It Was A Card Shop Kind of Day

I have tried to explain my teaching schedule before in previous posts, so I am not going to completely rehash the whole thing. I am currently in one of those windows where I do not teach for a few weeks. Most teachers have summer vacation. I have "track out" a few times a year. Earlier in the week, I did a bunch of stuff around the house, so I decided to treat my productivity with a trip to the card shop on Friday afternoon.  

Besides, I needed some supplies to help me put away some cards. I really need to make a sorting post one of these days. Maybe next week.  

Beyond the supplies, I also went home with a few new baseball cards. I hope you're in the mood to look at pictures of cards, because I am not in the mood to do a ton of typing today.  

Did I mention there are basketball cards too.  

I will start out with the basketball cards. I found these McDonald's All-American cards in a quarter bin. I found two cards of Zoe Brooks, who goes to NC State, and a Hannah Hidalgo, who goes to Notre Dame.  I saw Zoe Brooks record a triple-double earlier in the season. 

Big showing for the 𝙍𝙤𝙤𝙠𝙞𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙒𝙚𝙚𝙠 - Zoe Brooks, @PackWomensBball ‼️

🏀 Recorded 14 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists in the win over Liberty, earning the first triple-double by an ACC player this season

📰 https://t.co/81akC4qRWi pic.twitter.com/YcLOmQFYMs

— ACC Women's Basketball (@accwbb) December 11, 2023

It's March. Go Pack!!! 

Both Hidalgo and Brooks are freshman, so they are going to be around for awhile.  

Onto baseball. There were no new Blake Snell cards at the shop, but I did find two new cards of former Durham Bulls star, Jake Cronenworth. It's been a minute since I added a new Cronenworth card, but these two looked pretty sweet. They were also just fifty cents. Pretty good deal.  

I also found a pair of Pujols and Goldschmidt cards.  

 

An Adley Rutschman rookie card.  Big fan, you should be too.  

A cheap copy of the 1987 Topps Barry Bonds rookie card.  I can't believe these are a few dollars.  

Which brings us to the vintage portion of the post.  All of these are former Cardinals, former Durham Bulls, or in the case of Vada Pinson and Robin Roberts, older players I like.  

One final card for the post.  

I also picked up a Bowman Platinum autograph of Orioles pitcher Grayson Rodriguez.  

I have been really impressed with him in the Minors and his work in the Majors at the end of last season. I think he is going to have a really good season and his autographs are really inexpensive given his talent. I do not often advocate for people to spend money on autographs of prospects, but this is one of those moments.  

2022 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 3

Another new Blake Snell autograph that it is not all that new.  Similar to the last Blake Snell autograph I posted, this card is a parallel of one that I already own. Today's card comes out of the 2018 Topps Inception set. It's one of those pricy Topps products, but they give you sticker autographs. Even if they had on-card autographs, I would still be buying single cards.  

Here is the newest Snell autograph. 

It's obviously the red parallel and serial numbered to 25 copies. The lower serial numbered parallels in this set just come with more interesting patch pieces. Since I am not really all that interested in patch pieces, I guess it gave me a good excuse to skip this card back in the day. My first copy of this card was serial numbered to 249 and had a piece of the blue trim from his pants or sleeve. Now, I own a piece of a letter from the "RAYS" script on the front of Snell's jersey.

Well, a jersey that was possibly sitting in his locker at some point.  

Back of the card.  

Congratulations! 

Someone from Topps watched Blake Snell sign that sticker and he also once wore the jersey.

Maybe.  

The Super Utility Team Part 1

Have you watched a Rays game in the last few years?  Is it just me, or is the team filled with utility players?  The answer is yes, they are everywhere on their roster.  Two weeks ago I posted a bunch of cards of players from last year's Durham Bulls team.  I know a lot of people do not necessarily follow the Minors outside of the big name prospects, so I gave a little blurb about each of the players.  

They sounded pretty ordinary.  

Like for Nick Solak...... 

I wrote that I saw him play in college, he went to Louisville, and that he was traded to the Texas Rangers.  What I did not mention was that Nick Solak played four different positions while he was in Durham last year. Seems to be a common practice with the Rays these days with the Minor and Major Leaguers.  Teams are using more relievers and have shorter benches, so who can blame them for getting players time at different places on the diamond while they are in the Minors.  

I decided to single out a couple of my recent trades and purchases for their own posts highlighting all of the utility players that appeared in Durham last year.  It was like watching a team of Jose Oquendo's, only it's less surprising when they hit a home run.  

Up first for my utility players is Michael Brosseau, who played every infield position and left field for the Durham Bulls.  He also played 51 games in Tampa where he played every infield position, left and right field, and he pitched in three games. Sure, all the pitching appearances were in lopsided losses, but he's got an ERA of 4.50, so he's better than Brett Cecil.  

This is a good looking card.  

I got this off of Ebay.  It's out of this year's Inception set.  I always like this product, but usually have to wait a few weeks to buy the cards.  I understand that people spend a lot of money to buy boxes of Inception, but I am not spending $40 on a card of Michael Brosseau.  

Yes, I really like him as a player.  Just not $40 worth of appreciation.  

Brosseau was signed out of Oakland University, the one outside of Detroit, as an undrafted free agent.  I am not sure that I have ever really seen him mentioned on any prospect lists, so he does not have many baseball cards before this year.  Since the 2020 releases have started to come out, Brosseau has appeared in the base Topps set, Heritage, and Inception.  Looking forward to finding more of his cards.  

Silver Signatures

One of my favorite Cardinals autographs in my collection belongs to former third baseman David Freese.  It's a Five Star card from a few years back.  I love the combination of the red background with the silver pen used to sign the card.  The red does not like quite right when the card is scanned, so I prefer this picture of the card instead.  

There are other silver signatures in my collection beyond the Freese autograph.  They all look nice for the most part, I just think the Freese stands out a little more than the others I have with a silver signature.  

This Terry Pendleton autograph is a step down from Freese, but it is still a nice card.   

The Pendleton card does not have a strong contrast with the background.  I am not sure that color you would call that background, sort of a brownish/greenish, but no matter it does not allow the silver signature to pop as much.  

Another good one with contrast.....

If only Alex Reyes could stay healthy.  One day, maybe.  

That brings me to my latest card with a silver signature.  The contrast stands out, but there are some design elements I am unsure about with this card......

Mainly the different colors that are around the player picture of Jack Flaherty.  I like the orange over his left shoulder, usually a color that does not look good on Cardinals cards, but less sure about the purple semi-circle around his pitching hand.

I guess the important thing here is that the card is signed with a silver pen on a dark background.  Of all the different colored and patterned variations that Topps creates for all their different sets, the silver ink cards always seem to be my favorites.

Under The Radar

Blake Snell has to be the most under appreciated player in the game. 

I have been on a roll lately with Anthony Banda cards, but I took a little break to seek out a few Blake Snells.  It's not like it really costs much to collect either player, but I am roughly paying the same price for each of their cards.  Banda is a hard throwing pitching prospect who is out for the season after Tommy John.  Snell is having the best year of his career and is easily one of the better starting pitchers in the American League. 

Top 5, not even joking, completely serious.

Former Rays pitcher Chris Archer, that hurt to type, went on a campaign of sorts after the All-Star team rosters were announced in early July.  He had a video and an Instagram post, possibly a few interviews too.  They all gave the same message......

See my point above, top 5 pitcher in the league and the numbers support it, and the players around the league are completely missing out too.  Snell is completely under the radar.  

Snell has been on the disabled list since the All-Star break, but is coming off for a start tomorrow afternoon.  You do not even have to watch the whole game, just a few minutes.  You will not be disappointed.  

Two cards.  

I love the looks of the Inception set.  Not sure why Topps made this set chalk full of sticker autographs.  The original set had a design that was in the same neighborhood as this card, but no stickers.  They were nice.  Considering these cards are less than $10 shipped, I am willing to live with whatever minor flaws are present here.  

Last one for tonight.  How much is a box of Topps Museum Collection?  This came out of a $200 box of cards, but it costs me slightly less than $10.  There is so much to like about this card.  Decent two colored jersey swatch.  It's autographed.  I did not pay $200 to pull it out of a box of cards.  I think the last one might be the best one.  

I Just Want To Give It My Best Shot

A quick post about player collecting.  I have given up on it over the past year in the traditional sense over the past year.  Not sure I ever put that in a post.  There was one in the works at one point about it, sure it's my my drafts somewhere.  Sort of felt like revisiting the whole thing after the Canseco super collector retired and started selling off all thousandsomething of his cards.  

I need to revisit that draft badly. 

There are so many different card products these days, with all sort of parallels, and variations.  It's not really possible to go out and track down a large percentage of a player's card checklist the way you could in the 1990s when I first started a few player collections, mainly focused on Ray Lankford.    

I do not own a bunch of Ray Lankford printing plates, and there are several low print run cards that I do not own, but I usually crossed off the overwhelming majority of his cards every calendar year.  

That feels nearly impossible nowadays.  Money being one factor, but also the fact that I do not want to take the time to track down all of the cards.  So, instead I have borrowed one of the cliches from Bull Durham to describe my modified approach to find cards of favorite players.

Of course they're boring, that's the point.  

I like Anthony Banda at the moment.  True, he's on the disabled list and is not coming back until next year.  It's also true that he pitched well for the Durham Bulls and Rays while he was healthy.  Banda has many cards for sale on Ebay.  I have been picking out a nice card here, nice card there.  Really, not bad prices for a decent prospect with some upside.  

So, two new cards to start the weekend.  

This is from Museum Collection.  Love how many different uniforms the Diamondbacks wear.  Earlier in the week I posted an Inception card with a picture of Anthony Banda wearing a purple and green throwback Diamondbacks jersey.  The patch swatch on the card was the dark grey road jersey.  

This card has the purple and green jersey swatches that match the Inception card.  Seems like there could have been some better planning here.  

Always amazed at products that cost more than $200 a box, but the autographs are on a sticker.  That's why I do not buy $200 boxes of cards, just buying your $5 cards of Minor Leaguers.  Just gave it my best shot and I won an Ebay auction for this card.  

This Banda Inception autographed card was a little bit harder to find at a good price.  All I wanted was to own a nice card of a player I enjoy watching.  I just wanted to give it my best shot.  I can't blame collectors for listing cards like this for $30 and $40 considering the cost of the Inception boxes.  I set out to find one copy of this card, the color of the parallel and serial numbering did not really matter.  Just wanted to own a nice card of a player I enjoy watching. 

Even though this copy if numbered to 150 copies, kind of a high number for Inception, it's a great looking card with a nice piece of patch.  Second Banda card in the past two weeks with a huge chunk of jersey patch, those are still sort of cool. 

Pink Cards Are Underrated

There are not many pink baseball cards in my collection, but I feel like anytime I run across one I am never disappointed.

Vintage pink baseball cards are nice.

Modern pink baseball cards are nice too.

There are not many pink cards out there floating around, but one recently caught my eye.  There are pink parallels in this year's Inception set.  There were in the past too, the Taveras card is from the same product, different year.  I have a few favorite players in that set this year, so I had been on the lookout for their cards on Ebay and trade groups.  With one player I specifically set out to find the pink card.  

It caught my eye the first time I saw a copy of it.  

There are many other versions of this Anthony Banda Inception card with lower serial numbers.  They are also different colors.  Some are some are gray, some are red, and some are gold.  None of them look quite as nice as the pink variation in my opinion.  Yes, this card does have a decent patch piece included below the autograph, but I actually think that the picture of Banda in the old purple and green Diamondbacks jersey is the next best thing about this card.  

Another nice thing about this card is the fact that Topps did not airbrush Anthony Banda into a Rays uniform.  He was traded this off-season to Tampa, spent part of the season with the Durham Bulls, before he was called up to the Majors, which is why his cards keep popping up on my blog.  Topps has made a Rays card of Banda, it is just really terrible....

No thank you, I will stick to my pink Diamondbacks card.  A happy addition to the collection.