2021 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 4

Blake Snell has pitched an entire season with the Padres.  The Rays traded him to the Padres in December of 2020.  A whole year later and Topps is still making Blake Snell cards on the Rays.  I was going to have a hard time deciding whether to collect his autographs after he started appearing on cards as a Padre.  Luckily, it seems that Topps has kicked that can down the road to some degree.  

Incredible.  

Here is my newest Blake Snell autograph from Five Star. 

Five Star is one of those products that is a $200 pack of cards with two autographs.  The cards have on-card autographs and really thick card stock.  They are really nice.  I'm sure if you land a Mike Trout autograph you are happy you spent $200 on a box of cards.  At the same time, I can't imagine paying $200 for a box/pack of cards and landing a $20 autograph of Blake Snell.  I'd be irked.  

Well, I did not open a $200 pack of cards and I was more than happy to take a $20 autograph off the hands of someone who did.  The card is not even serial numbered?  Bon jour, case breaker.  

Back of the card.  

At first glance this does not seem all that impressive.  However, Topps typically fills the back of their high-end products with some giant note that starts with the word, "CONGRATULATIONS" in all caps.  I like the "Five Star Career" with 5 important accomplishments/highlights from Snell's career.  Really nice touch by Topps to actually do something interesting with the card back here.   

A Prospect and A Hall Of Famer

I recently had a chance to pick up a really nice looking card of Cardinals pitching prospect Alex Reyes.  Two years ago he was one of the better pitching prospects in the game, but had an elbow injury and missed last season.  Reyes is going to miss the first month or two of the 2018 season, but he should be back at some point late in May, or early in June.  

Alex Reyes is one of those prospects that has tons and tons of baseball cards.  There were a lot of cards made of him last year, this year has been a little slower.  Card companies have moved on to other prospects, but their are still some nice cards of Reyes floating around.  I recently was able to pick up a really sharp looking Reyes card from a regular trading partner.  

A look at the card......

  

Five Star is a really high end product with some really nice features, but luckily the prospect cards in the set are really affordable.  This card from the 2017 edition has an excellent design.  I like the dark grey in the background combined with the bright color picture of Reyes, and the signature in silver pen.  I know that this card does not have the lowest serial number of the colored cards that are in Five Star, but in my opinion this is probably the best looking looking of those parallels.  

Nothing like an orange Cardinals card.  

Reyes was a tremendous talent before he injured his elbow.  Hopefully he can bounce back and regain his form from the end of the 2016 season when the Cardinals used him down the stretch.  

I also managed to pick up another Cardinals card while I was trading for the Reyes card.  Not quite who you would think of when I say Hall of Famer and Cardinal in the same sentence.  It was still an attractive, nice looking card, and it was a really affordable card.  

This is from the Postseason version of the Topps Archives Signature product.  I am not quite sure why Topps made a regular season and a Postseason version of this product last year.  Although, if you were going to pick a good moment in Dennis Eckersley's brief career as a Cardinal, the 1996 Postseason is a good place to look.  

Eck pitched in a total of 6 games that year in the NLDS and NLCS for a Cardinals team that came within a game of the World Series.  He totaled 7 innings in those 6 games, did not give up a run, and struck out 6 batters.  Easily his best moment, since the back of the baseball card stats for the regular season with the Cardinals were not up to the standards he set while he was pitching with the A's and others.  

Considering these cards come one to a box, which cost somewhere between $40 and $50, I was more than happy to find a Cardinals card from the set for a fraction of the cost.  The scratches on the scan are all on the case and the card is serial numbered, but the numbering is in a weird spot next to Eck's cleat on the right side of the card.  

Five Star Big Mac

Two hamburger patties with Thousand Island Dressing and entirely way too much lettuce.  Big Macs are not the sort of fare that you could find at a Five Star Restaurant.  

The town that I live in outside of Raleigh, Apex, actually does not have it's own free standing McDonalds.  There is one McDonald's within the town limits, but it's attached to a BP Gas Station.  Eat at your own risk.  How could we quantify the quality of McDonald's food?  Not sure they appear on the Forbes Travel Guide.  

I consulted Google for a consensus review of a McDonald's restaurant within the Raleigh-Durham area.  Well, Chapel Hill too.  I choose the McDonald's that was closest to each of the major colleges located within each of the three previously mentioned towns.  

They were all close.  

                             

Three stars seems really high.  College kids are being generous.  Chapel Hill's rating could round up to 4 stars?  I'm done with you UNC.  

The Big Mac that I am writing about tonight is definitely worthy of a Five Star rating.  Both in name and in quality.  I like to think of it as a dinner out at my favorite fine eating establishment in the metro Raleigh-Durham area (it's in Durham) that serves some quality French food.  

It's more of a four star restaurant, but it's one of Alex Guarnaschelli's favorite places to eat.  Vin Rougue has a smallish menu, but you can literally order anything and not go wrong.  I usually get a soup or salad, steak and pomme frities, and bread pudding.  

Delicious.  

A few weeks ago I did a little purging from the collection.  I found a few boxes of cards, took a couple of scans, and placed some cards on Ebay.  In the end, there were many cards that left my house, but there was also some money in my Paypal account with no real destination.  So, I decided to find something tasty.  

This looked really good.  

Such a great looking Big Mac.  I like the picture, obviously a Cardinals card, and the design is the usual sort of thing that has been on the Five Star brand the past year or two.  I was never sure about paisley on baseball cards, but it works.  Better than shirts.  Not pictured in the scan is the thickness of the card and quality of the card stock.  The original Five Star cards tended to chip around the edges, but it seems like Topps has done a good job of improving the brand.  

The signature on the card is a little bit different than previous McGwire cards that I own.  This is somewhere between the full McGwire that he used at various times throughout his career.....

This is McGwire's longer signature from an Upper Deck card.....

Overall, I have to say that this Five Star Big Mac card was well worth the money it cost above and beyond the other type of Big Mac.  Plus, I am not a huge fan of the Thousand Island Dressing and gobs of lettuce.  This tasty morsel of cardboard will have a nice home in my collection.