Tony Gwynn Has a Beer

And it is good. 

There are some things in life I enjoy more than baseball cards, and one of them is definitely beer. Craft beer, specifically. I was delighted to merge a couple of my big interests recently when I spotted this imperial (i.e. souped up) version of a Tony Gwynn beer brought you by San Diego's Alesmith Brewing Company. San Diego is home to a number of excellent breweries (and seems to be ground zero for the war between Craft Beer and Craft Beer Sellouts), so I felt comfortable in my purchase.

Is it any good? Yes, it was pretty good! I am enjoying the remnants of this bottle right now. It starts off both bready and hoppy, with the unmistakable flavor of a West Coast IPA. (To me, the distinction between Imperial Pale Ale and Imperial IPA can be pretty difficult to draw once it comes down to the drinking part.) It's a beer worthy of the Hall of Famer himself, and I would certainly recommend it if you happen across it in a store or on tap somewhere.

Should I do more beer reviews? Find me some more baseball-themed beers!

Chrome is Back to Save Us All

Shiny and new. 

The Topps baseball release schedule is really crazy, with new products hitting the shelves seemingly every week this summer. My local store appears to have skipped right over Stadium Club and Allen & Ginter (more on that later this week), and headed right to Chrome Town. That's fine with me, because my favorite thing about last year's Chrome is back this year, the value packs with the bonus pink refractors. I feel like I get just enough "value" out of these without feeling like an idiot for shelling out $3 for 4 measly cards.

This was a good pack for a Rockies fan, as I picked up pink versions of last year's batting champ...

... and a guy I'd never heard of until this season but have on one of my fantasy teams. Cool, I guess?

Let's just out the rest of the non-base cards I received.

It seems like top prospects get traded a lot these days. I wonder if that hurts the collectibility of their earliest cards. This is one of those fancy "Prism" refractors.

The love affair with 1987 Topps continues. Springer is one of my favorite current players with no ties to the Cardinals organization. I have a couple of his cards squirreled away for whatever reason.

And here's a regular old refractor of the so-called Toddfather. This was also a great pack for the White Sox fan out there, except that Frazier has already been traded and Giolito has been mostly terrible the past two seasons. But, you know, there's always next year!

Basketball Cards for You (and Me)

Time to renew your free membership for free cards. 

It's been awhile since I've taken a look at the list of Guilt-Free Basketball Card Club members. I have scores and scores of cards to send out to people and am planning on a pretty serious purge of any unclaimed teams or players in the near future. If I haven't heard from you in awhile, please contact me and let me know if you want some basketball cards for pretty much nothing (that's why it's "Guilt Free"). All I ask is that if you run across some Blazers cards you think I might like, or really anything else from any of my collecting interests, just keep me in mind. No strict trades, no details, no guilt.

Please also let me know if you've signed up before and are interested in other players/teams not listed or are no longer interested in certain things. Just visit the page, and let me know.

Here are some members who I am considering for deletion if I don't hear from soon. It's not that you've been bad, I just haven't heard from you in a long time or don't have your mailing address (that last bit eventually becomes important.)

• Catching Up With Collecting (Ryan H)
• Henry M
• View From The Skybox
• Mariner1
• Potch (Darren W)

Here's just one example of a card that would get sent to the Great Auction Site in The Sky if no one signed up for the Warriors (seriously, no one likes the team that won 2 out of the last 3 championships?)

One Basketball Card Club member in great standing is Twitch, who is responsible for sending me the sweet CJ rookie jersey card and many other great cards of late. Let's take a look at what else he sent recently.

Hey, it's an original sketch from the man himself. Nic Batum was one of my favorite Blazers, so much that he was the first player of any sport whose shersey I decided to purchase. (50% Adidas employee store discounts help.) I still wear it on occasion, especially during basketball season/

Twitch sent Cards cards, and since this is a Cards blog first and foremost you were probably expecting that. Someone at Panini who gets to crop old photos and digitally remove logos really needs to do a Reddit AMA one of these days.

The Matt Carpenter backlash this year has been tremendous, and tremendously stupid. No, he isn't having an All-Star season at the plate like he usually does. Yes, all those walks are good for him. You'd think with all of the progress we've made as baseball fans with advanced stats and whatnot, no one would be overlooking Carpenter's contributions in getting on base with frequency despite not taking bases with contact as often as normal.

The once and current Cardinals closer: now in pink flavor!

Twitch also remembered that I like the Eagles, which is something that comes up on occasion. Brent Celek is one of my favorite Eagles. He's one of the only links to the Donovan McNabb era and he's an old school fundamentals-over-athletics tight end that just happens to have caught a ton of passes in his career. He's a great "bail me out" option in the passing game, which just so happens to be my go to move in every football video game I've ever played.

Shady, from a Panini Black Friday promo, numbered to just 25. I think this is some sort of "Black Ice" card?

Finally, it's Press Proof Rated Rookie parallel of new and current QB Carson Wentz. If things go the way of the hype train for Wentz, this card could be worth a pretty good chunk of change. On the other hand, it could also end up as exciting as a Bobby Hoying rookie Press Proof card. I suppose we'll wait and see.

#DONE

Putting to bed a set I started collecting (in my head) ever since I was a child. 

With the help of a generous blogger and trading partner, Dennis of Too Many Verlanders/Manninghams, I finally am able to put down a set I've admired since I could barely grasp what baseball cards were. A lot of people find the 1985 Fleer baseball set to be ugly or boring, but to me it was one of the first idealistic looks at what baseball cards could be, outside of the venerable The Topps Company. With team color-coded borders, SuperStarSpecials and plenty o' stats on the back, I always wanted a complete set of this stuff. The various rookie cards made it a bit outside of my meager budget for much of my collecting youth, but not many of those rookies (Clemens aside, I guess?) held their value over the years. More than once, I could have snagged a more or less complete hand collated set at a card show for a bargain price, but I decided to put it all together the old fashioned way. I bought some packs (okay, not too many) and put a want list online, occasionally whittling away at it throughout the years. Now, it's done and all slapped away in a binder. I couldn't be happier about it.

Dennis likely was sweating out the MLB trade deadline today, which passed without a trade of his (current) blog namesake. He did find some time to send me a bunch of Cardinals cards that I needed. I'm sure I sound like a broken record, but I used to really like the Topps gold bordered parallel cards. They don't look so great anymore, though.

This may look like a simple base card from the 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings set, but the logo is shiny and reflective and the card itself is numbered to 100. This set is one of the best examples of what people complain about when they talk about modern sets having endless numbers of parallels that are barely distinguishable from each other. And while I agree that it's all pretty silly, I really like these cards. They sort of feel like vinyl.

Speaking of the best things from the '00s, Fleer Greats are... great! Yeah, that's pretty much all I've got. I received another half dozen or so cards of the Wizard for my collection. I've temporarily lost track of how many unique Ozzies I own thanks to the demise of Zistle, but I'm (slowly) working on replacing my online checklist outlet.

Speaking of endless parallels. What was Topps thinking with this Co-Signers stuff? It didn't last, of course.

I don't have many slabbed cards, but since I'm guessing the only way to get this Tyler Johnson silver parallel from 2003 was in uncirculated form, I'll leave this in its cardboard prison for now.

More Edmonds, because... why not?

It certainly wouldn't be a "Too Many" package without a great crop of Ducks cards, and Dennis certainly didn't disappoint on that end. I usually save most of these for the college football Saturdays, but there were so many great cards to be had that I couldn't hold everything back.

Prior to receiving this, my collection of baseball cards in Ducks uniforms was comprised entirely of anything I pulled in that Panini Oregon Ducks Collegiate blaster from awhile back. Cleavinger was a 3rd round pick a couple years ago and was just dealt from the Orioles to the Phillies before the trade deadline. He's been playing at the AA level this year.

They were never my favorite, but I was a defender of the Ducks tire tread or steel grating or whatever the hell uniform look from the late '00s. In recent years, the team has strayed further and further from their primary colors, which is why it was actually refreshing to hear new head coach Willie Taggart announce plans to scale it back and stick to a more basic look.

Yeah, it's uh... a signed card of a shirtless Ducks football legend. Those fringe draft picks/prospects card companies are super weird. I don't actually collect a lot of football cards, but when I do I'm continually surprised at how willing people are to buy cards of players doing everything but actually playing their sport.

Finally, I have to say that I was really happy to get a Max Unger card. Unger plays positions that are generally overlooked when the card companies are setting out to print up some cards. Even though he's been to the Pro Bowl, won a ring and has been a league mainstay since he entered the league, I would be willing to bet that he doesn't have many cards out there.

Minis for Days

So... many... minis... 

The master of minis himself, Night Owl Cards, unloaded a huge lot of minis (and more!) on this unsuspecting part time blogger last month. I do seem to recall reading a post awhile back (possibly this one?) where Night Owl detailed the need to offload a bunch of these cards. Despite my reservations about collecting this year's Allen & Ginter set (I can't do this forever, can I?), I am definitely a super willing recipient of minis of sets past.

This is a lot of minis, folks. This means I'm probably going to have to pony up for some more 15 pocket Ultra Pro pages, and carefully thumb in and out some tiny cards into their plastic shields. Fun times ahead!

This curious group of six is headed for a different set of binders, of course. Only of these guys is a current Cardinal, and though it seems like just yesterday that Yadi was a 22 year old with a rocket arm that couldn't hit his way out of a wet paper bag... well... it's not 2004 anymore, I guess. That is sad news for all of us.

Other, non-mini Cardinals were included as well. Peter Bourjos popped up on my television in a Rays uniform the other day. Good for him.

I feel bad for Aledmys Diaz, an All-Star just barely more than a year ago. He's been uprooted by Paul DeJong, most likely permanently.

(Not So) Smokin' Joe is in a three-way tie for third place as the oldest card in my collection. I love these. I have no Topps cards prior to 1956 for some dumb reason.

Finally, Night Owl sent over a few needs from the 2017 Topps Heritage set. Here's the world's first mouse... I guess? This is definitely the best News Flashbacks card I've seen in awhile. This looks more like some sort of crazy device that would be used in a lab rat test maze.

Thanks again to Night Owl, and all of the other kind people who have traded with me over the years that make this place possible. And Blogger Google, I guess.

A Side Trip

A few cards from the other sports. 

I've been pretty baseball focused this summer, both in my online activities and general collecting pursuits. I'm working on (for the second time in a couple years) going through all of my Cardinals collection so that everything is online and the data is easy to access. The action in the MLB season, as they say, is starting to heat up. The trade deadline approaches.

Here are a few non-baseball cards sent my way courtesy of Sportscards From The Dollar Store.

Here's a card from LaMarcus Aldridge's last season with the Blazers. I believe it's the only card from this set I even own.

I mostly remember Greg Lewis from the last new NFL video game I ever played, the last one in the 2K series (NFL 2K5).  I never needed Madden in my life, and am quite happy with playing Tecmo Super Bowl if you really want to play some video games.

Shady managed to make the Eagles somewhat watchable during some dark seasons. I'm cautiously optimistic about the new direction the team is taking now, but I don't see a lot of reasons to get carried away with bold predictions yet.

Finally, I usually leave these kinds of special cards for certain Saturdays in the fall, but I couldn't help myself. Look at that big yellow thing! Ifo was one of my favorite players to ever wear a Ducks uniform, so it was rough to see him continually derailed by injuries in his attempt to make it in the pros. Even though certain things are Photoshopped away, I am always happy to get cards in Ducks uniforms.

Welcome to the Club

Stadium Club, that is. 

Topps is in the 4th year of their Stadium Club revival (let's just forget all about that mess in 2008), and their latest effort just hit the streets recently. With the baseball card aisles completely devoid of anything useful these days (thanks in part to Judgemania and Bellingermadness), I decided to venture out into the World Wide Web to purchase a blaster of the latest and greatest. The font is weird, once again, aping 2000s Fleer Ultra with a weird Coke swoosh on the end of the last letter of each name. Otherwise, this looks a lot like the last two year's offerings. Those were pretty good, although I doubt I'll be chasing this year's set.

The inserts are notable because they're not glossy on the back. The base cards and their assorted parallels are coated in the familiar slickness, and Topps doubled down on this by also making the card backs this way. You could probably fashion a slip-n-slide out of them.

Gold parallels such as this struggling Cub are a fairly common pull.

Wow, no one has trotted out the Faux '80s Graffiti font in awhile. I'm not impressed with these Contact Sheet inserts.

This, on the other hand, is pretty nice. For every hitter focused insert set, you need one for the pitchers I assume.

Sepia-toned parallels fall at 1:8 packs, or basically one per blaster. Seeing a team with black and white as its primary colors kind of ruins the sepia effect, though.

As with the other recent years, the black parallels are a bit of a tougher pull than the golds.

Moose Tacos is inexplicably one of the players I enjoy outside of any connection to the Cardinals. Actually, it's really not that hard to explain. It's the name.

Ozzie Smith's base card photo is in black and white for whatever reason, which briefly me had me thinking I'd pulled some sort of sweet parallel of the Wizard. Ah, too bad.

On the other hand, vintage Rickey is in full color glory here. I would love to see the A's bring these jerseys back as their alternates.

The backs of the card are light on stats (never really Stadium Club's thing unless you liked their weird attempts at '90s style advanced stats), but the little photo in the upper left is a nice touch. This is like a sunny day version of Ultra.

I was never good at pulling those coveted Beam Team inserts (I still need lots of '90s ones for my various collections I'm sure), so it was satisfying to get one of one of the game's best -- even if he doesn't fit into my collection.

As I mentioned, I'm not really collecting these, so feel free to think about sending some Cardinals from this set my way if you're interested in any of these and have picked up any yourself. I only have the Ozzie, so far.