Treats for Me

Unless you're not familiar with other sports card blogs or you're one of my "friends" who is currently stalking me through the "facebook", you probably know all about the extremely generous TribeCards David and his crazy giveaways. Crazy, I say, because I cringe to think about how much the man spends in postage each month. This post is, like many other blogs this month, dedicated to the annual TribeCards Trick or Treat giveaway. My package contained just two items, not counting the mildly creepy Kenny Lofton card that nearly everyone apparently got. He definitely went for quality over quantity, however, as you'll see below. Incidentally, I am now tempted to take my 25-or-so Jose DeLeon playing cards and distributing them to everyone I've ever traded with just because.

It's Stan the Man. The postal service actually heeded David's "do not bend" warning, because these puppies came to me in nice shape. But what is this, exactly? Seeing as how the backs of the oversized cards (they're actually larger than a postcard) were blank cardboard grey, my first reaction was that they must be something cut from the back of a cereal box or something similar.

And here's Gibby, too. On closer inspection, I can see that the cards are cut very well. If I had taken scissors to a package and cut something out myself, it would end up looking much like what would result if you handed some left-handed scissors (non-pointy tips, of course) to a righty third grade kid and asked him to cut something out for an art project. If you look to the lower right corners (clicking the images makes them larger, apparently) you can see that it has a copyright date and "DAVCO PUBLISHERS". I actually looked up Davco on Beckett's site on a whim and it actually turned up reliable results. These are apparently from the 1982 Davco Boxes set. I'm not sure what that means other than that these are some pretty nice legitimate collectible items which make great additions to my Cardinals collection. Thanks, David, as always!

That's it for me tonight. I'm off to create some Kenny Lofton-based public art.

5 on the 5: 2009 Topps Updates & Highlights

I don't suppose this needs much of an intro. I picked up 5 packs at the local megastore about a week ago for my first look at this year's Updates & Highlights. I was tempted to buy a blaster, but once again came to my senses and remembered that you get far more cards buying the (searched) loose packs. I'll probably buy some more of this stuff next weekend just for fun, but I'm trying not to get too burned out on it as I know I'll be buying plenty of the Heritage High Series scam of a product... if it ever comes out.

Pack 1:

UH11 - Daniel Schlereth (Best known as Mark Schlereth's son so far.)

UH57 - Juan Uribe

UH21 - Matt Diaz (Diaz is a Portlander, but I never hear about him.)

UH84 - Gerardo Parra (Is this ball headed over Gerardo's head? Suave.)

UH151 - Jayson Werth All-Stars

UH110 - Justin Masterson

UH258 - Nyjer Morgan

UH73 - Sean West Gold 0153/2009

PP4 - Andrew McCutchen Propaganda Art (I love these cards.)

TTT57 - Joey Votto Topps Town

UH284 - Mark Melancon

UH288 - Jon Garland (Pictured as a Diamondback. Topps isn't up with the late season deals.)

Pack 2:

UH206 - Chris Burke

UH70 - Wilkin Ramirez (I haven't heard of most of these rookies, sadly.)

UH7 - Brayan Pena

UH41 - Xavier Paul (Yeah, another rookie... no idea.)

UH103 - Evan Longoria All-Stars

UH38 - Justin Upton All-Stars

UH161 - Andrew Bailey All-Stars (The All-Stars seem to come in waves.)

TR116 - Rick Porcello Turkey Red (It's interesting that they slapped a rookie card logo on this. Usually inserts don't get that sort of distinction.)

TTT54 - Adam Jones Topps Town

UH5 - Brian Fuentes (I scanned this especially for Erin.)

UH135 - Detroit Youth Movement Ryan Perry / Rick Porcello

UH248 - Chan Ho Park

- David Wright junk card

Pack 3:

UH56 - Wes Helms

UH233 - Ramon Santiago

UH127 - Shane Robinson (This pint-sized reserve outfielder got a cup of coffee with the Cards prior to all the mid-summer deals. I was really surprised to see him make it to this set as I'd kinda forgotten about him already.)

UH173 - David Robertson (Effective Yankee reliever who was underused in the playoffs. Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes seemed really shaky to me.)

UH156 - Heath Bell All-Stars

UH148 - Jason Bay All-Stars (I like Jason Bay and all. He's a proud ex-Portland Beaver and a proud Canadian - I'm assuming. But I kind of hope that the Red Sox spend a ton of money on resigning him because I don't think he's THAT good.)

UH227 - Edwin Jackson All-Stars

PP30 - Zack Greinke Propaganda Art

TTT62 - Russell Martin Topps Town

UH27 - Josh Reddick

UH322 - Sean Marshall

UH180 - Mariano Rivera Season Highlights (For all the haters out there. Well... couldn't they have picked a better angle for this shot?)

Pack 4:

UH44 - Seth Smith (Seth Smith was on one of my fantasy teams last season, which goes to show how thin the talent pool was.)

UH241 - DeWayne Wise (Yeah, the crazy catch guy...)

UH114 - Chris Coghlan (Coghlan came out of nowhere to likely capture the NL Rookie of the Year honors.)

UH249 - Brian McCann All-Stars

UH240 - Jason Marquis All-Stars (I can't believe this guy was an All-Star. With the game in St. Louis, no less. Where he couldn't even make the playoff roster...)

UH2 - Felipe Lopez

UH266 - Jonathan Broxton (This post is lousy with Dodgers, as usual.)

UH76 - Scott Rolen Gold 0076/2009 (Scott looks really enthusiastic about wearing the wrong red team's gear.)

TTT55 - Vernon Wells Topps Town Gold

UH310 - Scott Richmond

UH262 - Jeff Niemann (Speaking of enthusiasm...)

UH141 - Jason Hammel

Pack 5:

UH32 - Kris Medlen (Another unknown rookie guy.)

UH45 - Brad Ausmus (Dodger. They paid him money?)

UH29 - Rich Hill

UH315 - Jerry Hairston Jr.

UH123 - Ryan Braun All-Stars

UH235 - Joe Nathan All-Stars

LLP-26 - Steve Carlton Legends of the Game Platinum (Wal-Mart) (Nice! Best card of the bunch.)

TTT63 - Jose Reyes Topps Town

UH271 - Frank Catalanotto

UH50 - Gary Sheffield (I show this because it pays tribute to Gary Sheffield on his final Topps card. At least, that's what I'm hoping for. Gary? Please retire. Thanks. You're kind of obnoxious.)

UH270 - Dominican Dandies David Ortiz / Alex Rodriguez (Yes, the card is really titled Dominican Dandies. I would have scanned it, but I've already hit my PED quota on the blog for the month.)

UH25 - Orlando Hudson (Another Dodger... but apparently not for long?)

Good Luck Ducks, Week 10: Fundamentals

Stanford is up next here in just a couple of hours. The former Stanford State Indians bring a power running game and a fundamentally strong running game, led by smarty pants head coach Jim Harbaugh. I believe Harbaugh is a Tecmo Super Bowl player if memory serves me. Stanford now has a tree (seriously?!) for a mascot and their team nickname is some sort of non-pluralized wimpy version of this blog's namesake.

Joey Harrington had a much maligned NFL career, but as a Duck he just won, won, won. He also had something striking in common with current QB Jeremiah Masoli: he would get amped up and would be extremely wild with his early passes. While Harrington used to fire some balls straight into the ground before he caught fire, Masoli has been known to fire darts and put holes in the chests of his receivers. With a road game looming today, it will take a much more calm and focused Masoli to... er... chop down the tree. This will be another big test for first time head coach Chip Kelly, who gets a chance to distance himself from his predecessor Mike Belotti as a strong November coach. A strong November will certainly land the Ducks in the Rose Bowl... or better!

National TV today on FSN at 12:30 PST. Go Ducks!

Airbrushed Fridays: 1989 Topps UK Mini #69

Didn't think I'd go all oddball mini on you, did you? I was actually digging through my oddball card stacks for Fred McGriff cards for a trade to be mentioned later when I ran across an old friend, Mr. Steve Sax. I actually sent another copy of this card to Night Owl Cards once upon a time in a completely unintentional mixup in which I had mistaken Sax for a Dodgers player. Given how much he detests the 27-time champs (congrats, by the way - to the zero Yankee fans who actually read this blog) I'm convinced he saw this as a dirty trick of some sort. I'm already wary of sending cards to people in team trades when said player left their favorite team for a hated rival or in a less than amicable way (hello, J.D. Drew, Mark Teixeira, John Smoltz...) but that's for another discussion.

Steve Sax was a five-time all-star second baseman who was speedy on the basepaths and provided a pretty handy bat for a middle infielder of the era. He was, in fact, best known as a Dodger, for better and for worse. At one point he caught a pretty nasty case of the Yips, but also seemed to be one of the few that actually recovered well from the issue (ahem... Chuck Knoblauch.)

Why did Topps airbrush Steve's photo? Sax joined the Yankees shortly after the 1988 season, but at the time it was virtually unheard of for Topps to capture a player in their new team's uniform, even for sets that came out in the middle of the new season. As shown before, even year-end traded sets rarely escaped the airbrushing phenomenon. Given the white card stock and the fact that this set was a UK release, the cards were likely produced by Topps Ireland. They either were likewise not opposed to airbrushing or they had no creative input into the photo selection.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? To my credit, I can say that I shouldn't feel so bad that I sent one of these cards to a die-hard Dodgers fan, since it's clear that Sax's uniform was really glossed over Dodgers gear all along. Without seeing the lettering, and fake drawn-on buttons aside, Sax's jersey top could just as easily contain Dodgers script as it could the Yankees. The photo is cropped low enough, however, that I think that some lettering was probably removed altogether as to remain ambiguous. The Yankees helmet logo isn't the worst thing I've ever seen, but it does seem ever so slightly off.

More Card Show Goodies

I'm working on getting my living room coffee table cleared of stacks of Cardinals cards, and with that comes a post about some of the stuff I picked up at last month's card show. This will be a short one, as I went way over budget on buying unopened packs and only picked up a small stack of Cardinals goodies. I started off in bargain hunter mode, as I believe this Tino Martinez jersey card was only $1.50, but I soon strayed from my original plan and wounded my bank account.

I'm missing a bunch of 2005 Topps Updates & Highlights cards, but this is no longer one of them. Even if I did already own this card, though, I would have a hard time passing it up. I love what it represents. (Not pictured: Brad Lidge)

Scrounging through someone's 5 cent box, I came up with a couple of well-loved 1975 Topps cards. Reggie's card isn't as badly miscut as it appears here, but it's dedinitely not right.

This one just screams '70s. I have no idea who this guy is, oddly enough, but I like it.

I think this was a $3 pickup, but it's Heritage and it's Wainwright and it's too good to pass up.

You don't see a lot of Starting Lineup loose cards for sale, so I jumped at the chance to get this Brian Jordan card. I also bought a similar Mark McGwire card without realizing it was badly creased. Oops.

Finally, here's another Brian Jordan card, this time on what I can only guess was Pinnacle's answer to Topps Finest with their "peel off" protective skin.

Next month's show is in a few weeks and I'm hoping to focus my efforts a bit this time around.

Trading with Ryan's Memorabilia

I'm finally (nearly) caught up on posting about packages I've received in trades recently. This trade comes courtesy of Ryan's Memorabilia, which I believe makes it trade #2 with those fans out in Orioles country. I'm hoping for a big year from Ryan Ludwick. I think if he can stay healthy all year that he'll improve on what had to be a bit of a disappointing, yet still productive follow-up season to his surprise All-Star 2008.

Here's this year's Comeback Player of the Year and one of my favorites in all of baseball.

I also think this is the first Carpenter A&G card I have from this year's set, which is surprising. I think the only other one I'm missing is the SP (whose name escapes me) but I'm not positive. I do need most of the mini Cardinals, though.

This is Albert Pujols from this year's pointless UD Icons set. At least, I think that it is. It's odd, though, because it has a metallic background and the Upper Deck logo is just printed rather than gold foil. Does anyone know what this means?

I received some great parallel framed cards from the late lamented UD Masterpieces sets. Here's a black framed Stan Musial from 2008.

Followed by a green framed Ozzie Smith from 2007...

... and this great looking blue card which is serial numbered 03/50! If there was any chance of me trying to "chase a rainbow" with one card, it might have to be this one.

Thanks again to Ryan's Memorabilia for the exceptional Cards on cards.

Troll Trade #3

First off, let me apologize for the lack of imagination in this post title. I believe that I've run out of clever titles using the word "troll" or I'm just lacking in overall imagination tonight. At any rate, the impetus for this latest trade-related post was a couple of black bordered Allen & Ginter minis from the 2009 set: Albert Pujols and Tim Lincecum (not pictured - who says I have to give equal time here?)

Much to my delight, a bunch of Cardinals goodies were thrown in as well, such as this black-bordered David Freese card. Freese is one of those kids who does not enjoy school picture day.

The Troll donated a sizeable chunk of his Ray Lankford collection. There was no other card more audacious in the bunch than this one. I did not even realize there was a Home Run Derby in 1997 (I probably didn't even watch the All-Star Game) but am now better educated.

Here's one from an early-'90s Topps reprint set. From what I remember, Topps used their new Stadium Club card stock and UV coating and put out a couple of "archives" sets representing the early Topps issues as well as a clever but kind of strange NBA set where they used baseball designs from the '80s to fill in the "lost years" where Topps didn't produce basketball cards in order to show key players on their pseudo-rookie cards.

I'd like to see if Jarrett Hoffpauir can be added to the mix next season and given a fair chance to win a spot on the bench. I think he'd be a much more useful pinch hitter than Joe Thurston, at least.

Jose Oliva is one of the '90s Cardinals bit players that I have no recollection of ever being with the team. Cards like this always jump out at me.

My thanks again to the Troll (who has a package on the way) and all of the other great traders and bloggers out there that I've dealt with. Thanks for being patient with me. Make sure you read up on the trials, tribulations and exploits of The Collective Troll here.