Mid-Week PWE Round-Up

A long lost Whitey and more from a couple of familiar Dodger-loving faces.

There have been a couple of old-school '80s variations on my want list for quite some time. It took me a long time to get the "Terry" version of the 1985 Donruss Terry Pendleton card (as opposed to his evil twin "Jeff") and now with a PWE that arrived from gcrl around the beginning of the year, I have an elusive Whitey Herzog variation from 1983.

The more common version of this card has Whitey's "Record as Manager" with a yellow background to match his bio info at the top of the card. I can't say I spent a ton of time searching for this card exactly, but I'm very happy to cross it off my list.

The Hamm King also increased his lead in the race while adding two more Hamms to the Hamm box.

Next up in the not-very-timely review of small envelopes from the first several months of the year is a pouch from, you guessed it: Night Owl Cards! There was a really nice variety in this generous package sent to the west coast in late March, including a numbered card of former prospect (and former Colorado Rockie) Elehuris Montero.

The older they get, the more fun these types of duo insert cards featuring players from opposing teams get. It's fun to look back on a time where we were on the edges of our seats to see what Albert Pujols might do to Mark Prior (or vice versa.)

I wish these '76 Revisited inserts from last year's Topps Heritage set were a lot easier to pull, or that the design was somehow part of its own set. I'd rather collect something that looks like this than, say, Topps Archives in its current state.

Night Owl tossed a few more Ginter minis my way, including a rookie year one of a guy who really borked up his career.

Just when it seemed like people were giving up on the stashes of Jordan Walker cards they were holding on to, the guy has started playing like an All-Star. Is it sustainable? Is the Cardinals relative success in 2026 sustainable? It's tough to say. I still expect the Cardinals to lose a lot of games.

Is there anything more fun than a food issue card? What about a vintage food issue card? This one looks like it was cut from the box by a very intoxicated person (or perhaps, more likely, a young person), but that just makes it all the more special. I need way more of this stuff in my life.

The last set of cards came over in another envelope in April from gcrl, who once again sent a fun Whitey Herzog card. This one is an embossed buyback card that was apparently inserted into the 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites product. If you're having trouble spotting it, the embossment is in the lower right corner on the back of Whitey's red jersey. There's a bit less of a permanence to how they mark these buybacks compared to the foil stamps that are common in more recent sets. Does anyone prefer these?

Also included in the envelope was a four-pack of Cardinals minis from the most recent Allen & Ginter set. It's a nice looking group.

The flagship Topps set has been inundated with parallels, the number of which seems to be growing at an alarming rate since the Fanatics takeover. I have more I could say on this topic, but will anyone seriously be able to identify what most of these parallels are supposed to be in just a few years?

Here's another one of those tougher-than-they-should-be-to-pull Heritage inserts.

Postage stamps have not actually been stamps in quite a long time, and now you can even have cards featuring stamps that are actually stickers. This is from the 2023 Topps Heritage set before they really started messing with all of the inserts and parallels.

When I originally started the collect these Propaganda inserts from the 2009 Topps Update set, the idea of having propaganda style posters of current MLB players seemed like a fun nod to the past. Now these are just kind of unsettling, but I still feel the need to finish these off.

Thanks to the often generous Dodgers bloggers for sending this stuff my way. I always appreciate a nice surprise PWE.

Cards from Oren and a Final Contest Reminder!

 

Don't forget to fill out your bracket! And let's check out some terrific cards from Oren. 

 

We're less than 24 hours away from the start of the big NCAA men's basketball tournament, which means it's time to get those brackets filled out. We're still taking sign-ups down to the wire, so check it out if you haven't already!

After the jump, because there is a giant amount of images to load, let's check out some cards from a trade with reader Oren that was put together over the Christmas holidays.

The Beginning of a Good Thing

My collection of the NFL's best rookie is off to a nice start thanks to @bgmartin76 box breaks. 

 

I try not to let anyone know that I collect football cards of any kind, but Oregon Ducks cards are my weakness as is well documented here. When the chance arose to jump in on some cheap box breaks hosted by Ben's Cards and Collectibles that featured 2020 NFL product, I also couldn't resist. Guess who my new favorite NFL team is? No, it's not really the (Los Angeles?!) Chargers, but for collecting purposes it really is whichever team Justin Herbert is suiting up for. At the time these first breaks happened, I was just trying to snag my first card or two of his. Now that we're at the end of the season, Herbert is in the books with one of the best rookie campaigns of all-time for a quarterback.

There was more than football (and Herbert) cards for me, however. I had a rare opportunity to claim the Cardinals in a couple of baseball spots. Usually those spots are already spoken for. Having not gone to a card show in about a year, I haven't had the chance to dig through boxes to find shiny Chrome cards for my team needs, so I've had to increasingly rely on breaks like these.

Ben even broke some basketball boxes at one point. He must be some kind of wizard. I had never seen this Aficionado Meteor insert before, so it was a really cool addition. You can tell this set is old as Dame is still wearing the Adidas jersey.

Here's another Dame from that 2016-17 Panini Aficionado set. I believe this is also an insert.
 

It's back to baseball here with a die cut Big Mac insert from the 2020 Topps Chrome set. Honest question here: Bonds and Clemens aside, how many players on the current Hall of Fame ballot were demonstrably better than Mark McGwire's peak? (I'm not actually advocating for McGwire's inclusion. I just find it interesting. Besides, I'd rather celebrate Scott Rolen and complain about Jim Edmonds getting booted off the ballot.)

The Jerk Store!

I feel like I picked up a ton of prospect Cardinals cards in 2020. Hopefully they will be fun to look at a few years down the road.

I also snagged the Eagles in a couple of the football breaks. My Eagles fandom really runs hot and cold (you can certainly guess what temperature it's at right now), but once I saw Randall Cunningham on the checklist, I knew I needed it.

I wish Alshon Jeffery had managed to stay healthy. Every team needs a huge receiver to bail you out once in awhile. This card is numbered to 100.

As mentioned, however, my favorite additions were my new Justin Herbert cards. It doesn't hurt that he's still in the Oregon uniform on these particular cards, but I'm sure I'll end up with quite a few Herberts in Charger blue... whichever shade they're happening to wear in a given week.