2x3 Hits

All hits, all the time.

I just got home from the Blazers game (big comeback win against the Charlotte Horn-cats) a little while ago, so this is going to be a brief one. I got hit 'n run by JediJeff again and thought I'd show off some of the goodies of a recent envelope I received. He struck repack gold, so to speak, with some autographed cards he pulled and decided to pass along the good fortune to me. This included an on-card Chris Perez autograph from the ill conceived 2008 Topps Stadium Club set. This is the same set that Erin pulled a Jeff Clement (!) redemption card from which took over a year to fulfill if I remember correctly. Maybe it took Clement that long to realize he used to be a baseball player?

My scanner did something really weird to Matt Holliday's name on this 2014 Topps Chrome refractor. This is Matt Holliday #237 for me.

Another repack auto, this one of Kyle McClellan. This is actually a big deal to me, all kidding aside, as I'm trying to collect a certified autograph of every member of the 2006 and 2011 World Series winning teams. K-Mac was a starter for much of 2011, so he was able to contribute that season in ways that go beyond his one postseason inning that year.

Oh, the wonderful blockiness of an Xfractor! It'll be interesting to see if Rosenthal keeps his job as closer going in to next season. Mike Matheny was pretty loyal to his guy throughout this past season, but next season is a new season for a reason.

This one is really nice! Topps has really stepped it up with the inserts in Chrome recently. I actually obtained another one of these via Listia recently, so I have it up for grabs if there are any offers out there. I think I know of at least one Wainwright collector who isn't strictly a Cardinals fan.

Snobbery

Russ Adams has more trophies than you.

Earlier in the year, when Topps Series 1 was still fresh and new in everyone's minds, a few people put down some claims on some fresh cards that I had posted about after opening those first few packs. One of the claimants was The Baseball Card Snob, who responded by hitting up my want lists, something I highly recommend.

The Rookie Cup annals hold the names of many stars and players with solid careers, but occasionally Topps rolled out a trophy to a guy or two that ended up being quite a clunker. For every Justin Verlander or Prince Fielder type, there's going to be someone like Russ Adams out there. In fact, the 2006 Rookie Cup team looks a lot more impressive in 2014 than the 2005 team.

I really need to work on the 2006 Bazooka set. This means I need to buy some more packs. Packs are full of inserts and parallels, which are what I like the most about this particular set. The base cards are nothing super.

Well, sometimes your Ring of Honor includes a LOOGY who threw a total of one inning across two appearances in the World Series. Thanks, Topps, for honoring Tyler Johnson.

I've been getting the occasional Philadelphia Eagles card from traders lately, which is nice, as long as people don't go super overboard with this. Anthony Toney was a backup RB in Tecmo Super Bowl who would occasionally be deployed whenever Keith Byars was hurt and/or if someone was in 'BAD' condition. He probably did something in real life as well, but this card represents pretty well how a slow backup back would fair in an 8 bit game situation.

'Tis the Season (For a Trade Post)

Happy holidays! I hope you're all watching the Holiday Bowl right now. No? Okay, well, settle in for some light reading instead. Jeff from 2 x 3 Heroes is giving away some cards to celebrate the season and he also recently sent me a nice box of cards as part of a big swap.

The retail exclusive Heritage cards have been hard to come by, for me at least, so it was nice to see several in this trade. I am trying not to get the sense of dread I usually get about completing every Heritage set, but here it is almost 2013 and I have so many more cards to go for this one.

This one is headed for my Cardinals binders instead of my (yet to be assembled) 2012 Heritage binder.

Oh, look at those fluffy little clouds.

Between Heritage and Archives, this was the year of the floating head revival. I wonder if we'll see more floating heads in 2013. I don't know how I feel about this. Apparently, neither does Dustin.

Also included in the box were plenty of Ginter goodies, like Marie Curie here.

It's an oft-injured short print. No, make that a short print of an oft-injured player.

I wonder where this treaty would fall in the All-Time Treaty Power Rankings. Perhaps some website somewhere has a slideshow I could refer to.

Oh, and there were Cardinal goodies in the box as well. Were there ever! A bunch of minis were to be had, and I picked my favorite one: this Chris Carpenter from the Ginter revival debut set in 2006.

The Topps base Matt Holliday card was one of my favorite cards of 2012, so it was exciting to get the Opening Day blue parallel version. Serial numbered with the good foil stuff.

I am not sure what happened to the rest of this card, but I swear it's really there. K-Mac is a man without a team right now after he spent most of 2012 on the DL.

Most McGwire Cardinals cards look hilariously dated. Not dated in a good way, like '50s Topps cards.

Finally, there were a couple of cards for the Jim Edmonds collection thrown in, including this 1995 Leaf thing.

And there was also this Metal thing. So metal.

Merry Christmas! It was quite a year for this blog (and trade posts).