to me. This PWE round-up contains a whopping four envelopes, the first of which came from Marc Brubaker around the beginning of the summer.

Aside from the super slick Panini Capstone insert, the rest of the cards were all from the 2023 Bowman set. I didn't buy a single pack of Bowman until fairly recently, even though it was one of the earliest sets released this year. I just couldn't justify the expense for such a cheap looking and overproduced product, although I'm glad that I've been able to trade my way towards a good chunk of the team collection.

These inserts have a bit of a magazine design to them. Would anyone actually read Modern Prospects magazine, though? I am not sure that I know anyone personally that has a magazine subscription anymore, although I do personally pay through the nose for my monthly issues of Retro Gamer.

The meat of the Cardinals offense this season is represented on these few Bowman base cards. I have a feeling Nolan Gorman will end up in these smaller sets by next season.

Mr. Night Owl recently commemorated fifteen years of trading with yours truly and I just so happened to have another envelope of his in the hopper. For nostalgic reasons I suppose, I've actually enjoyed the 1988 inserts from this year's Topps flagship set quite a bit. We shall see if they roll into 1989 with next year's set.

The 2023 One-Two Punch insert set recalls the 2010 Legendary Lineage and the 2011 Diamond Duos insert sets, but I believe they primarily feature starting pitchers.

Slap a little foil logo on it and you've got yourself a rare parallel card. It's the Panini way!

Adding some of my long dormant set builds to TCDB has helped quite a bit, but I still have a ways to go on a lot of these old things. As soon as the 50th Anniversary inserts were announced way back in 2008, I was instantly interested in these things. It was a fun way to get to know some of the players who I hadn't paid a ton of attention to in the time I was out of the card collecting game.

So many minis! Night Owl also included another batch of Allen & Ginter small fries from various years. These are usually my lowest priority when trying to work out deals on TCDB, but I loved receiving these out of the blue.

I recently offered up some assorted vintage cards I no longer had room for, and Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life was quick to respond with some thank you cards. The jersey card of Duck alum Demetrius Williams has definitely seen better days (was it run over by a car?), but it will still find its way to my Ducks hits shoebox.

There are a lot of weird mid-'90s college and unlicensed Rasheed Wallace cards out there, as I've discovered since adding him to my prized group of Player Collections. I'm not sure what "SR FORCE" is supposed to mean -- is it "Senior Force" or it supposed to stand for something?

Here's just a basic junk wax card that I needed, most likely because it has or doesn't have a dot on the back somewhere.

The 2007 Topps Chrome design looks pretty good on Reuben Droughns, and it makes me think that if I liked the NFL a little better, I might be interested in tracking more cards down from this set.

I am quite certain I have never opened a pack of 1981 NFL cards, so this Ahmad Rashad card was new to me. Although best known these days as a broadcaster, Rashad was a standout at Oregon when he went by the name Bobby Moore.

Last up from Bo is this pair of 2002 Fleer blink-and-you'll-miss-it parallels. The stats on the back use gold colored text instead of the usual black.

The last envelope of the bunch comes from The Elliptical Man, which included a pair of (former) Eagles on the familiar 2019 Donruss design. Zach Ertz was a key member of the Super Bowl winning team but ended up on the move after his contract had gotten expensive and with Dallas Goedert taking over as the #1 option at his position.

Miles Sanders departed in the offseason as very few teams want to pay running backs anymore. Sanders apparently found one in Carolina, however.

Hitting All the Sets

A trade stack for every occasion.

The Topps Baseball Fanatic is arguably the biggest Topps Heritage fan around. His collection is certainly putting mine to shame, but when you are doing as well on your set quests as he is, you're bound to have some doubles. Fortunately, I was once again the beneficiary of some cards he didn't need and was able to punch a few more holes in quite a few different sets that I'm working on. The Fanatic is also a big Dustin Pedroia collector, and I'm working on something to that end that he'll hopefully enjoy.

The 2012 Heritage set is probably the one I'm most sick of, but it's probably because I've opened more of it than any other year other than possibly 2008's offerings. I still have a bunch of doubles from this year, but I was able to snag a couple of short prints including CarGo here.

I actually forgot I was trying to collect these inserts. This is from the 2012 Topps Archives 3-D collection. I like these weird lenticular Sportflics-ish cards that occasionally pop up in recent products.

Josh Hamilton is surprised! And he has no signature. This is one of the variations from the 2007 Bowman Heritage set. I should really put this one to bed soon.

There are so many Dodgers collectors that I've traded with, so I don't get many chances to scan and post Dodgers cards on this blog. They're usually gone almost as quickly as they arrive. This one is staying home.

Here's another Bowman Heritage card of the foil variety. It's also a "no sig" version.

I still need base cards from 2009 Topps Heritage. That's sad. I'm missing 5 non-SP cards from the main set and 2 from the high series.

Finally, my favorite Topps insert set of all-time still has quite a few names on the list to cross off. Someday!

Trading with a Fanatic

Carlos Beltran is ready for the playoffs. Are you ready?

For at least the third time, I received a large package of set building cards from fellow set builder The Topps Baseball Fanatic. His blog primarily consists of wantlists of cards from Topps sets, but if you find something he needs and work out a deal with him I'm sure you're mailbox will be stuffed with cards that you need.

In addition to a few cards from the 2008 Topps 50th Anniversary All-Rookie Team insert set, I also got a healthy amount of needs from the 2007 Bowman Heritage. This short printed Ichiro "no signature" variation is a nice get. I don't exactly like that so many cards in this set have variations, but it's better that than no Bowman Heritage at all, which is the case these days.

Here's a shiny Miguel Cabrera. I don't really know what to say about Miggy, a guy who has put up video game-like numbers for the second straight year. I don't know, it could be that he's really good at the baseball game. I have a ton of these rainbow foil cards, but I need a ton more.

This package also continued where the previous package I received from The Fanatic left off, with a bunch more 2013 Heritage cards to add to my collection. Lance Lynn has been tabbed to start game 2 of the upcoming NLDS series with the Pirates right behind Adam Wainwright. Lynn was roughed up in a few relief appearances in last year's divisional series with the Nats and didn't fare much better in two brief starts versus the Giants in the NLCS. Hopefully he has learned something from his past playoff experiences and can turn that around.

I'm still chipping away at the 2006 Bazooka set, which was once upon a time a repack staple. I like all of the inserts and parallels, and I picked up a few of those in this package.

Well, it's the, uh... rarely seen Larry Bigbie. The right side of this card could tear apart the bozos on the left. That's all I'm saying.

Finally, this is a tough to find (for me) short printed team card from the 2007 Topps Heritage set. On a night where we saw the Reds season end, I had to wonder how long they'll keep Dusty Baker around, especially after he sent an ill-prepared Johnny Cueto to the mound with the season on the line. I guess it was technically the postseason, but it doesn't really feel like it. Much of the country was rooting for the "underdog" story Pirates to come out on top, and I was as well, though for a much different reason. I think the Cardinals, despite the regular season head-to-head records, will have better success against Pittsburgh than I did against Cincinnati. A couple of the Reds not-so-secret weapons (Chapman and Billy Hamilton) had me a bit concerned with the way they can affect a close game.

You Can Buy Cards on the Internet Now

For some reason, I've always had an aversion to buying single cards. Sure, I love going through the nickel and dime boxes at card shows, but when it comes down to coldly selecting that I was already searching for and paying an allotted amount of money for them (i.e. market value), something about the whole process leaves me cold. Part of the reason I buy cards, I guess, is for a little mystery and intrigue. And then the buyer's remorse sets in.

I recently had my first experience with COMC.com. There were bargains to be had, and even some oddballs I didn't know anything about. I've actually known about the site for about as long as this blog has been around (nearly 5 years!) as they're from the northwest and occasionally send a rep down to the local card show. I built up a little invoice of just a bit more than it costs to purchase a blaster, including two cards not pictured here that I gave to Erin. Overall, I was really impressed with the variety of cards available and the communication (those invoices are something else) from the website itself. The prices weren't bad, either! This isn't something I can afford to do a lot, because once I got going on purchases it was really hard to stop. In the end, I ended up with a lot of things I probably would have either never tracked down on my own through trades and whatnot, plus some memorabilia cards that I could have paid a lot more for elsewhere.

This card is from the still elusive 2008 Topps 50th Anniversary rookie cup set that I've been trying to collect forever. I should have bought two of them, in hindsight, because this is going to go straight in my Ozzie binder instead of my set binder. It remains on the want list.

I snagged a couple of oddballs that I knew nothing about, from some sort of Pepsi 2007 Topps set. I am only showing the back of the card because the front looks the same as any other 2007 Topps Jim Edmonds card.

I don't know if these were a regional issue or something that you could find a version of for every card in the set. They look the same as the "red back" parallels (red names and card numbers) except for the addition of the "P" to the card number. Kind of boring, really, but still very necessary.

Again, you only get the back of this card because a scanned image of the front would look like any ol' 1986 Topps Ozzie Smith All-Star card. This is a Tiffany version, of which supposedly only 5000 were printed. I consider this a steal at $1, as many of the other Tiffany cards they had were more expensive. I was lucky enough to get a stash of Tiffany cards in an eBay auction from the 1990 set, but I am still lacking the Ozzie Smith cards from that set. I guess I should start adding these to the want lists even though they're tough to find.

Here's another oddity I didn't really know about until recently. Apparently there's a Donruss "Learning Series" that consists of cards that were distributed to classrooms bearing the same overall design as an extremely plentiful design. You could probably fill the Grand Canyon with all of the 1990 Donruss cards that were printed, so it makes me wonder how many of these went home with kids, got mixed up with the nominally worthless 1990 baseball card stuff and were just destroyed. Now, if only I could track down some cards from that pesky 1990 Fleer Canadian set.

I've always loved these old Kellogg's cards, but have owned very few of them in my time.

I think these are the only two years that Ozzie Smith Kellogg's cards were made. They are both mine now. Mine!

Moving things ahead a few decades, here's one of those rare short printed variations from a recent Topps set. I have very, very few of these, which is frustrating to me. There are quite a few that I would like to own. I actually just pulled a Richie Ashburn 2010 Topps SP card from a pack, so I might have to see if there's anyone out there who wants to swap annoyingly short printed legends.

Also available for a nice price was this Ozzie Smith bat card from the 2011 Topps set. Ozzie wasn't known for his bat exactly, except for a few amazing and dramatic moments, but I love bat cards just the same.

Finally, I freed a couple of abominations from the clutches of the COMC warehouse. Upper Deck decided to create not one but two cards of Jim Edmonds (that I know of) that would be certain to please almost nobody at all. Presumably, you got an old swatch of a Jimmy jersey from his Cardinals days plastered on a card with Cubs logos all over it.

Here's the other one. To really hammer in their point, they did it again in 2009 on their retrospective set. Edmonds was only halfway done with his tour of the NL Central, unfortunately, so I'm curious to see what else is out there after he was traded away from St. Louis.

Trading with Reader Jeff

Reader Jeff from Iowa completed a Heritage-for-Heritage (and Cubs) swap with me recently. Included in the trade was this Anibal Sanchez New Age Performers card from the 2007 Topps Heritage set. Sanchez was one of a number of notable players dealt today with the trade deadline approaching. Sanchez came tantalizingly close a couple of times last year to throwing his second career no-hitter, but he hasn't always been the most consistent pitcher in the league.

Hooray! Floating rookie heads from 2011! This one is a short print. In this year's Heritage set, the floating heads don't mean a thing as far as rarity goes.

These guys look ghostly for some reason.

Ah, Ichiro. My guess is that he's with the Yankees now because the Mariners learned that there was no chance of Ichiro signing a new contract with him. Otherwise, I don't think they would have let their biggest ballpark (and tourist) attraction get away even with his rapidly declining skills.

Here's one for the Cardinals binders.

Like Ichiro, Randy Johnson and Richie Sexson (to name a few), Olerud was another former Mariner that made a late career stop in the Bronx.

Finally, here's Roy Oswalt from that 2008 Topps rookie cup anniversary insert set. I like these, but it feels like I still need so many of them.