More Jerseys and Autos from Oren

 

Reader Oren strikes again with an amazing collection of memorabilia cards and autographs. 

 

I'm not sure where he finds all of this great stuff, but I am always excited to put together a trade with Oren. This one even topped the last package! 

Andrew Knizner has had a really nice season as the #2 option at catcher with St. Louis, having found a bit of power that we hadn't really seen from him at the big league level.

For all of their shortcomings, Panini does put out some nice looking memorabilia cards from time to time. This dual relic from last year's Diamond Kings set is one of those, at least for me. It looks like last year might have been the last for the Diamond Kings set, as Panini really scaled back their baseball releases after losing their MLBPA license. Has anyone seen or heard of anything else coming out this year besides Donruss and Prizm? I think Diamond Kings would have been a much better fit for a bunch of retired players than Prizm was.

This time, Dylan Carlson shares the spotlight on a Panini jersey card with Alex Kirilloff. Time will tell whether either of these guys will ever fully live up to their earlier prospect hype.

This is probably my favorite of the whole lot. Whitey still has a nice signature for someone who turned 91 last year when the 2022 Topps Archives set was released.

Framed mini cards are best known as being an Allen & Ginter thing, but it's easy to forget that Topps was doing this before 2006 when the first modern A&G set came to be.

Speaking of Allen & Ginter, this card is very... white! I do prefer the mini memorabilia cards to these.

Yadi jersey cards are a bit tougher to come by than your average Cardinal, so I was pretty excited when this card popped out. They even did the rare thing where the jersey color matches the photo on the card.

This one doesn't have a memorabilia swatch or signature on it, but it's still a nice numbered Molina card.

There were also a few non-baseball cards included, like this dual jersey card of former Eagles starting RB Miles Sanders.

Zach Collins rocking a Panini headband?! I didn't know that I needed this, but I'm glad to have it!

The late Caleb Swanigan was part of the same draft as Zach Collins. Hoops autographs usually are on stickers, but they typically have a nice design and this is no exception.

Five Good Ones

Quality Cardinals cards from a quality Cardinals fan. 

 

When you're a team collector, you surely know the pain of ending up with heaps of doubles when certain people are always sending you their unwanted cards featuring your favorite squad. This is why it's always nice to have someone to trade with that's on your side, so to speak. Every so often I scour the collection of All Cardinals All The Time in hopes of offloading some of my own doubles, and I've had plenty of good Cardinals needs sent back my way in kind. Here's just a few of the Cards cards I received back in September.

This is one of those fancy "metallic snowflake" parallels from Topps Holiday. I'm not sure what makes them "metallic" - is it just the glitter? Nevertheless, I am compelled to collect all of these as the checklist demands it. How much will we see from Jordan Hicks in the future? Will there be any baseball at all in the future?

If I'm not mistaken, this is one of those retail chain exclusive colored parallels that I never see to be able to find on my own. Was this only available at Dollar Tree? Walgreen's? I know I haven't seen cards at a Dollar Tree in at least five years, and I only once stumbled across the fabled yellow (Topps) parallels at a Walgreen's store even though their pharmacies are all over the place in my neck of the woods. I need more elusive color parallels that are only available at certain stores!

Here's a nice little grey jersey swatch from Jack Flaherty on the always welcome 1986 design that was used through the 2021 Topps flagship sets.

We finish things up with an autographed card of the Cardinals backup catcher. This is on the 1985 design, which means it was inserted into one of the 2020 Topps sets. I didn't expect these to be signed "on card", so this is extra nice.

Standing Tall!

A #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax brings home some minor league guys and a new toy. 

 

I took a brief pause on group breaks for a bit there (how many versions of Bowman do we need crammed down our throats?) but was back at it recently for a minor league box break from your friendly neighborhood charity breaker Crackin' Wax. As has been well documented here, I'm a big fan of Topps Heritage and the concept translates reasonably well to Topps' minor league offerings.

Even though they came around in different eras, I'm always going to confuse this guy with Chance Caple. What are the chances (ha!) that the same organization gets two different baseball players with names like this?

Elehuris Montero was one of the players sent to Colorado in the Arenado deal. I'm not sure if he figures into the Rockies plans at this point, but he was one of the players I'd actually heard of in that strange trade.

Andrew Knizner (KIZZ-nur... don't ask me why) is a better known player at this point, and looks to have a good shot at landing the Cardinals backup catcher spot this season without much in the way of veteran help in the organization. The age old dilemma has been what to do if you're a Cardinals catcher and your name isn't Yadier, but if Knizner has any chance of being the team's catcher of the future, it would be nice to see him play at least once a week.

Card stands (is that what they're called) are all the rage these days, as people, typically those that sell cards online, tend to prefer them over straight scans because they can show off more of a card physical characteristics. People also like to use them just to show off, of course, because people tend to like to show off. Of course, I immediately went out and took a low res photo to show off this new (randomly free) piece of merch. I'm sure I can do better next time with my photo skills.

Sterling & Platinum

This week's cracked wax from @CrackinWax features only the shiniest on this #CrackinWaxMailDay 

Bowman Sterling is one of the latest Topps brands to be revived for these card-thirsty years. I believe the short-lived brand name was actually revived in 2019, but I completely missed the boat on those. It's not one of those products that gives you a lot bang (i.e. cards) for your buck. Instead, it promises the other kind of bang that some collectors enjoy. Still, I wanted to at least sample the stuff, because I really can't always help myself. I ended up grabbing a spot o' Sterling in one of the latest Crackin' Wax box breaks, along with a few other things.

I just ended up with the two base cards for my team, but this Kwang-Hyun Kim card could someday be a nice rookie card in my collection with the way people... what, okay, fine, it's a pitcher. Apparently nobody likes pitchers. It's weird to learn this so late in my (baseball card) life. What do you cash-blowing people have against pitchers? They're important dudes!
 

I can only really tell the different years of Topps Gold Label apart from their player selection, so I know that this is from 2016 because it features Stephen Piscotty and an RC logo. Otherwise, I really have no idea what the difference is between this and the last few years of this set. It always looks nice, though.

I just checked the numbers today thanks to a Night Owl tweet, and it turns out that this is my 805th unique Ozzie Smith card. He still has a ways to go to catch that pesky Pujols in my collection, but at least the number of Pujols Cardinals cards still being produced has dwindled over the years. Of course, I expect this trend to reverse itself not long after Albert retires.

It's never one of my favorite releases, but I just couldn't resist another Bowman Platinum break. This time I landed an auto of the Cardinals catcher of the future, Andrew Knizner. Of course, we all know what happened to the last guy who we said was the catcher of the future.

I'm not sure that Yadi is going anywhere right now. I'm knocking on wood, of course.