Zistle Trade #9

These cards cost me some Thomes, some Cabreras, some Ortizes, and a couple of Ichiros. But I got a few Cardinal managers, and closer to completing 2012 Update. It's win/win, like any trade should be.

1987 Topps #68 Tony La Russa
1988 Topps #344 Tony La Russa
1988 Topps #744 Whitey Herzog
2012 Topps Update #US3 Adam Kennedy
2012 Topps Update #US26 Santiago Casilla
2012 Topps Update #US27 Cesar Izturis

Several of the Update cards happened to be Cardinals too, including Adam Kennedy and Cesar Izturis.

2012 Topps Update
#US58 Manny Acosta
#US69 Brett Jackson
#US80 Jered Weaver
#US92 Chone Figgins
#US102 Brandon League
#US115 Jason Grilli
#US121 Johnny Damon
#US141 R.A. Dickey

2012 Topps Update
#US162 Yu Darvish
#US169 Steve Cishek
#US205 Travis Ishikawa
#US219 Brian Fuentes
#US235 Marc Rzepczynski
#US279 Ryan Cook
#US289 Prince Fielder
#US302 Lucas Harrell

The sportscasters here liked to call Rzepczynski "Scrabble". I don't know if that nickname predated his time here, or just reflects our relatively low Polish population.

2012 Topps Update
#US17 Joe Smith
#US170 Jerry Hairston
#US238 Shawn Camp
#US294 Sergio Santos
#US316 Ryan Theriot

Finally I got one more Cardinal middle infielder, short-timer Ryan Theriot.

If my Zistle want list is to be believed - and it usually is - I still need over 70 cards to finish the Update set. But, this knocked out about a quarter of the list.

2013 Topps Jumbo Pack #5

Let's open another pack, and I'll be halfway done with my Jumbo box.

2013 Topps
#205 Ryan Theriot
#235 Jake Westbrook
#266 Albert Pujols

Hmm, pack #1 also gave me all 3 of these guys. This one lacked Jason Motte and Jaime Garcia among Cardinals, though.

2013 Topps
Chasing the Dream #CD-25 Mike Moustakas
Emerald Parallel #185 Rob Scahill
1972 Topps Mini #TM-14 Chris Sale

I know it's not original, but Handlebar Moustakas has to be the best fantasy baseball team name in my league. Also, I think it's time Topps started considering their parallels when choosing photos. Purple and green together make me go cross-eyed.

2013 Topps
Gold Parallel #76 Brandon Inge #0638/2013
Chasing History #CH-4 Cal Ripken, Jr.
Chasing History Autographs #CHA-JH Joel Hanrahan

Now a Gold Parallel on Oakland's gold jerseys works nicely, even if it's not the same gold. The second card in this bunch is nothing to sneeze at either, Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr., but forgive me for jumping straight to the last one. Just before I opened this pack I said to myself "I haven't seen any autos or relics yet, I wonder if they'll all be here." Sure enough, the autographed card is. I knew Hanrahan wasn't still on the Pirates, but I was having trouble placing him, so I did a quick search. As you may know, he spent 2013 with Boston, but as you may not know, he just worked on on Thursday (April 17) for the Mets and Yankees. So, I don't think this auto is going to put anyone's kid through college, but, they can't all be superstars.

I got 43 base cards in this pack, thanks to the regular-thickness auto and other inserts. But, for some reason, almost all of them until the higher numbers were duplicates. My total unique cards went up by just 4, to 192. I'm starting to worry a bit more about completing the set with this box. At least I can say that if the collation is pretty good I still have a chance, since I have 250 more cards (200 or so base) to complete the 138 left.

Series 1 Completion: 192/330 (58.2%)

2013 Topps Jumbo Pack #1

When I started collecting in 1992, I immediately decided factory sets were the way to go. I bought or received as a gift the Topps factory set from each year, even when I started losing interest a bit, through 1999. In 2010 I started buying factory sets again, but decided for 2013 to try something different. I bought a jumbo box of Series 1, Series 2, and Update. Now, this is considerably pricier than a factory set. But, I'll get a sampling of the insert cards, and a 500-card box should give me most of each 330-card series if there's good collation. Let's see how it starts off.

2013 Topps
#54 Jaime Garcia
#130 Jason Motte
#235 Jake Westbrook

2013 Topps
#205 Ryan Theriot
#266 Albert Pujols

 First, as always, we have the current and former Cardinals base cards.

2013 Topps
Calling Cards #CC-15 Albert Pujols
Emereld Parallel #237 Brandon Lyon
Chasing The Dream #CD-17 Addison Reed
Chasing History #CH-5 Yogi Berra

Some of the more common inserts, including a nice Pujols card, where he's turned just far enough I can almost pretend he's in a Cardinals uniform.

2013 Topps
1972 Mini #TM-7 Craig Kimbrel
Cut To The Chase #CTC-14 David Price

 I like to call these two the "Awkward-to-Scan" sets, so I threw them together.

2013 Topps
Silk Collection #SC-97 Josh Johnson #22/50

And here's the prize of the pack, a Silk Collection card of Josh Johnson.

Before opening this pack, I actually already had 111 unique cards from Series 1, thanks to some cheap eBay finds and some contest winnings. Hopefully that means this box will easily complete Series 1 for me. Series 2 will be more challenging, since I currently have zero base cards. Another difficulty will come from the extra thick inserts, which can reduce the pack size by 1 to 9 cards, according to the disclaimer. This pack had 39 base cards and 7 inserts.

Series 1 Completion: 136/330 (41.2%)