Ball Cards, Baseball, and Bobblehead

My son and I arrived home early yesterday afternoon from our St. Louis trip.  If you would have told me the Cardinals would win a game Christopher Sanchez started, then beat Zach Wheeler the next day I would have laughed in your face.  That is what happened though.  We managed the heat both games.  Thankfully they last about 2.5 hours each.  Yesterday's afternoon game had feel like temperatures close to 105.  We moved around quite a bit to stay in the shade.  With attendance less than 20,000 , it was easy to find an empty seat.  

We had some time to kill yesterday morning after we checked out of our hotel, so we made a 15 minute drive to a local card shop that we visited 2 years ago.  The shop posted on Facebook a couple of pictures of restocked quarter and dime boxes.  We spent about an hour going through the boxes and about 10 binders of Cardinals sorted by year and brand.  We pulled 40 cards, most of them coming from the binders.

Most people do not get excited to find a 2002 Topps Chrome base card.  When it is a Cardinals from my wantlist, I do.

Not too long ago it would be insane to think you could buy a Carlson rookie card parallel and two short prints for a quarter each.  Shows how quickly things can change.

There were plenty of former Cardinals in the binders.  Speaking of the past, the Goldy pink refractor was once a $40 card after he was named 2022 MVP.  

Nice to find some premium brands in the quarter binders.  The cards were even sorted by number.  Makes me wonder if the shop bought out a collection.

It was awesome finding some 2012 Heritage Minors I needed, especially the Jenkins short print.

There were even some numbered cards.  Glad to finish off my 2009 Topps Unique team set with the Greene card.  I already had the Rasmus and Carpenter cards, but I know plenty of other Cardinals collectors who might be able to use them.

The binders had some parallels also, like these Opening Day blue foil cards.

I finished off the entire 2018 Topps Rainbow foil team set along with a couple from the Series 1 and 2.

My son found a couple of Altuve cards he needed in the quarter boxes.  

To round things out to an even $10, we pulled these from the quarter boxes.  

After a quick lunch, we headed to the game.  Our first stop was the Cardinals Authentics shop to purchase a game used ball from Tuesday night.

This was ball one to Jordan Walker in the bottom of the 7th inning.  He would walk, steal a base, then score the winning run.  Normally I would have Walker autograph this at Winter Warm Up in January, but with the impending strike will cancel the event.

I also met up with someone from a Facebook group and traded for this great bobblehead that was given out last Friday.  It plays a sound clip from Jack Buck calling the last out of the 1982 World Series and Joe Buck calling David Freese's home run in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series.  

It was a great day and a half that hopefully my son will remember for a few years.  We might have to make this an annual trip.