PWE Round-Up: All Night Owl Edition

Three envelopes. One sender.

It's once again time to do a little round-up of some Plain White Envelopes that I've received in the mail. This time, all three envelopes are from Night Owl Cards. Since sports card shows locally have been completely overtaken by Pokemon, TCGs and the like, this is practically the only way I can add something unexpected to my collection these days.

The first envelope showed up back in May, and included this really nice Nolan Arenado jersey swatch, presumably from one of his own "Victory Blue" jersey that the Cards have been wearing on Saturday road games in recent years.

Here's a trio of sparkly parallels from 2025 Topps sets. I've been one of those lamenting the proliferation of shiny parallels in Heritage products lately, but at least they make solid trade bait. Besides the Burly Heritage card, there's also a couple of holo foil parallels from the flagship set.

Last year, Topps Heritage did some sort of tribute to itself by showcasing (current?) players on previous Heritage designs, which of course were just a tribute to the first Topps sets. It's been tough to get ahold of almost any inserts in recent Heritage sets, so this was certainly appreciated even if the set was poorly executed.

Envelopes number two and three both showed up at the same time around mid July of this year. One of these envelopes was stuffed full of Allen & Ginter minis. There are enough non-sport collectors out there to make these a bit tougher to acquire than the parallel minis. The warthog throws off the whole landscape orientation synergy that is going on here.

The other envelope was all about the Cardinals. Yadi is the first of a trio of pink ice Panini Prizm parallels from 2025. That's a lot of P-words!

Masyn Winn just returned from a stint on the IL recently. His Gold Glove work was certainly missed in his absence.

This one looks a little off to me, and I don't think it's just the straight-on shot of Gibby's blank cap.

Drew Rom's time with the Cardinals was cut short due to injury. He was part of the deadline deal dump of Jack Flaherty a few years ago. This one is numbered to 499.

Rookie Nathan Church appears here on a holiday parallel. He's had some fleeting moments of success with the bat this season and continues to be their most impressively speedy outfielder.

We finish things up here with Waino and some shiny blue little rockets. For some reason, these have become one of the most prevalent Donruss parallels all of a sudden. I'm not really sure what the appeal is there.

Future Baseball Plans

The new Cardinals... maybe not the same as the old Cardinals.

I've tried not to dwell on this too much, but my interest in baseball in general has fallen off of a cliff in recent times. When you combine this with the streamlining of baseball card products in the Fanatics era, I could also say my interest in baseball cards is also starting to crater. I can't dispute the idea that the Cardinals lack of success on the field since the end of the 2022 season has contributed to this, but I still think I would have most of those negative feelings even if the Cardinals had been playing more at the level of their 2010s rosters.

While I won't get into my feelings about the state of MLB in general right here, I will show off some cards that Night Owl sent over back in July. Remember the summer? I miss it already. I guess I'm just having those December feelings right now.

I haven't really prepared any changes in the way I'm going to consume baseball games (or not). I haven't really dramatically changed how I collect cards, either. I'm still going to watch Cardinals games, of course, especially as long as there's free MLB TV access to T-Mobile subscribers, although it appears that deal's days are probably numbered with ESPN's pending acquisition of the platform. (Gross.) There are interesting players on the Cardinals roster on any given day, including speed demon Victor Scott II, shown here on the first "true photo" variation I've added to my collection. I wish these weren't such a tough pull, honestly.

I do nearly all of my trading via TCDB and have managed to add a bunch more Cardinals Topps gold parallels in the past year. The original gold bordered look still reigns supreme, as shown here on Miguel Cairo's card from 2004 Topps.

Will Panini continue to run out its zombie baseball products in 2025? What about the other sports? I know that Panini has a lucrative contract with the WNBA that has been extended by several years, so the company itself won't be going away any time soon. Fanatics supposedly has no interest in acquiring them, and I'm doubtful that they would suddenly start cranking out fully licensed Donruss cards even if they did. If anything, Fanatics seems to want to focus on it's core brands and do the laziest thing possible by applying the same design templates to a million cards a year.

Considering Paul Goldschmidt's Hall of Fame track and the six seasons he spent with St. Louis, I don't think the Goldschmidt want list will ever have a finite endpoint, even though he is no longer a Cardinal.

With Willson Contreras moving to 1B this past season, Pedro Pagés has actually caught the most games the past couple of seasons for the Cards. The entire catching situation is a bit murky right now, though, with Ivan Herrera showing star potential as a hitter and next to zero potential as a backstop. Toss in a couple of prospects on the rise and a cult hero in Yohel Pozo, and you've got a quandary on your hands.

JJ Wetherholt is the prospect of the moment. I honestly thought he would get a late call-up last season (maybe in the 40-man September active roster era), and he certainly has a chance to make it difficult to keep him down much longer if he has a big spring. Will the Cardinals be dreadful again next year? Absolutely. The most frustrating thing about this rebuild is that they should have started it years ago, if that was truly their intentional all along.

Night Owl also tossed in some more set-filling needs, including these inserts from the 2025 Topps Heritage set. Of course, they look very similar to cards from other Heritage and Archives sets, but Fanatics (or whoever) apparently decided they needed yet another insert set of random players on old designs.

We end things in true Night Owl trade envelope fashion with a few more minis from Allen & Ginter sets. Each of these names are of players I haven't thought about in a few years.

A Holiday Weekend PWE Round-Up

 

Fun things come in small envelopes.

 

It's time for another round of small trade envelopes and things of that nature. This bunch is pretty baseball (and Cardinals) heavy, which is just about perfect for this time of year.

First up is the first of two envelopes from gcrl (cards as i see them). This one has been sitting on my shelf since February according to the postmark. A pair of obscure Cardinals pandemic relievers still look good in red, even with the blue background design that accompanies the red bordered parallel card from 2021 Topps Heritage.

Panini's Donruss product sprang forth this strange little die-cut card with a giant Rated Rookie logo on it in 2016. The nostalgia for the Rated Rookie logo supersedes what little Panini actually does with its Donruss brand, which is typically underwhelming if not just outright boring.

I think at this point I have more Tim Cooney signed cards than the total number of times I can recall seeing him actually pitch, but that's fairly typical for certain players who get featured in Bowman. I didn't have this blue parallel, of course!

This Career Year insert is apparently from the 2022 Topps flagship set. I don't really remember it at all, and I bought a decent amount of this Topps stuff that year. Pujols certainly looks much younger here in his 2009 state than he did during his memorable 2022 Cardinals comeback.

Ah, who doesn't love a good Stadium Club photo? When do we get Stadium Club this year? This month? September? December? Never?

Until they also lost the Players Association license, Panini continued their tradition of numbering all of their inserts to 999 copies, like this one. You could still find unnumbered parallels in their various retail configurations, though.

I kind of miss the dumb fake relic cards that they put in Topps blasters for many years. I believe this year (2023) was the last year that they did something like this. The rubbery hockey puck-shaped thing in the middle of the card is certainly memorable. It almost totally obscures the player.

Further cementing gcrl's status as Hamm King were this pair of inserts from the 2015 Topps set. I now own 17 of these by my count, and others will have their work cut out for them if they want to catch the leader.

Next up is a very coveted card from noted author and Brewers fan (and the two do intersect) Matthew Prigge. I did not know that a Jim Edmonds Brewers card existed until recently, which made me highly interested in obtaining a copy. After Edmonds was traded to San Diego (for future World Series hero David Freese), he went on a whirlwind tour though the NL Central, playing for every team in the division aside from Pittsburgh before winding up his career. Cubs and Reds Edmonds cards are readily available in some major sets, but the existence of a Brewers card was news to me.

I had to scan the back because I'm highly interested in police/team issued cards and wanted to check this out. I believe there are actually a bunch of different versions of this set, at least according to TCDB. I'm assuming that the main different is the presenting sponsor on the back.

Matthew also included a few shiny bonus cards that I had been hesitant to write about for some time now. I believe he was the first person that I knew of to discover this weird bootleggy looking set/box thing that was briefly available on Amazon. I was hoping someone else would discover more info about this set and maybe even put a checklist together for TCDB, but as far as I know no one has bothered to undertake this.

Here's a couple more. I have a whole stack of these that I also purchased from Amazon a year or two ago, but I don't know if what I ended up with was a complete set. I ended up throwing a few of these into envelopes for others myself, so I wouldn't even be able to attempt a checklist anymore. I'll probably toss the rest of these up on the blog as a giveaway at some point this summer because they've been sitting on my desk far too long. The set is full of weird errors and has a strange checklist, but the Cardinals were more than fairly represented.

Here's what all of the card backs look like. Ah yes, it's the Patriotic Baseball Eagle. The cards are are extremely thin and sharped like playing cards/TCG cards, except that they're all shiny gold... and probably very toxic. Don't eat these. I believe they're Korean in origin, from what little research could be done from when they were available for sale.

The third envelope comes from gcrl once again, who comes out swinging with this amazing autograph of one of my all-time favorite college football players. LaMichael James' Press Pass autograph card is numbered to just 99 copies, and I don't even mind that he's been cut off at the shoulders here.

From Duck to Duck, this is a pro rookie card of another Oregon running back who had a pretty solid run with the Seahawks in the '00s. I've never been one to root a ton for the NFL team up north of here in Seattle, but Mo Morris gave me a reason to check in on them from time to time.

The bulk of the envelope was comprised of a bunch of 2025 Topps Heritage needs. I'm pretty close to being done with the (non-SP, non-insert) set now, but there's a few stragglers as usual.

Last up is this single card from Damon Holtz, a great Bluesky follow who gives away cards on his feed there pretty frequently. This is one of the "silver pack" box topper insert cards from the recently released Series 2 set and also shows Pujols in his original run with the Cardinals. This is actually the second card I've snagged from the very generous Damon, but I think I ended up only posting on Bluesky about the other one. I'm not going to try to convince anyone of the merits of Bluesky (or any social media in general), but if you're over there, feel free to give me a follow!

2025 Topps Heritage

Want List:

(SP)

401 David Bednar

402 Brice Turang

404 Zach Dezenzo

405 Mason Miller

406 Ben Rice

408 David Fry

409 Reese Olson

410 Michael Harris II

411 Reid Detmers

412 Corey Seager

416 Walker Buehler

417 Starling Marte

418 Andrés Chaparro

419 Kutter Crawford

422 Jackson Merrill

423 Logan Webb

425 Nick Gonzales

426 Miles Mikolas

427 Sal Frelick

428 Hunter Brown

429 Anthony Volpe

430 Pete Crow-Armstrong

432 Trey Sweeney

433 Erik Sabrowski

434 Jo Adell

435 Spencer Strider

437 Austin Gomber

439 Gavin Stone

442 Luis Severino

444 Nick Martinez

445 Rafael Devers

446 Shea Langeliers

447 Tyler Locklear

448 Bailey Ober

449 Joey Bart

450 Zac Gallen

451 Jordan Walker

452 Carlos Rodriguez

453 Jasson Domínguez

457 Ryan McMahon

458 Travis d’Arnaud

460 Jose Siri

461 Los Angeles Dodgers / New York Yankees

462 Los Angeles Dodgers

463 Jack Leiter

464 Gavin Sheets

465 Tyler Glasnow

467 MacKenzie Gore

468 Jesse Winker

469 Andrew Abbott

473 Jake McCarthy

474 Griffin Jax

475 Steven Kwan

476 Chris Bassitt

477 Shane Bieber

478 Jesús Luzardo

480 Kyle Schwarber

481 Carlos Rodón

483 Parker Meadows

484 Andrew Walters

485 Nathaniel Lowe

486 Alek Manoah

487 Mookie Betts

488 Brandon Lowe

489 Alejandro Kirk

493 Lamonte Wade Jr.

494 Bryan Woo

495 Joey Meneses

498 Gabriel Moreno

499 Nolan Arenado

500 Yordan Alvarez

701 Max Scherzer

702 Dalton Rushing

703 Anthony Santander

704 Carlos Santana

706 Nick Kurtz

707 Harrison Bader

708 Kodai Senga

709 Kenley Jansen

710 Alex Bregman

711 Gavin Sheets

712 Matt Shaw

713 Chase Dollander

714 Cam Smith

715 Gavin Lux

717 Moisés Ballesteros

719 Hyeseong Kim

720 Tommy Edman

721 Jose Quintana

722 Nick Pivetta

723 Carson Kelly

724 Lars Nootbaar

725 Kristian Campbell

(1976 Player Icons)

76PI-2 Bryce Harper

76PI-3 Pete Alonso

76PI-4 Jose Altuve

76PI-9 William Contreras

76PI-10 Corbin Carroll

76PI-12 Mike Trout

76PI-13 Mookie Betts

76PI-15 Dylan Crews

76PI-16 James Wood

76PI-17 Paul Skenes

76PI-18 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

76PI-22 Gunnar Henderson

76PI-24 Francisco Lindor

(1976 Redefined)

76R-1 George Brett

76R-2 Nolan Ryan

76R-3 Johnny Bench

76R-5 Jackson Holliday

76R-6 Jackson Chourio

76R-7 Paul Skenes

76R-10 Robin Yount

76R-11 James Wood

76R-12 Dylan Crews

76R-13 Francisco Lindor

76R-15 Mike Trout

76R-16 Shohei Ohtani

76R-17 Gunnar Henderson

76R-18 Jacob Wilson

76R-19 Jace Jung

76R-20 Spencer Schwellenbach

76R-22 Corey Seager

76R-23 Yoshinobu Yamamoto

76R-24 Mookie Betts

76R-25 Corbin Carroll

(Heritage 25th Anniversary)

H25-1 Anthony Volpe

H25-2 James Wood

H25-3 Connor Norby

H25-4 Bobby Witt Jr.

H25-5 Paul Skenes

H25-6 Coby Mayo

H25-7 Austin Riley

H25-8 Aaron Judge

H25-10 Pete Crow-Armstrong

H25-12 Masyn Winn

H25-13 Elly De La Cruz

H25-14 Wyatt Langford

H25-16 Luisangel Acuña

H25-17 Corbin Carroll

H25-19 Shohei Ohtani

H25-21 Jackson Holliday

H25-22 Justin Verlander

H25-24 Dylan Crews

H25-25 Bryce Harper

(Notable Americans)

NS-1 George Washington

NS-2 Abraham Lincoln

NS-3 Thomas Jefferson

NS-5 Benjamin Franklin

NS-6 Alexander Hamilton

NS-7 James Madison

NS-8 Samuel Adams

NS-9 John Hancock

NS-10 John Jay

NS-11 Patrick Henry

NS-12 Richard Henry Lee

NS-14 Robert Morris

NS-15 Peyton Randolph

NS-16 John Marshall

NS-17 Roger Sherman

NS-18 Thomas Edison

NS-19 Franklin D. Roosevelt

NS-20 Eleanor Roosevelt

NS-21 Henry Ford

NS-22 Theodore Roosevelt

NS-23 John F. Kennedy

NS-24 Harriet Tubman

NS-25 Samuel Clemens

NS-26 Orville Wright

NS-27 Wilbur Wright

NS-28 Amelia Earhart

NS-29 Frederick Douglass

NS-30 Susan B. Anthony

NS-31 Booker T. Washington

NS-32 Sacagawea

NS-33 Meriwether Lewis

NS-34 William Clark

NS-35 Christopher Carson

NS-36 Andrew Jackson

NS-37 Helen Keller

NS-38 Chuck Yeager

NS-39 Martha Washington

NS-40 Catherine Beecher

NS-42 Daniel Boone

NS-43 Frank Lloyd Wright Sr.

NS-44 John James Audubon

NS-45 Georgia O’Keeffe

NS-46 Jackie Robinson

NS-47 John Muir

NS-48 Ralph Waldo Emerson

NS-50 Jonas Salk

NS-51 Davy Crockett

NS-52 Woodrow Wilson

NS-53 Clarence Birdseye

NS-54 John Harvey Kellogg

NS-55 W.E.B. Du Bois

NS-56 Andrew Carnegie

NS-57 Ida B. Wells

NS-58 Stephen Foster

NS-59 J. Robert Oppenheimer

NS-60 John Pemberton

NS-61 Harvey Cushing

NS-62 Robert H. Goddard

NS-63 George Eastman

NS-66 Ernest Hemingway

NS-67 John Steinbeck

NS-68 George Gallup

NS-69 Cyrus McCormick

NS-70 F. Scott Fitzgerald

NS-71 Tuskegee Airmen

NS-72 Edgar Allen Poe

NS-73 Alexander Graham Bell

NS-74 Edward R. Murrow

NS-75 Orson Welles

NS-76 William Boeing

NS-77 Crazy Horse

NS-78 Noah Webster

NS-79 James Gordon Bennett Sr.

NS-80 Tecumseh

NS-81 Francis Crick

NS-83 Howard Hughes

NS-84 Cornelius Vanderbilt

NS-85 Babe Ruth

NS-86 James Naismith

NS-87 Thomas Paine

NS-88 Walt Whitman

NS-89 Eli Whitney

NS-90 P.T. Barnum

NS-91 Henry Clay

NS-92 George C. Marshall

NS-93 Rachel Carson

NS-94 John Dewey

NS-95 Harriet Beecher Stowe

NS-97 Frederick Law Olmsted

NS-98 James K. Polk

(Through the Years)

TTY-1 Joe Morgan

TTY-4 George Brett

TTY-5 Robin Yount

TTY-6 Cal Ripken Jr.

TTY-7 Dwight Gooden

TTY-8 Rickey Henderson

TTY-11 Greg Maddux

TTY-12 Ken Griffey Jr.

TTY-14 Pedro Martinez

TTY-18 Alex Rodriguez

TTY-19 Albert Pujols

TTY-20 Mike Trout

TTY-21 Clayton Kershaw

TTY-23 Aaron Judge

TTY-24 Ronald Acuña Jr.

TTY-25 Shohei Ohtani

1976 Player Icons Holofoil (HAVE:) 76PI-6, 76PI-18, 76PI-21

1976 Redefined Holofoil (HAVE:) 76R10, 76R-23

1976 Retirees (HAVE:) 76R-14

1976 Retirees Holofoil (HAVE:) None yet!

Award Winners (HAVE:) AW-8

Award Winners Holofoil (HAVE:) AW-4

Bicentennial Stars (HAVE:) BS-2

Bicentennial Stars Holofoil (HAVE:) None yet!

Dark Blue (HAVE:) 2, 13, 14, 23, 25, 36, 39, 43, 45, 48, 53, 54, 73, 77, 80, 82, 85, 99, 104, 117, 133, 138, 144, 145, 146, 161, 169, 170, 181, 188, 204, 209, 221, 223, 228, 234, 236, 237, 241, 256, 262, 263, 268, 273, 275, 280, 281, 284, 285, 287, 297, 298, 305, 308, 314, 323, 326, 335, 337, 339, 342, 351, 352, 356, 359, 373, 379, 381, 383, 384, 386, 390, 394, 396, 401, 408, 411, 412, 423, 434, 435, 450, 454, 463, 464, 470, 471, 473, 474, 477, 478, 485, 492, 493, 498, 501, 504, 505, 509, 512, 514, 516, 522, 526, 527, 528, 531, 533, 535, 536, 539, 550, 556, 563, 567, 568, 569, 572, 575, 579, 581, 583, 588, 590, 592, 596, 600, 602, 604, 606, 608, 611, 613, 616, 618, 619, 623, 636, 638, 642, 644, 646, 648, 649, 663, 665, 666, 668, 672, 675, 680, 686, 689, 692, 693, 694, 695, 696, 699, 701, 705, 708, 710, 715

Dark Green (HAVE:) 13, 22, 23, 24, 26, 32, 46, 54, 70, 78, 91, 93, 114, 130, 133, 137, 145, 146, 149, 150, 152, 168, 195, 201, 204, 213, 214, 216, 231, 256, 264, 269, 270, 272, 277, 282, 299, 305, 306, 311, 317, 319, 334, 341, 343, 347, 351, 352, 356, 371, 376, 381, 385, 390, 397, 400, 401, 408, 415, 422, 432, 436, 438, 442, 450, 453, 457, 464, 466, 476, 497

Dark Yellow (HAVE:) 25, 63, 122, 123, 136, 159, 207, 299, 325, 351, 476

Light Purple (HAVE:) 11, 27, 47, 85, 150, 151, 157, 173, 185, 188, 290, 303, 330, 370, 378, 401, 473, 489, 490

Red (HAVE:) 27, 42, 72, 113, 115, 127, 130, 137, 186, 208, 213, 237, 242, 264, 271, 277, 279, 288, 305, 316, 319, 325, 330, 341, 344, 364, 381, 435, 442, 445, 456, 460, 461, 485

Heritage 25th Anniversary Holofoil (HAVE:) H25-14, H25-23

Perfect 10s (HAVE:) P10-9, P10-11

Perfect 10s Holofoil (HAVE:) None yet!

Rookie Performers (HAVE:) RP-10

Rookie Performers Holofoil (HAVE:) RP-12

Through the Years Holofoil (HAVE:) TTY-1, TTY-2, TTY-10, TTY-21, TTY-22

Undefeated (HAVE:) U-5

Undefeated Holofoil (HAVE:) None yet!

1976 Buybacks (HAVE:) 619

Bicentennial /200 (HAVE:) 444, 627, 717

SP Variations (HAVE:) 725 (Flipped Bat)

[updated 10/24/26]