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 #19- 1995 Select Certified

 This week's Set Appreciation Post has a special guest, my six year-old daughter.  

She is a kindergartener who has some strong opinions on life and a love of art work.  Parts of our house are frequently converted into art galleries for whatever art she is working on at the moment. Her art does not always stay on paper though. Sometimes, it appears in other forms.  

For example, after returning home from a trip to Washington, D.C. this spring my computer was covered in sticky notes. Each sticky note was its own piece of art work, but it also somehow formed a larger work.  

The explanation would take several minutes and there would be no baseball cards in this post if I wrote everything she said about the sticky note art work.

She already has some opinions about my baseball cards.  

For example, according to her, my baseball card boxes are all pretty boring because they are plain white. She thinks that I should have the outside of the boxes match the baseball cards that are on the inside. At some point last year, she attempted to decorate the boxes for my autographed cards, which all have the letter "N" scribbled on the outside of them. She had bigger plans that her stopped. According to her, someone wrote on the cards inside the box, so she wrote the first letter of her name on the outside of the box.  

They match and she is willing to add more art to the outside of the boxes.  

I have not allowed her to continue to do her art work on my baseball card boxes, but that did not stop her from doing one final piece of art work on my box holding my copy of the 1995 Select Certified set. The cards are bright and shiny, so the box should match, right?  

Here is the top.  

Here is the front.  

Her median was 1990 Upper Deck team logo stickers.  

Let's talk about the cards. 

Each of us will provide a take on the 1995 Select Certified set.

Here is the basic design of the 1995 Select Certified cards.  

I really like the dark greyscale background behind the color photos, which is something different. I also like the card stock and texture. It's not exactly a thick paper stock, but definitely has a sturdy feel to the card. There is a glossy finish, which I think is interesting on a card that uses a greyscale background. 

My daughter does not like this design and wants to know why a brighter color like purple was not used in the background. She suggests a pattern that you could color in like a coloring book.  

That's actually not a bad idea.  

I love the breakdown of the stats by team on the back of the card. It's like the Bowman cards, but with more color and better graphics. Sure, you get less numbers, but you still get a good sense of how the player faired against each team. Bonds torched the Expos in 1994, which is saying something because they were easily the best team in the National League.  

My daughter likes that Barry Bonds is willing to wear earrings on his baseball card, but thinks at least one team should use a pony or hearts as their logo.  

My favorite card of a former Durham Bulls player in this set is Chipper Jones. His early cards are always fun, looks a little silly here with the huge swing. I will add that the number of former Bulls players in this set is fairly small and the other choices had rather blah looking pictures.

The card did not scan well, but Chipper is actually apart of the Rookie subset in Select Certified and the background of the card is half grey and half gold. That stamp does not exactly show a ton of creativity.  

My daughter also picked out this card for her favorite Durham Bulls player in the set, although her explanation started out with, "Have you ever ate lunch with boys at school?" and ended with "making farting noises".  It took her about two minutes to explain the whole thing, I will let your imagination fill in the middle of the conversation.  

My favorite Cardinals card in the set......

is Bernard Gilkey.  

Several of the Cardinals players are pictured in road uniforms, which are nice, but are also a gray uniform on a dark gray background. I do like the action shot on the front of this card, but also really like the way that the white home uniform with the red helmet and uniform accessories pop on the dark background.

My daughter did not pick a favorite Cardinals card, because "none of them are very nice looking" and added a "No, thank you" when I told her that she needed to pick a Cardinals card. Later in the post she does pick a former Cardinals player card for her favorite overall card from the set.  

Let me off-road a few other things I like about this set, but the little one rejoins the conversation.  

One of the best parts of Select Certified is the Gold Mirror parallels.  

I am generally not a parallel person, but this one is well done. There were a few Gold cards in every box, no serial numbers, and it's the only parallel that came in the product.  Over the years, I have put together the complete set of Cardinals and I am close to having all the former Durham Bulls players. Good looking set of cards.  

If you don't dig the dark background of the base cards, these are a really nice option and they are generally not that expensive compared to the price of other popular 1990s parallels at the moment.  

Moving on.  

Select Certified is a small set with only 135 cards in the set. There were 28 Major League teams in 1995, so there are roughly 4 to 5 cards for each team. Small sets generally tend to stick to the big names on rosters and not stray into many subsets or special cards. Select Certified has a bit of both.  

The Dodgers got a special card for having three players win the Rookie of the Year in a row.  

Eddie Murray also got a special card for collecting his 3,000 hit in 1994.  

Always cool to see these kinds of cards to mark special accomplishments, especially on a small checklist like Select Certified. There are also Rookie Subset cards. I posted one at the top of the post with the Chipper Jones card, but the scan did not do a good job of showing the card.  

Here is another Rookie subset with a picture taken using my phone's camera.  

There are actually some pretty big names in the Rookie subset with Jeter and ARod. A few others including one later in the post.  The Jeter and ARod are not actually rookie cards, but still early cards that are fun to own. You can see the two-toned background a little better on photograph. 

Let's bring the little one back in to finish up the post and talk about our favorite cards.  

My daughter is up first with Mark McGwire.  

She picked this card, because Mark McGwire is the only player in the set with long hair.  

That's it, her whole reason for picking the card. I will add for context that her favorite Disney Princess is Rapunzel, and that she keeps her hair long and it must be styled everyday before she goes to school. I would like to see Mark McGwire rock some bubble braids.  

I went a little different direction for my favorite non-Cardinal, non-Durham Bulls card from this set.  I decided to pick the Hideo Nomo rookie card.  

  

Every year the baseball card world goes crazy of a certain player or two. In 1995, there was Nonomania. Everyone wanted a Hideo Nomo card and this was one of my favorites. A great card from the mid 1990s, I think if I made a list of the best cards from my time in high school, this card would be on the list.  

How does it rank on my list?  

It has been a hot minute since I have done a set appreciation post. The last set I added to my list was the 2001 Donruss set last November. The set was terrible. The 1995 Select Certified set is definitely not terrible. In fact, it's a pretty good set of baseball cards. 

Narrow it down.  Looking at the top half of the sets I have posted, I think it's better than Emotion XL (they are kind of similar though) and the 2017 Heritage Minor League set. Topps TEK feels like the right neighborhood.  I am actually going to give Select Certified the slight nod given its a set that you can actually complete, unlike Topps Tek's 8,100 card craziness.  

19. 2000 Pacific Paramount Update 

18. 2010 Topps USA Baseball  

17. 2001 Donruss 

16. 2000 Topps 

15. 2012 Bowman Platinum 

14. 2000 UD Ionix

13. Topps Lineage   

12. 2002 Bowman 

11. 1988 Donruss 

10. 1995 Emotion XL 

9. 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

8. 1998 Topps TEK 

7. 1995 Select Certified 

6. 1986 Topps Mini League Leaders 

5. 2001 Fleer EX 

4. 1979 Kellogg's 

3. 1998 Metal Universe 

2. 2002 Topps Super Teams

1. 1983 Topps 

Bear With Me

I found more retail baseball cards this past weekend. 

I think we have officially moved past the pandemic retail card craze. 

The Target next to my house had physical fights over sports cards that required police intervention during the pandemic. They pulled them from the shelves and they have not returned.  

Fighting. Over. Cards. 

So, the cards from this post came from my local Wal-Mart, which is low on my list of places to shop. I recently wrote about the Wal-Mart that is halfway between the Duke and UNC campuses. The Wal-Mart near my house is interesting for different reasons. It's the cultural intersection of suburban-dwelling transplants and old farmers who can tell you what kind tobacco was grown in your neighborhood before it was developed.  

That's for a different post.  

Unfortunately, I bought a box of Donruss, but bear with me, it does get better at some point. 

I was intrigued since the last few packs of Panini cards I opened were not actually all that bad. Baseball card money is finite, so I am usually carefully and picky about what I buy and how much I spend. I should have looked up the cards online before I handed over money for these cards.  

Here is the basic design.  

There are a lot of cubes and rectangles with different depths. Maybe it's my ADD, but I feel like my eyes are drawn away from the picture of the player and onto the design of the card. Catchy designs are good, but not when they are overwhelming and busy.  

The back is the same.  

The write-up is terrible.  

It's hard to make an argument about someone being the best in baseball history when the stat involves getting hit by pitches. Do people at Donruss know how many times the Marlins have thrown at Ronald Acuna? I bet they account for at least half the total.  

There are other disappointing aspects to this year's Donruss set beyond the base cards. The Diamond Kings cards, long-time personal favorites, now feature a background that looks like a floral sofa pattern from some 1980s living room. 

The inspiration for the background of this Jose Ramirez card?  

There are plenty of other half-assed cards also appeared in the box.  

There is some sort of 1988 Donruss redux.  

Where is the rest of the border?

Why is half of it whited-out?  

Why is the colored pattern on the border on the adjacent corners from the original?  

GET. THE. LITTLE. DETAILS. RIGHT. 

I am not even a details person and it bothers me. 

 

I saved this for last.  

Donruss included some retired Hall of Famers on their checklist, but they could not just airbrush out the logos on their uniforms. They had to take it an extra step and add trim to their jerseys. The Brooks Robinson card leaves me speechless. Ozzie?  The red trim is terrible.  

At least Panini still includes the Rated Rookie cards in Donruss.  

I managed to pull Rated Rookie cards of Vidal Brujan and Juan Yepez. I am still not sure what the Rays are going to do with Brujan. He's played well with Durham this year, but he's played all over the field. I am not sure if they are trying to turn him into a super-utility type or the Rays just do not know what to do with him. Shortstop is obviously taken for the next decade. Yepez has been excellent for the Cardinals. One of the few players who has hit well.  

Then there is this.....

Rated Prospects?  

This feels like New Coke or M&Ms filled with pretzels.  

Okay, so bear with me for a few more cards.  

As bad as the base cards are in the 2022 Donruss set, the inserts are actually pretty nice.  

I pulled two Diamond Marvel cards. I am not a comic book collector, but I like the design here merging them with a baseball card. The cards have a nice finish too. Not sure if it comes through on the scan.  

The other pleasant surprise with 2022 Donruss was the quality of Stan Musial cards. 

Who saw that coming?  

For a card with the logos airbrushed off, this is really nice. I also like the choice of using a black and white photograph versus the red, gray, and black boxes around the edge of the card. Perhaps, Panini should have used black and white photos for more cards.  

The last card is just incredible.  

Growing up in St. Louis, I have spent my whole life listening to stories about Stan Musial. I am not sure that any of them made me think of Stan as being ferocious. What attributes does Stan share with a bear?  

I am not sure, but this is pretty awesome.  

A Nice Day For Some Artwork

I spent some time cleaning up around my card room last weekend and found some Project 70 art cards that I bought over last year that were worthy of a post. I picked up a few of these back at the start of the 2021,  but the Project 70 cards have not held my interest as much as the Project 2020 cards from two years ago. Some of the artists are the same between the two projects, with plenty of new artists mixed in, but it felt like there were a lot of similar card subjects.

If you are a Yankees collector or Fernando Tatis Jr., there are a lot of cards. Cardinals and Durham Bulls collector? Not so much?  

I did not check-in with the new designs on a daily basis, so maybe there are a few good cards that I am missing out on, but these were the four cards I ended up adding to my collection during the past year.  

First up is an Ozzie Smith card by Shoe Surgeon.  As you can guess, the Shoe Surgeon is a guy who customizes shoes. His rates are a little step, otherwise I would send him my canvas Nikes I wear to school and get some cool 4th Grader customization. Back to the card. I like the play on the movie "The Wizard of Oz" on this card. It's a no-brainer with Ozzie Smith, but I am honestly not that many card companies have made that connection over the years.  

The gold path and the Emerald City/St. Louis skyline mash-up are the best elements of this picture. Not sure about an emerald Arch, but I am willing to let it go for this card. The action shot of Ozzie in front is a nice touch as well. Are those flying monkeys around the Arch? The cloud picture on the right-side looks like the play where he cleared Lenny Harris. 

This happened in the early 1990s. Lenny Harris went into second base half-standing trying to take out Ozzie. Pretty impressive given the fact that Ozzie Smith was not a very big guy.  

I checked out the other cards that the Shoe Surgeon has made for Project 70. Seems talented, but I am sticking with just this Ozzie Smith. He would be one of the artists who went for a lot of really common and repeated subjects.  

Next.  

It appears that there were not many current Cardinals players included in the Project 70 set. I am not really surprised. Arenado has two cards, but one is a dual card with Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers. I really like this card with him pictured as both a Cardinals and Rockies player with the Arch in the background. A Cardinals only card would have been better, but I don't really have much of a problem with the Rockies. All of their good players end up in the Cardinals, right?  There is a lot of purple here, but I like the overall concept of the card.  

Mimsbandz is another new artist for Project 70. He actually has some really good artwork and I might have to pick up a few of his other cards. There are a lot of really great 1980s players featured in his artwork. Yes, a few Hall of Famers, but also a lot of personalities from the decade along with great of the era types. There will definitely be some more Mimsbandz cards on my blog at some point in the future.  

The next two cards were both made by a favorite artist from the Project 2020 cards, Efdot.  

Beyond enjoying the artwork made by Efdot, he also picked some different players out for his Project 2020 cards. Yes, I think he made an Ohtani, Trout, and a few Yankees players, but also some players who probably do not get enough attention. Tim Anderson seems to be one of those players. Flashy and exciting, but he's also made the All-Star team and won a batting title. There is a lot going on at the top of this card with the black background and white doodles over the top.  Efdot always has a lot of "Easter Eggs" in his art work. It's fun to stare at these cards sometimes and see what you can find. A few old White Sox logos, an L train, a 2005, the fireworks pinwheels from the Comiskey Park scoreboard, etc.  

Efdot is also one of the few Topps artists who made cards of Negro League players for the set. Even as Major League Baseball has worked to claim the players and their stats as part of the past history of the game, it still feels like the great Negro League players are completely underrepresented with baseball cards. Love the art work here with the high leg kick.

The 1942 on the bottom of Satchel's shoe is for the year that the Kansas City Monarch defeated the Homestead Grays in the Negro League World Series. The Grays were led by Josh Gibson, the best power hitter, while the Monarchs were led by Paige, the best pitcher. The Grays apparently had Satchel's number and always got the best of him when the teams played.  

The highlight of the series took place in Game 2 when Paige entered the game in relief with two out in the seventh inning and the Monarchs leading 2-0. The first Grays batter tripled. After a mound visit from his manager, Paige walked the bases loaded to face Josh Gibson. There are different stories about how the at-bat progress, but they all end with Gibson striking out to end the inning. The Grays lost the game and were swept by the Monarchs. 

A Finest Moment

Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame because of his great defense. Rightfully, there are a ton of cards that highlight his Gold Gloves and acrobatics in the field. However, there does seem to be one offensive highlight that appears on Ozzie's cards almost on an annual basis. One of the greatest Postseason home runs in the history of the Cardinals franchise.  

Great call by the late, great Jack Buck too.  

In sorting out some cards the other week, I noticed that I had not really done much with the Cardinals Hall of Famers this year. Last year, I found a Bob Gibson rookie card. I didn't need anything that big, but it does not quite seem like a full year of collecting baseball cards without a good card of Stan Musial, Gibson, Lou Brock, or Ozzie Smith. I went ahead and found my good Cardinals card last week.  

I love the picture on the front of this card.  It's what caught my attention. Every Cardinals fan knows this picture of Ozzie batting left-handed in a 1980s Cardinals polyester uniform. It is indeed a "Finest Moment".  

I was also impressed with the back of the card.  

Topps usually skimps on the back of the card. They actually did a little bit of research and a decent write up here. They left out the fact that it was Ozzie's first home run as a left-handed batter during his career.  Ozzie was a switch-hitter. However, the first sentence bringing up his whopping career home run total of 29 did a good job of giving the reader of how rarely Ozzie hit a home run.