Christmas Cards, a Few Months Late

I seem to always be trying to catch up, so here's some cards that arrived sometime in December, from ATBATT's 3rd Annual Operation PWE. There's something about an envelope of mostly different players and sets that just brings joy to opening the mail.

1991 Topps #343 Jose Oquendo
1992 Pinnacle #381 Andres Galarraga
2015 Topps #220 Shelby Miller
2015 Topps #336 Matt Carpenter
2015 Topps - Archetypes #A-11 Mark McGwire
2016 Topps Heritage #89 Trevor Rosenthal

I'm bad at staying on top of acquiring the Cardinals inserts when new sets come out. That Mark McGwire is a card I definitely should have already had, but didn't. As always, I'm surprised when I don't already have junk-era cards I receive, because it seems like I have so many cards from those years. But both the Oquendo and Galarraga fill holes in my collection.

1988 Topps UK Minis #72 Ozzie Smith
2016 Topps #254 Matt Holliday

I like these UK Minis, and I actually have a couple copies of the Ozzie card now. All the more reason to chase down the Vince Coleman and Willie McGee cards from that set. Then there's Matt Holliday, who just won't seem right in a Yankees uniform this year.

Thanks to Stealing Home for the PWE!

Me Too!

I've seen lots of 2015 Update boxes with the Chrome cards on your blogs, and had to get one myself. Let's see how I did. As usual I like to show off the Cardinals and inserts, lest I spend a ton of time scanning 9 cards at a time.

2015 Topps Update
#US106 Shelby Miller
#US214 Yadier Molina
#US338 Pete Kozma
#US373 Mitch Harris
#US393 Dan Haren
Pride and Perseverence #PP-8 Jon Lester
Rarities #R-3 Daniel Nava
Rookie Sensations #RS-6 Nomar Garciaparra
Rookie Sensations #RS-20 Tom Seaver

Shelby Miller's got an ugly hat, and Yadi's got a ridiculous gold chest protector, but I like All-Star game cards. It's not Topps' fault the game has started to look a bit silly.

Pride and Perseverance is a good idea for a set, featuring players with unique challenges, mostly medically related from the checklist. I think it might have been better if it didn't just look like a brown parallel, though. The other insert card of note in the first bunch is the Nomar Garciaparra, one of the very few players I collect that hasn't played for the Cardinals.

2015 Topps Update
Highlight of the Year #H-76 Hank Aaron
Tape Measure Blasts #TMB-11 Mark McGwire

Here are two more retired players feature on inserts. I guess it's a nice easy way to please everyone, having insert sets featuring not only the biggest stars of today, but all time. The McGwire card features a specific long home run he hit just a few months before being traded to St. Louis in 1997, and breaking the single-season record in 1998.

2015 Topps Update - Chrome
#US237 Craig Kimbrel
#US238 A.J. Cole
#US309 Howie Kendrick
#US308 Joey Butler
#US319 Will Harris
#US392 Odrisamer Despaigne
#US398 J.T. Realmuto
2015 Topps Update - Rookie Sensations Chrome #RSC-2 Ichiro Suzuki

Here's the big draw for these boxes, the Chrome parallels. There were 8 and they scanned nicely this way, so apologies to Joey Butler's card for being sideways. I didn't get any Cardinals in the Chrome packs, but I did get an Ichiro insert. The exclusive nature of these means I might be tempted to grab another box or two, and then try to trade for or buy the rest secondhand.

July Card Show Purchases II

Here's the other half of the Cardinals and other players I collect.

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen
#9 Bo Jackson
#25 Matt Carpenter
#27 John Lackey
#37 Mark McGwire
#44 Steve Carlton
#47 Ozzie Smith

That's a strong bottom row, with two Hall-of-Famers, and one that would have been, probably if he just handled the post-career PR a little better. Bo Jackson is one of the few players who never played for the Cardinals that I nevertheless collect, just because his story was so fascinating. I think the two-sport aspect gets me a little, too, because I considered adding Deion Sanders to my collections as well.

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen
#48 Shelby Miller
#49 Albert Pujols
#59 Adam Wainwright
#72 Carlos Martinez
#84 John Smoltz
#99 Roger Maris

This half netted me 6 uniformed Cardinals and 5 other Cardinals, for a total of 13 uniformed and 8 other. I wanted to say "former", but both Smoltz and Maris are pictured with teams they played on before St. Louis. I wasn't expecting a full 8% of the base set to fall into my personal collection, but here we are. Certainly that's somewhat due to the Cardinals recent success, and at the expense of other teams, so I will enjoy and appreciate this while the winning lasts. 

2015 Is Here

Ok, it's been here for a few days. But, I've been entirely too busy to open the hanger box (is that the right term for the 72-card, $10 box?) I bought Friday at Target. I'll probably wind up purchasing a Jumbo box, rendering all of the base cards in this box expendable, but I decided to be less practical and more fun in my collecting from now on, and a $10 bill won't kill my budget. But, enough about my collecting philosophies; onto to the cards!

2015 Topps
#11 Jon Jay
#48 John Axford
#80 Adam Wainwright
#220 Shelby Miller

I consider any pack consisting of over 1/30th Cardinals a success, even if one is pictured as a Pirate and another (Miller) has already been traded away for Jason Heyward.

2015 Topps
Archetypes #A-22 Hank Aaron
Rainbow Foil #279 Coco Crisp
First Pitches #FP-06 Agnes McKee
Robbed #R-12 George Springer
The Jackie Robinson Story #JR-2 Serving His Country
Free Agent 40 #F40-5 Goose Gossage
First Home Run #FHR-05 Derek Jeter
First Home Run #FHR-10 Anthony Rizzo

The first time I flipped through the cards, I didn't notice this Coco Crisp card was a parallel. The Rainbow Foil effect is somewhat hard to discern with the colorful borders. For the First Pitch cards, I thought it was kind of a cool idea when I read about it, but of course I was focusing in on the celebrities like Jeff Bridges and Eddie Vedder. Even though my card has a 105-year-old woman I've never before known about, I'm still in favor of the set. In the second row, you can see I pulled the mandatory Jeter card, which was actually the first 2015 cards I saw in person. I was a little surprised to get 2 cards from the First Home Run set, though.

2015 Topps
Call Your Shot Game Card
Highlight of the Year #H-8 Ted Williams

I doubt that bar code has enough information for you to redeem my Call Your Shot codes, but in case it does, I've already entered, giving me a 1:1,000,000 shot against everyone else who opened 2015 Topps this week.

The Ted Williams highlight card is nice and all, but overall, I'm not that overwhelmed by the inserts from this box.  Usually at least one catches my eye, and the whole set makes its way to my wantlist. Archetypes is obviously full of big stars, so that may be one that I go after. When looking up the Williams card in an online checklist, though, I saw there's a Nomar Garciaparra card in that insert set as well. I'll definitely be trying to track that one down.

Well, that's my first taste of 2015 cards. I'm sure the next will come when I'm waiting in line at Target and feeling froggy, so that could really be any day now.

2013 Allen and Ginter Set

You read that title right; we're throwing back allllll the way to 2013.

I bought the full set (almost) from Nachos Grande last year, and it's been sitting on my shelf as I procrastinated entering the cards into my Zistle account. I actually purchased the non-SPs only, and this was also at the beginning of Puig-mania, so a Puig-free set was offered at a substantial discount, so I decided to take a chance that Yasiel Puig would cool off a bit, along with the prices for his cards. So far that doesn't seem to be happening, though. In any case, the set I purchased was 299 of the 300 base cards. In a separate purchase, I bought all 50 of the SPs, so I'm at 349/350, needing only a Puig to finish off the set.

I decided while flipping through the cards again that I'd go ahead and post the Cardinals like I normally do, but there were a large number of them by my criteria. I tried to split them up somewhat logically, though with all of the retired players the divisions became a bit fuzzy. Today was supposed to be players who have moved on from the team.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#5 Albert Pujols
#12 Dan Haren
#20 John Smoltz
#27 Shelby Miller
#46 Colby Rasmus
#93 A.J. Pierzynski

The Shelby Miller trade caught me off guard, and I had to re-scan my cards. Also, I don't know what I was thinking putting A.J. Pierzynski in this pile, even though he is technically a free agent right now. He could still be a Cardinal next year, though he may just as easily be playing somewhere else. Also, Smoltz retired after a partial season with the Cardinals, so one could argue he should have been in the next post, with guys like Ozzie Smith.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#183 Ryan Ludwick
#189 David Freese
#208 Allen Craig
#235 Carlos Beltran
#245 Mark Buehrle
#284 Will Clark

Will Clark's another guy who finished with the Cardinals, though he clearly had the most productive years of his career elsewhere. And Mark Beuhrle has never been a Cardinal, though I still suspect he'd give them a pretty good hometown discount. I like to track his cards just because he grew up in the same town as me.

In conclusion...these are some random 2013 Allen and Ginter cards of guys I collect for reasons not limited to playing for the Cardinals?

2013 Topps Update Jumbo Pack #10

It's the final pack in my quest at the full run of 990 cards in 2013 Topps.

A fan of the other Missouri baseball team gave me trouble about all the Cardinals in Pack 9, but he was the only one to comment, so I shall reward him with all of the Royals in Pack 10.

2013 Topps Update
#US40 Tim Collins
#US75 Ty Wigginton
Emerald Parallel #US141 Chris Carter
Franchise Forerunners #FF-8 Nolan Ryan/Yu Darvish
Gold Parallel #US166 Kevin Gregg #0845/2013
Making Their Mark #MM-28 Nick Franklin

Well, as far as base cards go, this pack had one Cardinal, and one Royal. I don't really know much about Tim Collins, but I do know this is my first card of Ty Wigginton in a Cardinal uniform. He didn't last very long here, but I'll still collect his cards. That Nolan Ryan guy down on the left isn't bad either.

2013 Topps Update
Chasing History #CH-108 Shelby Miller
1971 Topps Mini #TM-25 Shelby Miller

This pack had not one, but two Shelby Miller insert cards, modeling both the home and road jerseys, I think. Maybe the mini is just poorly lit.

After the last pack, I still had 45 cards to go, or so I thought. All 44 of the base cards in this pack were new, according to my list. That left one card, #109. I looked in the already sorted pile from the previous 9 packs, and sure enough, there was a #109 in there. I must have just misclicked when entering my cards into Zistle.

Also, I mentioned back in Pack 3 that I had a dinged up Wilson Betemit card. I did get an additional copy of that one along the way, so I have a full, undamaged set. All in all, I think my decision to get a Jumbo box of Update was a good one. I will probably do the same for 2014. As for Series 1 and 2 this year, I'm still a little on the fence, so it might come down to the price I find for Jumbo boxes and the factory set.

Update Series Completion: 330/330 (100.0%)

2013 Topps Update Jumbo Pack #7

Some say 7 is lucky, but I've never really found that to be the case. Let's see how Pack #7 works out

2013 Topps Update
#US171 Nick Punto
#US201 Adam Ottavino
#US253 Shelby Miller
#US261 Skip Schumaker
#US270 Edwin Jackson
Emerald Parallel #US Dylan Axelrod
Gold Parallel #US40 Tim Collins #1277/2013
Black Parallel #US278 Jose Alvarez #61/62

Believe it or not (and why wouldn't you, really?), these are the first cards of Nick Punto and Adam Ottavino I've ever shown on my blog. I would have figured their cards would have come up before. On another note, I pulled another black parallel from this pack, numbered to 62.

2013 Topps Update
#US189 Kyle Lohse
Chasing History #CH-144 Yasiel Puig

This pack had quite the rogues' gallery of former Cardinals, with 4 in the first scan, and Kyle Lohse in the horizontal section. Along with him I have another card of this Puig fellow who seems to be showing up a lot.

2013 Topps Update
Franchise Forerunners #FF-2 Yasiel Puig/Matt Kemp
Making Their Mark #MM-39 Kevin Gausman
1971 Topps Mini #TM-2 Babe Ruth

And here I have yet another Puig along with Matt Kemp. It must be good to be a Puig collector these days, unless you're a completist. Then I'd guess it gets a little pricey.

This pack had the full 43 base cards after subtracting out the "standard" inserts. 30 of them were new, keeping me ahead of the pace to finish the set; with 70% of the packs busted, 73% of the set is complete.

Update Series Completion: 241/330 (73.0%)

2013 Topps Jumbo Pack #7

With 4 packs and 113 cards to go, can I stay on pace to complete the set?

2013 Topps
#245 Jason Isringhausen
#305 Shelby Miller

I like to pretend former Cardinals in Angels or even sometimes Rangers uniforms are still Cardinals. Squinting just slightly at Izzy makes that pretty easy on this card.

2013 Topps
Calling Cards #CC-5 Jonathan Papelbon
Chasing History #CH-42 Alex Rodriguez
Chasing the Dream #CD-19 Yu Darvish
Emerald Parallel #303 Alex Rodriguez/Checklist

2 A-Rod inserts from a single pack would have been a bit more exciting before the whole year-long suspension thing.

2013 Topps
Cut to the Chase #CTC-16 Nelson Cruz
1972 Topps Mini #TM-27

These die-cuts are still weird, and the minis are still awesome.

Out of 42 base cards, 22 were new this time. The set-complete percentage is still slightly above the box-busted percentage, but it's getting closer.

Series 1 Completion: 239/330 (72.4%)

College Bowl Game Contest Win, Part 1

For the 2012-2013 College Football season, I entered the College Football Pick 'Em contest hosted by madding of Cards on Cards. I've won several of his contests over the years, and he always dumps a ton of Cardinals on me when I do. Yet, I think this time he may have outdone himself. I may have to work hard to get them all posted before the 2013-14 College Football season starts August 29, and I start posting my Power Rankings again.

I've decided to go more or less in backward chronological order with these, so for this post, you get some of the 2013 Series 1 cards. Specifically, the pitchers.

2013 Topps
#50 Adam Wainwright
#54 Jaime Garcia
#96 Edward Mujica
#130 Jason Motte
#146 Kyle McClellan
#188 Brian Fuentes
#235 Jake Westbrook
#261 Trevor Rosenthal
#305 Shelby Miller

I realize you could say this about just about any MLB team, but if all of these guys had stayed healthy (and with the team in the case of McClellan and Fuentes), I think the Cardinals would be running away with the division today, not struggling to hold back or catch the Pirates and Reds.