Hello, 2024.

A recent trip to Target yielded my first packs of 2024 Topps. 

I kind of dig this year's design, so I was somewhat excited that they were in stock and not completely picked over. In my opinion, the cards look like a cross between the 1986 Topps cards and the neon "DOUGHNUTS" sign at Krispy Kreme Doughnut shops.  

I really like the 1986 Topps set and I also like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, as long as they are being sold at their restaurant and not a grocery store. Krispy Kremes have to be hot or they're no good.  

Here are my firsts from my packs.

First card was Ronald Acuna.  

I also included a scan of the back of the card, because Acuna is card number 1. Convinient for set building purposes. Unfortunately, my second card was not card number 2, but I do like these card backs. 

I love how stolen bases happened last year. I miss the high totals of my childhood, which is probably another reason why I like the back of this Acuna card.  

First Cardinals card was Nolan Arenado.  

First former Durham Bulls player was Merill Kelly.  

He's turned into a really good pitcher. See the Diamondbacks in the World Series last year.  

A few other cards that were in my packs.....

Topps is doing holiday themed backgrounds this year. They were also in the Update set last year. I got three out of a blaster box. Springer is the best player in this group, but DeLuca was traded to the Rays and is a candidate to start the season in Durham. Seems like he might be a fun player to follow this year.  

We also have the 35th Anniversary reprints. Not sure why we have a Topps Heritage set at this point. I like the 1989 design, but the font is off on the player name. There is a Jim Edmonds autograph in this set, so I am sure I will go find that card at some point in the coming weeks.  

Best card I pulled was an Evan Carter blue framed parallel. He is the favorite to win the American League Rookie of the Year this season.  The card is serial numbered out of 800, but several copies have sold for north of $100 already. 

Here is the card......

I am going to file Evan Carter away for safe keeping.  Might have to revisit this card later this summer depending on how the Rookie of the Year chasr is going.  

I also got two yellow parallels. These used to be in the packs at Walgreens, but I am guessing that they are now in all retail packs seeing how I bought these cards at Target. Nice looking cards, love the Corbin Carroll.  

Last card for today. I also landed a Matt Olson Home Run Challenge card.  

Does anyone actually play these cards? I feel like I have a stack of them from the past few years that went unused.  I am sure you win something for playing, but I am not sure if it is worth my time and effort.  

Anyway, I like the 2024 Topps set, so I will be writing more about it throughout the summer.  

A New Card Shop.

My track out from school started this past Friday. I really want to be productive with my time and accomplish a lot of stuff around my house, which includes getting some cards sorted out and boxed up. I recently finished putting together a few sets, so those are the top priority. However, in attempting to purchase boxes for my completed sets I got a little aggravated at the card shop that is near my house.  

I am not going to name names, but they are now stamping their boxes with their store name, contact information, and a QR code, which leads to their website. My collection is my collection, not an advertisement for your card shop, so I took a pass on buying the boxes. I figured I was going to have to order boxes online, but just in case I did a quick Google search looking to see if any new shops had popped up in the area.  

I was in luck.  

Triangle Area Sports Cards is located in Cary, North Carolina, which is about a fifteen minute drive from my house. If you're a local, it's off of Tryon Road and Buck Jones. It has been a minute since I have had a favorite local card shop, but this one won me over in a single visit. 

Here is the inside of Triangle Area Sports Cards.  

The owner is a nice guy. We talked off and on during my time in the store. Really helpful, but low pressure on buying and very friendly. He shared his vision for the store, this is going to be a good store.  

There were tons of cards to look through and things were clearly and fairly priced. I was able to walk away with my boxes for my sets, plus I ended up with a huge stack of cards. There are wax boxes behind the counter, but I was not in the market for wax. I also don't want to spend my entire morning scanning, so I am giving you the highlights.  

There were single cards everywhere in the store with a wide variety of price ranges. I decided to flip through the single cards of Blake Snell, Paul Goldschmidt, and Nolan Arenado. Again, just the highlights, but these were all either fifty cents or a quarter.  

All those Snell autographs, figured I should probably start trying to collect some of his base cards. I am sure he has a ton, but it's a project I am thinking about taking up for 2024. More on that later this month.  

Here are the highlights of the Goldschmidt cards.  

Love that Stadium Club card in the top row on the left with the Arch in the background.  

The highlights from my Arenado stack......

The $1 is one of those wavy refractors. I actually found a bunch of parallel cards from Topps Platinum Anniversary set in various boxes around the store. The Arenado is probably my favorite, but I also found a Juan Gonzalez numbered out of 25 and an Edgar Renteria numbered out of 150.  

I also picked up a handful of Jordan Walker singles, but I did not scan those.  

Next up is a relic card of Ozzie Smith. My scan flipped out here, it's not the card.  

This is a Jersey Fusion card. I did not know much about them, but I rolled the dice. Basically the company has authentic game-used jerseys and they attach them to existing sports cards by encasing them. The back has a QR code wear you can go see the actual jersey that was used to make your card.  

These two pieces come from a 1994 Cardinals road uniform.  Here are the pictures from the company website.......

There are a bunch of these on Ebay, some pretty crazy patch pieces too.  

The remainder of the cards I am going to post are autographs that fit into my collection for various reasons. Three were pretty inexpensive, the last was the big card I purchased on this shopping venture.  

First up, Cooper Criswell.  

Cooper Criswell went to the local light blue school, but spent last year pitching for the Durham Bulls. He was a solid starting pitcher in Triple A, but really struggled during his time in the Majors with the Rays. I believe he is a Minor League Free Agent at the moment, but he still played for the Bulls, so for a few dollars I now own his autograph.  

A.J. Puk is now on the Marlins. I dabble in his cards since I saw him throw a no-hitter while he was in college playing for the USA Baseball College Summer team.  I cannot even remember the last time I ran into one of his cards.  Anyway, for a few dollars, this one has a new home.  

Alec Burleson is a local kid, went to East Carolina. The Cardinals drafted him and used him as an outfielder last year. Probably more of a first baseman or DH in the long-run. Since I finally bought his autograph, I am sure the Cardinals will trade him within the next two weeks.  Book it.  

Last card and my big purchase for this card shop visit.  

It's been a minute since I have added a Scott Rolen card. He's been signing like crazy the past few years and I have missed more than a few good looking Rolen autographs. Figured this one kind of made up for a few of those missed opportunities. 

Overall, this was a really good card shop experience. If you are a local reader, I highly recommend you visit this Triangle Area Sportscards. I know you will enjoy it.  

Set Appreciation Post #20 - 2012 Topps Pro Debut

No special guests or Aaron Boone memes for this set appreciation post, just baseball cards of players wearing Minor League uniforms. As a person who follows and watches Minor League baseball, these are always fun sets to flip through. This was the third Pro Debut set, so it was still a relatively new product at this point. More than a decade removed from its release, there are plenty of players on the checklist who are in the prime of their carer or beyond.  

Let's get it.  

The 2012 Topps design has always been fairly low on my list, easily the bottom quartile of all their base sets. It's just uninspired and looks like they did not put much thought or effort into this design. Someone came up with this five minutes before pitching it to some higher-up. The photography is fine, it's not Stadium Club or anything. You better believe I am going to count the bad design towards the final rating at the end of the post.  

It gets worse.  

There are no statistics on the back of the card. I almost want to stop the post here and just tell you to avoid ever touching this set. Add in that Topps is calling Dante Bichette a "dynamic offensive" player. That is only making things worse. He couldn't hit a beach ball outside of Denver.  

This set is really a hit or miss product. The good names are great, but there are a lot of former highly regarded prospects who never panned out or lived up to the hype. As a fan of the Minor Leagues, I am going to try to stick to the success stories for the cards I show off. The percentage of players who did not make it is really high, even for a Pro Debut product.  

The best three cards in the set are no-brainers. Like decade into their careers and they are Hall of Fame trajectory type players.  

First, we have Syracuse SkyChiefs outfielder Bryce Harper.  

Bryce Harper was in Triple A less than a month during the 2012 season before the Nationals called him up to the Majors. I usually make a point to see players like Harper when they roll through Durham, but he did not make it that far into the schedule. Despite the miss on my part, this is a cool card. I miss the SkyChiefs, who had a train as a mascot. You can see it on his batting helmet. There is story there, but I am not going to tell it on my blog. Cool card and a cheap Harper rookie if you don't own one. 

One of the other really good cards belongs to Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado.  

Arenado is shown here with the Modesto Nuts of the California League. That's A Ball and Arenado is 20 years old in this picture. Arenado was actually on Modesto in 2011, his 2012 season was spent with Tulsa in the Double A Texas League. Who would have guessed this guy would go on to hit 300 home runs and win 10 Gold Gloves? 

Baseball America rated him the 42nd best prospect right along side fellow third baseman Mike Olt and Will Middlebrooks in their 2012 Prospect Guide.  

Oops, missed out on that one.  

Last up of the really good cards is Manny Machado of the Fredrick Keys.  

I will not listen to your Manny Machado slander about him not being a future Hall of Famer.  

A few other really good players in this set......

We've got Jose Ramirez. Probably also a Hall of Famer, or getting really close. The card shows him with the Indians entry into the 2011 Arizona League team. Ramirez is an 18 year old on this card, one the youngest players featured in this Pro Debut set. This card is why this set is fun to look at years later.  

We've also got what feels like an air brushed Gerrit Cole.  

Cole was actually in college in 2011. He went to UCLA and was selected by the Pirates with the first overall pick in the MLB Draft. Cole did end up playing with the Bradenton Marauders during the 2012 season, but he was only there for a few starts before the Pirates promoted him all the way up to their Triple A team.  

Locally, we've got Christian Yelich playing for the Greensboro Grasshoppers.  

Yelich is another really young player in this set, only 19 in this picture. Turned out to be a pretty good player. Why do the Greensboro cards never have the players posing with the bat dogs?  

Many teams have bat dogs these days, Greensboro was the originator.  

Let me move on to the Cardinals and Durham Bulls portion of the post. 

There are a lot of Durham Bulls in this set. There are not many Cardinals players in this set. At least not many who made it to the Majors.  It was a toss up between Shelby Miller and Matt Adams. 

I am going with Matt Adams, because you can see his uniform.  

I have always liked the Springfield Cardinals uniforms. The Cardinals should do this with all their Minor League affiliates. Two birds on the bat with the city name in the Cardinals script. 

My best memories of Matt Adams on the Cardinals include his home run off of Clayton Kershaw in the 2014 NLDS.......

There was also that time FanGraphs wrote an article about how bad Matt Adams was playing left field and fellow Cardinals outfielder Tommy Pham liked the article post on Twitter.  

On to the Durham Bulls portion of the post. There are a lot of them.    

Some former Bulls are in the base set, but were on the Royals at the time this product was released......

You can't read the names, because it's 2012 Topps, but this is Wil Myers and Mike Montgomery.  

Montgomery recorded the final out in Game 7 for the Chicago Cubs in 2016 World Series, so I should probably ignore all his cards, but he also threw a no-hitter for the Durham Bulls at a game I attended. Seeing a no-hitter is pretty cool, so I just try to ignore his Cubs cards. 

I have also sacrificed a Durham Bulls card from this set for an in-person autograph for my son.  

Never replaced it, not sure I ever will.  

There is also a card of Taylor Motter in the set, but he is on the Princeton Rays and not the Durham Bulls. He looks weird with short hair.  Motter does not have any certified autographs, but I have an in-person autograph copy of the card that I prefer to the unsigned copy.  

There are also two Tim Beckham cards, which both show him on the Durham Bulls.  The first is a relic card.  

There are parallels of this card with patch pieces, but they've always been really expensive when they've shown up and the patch pieces are just the blue trim from the middle and sleeve areas of Beckham's jersey.  If I ever saw a patch piece from the Bulls logo, I would be all over it.  

Last Tim Beckham card......

Easily my favorite Durham Bulls card, as well as my favorite card overall in this entire set.  

Let's make one more stop with this set and then I will assign it a rating.  

Pro Debut products usually come with a few autographs per box. The 2012 Pro Debut set was no different, but the autograph checklist is terrible. I have autographs of Drew Hutchinson, Charlie Tilson, and Matt Adams, and they are three of the better names available.  

So, how does the 2012 Pro Debut set rate?  

I had been ranking the sets featured in my Set Appreciation posts, but I am going to stop that today.  Instead, I am going to rate the set on a 1-5 scale based on its design, quality of checklist, insets, value and price, and also an overall. 

Today's rating scale is using the Durham Bulls beloved mascot, Wool E. Bull.  

The design is really bad and the lack of stats on the back of the cards is really hard to get past for me. I gave the set 1 Wool E. Bull for design and I felt like that might be generous. The checklist has some strong names, but it is really top heavy. There are a few other solid names in this set that I did not bring up in the post, my time is limited, but there are a lot of failed prospects here. More than other Pro Debut sets. 

My two highest ratings were for inserts and value. While the autograph checklist is terrible, I am a sucker for those manufactured patch cards with the Minor League logos. I know that there are few Minor League card collectors floating around on Blogger, but those are universally loved and were a great concept. The value offered here is good too. There are really cheap boxes and packs of cards that you can find on the discount table at shops and shows.  

Overall, I give this set two Wool E. Bulls.  There are better Pro Debut sets out there. 

Friday Five: My Favorite 1988 Topps and Topps Traded Cards

I got a copy of the 1988 Topps set from my parents for Christmas that year. I was excited about getting a complete set, so I opened the set box and sorted out all of the cards. Everyone from the 1980s knows you are supposed to leave your complete Topps sets sealed, right? I was in fifth grade and baseball cards are fun, of course I opened the box. Also, it's the 1988 Topps set.  You can probably find a copy of the set at your local thrift shop for $5.  

There are probably multiple copies for less than $5 at your thrift shop.  

Is the 1988 Topps set unpopular because it's really that bad, or because it lacks a signature rookie card Truth be told, I kind of dig the 1988 Topps set. The design is underrated.  

Topps is using the 1988 design as an insert set with the 2023 Topps set. Many have not liked the 1988 Topps set for the past thirty years, but you're going to love it now and buy all the retail packs from Target and Wal-Mart.  

I personally like the Nolan Arenado card.  

Now, let me get to the countdown. I am going to include cards from the 1988 Topps Traded set in this post, because there are some good cards in there and it is also a $5 set.  

Shall we?  

5T. 1988 Topps Traded Andy Benes #14T 

5T. 1988 Topps Traded Ron Gant #39T 

I did not touch the 1988 Topps Traded set until the Cardinals signed Andy Benes and Ron Gant as a free agents before the 1996 season. There was a high-end card store that was a few minutes from my house back in the 1990s. When the Cardinals signed Benes and Gant, they set out a huge stack of 1988 Topps Traded sets on one of their counters with all the sets costing $10. I bought the set expecting it to have a Ron Gant rookie and a bunch of junky cards. 

Not the case.  

As a Cardinals fan, I got cards of Jose DeLeon, Luis Alicea, and Tom Brunansky on top of Gant and Andy Benes. There was also David Wells, Jim Abbott, and Roberto Alomar amongst others. It's a pretty good set and I have no idea how it is only crispy Alexander Hamilton.  

4. 1988 Topps Traded Robin Ventura #124T

Robin Ventura is not quite a Hall of Famer. One of the best third baseman from the 1990s and early 2000s, just a step below players like Scott Rolen. In the aftermath of the 1982 Topps Traded set, every Topps Traded set had a potential Cal Ripken waiting to rising from the checklist. This was the "it" card from the 1988 Topps Traded set. Not sure it was every really all that expensive at any point, but the fact that the card costs less than a dollar is insanity.  

This card should cost at least a dollar at a minimum.  

3. 1988 Topps Vince Coleman #1 

I loved the design of the Record Breakers cards in the 1988 Topps set. That red background really pops and it was great to see a Cardinals player on the first card of a Topps set.  The Record Breaker was for Coleman's third consecutive season with more than 100 stolen bases. I believe that Topps has reused this design in one of their Throwback/Customer Direct products.  

Here is the moment.......

The previous record was held by Rickey Henderson.  

2. 1988 Topps Mark McGwire #580 

Mark McGwire with a Topps All-Star Rookie logo in the corner. It was a no-brainer. No goatee or crazy muscles, just skinny Mark McGwire holding a bat and posing for a picture. This is one of my favorite early McGwire cards. Topps also used a picture from this same photo shoot on McGwire's 1988 Glossy Mail-In card and the A's Team Leaders card.  

I am sure if I looked hard enough, Topps has probably recycled these photos on modern McGwire cards as well. It would be borderline shocking if they have not.  

1. 1988 Cardinals Leaders #351 

Great picture here with long-time Cardinals player, manager, and coach Red Schoendienst standing next to catcher Tony Pena. Most coaches do not get cards, so it was nice to see someone as high-profile as Red get the nod from Topps. It is somewhat surprising that Pena appeared on this card over some of the more popular 1980s Cardinals players like Ozzie Smith, Willie McGee, or Vince Coleman. 

Still, not a complete reach.  

If you weren't around for 1980s baseball, Pena was the premier defensive catcher in the league and the Cardinals were loaded with Gold Glovers. The Cardinals had outfielders to spare, but no catcher. Prior to the 1987 season, the Cardinals traded Andy Van Slyke to the Pirates for Pena. The Cardinals ended up winning the National League that season, but injuries caught up with them in the World Series and they lost in seven games. 

A card back.  

Solid numbers on the Cardinals Team Leaders. I am sure Red helped somehow, someway.