Let's Throw it Back

A Cardinals-centric collection of @batcavelv cards from today and back in the day. 

Tracy's Box Breaks is known for posting cheap box breaks periodically, which I always enjoy. Tracy also finds time to kick some other Cardinals my way from time to time. Let's check out a bunch of cards I got back in late November.

It's a rare Toys 'R Us parallel sighting! With the toy chain's demise, the purple parallels were pawned off on another chain store that we don't have around my neck of the woods. I'm not sure if they're continuing to do this for 2020 or not. The Walmart and Target colored parallels ceased years ago, but the idea continues to live on (see Walgreen's for example.)

Speaking of retail exclusives, here's one from the Topps Fire set that you can usually only find at Target. This is a nice gold parallel of Brock's base card.

Carson Kelly showed some power last year in his first shot of regular catching duty, albeit with another team. I wonder how Diamondbacks fans feel about him. This is kind of a busy card design, but I kind of like it.

More parallel madness, with former Cardinal (for six games at least) Tim Cooney appearing on a silver prospects Bowman card. Hey, that's six more games than most people have played in Major League Baseball!

I love "framed" cards a whole lot, so I'm always happy to get these. Goldschmidt is still in Diamondbacks uniform here, and I like that Panini didn't do a whole lot to disguise that other than the usually logo wipes that they do.

Another card of Goldy, shown here on last year's Panini Leather & Lumber base card. I think I missed out on a big opportunity when I didn't buy up all of the discount blasters of this stuff at a card show last year. I did have fun with the one that I opened, at least.

The photo itself doesn't get a ton of space here, but it's great to get a numbered card of any Hall of Famer.

The thing that really kickstarted this particular package was Tracy contacting me about going in with him on one of those Topps online exclusive set deals. That particular week's Throwback Thursday checklist had two Cardinals on it, and I was feeling adventurous and bought in.

They have a very 1990ish Score feel to them, although who knows if that's what they were going for here? There's next to nothing on the back, but I do appreciate the thickness of these cards as well as the overall look. One of the biggest reasons I never got on the Topps Now train even once is that I suspect that, once in hand, the cards weren't going to look or feel much different than any old insert card from the flagship set. These TBTs are really nice, though.

And speaking of throwing it back, check this totally '90s card from Topps Magazine. I love it.

Thanks again to Tracy, who has had a box break up for quite awhile now. I bet there's still time to buy in if you check with him.

Waiting for Spring

A few cards from @Lost_Collector while the anticipation awaits. 

With the super duper football spectacle firmly in the books (congrats to Andy Reid, Lil' Mahomes and KC!), it's officially baseball season as far as I'm concerned. Let's take a look at some baseball cards from long time blogger and trading dude The Lost Collector.

Here's a rare foilboard card that actually scanned pretty well. There's a couple of weird gouge marks towards the bottom of the card that aren't actually present on the card, though. It's probably time to do some scanner maintenance.

Okay, fine, there's just two baseball cards to look at tonight. It's a trick! AJ sent me more than two Cardinals cards, of course, but I really felt like scanning more of the Blazers he sent for some reason, like this wintery Al-Farouq Aminu card from last season. Portland certainly misses the key players that left the team after their playoff run last season, but they seem to be turning a bit of a corner now in the 2019-20 season... finally.

Here's a Panini Contenders card before they fully dropped the Playoff branding and made the sets look pretty much the same every year. Marcus Camby was a fun player with the Blazers.

Another ex-Blazer (current Milwaukee Buck) Pat Connaughton is here on an insert design that is one of Panini's best efforts at replicating a classic Donruss look. I mean, it's not exactly the same (bears the most resemblance to the 1988 The Rookies box set), but it feels right. They went for white borders instead of blue here.

Here's another look at Panini Contenders, although this is from the Draft Picks set that confusingly includes veteran NBA players in their NBA uniforms. I don't get it. Damian Lillard has been playing like he activated God Mode for the past couple of weeks and shows no sign of slowing down, so I had to find a way to get a Dame card into a post tonight is basically what I'm saying.

Finally, here's blog fave Wesley Matthews while on his way out the door in Portland. His time with the Blazers was undone by an untimely Achilles tear as his contract was expiring, which, well... sucked.

Super Groundhog Sunday!

Today is the day nearly everyone likes or tolerates pro football! 

I threw together a quick pack break over at APTBNL. Go check it out and enjoy 2x the Grogan!

Mini Mania

The @nightowlcards delivers a large amount of small cards. 

Top tier blogger and Beckett contributor of late Night Owl Cards sent along another excellent package of stuff to me back in November. This one was largely comprised of minis from the most recent Allen & Ginter set. Interestingly enough, I actually bought a couple of loose A&G packs tonight during a grocery run and ended up with a mini of that blasted egg card.

These minis were much more exciting than the dreaded egg. This one is an insert from Topps' tribute to acrophobia, apparently.

Topps has done various plants and flowers in Allen & Ginter sets, sometimes even including seeds inside. This one is of the seedless variety.

Here are even more minis! I considered making a mini pyramid (of minis), but this ended up looking more like the reverse funnel system.

Night Owl also sent some full-sized cards, including this much needed short print from the 2018 Heritage set. I only need 80 more of those, probably.

There were Cardinals, too, including this not-as-ordinary-as-you'd-think card of the White Rat. There was a special on MLB Network tonight about the '80s Cardinals that I'm sure I will enjoy watching later.

See? It's not ordinary, it's a Tiffany!

And speaking of not ordinary, here's Yadi, who plans to retire a Cardinal... if he ever retires at all.

Stats: Advanced Edition

Are you ready for these numbers?

Here's my most recent Listia pickup, and it's super ordinary looking on the face of it. I completely missed it, but in 2019 (at least) Topps extended their idea of card back variations containing advanced stats for players throughout the entire set.

Rather than choosing a handful of cards to create variations for, we get a serial numbered card with different stat categories for each card in the set. Well... maybe. I don't see how this would work for team cards, checklists, or even rookie cards unless they actually have these same stat categories for minor league numbers or did something totally different than usual with the backs. After a brief check of available card images on TCDB, I wasn't able to find any images for RC cards or other non-single player cards with typical backs.

All of this makes me wonder what the print runs were for the earlier stat back variations. I think I only have a couple of those.

Shiny and Gold

Another fresh batch of Cardinals from a fellow Cardinals fan. 

As a team collector, it rarely beats the feeling of dumping cards from a rival team on someone and getting some stuff from your team in return. For me, it's kind of like swapping a bowl of slimy mushroom and beet salad for a fresh brick oven pizza. (To be fair, I actually really like salad, but not so much those particular veggies.)

However, sometimes it's even better to swap items with someone who is into the same team as you. I end up with a crateload full of Cardinals doubles by the very nature of being a team collector, and I imagine Ray from All Cardinals All The Time is in a similar boat. 2019 was a very productive year for Cardinals-for-Cardinals trades, at least on my side, so I'm hopeful that I was able to add as much of the good stuff to his collection as he did to mine. He's a few highlights from an envelope received back in November.

There's an incredible amount of Bowman parallels, many with their own "flair" added to the color scheme. I'm just going to call this "blue wave" for now, even though it might not be.

I know that I figured out where the Kaminsky and Tilson cards belonged in the TCDB database back when I first opened this stuff, but again I'm just going to stick with "blue wave" for tonight. See, it's kinda wavy? I don't tend to open a ton of Bowman, and when I do it's pretty much always retail, so I only usually see the basic refractors.

Here's a nice trio of gold Bowman parallels, something that Topps has done away with in recent years. I don't necessarily love the gold look on these, but I feel that they have somehow made the Bowman product much more boring lately. I feel like I had a lot more fun with this pack break from 2007, for example.

Here's one last shiny parallel in the form of a Matt Adams "prism" refractor. These seemed destined to replace the "X-Fractor" at some point, but I see that they're still making those as recently as 2019.

Thanks again to Ray. I think I have at least another one of these packages from him to recap in the near future.

Ineffective Phil

Chronicling the famous knuckleballer's brief time with the Blue Jays. 

There was a nice batch of oddballs in my most recent Goodwill find, including a bunch of Classic game cards from 1987 and 1988 that I hadn't seen much. This Phil Niekro card stood out the most, as I had no recollection of Niekro ever wearing a Blue Jays uniform in baseball card form or otherwise.

As it turns out, it wasn't such a great time for Phil! Can you imagine Niekro ever signing the back of this card? I will cherish it forever.

I believe there are three Niekro cards in this set, most likely representing each of the three teams he played for in his final season. I wonder if the stats were just too gruesome to look at.