The First Of Many

Not an expensive card or anything rare, but I feel like this card deserves its own post.  As a Cardinals fan, I know that this is going to be the first of many cards that I add to my collection with Nolan Arenado wearing the birds on the bat.  

This is from the Topps Living Set or the set that never ends while flooding the market with even more baseball cards that borrow the design of the 1953 Topps set.  

Front of the card.  

The art on the front of the card is excellent.  I would have been a little worried that this might not have been the best effort given that it seemed to come up quickly after the trade between the Cardinals and Rockies.  

Of course, Topps could have had this card in the works with a Rockies uniform and simply reworked the hat and the color of the undershirt.  Not difficult to change.  

Back of the card.  

The back of the 1953 Topps cards has always felt a little busy for me.  A lot is going on here.  In the write-up, the phrase "and has claimed a defensive award for his stellar glovework in each of his eight big league seasons" is weird.  Couldn't you just say that he's won the National League Gold Glove Award for third baseman?  

Still a great card.  

Old Style

As sure as the sun rises this morning, we can always count on Topps rehashing a bunch of previously used styles of cards from its past, or sometimes borrowed from other companies.  They love their old styles and designs a little too much at times.  I spent part of last week looking for a few non-autographed Snell's, and came up with a few cards with designs that were borrowed from long ago.

Three cards in all, here is the first.  

This is from the Living Set, or the set that just won't end.  Topps has been making these cards for a few years now.  Roughly two cards per week, so I am not sure how many different cards are now in the set.  The never-ending set borrows its design from 1953 Topps.  I have a bunch of the Cardinals and former Durham Bulls, including a Bob Gibson card that I posed in the last two weeks. 

The hat logo on the side of the cap puts a date on the card, even if the set transcends years.  It's the Rays 20th Anniversary, which was in 2018.  

It's a good thing that Topps noted Snell pitched 6 2/3 innings in the game mentioned on the highlight, otherwise I would have assumed that those 11 strikeouts would have gotten him pulled in the fifth inning.  I will let it go one of those days/years.  

Next up are two different Snell cards from the latest Topps re-hash of the T206 tobacco cards.  They brought these back again this summer.  I liked these last decade, or whenever they last appeared.  I have two different variations of this Snell card.  The first is the base variation, which does not have a tobacco advertisement on the back.  

The other card is the Polar Bear back.  

The Polar Bear backs have a print run of 83 copies, although they are not serial numbered for some reason.  There are a few other different back variations that I might try to add over the next few months.  These are not only great cards because they feature Snell, but the tobacco ads on the back are all products from the American Tobacco Company, which was in Durham.   

In fact, there old factory is across the street from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.  

The giant Lucky Strikes Water tower and smoke stack are still at the factory, but all the space is now taken up by various businesses.

The Bulls actually produced a series of videos a few years back showing how the different players prepared before the game.  Blake Snell actually walked to the ballpark before his starts.  Starting at the water fountain, until he reaches the ballpark, are all apart of the American Tobacco Factory.  

The Arrival-Blake Snell from Walmer Medina on Vimeo.

More Blake Snell cards later in the week.  

We Don't See Each Other Much Anymore

It is really hard to find a direction with blogging when you do not do it on a regular basis.  I used to have regular posts with themes and everything.  There were Monday posts about 1980s Cardinals players.  I still get to those sometimes.  Those ones with the early 1990s Skybox basketball cards that were made by a tobacco company in Durham.  More recently, I had posts rating baseball card sets, and a bunch of Durham Bulls projects.  

I do not write enough to make those posts anymore.  

My desk is covered, to the annoyance of my wife, with a large stack of baseball cards that I do not have the time or energy to write about at the moment.  I know that I have taken a break from my blog before, but I am not going to do that at the moment.  I still enjoy coming here, but I am going to give up on having the sort of order or established schedule that I have had in the past.  

The pandemic has stressed people in many different ways.  For me, I have gone from being a teacher who relied heavily on low social interaction and building rapport with my students.  There was some screen time, but it was limited.  Now, I am sitting in front of a computer from 9:45 until 4:00 everyday.  That does not include prep time or grading.  After sitting in front of a screen for 8 hours hours at work, I find it hard to get back in front of computer when I get home.  

I know I have touched on this topic several times over the past few months.  Some of you are probably tired of reading about it.  From this point forward, until I feel better about my quantity of screen time, I am just posting cards that catch my eye.  They are going to be random.  

Today, I am posting three new cards and two cards in my collection that I am thinking about selling for a small fortune.  There is also a plug for a podcast.  

First up is a Bob Gibson card that was recently released as part of Topps Living Set, or the set that never ever ends.  This is a great card.  

Might be one of my favorite cards that I have added to my collection this year.  I have a bunch of new Gibson cards this year with him being one of the twenty players in the Project 2020 set.  This is better than every single one of those cards.  I still love them, just not as much as this card.  

Anyone watching the World Series?  

This card has a connection.  Not really a good one for me as a Cardinals fan.  I am not sure how I feel about it's recent arrival after watching the first two rounds of the playoffs and the first four games of the World Series.  This is one of those coin cards from Topps Heritage Minors.  

Love that the nickel is upside down.  

Liberatore is a Top 50 prospect with every publication that puts out a set of rankings.  The Cardinals picked him up from the Rays last year in exchange for two outfielders.  One was Jose Martinez.  Yes, he can hit, but he does not really have a defensive position.  Strictly a DH.  

Here is the back of the card.  

Always like that you can see the back of the coin on these cards.  So, I was telling a story about the Cardinals trading for Matthew Libertore.  I think he's going to be a solid pitcher at a minimum.  Maybe possibly a front line starter.  Pitching is never really the problem for the Cardinals though.  They can't hit.  So, the other player they gave up for Liberatore was Randy Arozarena.  

The Cardinals likely would have found a way to screw up his swing, or they would give him the same role as Lane Thomas and let him pinch hit once a week.  I have never posted any Randy Arozarena cards on here, but there are several floating around in my collection.  He was a really inexpensive Cardinals autograph about two months ago.  

Not anymore.  Here are two that I scanned the other week.  

Love the top Stadium Club card with him sliding into second base in Wrigley Field.  That's a quality baseball card.  These are selling for a small fortune on Ebay at the moment.  Thinking of maybe putting one of these up.  

Last card.  

I have written about Gene Tenace several times on my blog.  

My one sentence summation: 

As a child Gene Tenace was the backup catcher on the Cardinals, so I naturally thought he was a complete bum until I got older and learned more about him.  

This is from the Upper Deck Timeless Teams set that was released in 2005.  Solid product with a lot of good on-card autographs.  This is my second Tenace autograph out of the set.  The other one is a different card from the 1973 A's team.  

Back of the card.  

I was looking at some Tenace cards last month after listening to the Beyond Batting Average Podcast, which had an episode about underrated baseball players from the 1970s.  Some good names on there, even if they left Rusty Staub off the list.  Tenace is one of those players who has really been helped out by some of the advanced statistics.  I am not going to rehash the argument, but there is one to be made for someone who has a .241 career batting average. Both hosts, Mark and Andy, who have a really cool baseball card related accounts if you are on the Twitter.    

Living Set Cards That Are Still Alive

Topps sells cards on their website.  They have a store with packs and boxes.  There are Topps Now cards, Throwback Thursdays, The Living Set, and probably a few others that I am missing on my list.  I see collectors get these different types of direct to consumer cards, post them, and many of them look like really nice cards.  I did that once.  It's been two years since I have touched the Topps website.  

Not going back.  

The last card I bought off of the Topps website was an Aledmys Diaz rookie card.  It did not arrive in mint condition.  The customer service people at Topps kind of shrugged their shoulders.  I did end up with another copy of the card, but I got it from another collector.  No more cards directly from Topps.  

I have been checking out some of the cards out of the Living Set, also known as the set that is supposedly never going to end.  Until enough people get bored.  Seems like a nice product with some nice looking cards.  I was curious.  I bought a few of the cards.  

Not from Topps.  

There are a few different Cardinals players that have appeared in the set, along with a few different Durham Bulls players.  I decided to start off with one of each, checking things out. 

My Durham Bulls player is Willy Adames.....

The art work on the front of the card is nice.  Adames has been a pretty prime prospect for a few years now and has a ton of cards.  Not sure he has an "art" style card.  Kind of something different after years of Minor League and Bowman products.  

Back of the card.  Would have been cool if Topps had put his Triple A stats in the past year column on the stat box on the bottom of the card.  

My Cardinals card is Jack Flaherty.  

This picture feels a little bit more like a sketch book drawing than a baseball card.   A few of the students in my class this year are really into art and do a lot with sketchbooks.  This feels like something in a sketch book.  I should get one of them to make a Jack Flaherty picture and see how close it is to this card......

Back of the card.  It would not shock me that 100% of the Dugout Quiz cartoons on the Living Set cards are about only four or five players.  

One more for today.  Besides the two cards from the Living Set, I also ended up with a Topps Now card from 2016.  I actually have a few cards from this set, which I bought before the whole Aledmys Diaz debacle.  Mainly, just a mix of Cardinals and Durham Bulls players.  I think I might have a Bryce Harper card too.  

My new Topps Now card is a former Durham Bull.  

I have a few other Upton cards out of the Topps Now set.  I was surprised that one of them is actually a pretty tough find, definitely on the expensive side for a B.J. Upton, I mean Melvin, card.  This one seems to be fairly ordinary.  

The back of the card has a quick description of the event that got the player the Topps Now card.  

Overall, some nice cards that I am happy to add to the collection and they arrived safely at my house without any bends, folds, or the need to call Topps customer service.