March Radness Update, PWE Updates

The cards will go on. 

As you may have suspected, the annual March Radness contest is off, as there's nothing to prognosticate about without any actual basketball action. I wasn't able to find a way to email the group that had signed up so far, so through this blog post I'd like to extend an offer to anyone who entered, or even was planning on entering, for some free cards. Send me your mailing address, and a favorite team(s)/player/want list and I'll make sure to get a PWE with a few cards in the mail with your name on it in the near future.

If you don't have my primary email handy, you can just drop me a line at [this blog name] at [gmail].

Meanwhile, let's check out a couple of other PWEs from fellow blogging folk. A nice vintage-leaning envelope was received from cards as i see them just after the new year.

But wait... is that A.J. Hinch? The disgraced A.J. Hinch?! Apparently I needed this for a set build, but this was kind of funny to unearth again.

This was easily my favorite card of the envelope, as I'm sure any card from the '50s would be. That it's Rip Repulski makes it doubly excellent.

It's a crummy scan, but Dick Schofield was one of two excellent cards from the 1969 Topps set that I needed. They are needs no longer.

And yes, there was even a pro football card. I'd kind of like to flip through an NFL Europe set some day, as I'd be curious to see any of the names I'd recognize. Tony Graziani was the starting QB for the Ducks for a couple of my years there in school.

Finally, Peter from Baseball Every Night sent me this very special version of Ryan Helsley's card from the 2019 Topps Update set. I am still in need of a lot more of these special cards.

The New and Logoless

@CrackinWax brings our first look at 2020 Donruss, Panini style. #CrackinWaxMailday

Things have been wild lately, but the blog posts about cards must roll on even as the real sports are all shut down. I bought into a pair of box breaks last week over at Crackin' Wax, and the goods were delivered on Wednesday while I watched the escalation of a public health crisis through the lens of ESPN's live NBA coverage. Scary stuff.

Break #1 was 2020 Topps Heritage, which served to knock off a couple more SPs from my set/team builds. I'm not going to focus on that here, because I want to take a look at the new stuff. I had more or less decided to ignore new Donruss cards at least for the time being, because I've never been that impressed with them in the past. However, I still want the cards of the guys who play for my team, so I bought in just this one time. I have a small lot of Giants from this set with a few parallels and some nice nods to the original 1986 Donruss set in case anyone is interested, as they were my second randomly assigned team.

Let's check out some of the Cardinals now.

I know that Topps uses Getty Images these days for their photos, but does anyone know what Panini does for baseball? You would expect more hatless close-up shots in a set that can't show logos, but that hasn't been their thing at all.

Here's Goldy on one of my earliest looks at seeing how the Cardinals powder blue road jerseys don't always scream blue at you even on a baseball card. Sometimes it's hard to see on television, as well.

Lots and lots of colored parallels in this set, because Panini.

There are photo variations in this set as expected, but it turns out that this time each photo variation exists in each parallel version. Seems crazy!

The Cardinals must have been playing another red team on this day, because Hicks was wearing a navy blue cap.

I haven't said anything about the design yet. I think it's probably better than the last few years, but not by much.

Here's a nice shot of Yadi wearing a baby blue chest protector and mask to match his uniform of the day. I still need to track down another copy of this card for Erin.

Here's the blue version.

The break even was kind enough to spit out a signed card for me. I don't have a lot of Genesis Cabrera cards and it seems like the Cardinals have a million pitchers right now, but it still seems like he has a bright future even if it's not in the 2020 rotation (assuming that's even a thing.)

Hobby Huntin'

The goodies from a 2006 Bowman Heritage box. 

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to make the rarest of purchases: the vaunted hobby box. This one was available for a pretty good price and is a set that I at least passively collect, and needed plenty of.

I won't go into the details of everything I pulled, but you can check out what I'm still missing here.

There were three "hits" in the box, which sounds like is pretty much expected. My first one was this nice Chipper Jones bat card. In such an old product that's littered with "prospects", this was much better than what I was expecting.

There's probably someone out there with a full body suit of Todd Helton jersey pieces by now, but he was a very good player for a long time, so I can't complain about this. The pinstripe is a bonus.

Well, here's where the "prospects" thing comes into play. Matt Maloney did appear in parts of 4 MLB seasons with a couple of teams (Reds, Twins). At least the autograph is actually on the card.

There were some really cool box toppers that I had no idea about going into this. There was a full fledged two-sided posted with a mini scouting report for each of the 100 players in the prospects portion of the set, plus a checklist (in addition to the randomly pack pulled checklists). There was also the handy little sticker you see at the top of the post, which is meant to be affixed to one of those cardboard storage boxes you might store your set in. And there's also this pack, which I'm not going to totally spoil (check APTBNL tomorrow for details.)

I did pull a Cardinal out of the pack, though. Hey, Adam Ottavino... we remember you.

The Anticipation

Mostly Cardinals, some of the time. 

I've been rewatching the 2006 and 2011 World Series games in anticipation of the coming season. I have some serious questions about the current group, but I'm hoping they can put together one last run for Yadi and Waino, and it's always awesome to remember the championship teams. This is especially true considering that there aren't a lot of titles in my lifetime for the other teams that I follow.

Ray from All Cardinals All The Time have been pretty productive of late in swapping doubles. I thought I'd show off a few from a mailer I got around the beginning of the year.

Here's another group of fabulous minis. In the middle, we see both versions of Allen Craig's 2013 Gypsy Queen offering. In watching the 2011 Series, it's been nice to go back in time and see Craig at the start of his short run as a very productive offensive player.

This one reminds me of spring, and youth! It's the gold plated edition, die cut, baby!

Well, once again I've done an injustice to a foilboard card, thanks to my scanner. That's too bad. Scott Rolen inserts are cool.

I'll end things here with a numbered (to 75!) Chrome Blue Wave Refractor version of ex-closer Trevor Rosenthal's 2016 card. Rosenthal has been through the pro baseball ringer over the past couple of years, but he's looking to (hopefully) find a place in Mike Matheny's Royals bullpen this season. Doesn't that sound a bit strange?

Contest Time! March Radness XII!

The big free contest is back! Make your picks and win some cards, because it's #MarchRadness time! 

Here we go again! It's March Radness time here at Cards on Cards. For the 12th straight year, I am hosting (with the assistance of the ESPN Tournament Challenge platform) a free-to-play (and not in the way of those pesky cell phone games) contest wherein you will receive some sort of sports cards related prize if you do well. You may even get something if you do very, very poorly. There's a few changes in the prizes this year, but it's pretty similar to past years. I am going to try to keep this concise this time so one or two people actually read this, but let's go over the details...

• Selection Sunday is March 15th, which means that is the earliest the brackets can be filled out. The games that actually count for the contest will start on March 19th.
• Default ESPN scoring rules apply. You must fill out the entire bracket, including the tie-breaking final score of the final game. Unlike the Bowl Pick 'Em contest, your picks are locked down the second the first game of the tournament starts.
• First place wins a brand new blaster box of baseball cards (subject to availability: 2020 Bowman, 2020 Topps Gypsy Queen or 2020 Topps Heritage are the likeliest available products). If there happens to be a suitable replacement (basketball?) at the time, we can negotiate that when the time comes. First place will also get extras to go with the blaster.
• Second and third place prizes will consist of some team bags of cards from your favorite MLB and/or NBA teams.
• Similar to the Belk Bowl contest, I am going to create an in-tournament contest for a participant to win a small prize, whether or not you've submitted a bracket. Keep watching this space for details.
• As always, the worst (honest) bracket will get something, too.
• Click here now to join, and follow the "Create Bracket Now" link. Make sure to fill out your bracket prior to March 19th!

Stickers and Stuff from Scott

Cardinals-themed stickers and more from @INeedNewHobbies -- unpeeled, of course.

Before I get into the goodies, I want to do a plug for fantasy baseball. Scott from I Need New Hobbies (and other cool internet things) is looking for some fake baseball managers presently. I joined his league a couple of years ago and have managed to be not extremely terrible, so there's that. You'd be competing against me and a guy you've probably traded cards with at some point and some other cool folks. It could be fun!

Now, let's check out some of the stuff Scott sent me around the end of 2019. (We will be mentioning that year less and less around here as time marches on.) This bubble mailer was heavy on baseball album stickers, which my collection is pretty lacking in. The 1986 Topps sticker album is near and dear to me, but I'm not sure if it's still in my possession at this point and I never actually completed it. Now that I'm full on collector scum, I need copies of all of the Cardinals in each of these sticker albums, unstuck and tucked away in plastic cases. Something like that, anyway.

1986 was the first year I bought cards, and so the stickers eventually found their way into my hands when I realized they could be bought at the grocery store instead of the neighborhood makeshift card shop. My scanner cut off the white border on the left of this sticker of Ozzie making folks about to go crazy, but you get the gist of it.

John Tudor pops up again on another playoff themed sticker, this time from the 1988 set.

One of the stickers in the package was some sort of test issue that I'd never seen in person. These are on thicker stock, similar to the revival of the Topps stickers from the 2010s (before they went back to the full on Panini look.)

Unless you've held one of these in your hands, it's going to look the same aside from the much darkly colored backs.

Speaking of that Topps sticker revival, here's Waino from the 2013 edition. Last year Topps pivoted from the thin Panini-style stickers to a full sized sticker-plus-card sandwich, which I thought I'd end up liking a lot more than I actually did (or... didn't, rather.) I'm not sure what they've got planned for 2020, if anything.

It wasn't all about stickers (or sticker-card hybrids), however, as Scott included a bunch of non-sticker Cardinals. Check out this trio of green parallel Gypsy Queen Cards.

I love that Kolten Wong is an officially recognized Gold Glover, even as some are starting to diminish the importance of infield defense (or defense in general) with the way baseball is moving towards fewer defensive chances in general. I don't care, though... he's fun to watch play these days.

Perhaps my favorite things from the package were a couple of checklists, featuring the heads of Hall of Fame Cardinals. It's tough to find old checklists that aren't marked up and/or doodled on, and this one has a bit of that. There was really a guy named Bill McCool?

There's no marks on this one, featuring Orlando Cepeda and the 1968 set. Best name on this one? It's gotta be Zoilo Versalles.

Really, Topps?

Hey, I found some 2020 Topps Heritage. 

Every year seems to be the year that I hope to dislike Topps Heritage so I can stop collecting it. Once again, this appears to not be that year. I found brand new cards (which has actually been nearly impossible the past couple of months) on Saturday, and picked up a blaster, a hanger box and three loose packs of the new Topps Heritage set honoring the iconic 1971 set. I was not disappointed, aside from one glaring issue. Let's check out the Cardinals cards from this set, because this is a Cardinals blog, after all.

The insert designs are always the most interesting to me, because, unlike the base set, they are totally made up. This keeps a bit of the black border, but still works somehow. Also, literally any Jack Flaherty card is going to work for me at this point. Just saying...

Oh wow, Paul is really close here.

Anyway, this is the point where I'm supposed to complain about the Cardinals photo shoot photos consisting of the players wearing numberless fake jerseys, but honestly after seeing all of the fake numbers added to these jerseys by Topps, I feel better about this.

Junior Fernandez is super young but has closer potential. Randy Arozarena was a casualty in the Jose Martinez trade. Didn't these Rookie Stars cards have "RC" logos in the past? I find this interesting.

But my one actual complaint was with the blaster I bought. My first Heritage blaster of the year was a "hot box", which as usual contains a purple refractor in each pack. Cool, right?! Unfortunately, I don't know that I have any Twins trade partners at the moment, let alone three. These usually make nice trade fodder, but I really don't know what to do with these three Eddie Rosario cards.