New Year, Old Cards

A big bunch of cards to peruse.

I think I've hit a first here at the blog where I busted on past Blogger's built-in character limit for tags. I like to tag each individual player whenever I show off a card that's notable (typically anything serial-numbered, signed or containing a memorabilia piece of some sort), but there was no way to do that with this bunch of cards from buckstorecards that I received back in September unless I broke this up into several posts, which isn't something I typically do. As daunting as it was to post about this massive, impressive batch, it would have been even more unwieldy to deal with it in multiple parts.

Off we go, sans tags for the Ducks cards (the bulk of these)...

I don't recall "PRESS PROOF" actually being stamped on any other so-called "press proof" parallels from Panini that I've seen before. Tots is still a free agent somehow. I wouldn't mind seeing him come back to St. Louis to be in the outfield mix.

Nick Foles cards are always going to be welcome in my collection, as he helped the Eagles to their first Super Bowl title.

Much more after the jump!

It's Inevitable

Cards from buckstorecards turn the heat up!

We're passed the point of no return and there's no coming back. Summer is inevitable. It's busy. It's impossible to stop. There's a lot going on right now, both in and out of the sports realm. Baseball arms are falling off, as they are wont to do. Video game consoles are being cranked out to the masses. Rock bands are doing their band things. While I have a minute to stop and take a breath, let's check out another bundle o' cards from the Dollar Store (note: not actually a dollar store.)

It's a side-by-side look at a pair of Victor Scott Stadium Club rookie cards. On the left is the sepia parallel and on the right is the base card. I'm not totally sold on Scott as being a future cornerstone of the franchise out in CF yet, but he's swiped enough bases to stick around my fantasy team's lineup at least.

Here's another pair of Cardinals cards, this time from different eras. I was surprised to learn that I didn't yet own this Co-Signers Chris Carpenter card. Cards from the '00s are starting to become tougher to come by these days.

I also landed a copy of one of these wacky Topps Tek cards. It's some sort of "blue rainbow diffractor" parallel (whatever that means) with a print run of just 75 copies.

Kwame Evans Jr. kicks off the duck-billed portion of the trade package. Evans carved out a nice role as a sixth man type last season and is expected to be back with the team's second season in the Big 10 after making it to the round of 32 in March Madness.

I also got hit up with this two-packs of Oregon autos from the 2023 Topps Chrome McDonald's All-American set. I don't have a formal collection of Oregon women's basketball player cards (yet!) aside from a very tiny amount of Sabrina Ionescu cards, but I will definitely start looking for more and more of these especially with the WNBA set to return to Portland very soon.

A 20+ CFL card?! Yes, please! McCullough took over as the lead back at Oregon towards the end of my time in Eugene, and he doesn't have many cards, so this is a treat.

Of course, this is a much newer CFL card (check the date!) of another Ducks alum. Upper Deck started "game dating" their photos in some sets back in the latter half of the '90s, and I really wish that this had become more of a common practice over the years as it's always nice to know what specific game a given photo comes from. Of course, with most of the stuff that Topps puts out these days, they've completely washed out or cropped out the backgrounds so as to make the event they came from fairly meaningless.

(New) Leaf puts out some weird stuff, but here's a perfectly colored autograph that goes quite well with the green on Breeland's uniform here.

I just discovered recently that Panini put out an "Unparalleled" brand NFL set for a number of years that closely mirrors the Revolution brand they use for basketball. I'm not sure why they chose different brand names here, but it's always tough to figure out what Panini is doing.

Speaking of which, Chris Boucher seems to be standing in front of some sort of planet-shaped energy orb here on this parallel Recon card numbered to 199.

It's a token Blues card! Shattenkirk was with the Blues during a good chunk of time in the 2010's and just announced his retirement late last year.

The last card up is one of the best, with a nice addition to my Randall Cunningham PC. This one is from 2012, but I've noticed he's found his way to some more recent checklists, which is always a nice thing.

Contest Update and More Cards from Padrographs

Who is going to win this thing? 

 

It's finally baseball season and that feels great. It also means that we're just about to wrap up another year of March Radness. Before we get into the cards proper, let's see where we're at with the contest.

With just the Final Four games remaining, it's a pretty tight race for the top. The top three (Brandon L, Jordan L, and Andy R) are also the top three in max possible points, but there are quite a few brackets nipping at their heels. There was a fairly diverse selection of champions picked by everyone, but surprisingly most brackets' winners have made it all the way to the semifinal games. My champ is still alive as well, but everything else about my bracket has it stuck in the dregs of the standings.

Let's check out the cards from Rod of Padrographs. This is one of last year's holiday-themed parallels, but it looks more like some sort of tablecloth pattern to me.

I do like a good bat chunk, authentic or otherwise. I know we all need to assume the worst with cards like these, but I still like to collect them.

The second Goldy of the package is this blue prism refractor from the 2023 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary release. Are they doing this again this year? (And by this year, I mean last year, I guess?) I hope not. It just doesn't really appeal to me, even though I've always enjoyed this particular (1954) design.

When Victor Scott (the sequel!) debuted on the Opening Day roster last season, I noticed that I had zero cards of his. No draft cards, no minor league cards... nothing. It's nice that his cards are finally starting to trickle in, especially thanks to releases from late last year.

Here's a pair of Chrome parallels from last year's Stadium Club release. A legend of the game and a future Hall of Famer.

I don't know how much longer Topps is going to be rolling with the Pro Debut set, but it looks like they once again made Chrome parallels like this one.

I know it's baseball season and all, but I still haven't properly celebrated the Eagles big Super Bowl victory here on the blog. Fortunately, there were some nice recent Eagles cards in the package for this very occasion. This is some sort of orange parallel from a Panini Illusions release featuring QB1.

This one is a black parallel of the Eagles big (literally) wide receiver star.

Speaking of big, this is one of those silly "big head" cards that bothers me a lot. Maybe I just don't like fun. The weird thing about these is that they only increased Hurts' head size just enough to be disconcerting. I've seen bigger is what I'm saying.

The last one is a pretty slick looking Prizm parallel of Haason Reddick, a guy who was not on the recent Super Bowl winning team but was a key contributor on defense for the two previous years, including their big run to the Super Bowl in 2022/23.

Thanks again to Rod, whose pile of cards keeps accumulating slowly. I swear I'll drop it in the mail one of these days.

Surprise Visit from the DK

 

...no, not the Donkey Kong. 

 

A few months back, I got a surprise knock on the door from local area not-blogger The Diamond King, who dropped off an incredibly generous selection of Cardinals goodies. I had included my childhood (H)akeem Olajuwon rookie in a mailer sent his way sometime in the past year or so, but certainly wasn't expecting anything in return. We're lucky to have a semi-monthly card show in the area where I suspect at least some of these cards were procured from, and it reminds me that I wanted to make a concerted effort to go to more shows this year (I've already missed the first one.)

Heritage seems like it has such a high print run these days, so I'm always taken aback when I run across a variation like this B&W Arenado, as I never seem to pull stuff like this out of packs anymore. It seems increasingly likely that Arenado will be around for at least the first half of the year with St. Louis now, but I wonder if this card marks his final All-Star appearance with anyone.

The goofy, AI-"enhanced" 2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary whatever is the gift that keeps on giving, apparently. They really went nuts with the parallels on these. This one is numbered to just 25. Carlson still hasn't caught on with anyone for the coming season as far as I can tell.

Here's another one of the wacky parallels. This one with the free flowing hair of Ted Simmons is numbered to 75.

This Bud Smith card has an imprint with the National Sports Convention logo on it and is numbered 2 out of 5. Rare stuff here! I've always wondered how "official" some of the past cards with stamps from card conventions on them are, but they've mostly been treated as such by the major publications and databases I suppose.

Angel Rondon may have only had a cup of coffee with the Cardinals, but he still makes for a nice looking autographed card. Of course, almost anyone would look good on an Inception card like this.

Daniel Ponce de Leon was once seen as a key cog in the Cardinals stable of pitchers, but he had some tough breaks along the way including a much publicized scary head injury. When standing next to a comparable Topps high end card, Panini's unlicensed warts are pretty visible, though this does contain a nice chunky patch-looking thing in it.

We're back to the AI set here with a more normal parallel pattern. I think this is gold? This will look nice in my Waino collection and is numbered to just 50.

The red ice(?) sky on Lou Brock's card makes this one a bit apocalyptic looking. It's numbered to 100.

Last, but certainly not least, is this pretty slick looking bat card from the 2019 Topps Tier One set. I can't believe it's already been six years since the Cards brought in Goldy. I hope he does well with the Yankees. The Cardinals are really going to miss his defense at 1B more than anything at this point.

If you've got some time, I'd definitely suggest checking out The Diamond King's blog especially if it's been awhile. It looks like he's been generously giving out some impressive stuff, so I'm sure he'd love to get hooked up with something of his own interest.

Large Mac and Other Stars

The latest and greatest group break Cardinals.

 

One of the packages I've yet to sort from this year was a rare all-Cardinals selection. These cards were from group breaks hosted by Nachos Grande, mainly featuring products released late last year on into the early parts of this year. A lot of these cards are from sets that have been shown off to death in various corners of the internet, so I'm going skim and try to just show some of the best of the best.

I really had no interest in the first two Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary sets, although the Cardinals cards will always have places in my binders. The first set just seemed like the millionth excuse to pay tribute to the iconic 1952 design, which was a bit boring to me. The second set? Well, it truly looks like it's powered by AI. Fortunately, the most recent edition (2023, but released this year) seems to have done away with the uncanny valley filter most of these '22s had on them, but I still haven't picked up any for myself. Goldie checks in here on a "rose gold" numbered parallel.

Ooh, here are some Tiny Little Diamonds (or whatever Topps calls them.) I was initially excited to finally get my hands on a Cardinals Packy Naughton card as he was featured prominently in the bullpen for a bit, but he hasn't been heard from at the big league level since an injury derailed his 2023 campaign.

There must have been some earlier Donruss Optic sets included, because I landed some interesting colored parallels. This Yadi card from 2021 is numbered to 199.

Dakota Hudson spent his whole career with St. Louis until he switched teams this past offseason, where he's learning the true horrors of being a Colorado Rockies starter. This is some sort of "purple stars" parallel. It's very dreamy.

There were a ton of 2023 Stadium Club parallels, but as I was saying, you've all seen these photos quite a few times by now.

I was very excited about these 2023 Topps Archives inserts featuring some Cardinals legends in their final seasons.

Apparently these are based on the 1954 Tarzan 3-D design. I wouldn't mind a whole set of these, even though they are just printed on regular Heritage-style card stock. It looks like they did attempt a 3D effect at least on this card, as the background shows all the expected signs of double-layering.

What I did not expect out of a 2023 Panini product was a Mark McGwire autograph! Sure, Large Mac only signed a sticker, and these stickers have probably been sitting around the Panini vaults for some time, but I certainly can't say I have a ton of his autographs in my collection.

Last, but certainly not least, came this Fan Favorites autograph of good ol' Simba. I feel very fortunate to have seen Ted Simmons along with a number of other Cardinals legends at a game I attended in person. With the passing of what feels like an entire generation of great players over the past five years or so (R.I.P. Willie Mays), I feel that much more fortunate for the ones that we still have around.

In da Club(house)

 

Another big batch of Cardinals cards from @flywheels Affordable Group Breaks. 

 

While the Cardinals season continues to circle the drain, I have continued to focus on piecing together my card collection, even though baseball as a whole hasn't been all that fun for me of late. In April, I had another bunch of cards from Colbey shipped my way, and there were lots of goodies to behold!

A number of Panini products were involved, including the always flashy Prizm set. Certain configurations (Quick Pitch?) have these numbered "donut" parallels, and I was fortunate enough to land a couple of them.

Donruss Optic, of course, has all kinds of colored parallels including this blue Goldy numbered to 149.

More numbered Goldy! Goldy Donut Goodness. This is numbered to 199.

Panini's Mosaic set is sort of a knockoff Prizm set. The International Men of Mastery set has the player's national flag in the background and this is a "mosaic" parallel of the regular insert.

Colbey likes to open a lot of older stuff (how else can you consistently keep it "Affordable"?) which resulted me in picking up a couple of these fancy looking base cards from the 1997 Flair Showcase set.

More logoless Panini stuff here. Dylan Carlson has a billion cards on the market for someone who has only been in the league since the pandemic-shortened season.

Speaking of players who have a billion cards, I snagged a couple of J.D. Drew insert cards from the 1999 Pacific set.

I'm definitely grateful for breakers like Colbey, because not many people out there will go near Pacific stuff. How else would I get a cool die cut crown card like this?

The latest and greatest at the time was the 2022 Stadium Club Chrome set. I never managed to find any at retail, but I think there's only 3 cards per pack, so it was probably out of my price range anyway.

I ended up with at least a half dozen base card needs, but my favorite was this Albert Pujols card from his infamous pitching appearance last season. Last season was so fun! This season... yeesh!