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.

Cracked Cardinals? (That's All I've Got)

Cardinals cards and more from @acrackedbat migrate northwest for the winter. 

Last fall, I decided to part ways with a J.T. Realmuto Topps Heritage autograph (on-card, of course!) that I had been hanging on to awhile. I really like the on-card autos in the set, but with Realmuto's growing presence in the game and my need to return a little generosity in the world, I decided to send the card over to a home that it was more suited for. That's where Julie from A Cracked Bat came in. Some day, I'll get motivated to acquire some more Heritage autos that are more suited to my collection. I think I owe myself at least one.

Julie sent over a bunch of Topps Heritage High Numbers needs from the most recent set, including Cardinals cards and set fillers. By mid-summer, the flamethrowing Jordan Hicks was starting to show up in every set. This isn't, unfortunately, something that tends to last for most relievers.

Last year, Topps paid tribute to their 1983 set with some of their inserts in the flagship set, and Chrome'd up versions in their (well, duh) Chrome set.

More Marcell Ozuna (x2)! Here is the Cardinals left fielders on a part of parallels of inserts (what?!) from last year's Topps Fire set. Nice.

Low numbered relief pitcher alert! Low numbered relief pitcher alert! Kevin Siegrist, who was drafted in like the millionth round some years ago, doesn't even really fit in frame here. Does Panini have any idea what they're doing with their fancy high end baseball stuff?

Here's one of those awkward greyscale Honus Bonus cards that someone on the internet quickly shut down back in 2017. I love these for some reason. I guess if you're going to go with an unlicensed product, it's cool to go super weird with it.

Finally, as mentioned, there were plenty of 2018 Heritage High Numbers cards to go around. Hotshot rookie Juan Soto and the perpetually unsigned Bryce Harper are almost doing the "Spider-Man pointing at himself" meme thing here, which would be pretty weird because they're not the same guy. Soto might be the superstar outfielder of the future in Washington, if there is even a Washington left in the future.