All the Series 2 Cardinals

It's a #CrackinWaxMailday with a case-load full of Cardinals from @CrackinWax to pore over. 

Occasionally it pays to think ahead. Since I've stopped buying the Topps flagship product in recent years, collecting the Cardinals stuff from these sets (still a priority) can become a bit of an afterthought. This is one of those rare times that I planned things out in advance, as I bought into a case break over at Crackin' Wax. I think I did pretty well for myself.

Of course, there are base cards. Many, many base cards. I believe I ended up with eleven total team sets. Fortunately, I should be able to dump a few of these on Listia, but if anyone here is interested in one, let me know. I do still need two cards from the (neglected) Series 1 team sets, plus a whole lot of inserts and special stuff.

This time around, there's only one player in the mix that's no longer with the team. We'll get to him in a moment. We also get a team card, some rookies and a rare Greg Garcia card. Seriously rare. This is his fifth season with the big league club and it's just his first Topps card. He also appeared in Bowman products in 2010.

Alex Mejia saw a bit of action late last year, but he's off the 40-man roster and back in the minors with the Cardinals organization. These are his rainbow foil and gold parallels.

It's an SP! I didn't know they were putting "legend" SPs into this set, so this was a nice surprise.

I still need a bunch of the "Topps Salute" cards from Series 1. In fact, I think this might be my first look at this design.

Carlos Martinez was well-represented, with his rainbow foil and vintage stock (numbered to 99!) parallels. The vintage stock card might be my favorite of the whole break. I wish the whole set could be like these. Only, you know, not so rare.

Paul DeJong should be back soon. Hopefully! This whole season feels like it's teetering on the brink of disaster.

Jack Flaherty has looked really good at times. The rotation appears to be pretty set for the future, at least, if the club doesn't end up making any significant moves.

Rainbow and gold Cafecito.

Here's the rainbow Matt Carpenter version.

Today's game seems to be steering back to homers! homers! HOMERS! This card just seems appropriate all of a sudden.

The tribute to the 1983 set continues with these All-Star inserts. I love new Ozzie cards!

Speaking of which, this is super awesome. I have one of these warm-ups (#1, of course) in my closet that I break out for special occasions.

This one had me stumped for a bit, because it's from the "silver pack" promotion. In Series 1, each of these had some fancy pattern on the card. Oh well, so much for continuity!

Great shot of Tommy Pham up against the Wrigley Field ivy. As much as I dislike the Cubs, every good outfield needs a photo like this on a card.

This is my first, er, negative photo parallel. I know these are hobby only, but I don't remember how rare they are.

This is another SP. This time, it's a photo variation.

Here's a Topps Salute card of Tommy Pham in his "Players Weekend" jersey. I feel like this was so hyped last season that it's probably coming back this season.

My collection is sagging under the weight of all of the different Pujols cards that I own, and Topps keeps finding ways to print them up in his old uniform.

I don't "PC" this guy, but I think he's up to #2 or #3 in total unique cards owned in my collection. Yikes.

Are these photos from the actual game they are commemorating? Of course they aren't.

The Pujols parade is over, and there's a new Sherriff in town. And that's the last time I ever make a Ryan Sherriff joke.

As mentioned earlier, Breyvic Valera is the lone Cardinal no longer with the organization that's in the base set. He was flipped to the Dodgers in a roster space crunch move right at the start of the season. Once again, these are the rainbow and gold versions, respectively.

At 15 seasons in the league, Yadi might just be a little tired of posing for dorky photos.

I also snagged Molina's gold parallel. I miss the old gold parallels, as I pretty much say every year now.

Apparently there was only one autograph pulled in the whole case (what?!), but I was lucky enough to snag two game used memorabilia cards. Here's DeJong in his former uniform number, which now belongs once again to Jose Oquendo.

And this is a black parallel (check the serial number!) of a Luke Weaver jersey card. Because everything needs parallels.

Feel free to hit me up if you have any 2018 Topps Cardinals stuff not pictured here. The want list will be updated shortly.

Some 2018 Cardinals

And former Cardinals. 

Thanks to @pksteinberg of Baseball Every Night, I now have roughly 55% of the brand new Topps Series 1 set. Unfortunately, there are only a paltry 11 Cardinals cards in the entire series. I know that this has long been a problem for certain teams, and now we've reached the point where St. Louis is officially out of the limelight, having missed the playoffs in consecutive years.

Of those 11 players featured on a card, 3 of them are already getting ready to put on another uniform later this week. Aledmys Diaz, his 2016 All-Star appearance already a distant memory, was shipped off to the Blue Jays for a prospect. He'll join Randal (with one L) Grichuk in Toronto. (I still need Grichuk's card.)

The Cardinals did hang on to rookies Jack Flaherty and Harrison Bader, and both figure to be factors this season with the big league club in some capacity. It would be a bit surprising to see Flaherty win a spot in the rotation, but it would also be surprising to not see him make some starts at some point if he isn't moved to the bullpen.

I haven't really talked about the new flagship design yet. It's better. And this is a really solid photo.

I think I am still going to pass on buying packs of this stuff, as I have for the previous two sets. The lack of stats on the back is what upsets me the most now. One of the biggest reasons I got interested in baseball as a kid was from poring over box scores in the local newspaper. It was the stats, man! So the allure of baseball cards at an early age was really just a natural progression from the back pages of the Sports section to the annual document of record for each ballplayer. I realize it's easy to pull all of the stats up on B-R (and I often do), but not having full stats for a player really kills the appeal for me. (This was why I strongly preferred Fleer to Donruss in the '80s, even though they occasionally cheated for some long time veterans.)

It kind of looks like Stephen Piscotty (now in Oakland) is caught between bases and doesn't know what to do. I do like the photo choice. Let's check out the source image, because we haven't done that in awhile.

Embed from Getty Images

(If you check out the caption, he was totally caught stealing.)

All in all, this new Topps set beats last year, but it was a very low bar to clear. About as low as the space between Kolten Wong's hands.