Reddit Trade

I have traded for cards on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email, the comment section of blogger.....Whatever and whenever something catches my interest.  The last month, or so, I have been doing a little bit of posting in the Baseball Card area of Reddit.  It's a pretty diverse group.  Anything from the "I found 10,000 cards from 1990 in my attic, am I rich?" to "Check out these cool cards I found" and everything in between.  

After making my post about my Archives hits a few weeks back one of the frequent posters/commenters FFFHFT approached me about trading a pair of the Mets cards I pulled, the Franco autograph and the Wright silver, for a similar pair of Cardinals cards.  

Here's what I landed:

A copy of the Kolten Wong Gypsy Queen autograph.  I pulled a Matt Adams autograph out of my box, and have picked up a few other Cardinals along the way, but still have not picked up a copy of this card yet.  Wong is having a great year and I am not doing anything with his cards....I will work on it.  This is a really nice on-card autograph of the Cardinals second baseman.  Really happy to add this card to my collection.  

Speaking of good seasons, I also added a copy of a Jhonny Peralta silver bordered Archives card.  These are numbered out of /199 and run at a rate of about two per box.  Here's a look at the back of the card.....

Two really nice cards and a great new place to trade some cards.  

  

#MyCardMonday

I am going with a 2003 Donruss Studio Jhonny Peralta rookie card.  Why?  The Cardinals are in first place and they would not be there without the performance of their new shortstop.  Loads of fans groaned about PEDs and bad defense, but Jhonny has hit 20 home runs, played great D, and the Cardinals have a four and a half game lead on the Pirates.  If you want to talk about the Cardinals MVP this season, I would have to think long and hard about voting for this guy.....

2014 Topps Heritage Base Set

Last post for a few days on the 2014 Topps Heritage set.  I love the base set for this year's set which is based on the 1965 Topps design.  Pretty spectacular looking cards and I really am looking forward to seeing this set put all together.  Here's my quick spin through this cool looking set:

 

Again, the base set borrows the design from the 1965 Topps set.  One of my personal vintage favorites.  There are some great looking cards in this set, but the Eric Sogard is really cool.  The glasses of Eric Sogard are highly underrated and are cool to see on a baseball card.  The set also features some players showing off some cool hair. 

My personal favorites are the Bryce Harper comb over and the Colby Rasmus mullet.  Harper always seem to have cool hair.  We've gone from mohawk early on in his career to this...Well played.  Colby I am not so sure about.  The hair looks like something from Kenny Powers.  Perhaps Colby has a future as a gym teacher in North Carolina.  

There are also cool prospects cards in the set.  Both Enny Romero and Tim Beckham had rookie cards long ago, but it's nice to see a pair of Durham Bulls players on the same card.  I believe all of the teams have a pair of prospects in the set.  The Cardinals have a prospects card with Kolten Wong and Audry Perez.  They also have a split prospect card featuring Kevin Siegrist and Giants prospect Heath Hembree. 

 

The League Leaders cards are cool too and a great copy from the originals in the 1965 set.  The backs are cool too and again a great copy.  Sorry I did not put a scan up on the back of the card.  

The World Series cards are also a great throwback to the 1965 Topps set.  Well, the Cardinals won the 1964 World Series so the final outcome of the cards in the 65 set was better.  There are still good cards in the Heritage set for Cardinals fans.  I like this Wacha card from Game 2 of the Series.  

There are also some great update cards in Heritage.  Plenty of players in new uniforms and Topps actually did a pretty good job on these cards.  Yes they are airbrushed, but they are well done.  It was nice to see a Jhonny Peralta and Peter Bourjos in a Cardinals uni. 

2014 Topps Jumbo Break-Base Set and Parallels

One of my measuring sticks of a successful Jumbo Box is the percentage of set completed.  Some people like to measure the doubles in the box, but that is really disingenuous to think that the dupe rate is going to be low when you are opening a box of 500 cards for a 331 card set.  Get real.  So, I sat yesterday afternoon and assembled my Series 1 set and came up with 327 of the 330 cards.  That's slightly over 99% of the set.  Yes, I do have a big stack of doubles.  Luckily, I had walked to Target and picked up a few rack packs on Tuesday.  I manged to land the three missing cards: Elivs Andrus, Martin Perez, and Jason Grilli.  

Looking for a reason to put together the 2014 Topps Set?  I have got five reasons:


1. Red Parallels

There are a bunch of different parallels like normal.  Camo, Pink, Green, Yellow, and these.  I like red.  Cardinals and NC State.  SEMO too (look that one up).  These are like the Emerald Green cards of last year, so I will have to put together a set of Cardinals for this parallel set.  They are not serial numbered and seem pretty reasonable on Ebay.  I landed this Mariano, so that's going to look good with my Cardinals set.  By the way, I got one card out of the Cardianls set done.

I like any Cardinals card with the retired numbers in the background too.  Wonder if Matt Holliday caught this flyball?

2.  Final Regular Cards For Helton and Rivera 

I am sure that Topps will put Helton and Rivera in plenty of sets in the near future, but it's sad to see them make their final regular card appearance.  Both players have been great for the past twenty years or so and have been regulars in baseball card sets throughout that time.  If I have more time to flip through the cards I am sure I can probably find more players making their final appearance too.  Dawg, where's Lance Berkman?

3.  There's No AIRBRUSHING!

You want players in old uniforms?  You got it.  Thank you Topps for not airbrushing players into their new jerseys.  Peralta is still a Tiger.  McCann is still a Brave.  Both cards look fine.

4.  Throwback Uniforms

 

Lots of cool old uniforms in the set.  Reds, A's, Brewers, and many others.  Always like to see some of these in every set.  Topps has been putting plenty of these cards in sets recently and this year's Topps I is no different.  

 

5. Coco Crisp's Hair

 

Kind of a throwback to the seventies.  Where's Oscar Gamble?  

Blogger Buys Card of PED User

2013 Topps Tier One Jhonny Peralta Autograph 

Raleigh (AP) -- Sources have confirmed that The Snorting Bull Baseball Card Blog bought an autographed card of known steroid user Jhonny Peralta last week off of Ebay.  While Peralta recently signed a brand new four year contract with The Snorting Bull's beloved St. Louis Cardinals, many critics of PED use in baseball pointed out that the purchase represented a low point in the brief history of the blog.

During the 2013 season Peralta played for the American League Central Champion Detroit Tigers, but was suspended after the All-Star break for his involvement in the BioGenesis scandal for 50 games.  After serving his 50 game suspension the shortstop was signed early into Major League Baseball's free agent signing period by the St. Louis Cardinals at four years and 52 million dollars.

The signing outraged a group of Major League Players including Diamondbacks relief pitcher, patrol officer for MLB Police Department, and Kansas Jayhawks fan Brad Ziegler.  After hearing of the Peralta signing Ziegler issued the following well thought out statement via Twitter:

When reached for comment The Snorting Bull gave a few reasons for the purchase of the Peralta card:

"First, I already owned two Peralta cards, but they were both pretty low rate sticker autographs.  One was from an early 2000s Donruss Team Heroes set, while the other card came from a Leaf release from the same era.  If Peralta is going to be on the Cardinals for the next four years, then I feel like I should have a nice autograph of his in my collection.  Second, the card cost me a whole $3.  Add in the fact that I also picked up a Jon Jay Tier One autograph from the same seller cheap and you've got a pretty sweet deal on two nice autographed cards"

The Associated Press was able to obtain a nice picture of the the Jon Jay Tier One Autograph which is
also serial numbered out of 299 and features a nice on card autograph of the Cardinals outfielder.

While Jay has avoided negative press during his brief career with the Cardinals, it should be noted that Jay did attend the University of Miami.  While attending the ACC school, Jay played his home games in the university's baseball stadium which is named for known steroid user Alex Rodriguez.

Critics of PED users in baseball are alarmed and disappointed that card collectors are still spending money on known steroid users.  The Associated Press was able to a baseball card collector who describes himself as a big collector of Brian McCann and Brad Ziegler.  Here's what they had to say:

"I cannot believe that someone would spend good money on a Jhonny Peralta autograph.  You know he was suspended for using steroids.  What are we doing to punish users if owners keep trying to sign good players to win games.  A blogger spent $3 on a Peralta card?  He could have bought a lot of 100 to 200 Brad Ziegler commons for that much.  Completely disappointed." 

The AP tried to contact Brad Ziegler for comment on the story, but he was busy try to sell off spots in a baseball card break touting the autographs of Josh Hamilton, Matt Williams, Paul Molitor, and Ryan Braun.  Good thing he's not profiting off of others drug use.