Not Quite Junk

No junk here. 

It's pretty amusing that Jaybarkerfan's Junk is named the way it is, because I'm pretty sure that no one who has ever received a package from him has ever found anything resembling junk. The SuperTrader founder who has, apparently, temporarily given up on the Atlanta squadron sent along a package that was basically 90% serial-numbered, shiny, gold-plated, etc. Quality.

Before I knew that 2002 Upper Deck Plus was ever a set, I discovered that there are both hobby and retail versions, each serial numbered to a baffling 1125 total. Did Upper Deck decide that there are exactly 2250 baseball card fans out in the world?

David Freese has a lot of baseball cards commensurate to the grand total of his contributions on the field in his MLB career, but he earned them. He really did. For a period of time where things really count the most, he was a monster on the field.

HELLO, I AM RANDAL WITH ONE L! I AM ON A BASEBALL CARD! HOW ARE YOU?!

This is our second Mullinax appearance in as many months on this blog, which is exciting business!

Stephen Piscotty, professional hitter.

I received a trio of these fancy blue 2005 Donruss Craftsmen Rolen cards, all numbered to 2000. As I've mentioned a few times, serial numbered cards are something I'll never consider a true duplicate, so... basically I'm a Cardinals hoarder.

As I'm edging closer to my return to Safeco Field to watch the Cardinals, here's another So Taguchi card from his MLB rookie season. It'll be the first time since So's debut that I've seen the Cardinals in person on the west coast.

Finally, here's a Yadi card that will be added to Erin's collection. It's a ghostly card. It's a card of dubious distinction. Panini is trying to call this a "test proof", but I'm pretty sure they weren't testing anything other than their gold plated stamp machine when they decided to crank out 49 of these.

Cards from the Bayou

A huge haul from @Teejnola includes another player I had to Google. 

My mailbox has been full of great stuff from Junkies lately. Unlike other junkies I'm familiar with, The Junior Junkie probably didn't have to dig through the reycling bins and scraps at the local construction site to find things of value for this deal.

Some really nice additions to the Carp collection were on hand, including a 2006 MLB Artifacts jersey swatch card and this black bordered mini from the 2008 Allen & Ginter set. This set is still my favorite of all of the Ginter sets because it was the first one I ever got my grubby mitts into.

I've been working on getting a better handle on cataloging my cards lately and have found that the Signature Rookies cards are really tough to find good info about. They tend to come in either "promo" versions, signed versions and unsigned versions, all of which look nearly identical and come with a not-quite serial number. Obviously, this isn't signed, but I'm never going to find it on any of the websites I frequent even though supposedly 5000 of them were printed. That said, I love getting early Chris Carpenter cards. (Not Cris Carpenter... that's another guy.)

This is an absolutely fantastic "gold mirror" parallel Jim Edmonds card, numbered 10/25. It's one of the better additions to my Jimmy Baseball collection of late.

I think we're just about at a stage of Jaime Garcia's career where we can expect things out of him for the first time in pretty much ever. It's nice. Just like this purple refractor is nice.

I'm familiar with Kevin Joseph in that he made some appearances here and there for the 2002 Cardinals team (the one that traded for Scott Rolen only to have him break in the playoffs) and the fact that somewhere I think I have another one of his autos or serial numbered rookie cards.

Ray Lankford is the King, man! Pacific did a lot of weird stuff, but the blinged out die cuts are pretty fun to look at even now.

Luke Weaver seems like he is destined to be another gem in the recently successful pipeline of Cardinals prospects.

This Matt Adams card is thick as a brick! I could probably shatter your car window and steal your spare change with it. It's definitely thicker than some entire packs of cards.

Mullinax... Mullinax... hmm... Jacob Mullinax? Doesn't ring a bell. There's not much out there about him, but he was apparently a 14th round pick that was out of pro baseball after just two seasons. Of course, that's two more than I played.

Purple Piscotty! He's gotten off to a nice start as the every day right fielder.

And we say goodbye for now with an early Pujols. One of these days I'll finally suck it up and track down a rookie year card, but for now I've got my 2002 cards to deal with.