More Same Team Swaps, Please

Another batch of Cardinals extras from a Cardinals collector. 

 

I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 Cardinals cards that I don't need. They're dupes, as we call them. This is why it's always exciting to find someone who collects my favorite team and either has an up-to-date want list or uses TCDB to document their collection. (I do both!) I have been able to to unload a few stacks of Cardinals cards over the past year or two to All Cardinals All the Time, who I'm sure was appreciative of being to unload some of his doubles onto me. Such is the life of the external baseball card exchange.

It's the famous Terry Bradshaw! Well, nah, it's just a Terry Bradshaw. I suppose if you get paid to play sports professionally, though, that does make you a little famous.

If you want to feel like an old person, just say things along with the line of "Topps Gold... they sure don't make 'em like they used to" and then repeat that sentiment dozens of times for years on end on the internet. I am going to try to come up with some new material next year, I promise.

Here's a strange one in that I couldn't find it in the TCDB database. I'll have to look again. It's easy to get lost in that website even if you know what you're doing.

I wasn't fond of Topps Fire this year, which seems to be more the norm rather than the exception. It turns out that 2019 was the weird outlier, and I can't even explain why I liked that design. Maybe I just like huge block letters. In any case, I still need a bunch of stuff from this set if you've got anything laying around.

Autographs and memorabilia cards of lesser known players are always appreciated here at Cards on Cards. While Tom Herr isn't exactly an obscure player, I don't have many of his cards beyond the common junk wax era stuff. I wish there were more sets like the old Fleer Greats of the Game line. Topps has their Fan Favorites, which are cool, but they're stuck in the Autographs portion of the Archives set.

If you or anyone you know has a need for thousands of extra Cardinals cards (or even just a few), feel free to let me know.

Time to Let It Go

The season is over for the Cardinals, whether I like it or not. 

As a totally biased observer, sometimes it's hard for me to understand why there's little love for the Cardinals franchise these days from outside of the fanbase. But I do get it. People get sick of teams after they have a period of sustained success. While not yet mathematically eliminated from the NL Wild Card race, this will be the second straight year that St. Louis has missed the playoffs, reminiscent of the two seasons following their unlikely 2006 championship. Except, of course, that these last two seasons are not coming on the heels of a World Series ring, but a bitter defeat and early playoff exit at the hands of the Chicago Cubs. This is year six of the Mike Matheny regime, and it wasn't a good one.

Fortunately, I have some fantastic cards from... you guessed it... a Cubs fan to cheer me up. This is part two of the feast of cards set upon me by Jon of Community Gum. Let's look at a few things from the other side of the rivalry.

Here I am rediscovering 1987 Topps. I totally forgot about this set! It's been, what, five long years since Topps put miniature tributes to this set in with their flagship product? This is actually my first bronze foil version of the Rediscover Topps line, which I am told is actually their most common variant. (Hopefully I have the right color here. Sometimes it's hard to tell with foil stamping.)

Jon included a note with this one stating that it was a repack pull. I feel like J.D. Drew is in the upper echelon of what one can expect to pull from a repack. My guaranteed hit or whatever you want to call it is usually some swatch of WBC or Futures Game jersey from a guy who never made it to AAA. I've got nothing against those guys, of course, but when you don't even get a card of a guy wearing any MLB team's uniform, it's hard to get too excited about it.

You know what always cheers me up? Ozzie Smith! Or, more specifically, cards of his that I didn't yet own. I don't often get a chance to buy Topps Finest stuff, so this insert is extra nice. Most of my Finest purchases are base cards out of quarter boxes at card shows.

I really irrationally love Topps Tek (Hi Tek?) and all of its various incarnations. I think this might be only my second card from its recent revival. I think I am just a huge sucker for anything printed on clear acetate. I am the guy that I used to make fun of, folks.

2008 SPx is like the baseball card version of a fidget spinner. Or maybe disc golf? Has anyone tried tossing these cards around an open space? Do they have a boomerang effect?

I'm taking a brief detour here, but Erin's player collections often get a disproportionate amount of attention here at Cards on Cards. This is a fun shiny parallel of Tulo from the waning moments of his Rockies glory days.

I'm probably coming across as a lot more negative than I should considering that I'm poring over all of these terrific Cardinals cards, but I do want to reiterate that I still think Allen & Ginter's shift to full sized relics are a bit of a cop out. This is a nice design, clearly, but the framed relics were always one of my favorite things to look forward to about this set each year.

This card was printed seven years before I was born, but foil stamped just a couple of years ago. It's strange to think about. I need to track down an unstamped version of this card, actually.

There were a lot of Finest cards in this package. This is probably the centerpiece right here. Wong still hasn't put things together for a full season, but he's shown enough in streaks that I still remain hopeful about his career.

This is just a plain old refractor parallel of the same card. No big deal. I probably couldn't find this in the quarter boxes, to be honest.

Another helpful note was included with this Yadier Molina card, noting that it came from the All-Star team set. I only scanned the front to show how little there is to distinguish this from his regular flagship base card. They used to actually put NL or AL logos on these, but the only way to tell now by looking at the front is noticing that the Topps logo is not actually printed in foil. Still, I am super happy to get this card so I am no longer tempted to buy the whole stupid set just for Yadi.

Well, we'll see how much the world loves the Cubbies after they win their second straight ring next month.

Cards on Cards From The Writer's Journey

I love a good blind trade, especially when it nets me Cards (on cards) by the pound. I almost collapsed under the sheer weight of Cardinals cards that I received from The Writer's Journey back in late February, and I have picked out some of my favorites from this great haul.

I know we all wanted last year's Topps Archives set to be more like the Topps Archives sets of the past, and the cards I received here were good reminders of that. It's interesting that they chose one of Kaat's last cards, and not even a regular base card, for this set. It actually took me awhile to get ahold of the original 1983 Topps card that this was based off, and now I have a slick reproducton of it as well.

I am not sad that Tim McCarver is leaving the FOX broadcast booth. I've probably mentioned this before, and will likely continue to mention it whenever I run across his cards. He was on some great teams and had a nice playing career, but his second career makes my ears bleed.

Pacific cards could be just plain weird. It's a very bizarre era of cards that I completely missed out on. I just can't believe this really stern looking inset picture of DeShields, surrounded by a glowing light that makes him look like one pissed off judgmental diety.

'Sup guys. My name's Alan. I'm here to take the league by storm.

I don't know how many times I've seen the classic Gibby "arms up, ready to pitch" pose, but I'm not sure that I'll ever tire of it. Bonus points to Upper Deck for not colorizing this card... unless they de-colorized a color photo for some stupid reason.

Here's another Pacific card that I missed out on the first time around. This may have been from before Kennedy developed his frustrating uppercut swing.

It's always bittersweet, and maybe even a little heartbreaking to see Darryl Kile cards from the year he died (2002).

Cute. I wonder if the kid that drew this ended up setting his original artwork on fire when he found out the truth about Big Mac, though.

By the way, it's 11:00 PM on the west coast as I write this, and the Cardinals game is still going on. I should be liveblogging this instead of talking about players who haven't played for the team in half a decade.

I love regional issues. I should really work something out with someone local who goes to all of the games to get ahold of more Cardinals merch and regional cards. That would be fun.

Finally, here are some of the bigger guns that this huge package offered. This Woody Williams "Credits" parallel is numbered 66/100. Nice find!

I don't know where or how or who released this button set, but I want more! I would proudly display Todd Zeile's button on my backpack or book bag.

And finally, it's Tommy Herr! A nice slab of autographed cardboard if I do say so myself. I wonder if there's a story behind this card. It's now officially the largest autographed baseball card in my collection.

Airbrushed Fridays: 1988 Topps Traded #49T

This one could practically write itself. If that were the case, however, there'd be no use for me around these parts. I actually had a hard time finding an airbrushed card in my '80s box, so I had to go back to the well and pull out the old reliable traded set binder. Perhaps I should consider taking submissions for this at some point.

Tom Herr was the second baseman on three Cardinals World Series teams in the 1980s, which included a monster 1985 year for the otherwise productive but not a huge run producer. In '85, Herr drove in 110 runs (his previous high until that season had been 49) and was a pivotal part of the Runnin' Redbirds second World Series run.

Why did Topps airbrush Tom's photo? Early on in the 1988 season following the second World Series loss, this time to the Minnesota Twins, Tom was traded for another Tom (Brunansky) as the Cards hoped to bolster their offense. The Cardinals went on to have a lousy year which was par for the course for awhile in even years.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? Tom apparently is wearing some sort of cartoon army helmet and the shirt is totally drawn on him. This one is pretty obvious.