Entering The Cronezone

It's been a few weeks since I have made a post. I have been enjoying my fall break away from school by doing a few things around the house and taking in the NC State football game last weekend.  

My Wolfpack snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Losing to Wake Forest after leading by 10 at the beginning of the 4th Quarter is not cool. The coaching is less than ideal.  

Baseball cards have been slow too.

No Blake Snell autographs. 

Pumping the brakes on the Rays current young players.

Nobody likes the Cardinals right now.  

I did find an interesting 2023 Topps Chrome Jake Cronenworth card a few days back. Cronenworth was on the Durham Bulls a few years back and came up in the Rays Minor League system before he was traded to the Padres. Here is the front of the card.  

I have grown tired of my scanner, so you are getting a picture.

Notice the authentication sticker on the jersey swatch. I went ahead and ran the numbers on the swatch and came up with a time and date for the jersey that appears on the card.  

The answer is a bit disappointing........

No idea why Jake Cronenworth was wearing a Padres jersey in the middle of January, but I could not find anything when I did some digging on the team's social media pages. No press conferences, no fan fests, nothing.  

Here is the back of the card......

Playing around with scanning apps......

Not too bad. 

105.

This is the 105th Blake Snell autograph in my collection.  

I have actually been waiting to add this card from the 2024 Topps Series 1 to my collection for a few months, but the price has always been outside of my comfort zone for Blake Snell autographs. Almost immediately after Series 1 hit the shelves, this card was north of $50, that includes the base (non-red) variations too. 

I waited patiently, also lost a few auctions on Ebay, but I finally found a copy at a comfortable price.  

Love that brown and gold patch-piece on the front of the card. This is a sticker autograph, but very well blended by Topps.  Serial number is in the bottom right-hand of the card, just two off his jersey number with the Giants.  

Back of the card.  

The typical "CONGRATULATIONS!" message with the usual small print.  

This Isn't Your Best Work

I have had really bad luck with scanners and printers over the years. It all started during my final week of graduate school at NC State. I had to assemble a portfolio of work from a year-long internship. I did a good job of keeping up the portfolio during the school year, but the final week a bit of a mad dash to make sure everything ended up in my file crate. Lots of emails, documents, and other assorted articles were printed and filed.  

On the Thursday night before my Friday final, my printer died. I went to the local Office Max, picked out a printer that was on-sale, and finished my work in the wee hours of Friday morning. That sale printer would last me roughly a year before dying and was replaced in similar fashion. Its replacement would also only last a year or two. 

I bought my current printer on a Saturday morning in October of 2016. My parents were in town to visit my newborn daughter.  I was taking my father to the Duke/Virginia Tech football game, needed to print off paper tickets, and could not get my printer to work.  I went back to the Office Max and bought a printer that was not on-sale. I also checked the internet for reviews and found that Canon made excellent printer/scanners.  

Virginia Tech won. 

Every card that has appeared on this blog during the past eight years has landed on the scanner of that printer and I have generally been happy with the results. 

Well, not this morning. 

This is my latest Blake Snell card.......

This is a picture of my latest Blake Snell card......

This isn't your best work, Cannon printer/scanner, but I am willing to forgive and forget. 

2024 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 7

This is the ninety-seventh Blake Snell autograph in my collection and definitely the first with the word "Pentamerous" on the front of the card. Pentamerous meaning something that is arranged in groups of five.  

After looking at the card for a long time, I cannot find anything with five groups of anything. There is a five-sided star at the top and two small five-sided stars next to the nameplate, but that's it. That's also three stars, not five.  There are not five pictures of Blake Snell, or five autographs of Blake Snell, which might have made this a really awesome card.  

Here is the front.  

I am going to stop picking on the name of this card and focus on the fact that it is really nice. My latest Blake Snell autograph comes out of the high-end 2023 Topps Five Star product. The card has thick card stock and a nice, glossy finish. The wooden looking parts on the front of the card have some nice gold foil and are also embossed.  The gold around the edges is obviously more embossed foil.  

A little lost on my scan is the fact that the center of the card is actually translucent. It's hard to tell on the front scan, but you'll see it in a second when you look at the scan of the back of the card.  

Here is the back.  

The translucent front can be seen here with the reversed image of Snell on the left side of the card, the faded portrait image on the right, and the autograph bleeding through on the bottom. The small print is still on the bottom of the card underneath the picture frame. 

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.  

2024 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 6

This is the 96th Blake Snell autograph in my collection and the card comes from the 2023 Topps Update set. This was a little too pricy for my tastes a few months ago, but they have come back down to reality. Snell was the Cy Young favorite by the time Topps Update was released and there seemed to be an uptick in his card prices for a time this fall.  Snell's prolonged free agency seems to have returned his card prices to more comfortable and familiar territory.  

Here is the front of the card.  

Pretty standard looking card for a Topps jersey/autograph. It's a decent design that does an above average job of blending the sticker autograph on the front of the card. I like the action shot of Snell pitching.  Looks like a change-up grip. The jersey piece is all white, you can find copies of this card with patch pieces, but this was roughly a $10 card.  Plain, white jersey swatch is just fine.  

Back of the card.  

The back is the standard "Congratulations" message with all the typical small print about representatives and witnesses. The serial number placed at the top, center of the card. Bit of a different location for a serial number for a Topps card. 

Four away from 100.     

I Needed Some Boxes, Maybe A Few Cards Too

I have been doing a lot of sorting the past few weeks, which probably deserves a post, but not today. Instead, I wanted to post a few cards I picked up while I was purchasing a few boxes from my local card shop this past weekend. It's a newer card shop that I wrote up a few weeks back, but I am impressed every time I stop there. Lately, it's been for boxes. 

Figured I needed to check out some cards. 

Here is a quick rundown.  

First up, is an Adley Rutshman rookie card from Bowman Chrome. I am not an Orioles fan, but I do like a lot of their young players. I saw Adley a few year back in Durham, figured I would add a few of his cards when I get a chance. This was a good starting point......

Also fairly inexpensive.  

Next, an unexpected Cardinals find. This is a 2001 Bowman Chrome Stan Musial rookie reprint. Not sure the scan does this card justice, but I really like the sepia background with the greyscale photo, all with the trappings of a Chrome card. Nice to see a good blend of some vintage and modern design elements on the same card.  

Here is the back, which includes the serial number out of 299. Not the rarest Musial card by any means, but I was not expecting to find a serial numbered of The Man when I walked in the door of the card shop.  

I also found a few Snell commons.......

My effort to collect some non-autographed Blake Snell cards also should probably be there own post, but I will wait until I have time to write about some more exciting cards. There are in the fifty-cent bin at the shop.

Next up......

A few vintage cards. The Curt Flood is probably my favorite card out of the group.  All the players have a connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls with the exception of Norm Cash who once tried to take an at-bat against Nolan Ryan with a table leg.  

I demad a game-used table leg card, but nobody has come through for me.  

2024 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 2

We are four days into 2024 and I am already on my second Blake Snell autograph of the new year. I set a goal of reaching 100 Blake Snell autographs this year, and at this rate, I might hit that goal pretty soon.  

Here is a look at my newest Snell signature, which comes from the 2023 Topps Museum Collection product.    

The front of the card is a little busy, but I like the two jersey swatches and signature on the front. Nice action photo as well. It just seems like the design elements and framing around the autograph and jersey pieces is a bit much. 

I also like that the jersey swatches are from two different Padres jerseys. The white and brown pinstriped swatch on the left is obviously from a home jersey. Not sure about the light brown jersey. I feel like the Padres brown jerseys were a darker shade of brown. 

Back of the card.  

CONGRATULATIONS!!!! 

Also a bunch of small print.  

Blake Snell Pink Card Count: 1

I am starting to run out of "normal" Blake Snell autographs to collect. Normal meaning that the card is not serial serial numbered to 5 or costs $300 on Ebay, because it has some crazy patch piece. If you collect a player, it's one of the worst feelings. I have been there before with my Ray Lankford collection. However, there are other places I can go with my Blake Snell cards, especially when I consider how I have not really done anything to collect his base or relic cards.  

I am likely going to spend a good chunk of time working on Snell's base cards in 2024 and will be posting that as one of my collection/blog goals for the new year in the coming weeks. I will dabble with relic cards, but the majority just don't really do anything for me as a collector.  

There are a few exceptions and I found one earlier this week on Ebay.  

A pink Blake Snell card.  

The card is not actually pink, it's the green parallel from the uber expensive Topps Definitive product. This is one of those three hundred dollar boxes of cards where you get two autographs, two relics, and a parallel card.  This green relic parallel is numbered to 15 copies. Someone pulled this card and was probably really pissed off they only got a $20 card out of the pack. The large pink object on the card is actually a patch piece from a Padres jersey.  

I know, the Padres wear brown, but their Nike City Connect jerseys are pink, teal, and yellow. Here is a photo of Blake Snell pitching in one of these uniforms.  

The pink piece on the card is a patch piece, so it's from the word "SAN DIEGO" on the front of the uniform, as the pink sleeves are just pink fabric. 

If this had been some piece of white or gray jersey, there is zero chance that I buy this card. I just could not pass up a pink jersey swatch with a low serial number. This is a unique card that will look great in my Blake Snell collection.  

Back of the card.  

The standard back. Nothing too interesting.  

Overall, a great looking card.  

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.