The new Cardinals... maybe not the same as the old Cardinals.
I've tried not to dwell on this too much, but my interest in baseball in general has fallen off of a cliff in recent times. When you combine this with the streamlining of baseball card products in the Fanatics era, I could also say my interest in baseball cards is also starting to crater. I can't dispute the idea that the Cardinals lack of success on the field since the end of the 2022 season has contributed to this, but I still think I would have most of those negative feelings even if the Cardinals had been playing more at the level of their 2010s rosters.
While I won't get into my feelings about the state of MLB in general right here, I will show off some cards that Night Owl sent over back in July. Remember the summer? I miss it already. I guess I'm just having those December feelings right now.
I haven't really prepared any changes in the way I'm going to consume baseball games (or not). I haven't really dramatically changed how I collect cards, either. I'm still going to watch Cardinals games, of course, especially as long as there's free MLB TV access to T-Mobile subscribers, although it appears that deal's days are probably numbered with ESPN's pending acquisition of the platform. (Gross.) There are interesting players on the Cardinals roster on any given day, including speed demon Victor Scott II, shown here on the first "true photo" variation I've added to my collection. I wish these weren't such a tough pull, honestly.
I do nearly all of my trading via TCDB and have managed to add a bunch more Cardinals Topps gold parallels in the past year. The original gold bordered look still reigns supreme, as shown here on Miguel Cairo's card from 2004 Topps.
Will Panini continue to run out its zombie baseball products in 2025? What about the other sports? I know that Panini has a lucrative contract with the WNBA that has been extended by several years, so the company itself won't be going away any time soon. Fanatics supposedly has no interest in acquiring them, and I'm doubtful that they would suddenly start cranking out fully licensed Donruss cards even if they did. If anything, Fanatics seems to want to focus on it's core brands and do the laziest thing possible by applying the same design templates to a million cards a year.
Considering Paul Goldschmidt's Hall of Fame track and the six seasons he spent with St. Louis, I don't think the Goldschmidt want list will ever have a finite endpoint, even though he is no longer a Cardinal.
With Willson Contreras moving to 1B this past season, Pedro Pagés has actually caught the most games the past couple of seasons for the Cards. The entire catching situation is a bit murky right now, though, with Ivan Herrera showing star potential as a hitter and next to zero potential as a backstop. Toss in a couple of prospects on the rise and a cult hero in Yohel Pozo, and you've got a quandary on your hands.
JJ Wetherholt is the prospect of the moment. I honestly thought he would get a late call-up last season (maybe in the 40-man September active roster era), and he certainly has a chance to make it difficult to keep him down much longer if he has a big spring. Will the Cardinals be dreadful again next year? Absolutely. The most frustrating thing about this rebuild is that they should have started it years ago, if that was truly their intentional all along.
Night Owl also tossed in some more set-filling needs, including these inserts from the 2025 Topps Heritage set. Of course, they look very similar to cards from other Heritage and Archives sets, but Fanatics (or whoever) apparently decided they needed yet another insert set of random players on old designs.
We end things in true Night Owl trade envelope fashion with a few more minis from Allen & Ginter sets. Each of these names are of players I haven't thought about in a few years.
