TCDB 2 for Tuesday #94

It is finally here, election day 2024.  It will be so nice not to watch a political commercial every 15 minutes.  Please do get out and vote.  It may not seem like it, but every ballot does count.  

On to more exciting things like baseball cards.  Today's first trade recap came from member marzcards.

How fitting to show some red, white, and blue cards today.  

Check out that awesome batting helmet Brock is wearing.  It would be nice to go to those days instead of seeing helmets with Strauss plastered on the side.

The last card of the trade is a 2023 rainbow foil.  There is a good chance Matz will pitch somewhere else in 2025, although that will most likely require St. Louis to pay a large portion of his salary.

The second trade package came from member Papayanz.  He is also a team collector, for which making the playoffs will be unlikely.  I traded him a stack of Nationals.    

1996 Fleer Tiffany cards almost have a modern Stadium Club vibe.  The images are sharp and clear, just not as eye-popping.  I need 5 more Cardinals to finish the 22 card team set.  

1996 Flair had 2 versions: gold lettering on a silver background and silver lettering on a gold background.  Some cards you need to look at hard to figure out which version you have.

There are so many different color parallels to recent Donruss sets.  I do not have most on my want list, but I will gladly take those I do not have.

It will be an interesting offseason for Arenado.  I doubt he wants to stay in St. Louis during a rebuild, but his large contract does not make it easy for the Cardinals to trade him.  I would like to see him stay even though it appears age is catching up with him.    

      
  

  

    

2024 Topps Update Box Break

It has been a while since I joined a box break, so last week, I joined a jumbo break of the 2024 Topps Update on The Bench website. It was an auction-style break, and I won the Cardinals spot for $7. As always, the breaker mailed the cards very quickly.

Update features the usual bevy of rookies not included in Series 1 or 2.  The higher profile players like Scott and Winn also get a rookie debut card.  

I came away with 9 of the 13 Cardinals in the team set and a duplicate of Matt Carpenter.  The box break featured about 20 duplicates, which I thought was pretty bad for a jumbo box.

My lone insert was a nice Pujols card.  It is good to see Topps came up with a new insert design for Update instead of reusing ones from Series 1 or 2.  
  

TCDB 2 for Tuesday #93

Tonight could be the last night of the 2024 season.  The Dodgers have looked unbeatable in every aspect of the game.  I am not a Dodgers fan, but it is great to see Freddie Freeman having an awesome Series after the personal hardship he went through this year.  

Even though the season will soon be over, there are always baseball cards to pass the time until spring training.  I should have plenty of cards to show off in the next few months.  First up is a four pack of Cardinals from member JWSheehan.

My 2024 Topps Chrome team set is now complete.  If I was a betting man, I would guess 3 of these guys will not be on the Cardinals next year.  Fermin will be gone for sure, while the other 3 will have to waive no trade clauses to be dealt.  My guess is Arenado and Contreras will be gone.

The second trade envelope came from member dcoulmanjr.

These are the type of obscure minor league cards I love.  From top to bottom is a 1994 Signature Rookies Draft Pick, a 1993 Stadium Club Murphy, and a 1999 Team Best Player of the Year.  Valuable cards, no, but cool as hell in my opinion.

The Major League portion includes a 1998 Paramount Gold, a 1997 Donruss Team Set, and a 1996 Flair gold background variation.  The Donruss card is my favorite with the nice color match logo and name bar.

      

A Fine PWE Trade

Before I took a break earlier this month from trading, I was getting frustrated with a recent run of pwe trades.  Lately, traders have been getting lazy and/or cheap with their packaging.  I do 90% of my trades with pwe, so I have seen a variety of methods.  As long as the cards arrive safely, I do not care.  One trader was so lazy he stuck 5 cards into a small thank you card.  No protection, not even a penny sleeve.  4 of them had badly bent corners, including a nice refractor numbered to 499.  When I messaged him, he was shocked that the cards did not arrive okay.  Needless to say, I left him negative feedback.

The handful of trades I have received since then has been great, including one from TCDB member alchapman.  He sent 5 Cardinals in sleeves taped to a thin piece of cardboard.  The perfect way to ship that is still not expensive.      

A fine trade should include some Finest cards.  I am not crazy about the 2022 design.  The random lines going every which direction do not have much eye appeal.

I hope the Cardinals give Jordan Walker a long look next year.  Start him every day and see what happens.  

Panini did well with this 2024 Red and Blue parallel.  No need to airbrush Ozzie's uniform on helmet.

The last card was a mini of former Cardinals great Juan Yepez.  My guess is that the Nationals will trade him to a contending team next year, and he will become a playoff star.  Lane Thomas and Tommy Edman are the latest former Cardinals to have playoff success.      

Cardinals EBAY Auto

I had some spare time last night to clean up a few cards that have been on my desk for about a week.  It was not a large stack, but getting a few things filed away still felt good.  One of the cards was a recent EBAY win.

My first Kyle Leahy auto set me back about $3.50.  This one is numbered to 199.  He appeared in 33 games this year as a reliever with an  ERA of just over 4.  Serviceable, I guess, but nothing outstanding.  Leahy will most likely get a shot to be in the bullpen in 2025 since he is a cheap option.    

TCDB 2 for Tuesday #92

This 2 for Tuesday is over a month since the last one.  I need to get busy working on more trades so this does not happen again.  First up is a 4 pack of Cardinals from member BristolBob.

These are my first cards from 2024 Topps Pro Debut.  There are only 5 Cardinals in the set, so this one should be done quickly.

My 2023 Topps Chrome Platinum team set is slowly coming along.  9 more to acquire in order to finish the 24 card set, not counting the short print variations.  

The second trade was with a newer member, victornegroncards.  I received a couple of Cardinals.  Being a trader with less than 5 feedback, I did not want to invest much into the trade in case something did not work out.  I am happy to say all is well and I would gladly trade with him again.

I love me some gold parallels, whether they are Ultra or Topps.

You almost have to do a double-take to ensure this is a Cardinals card and not Boston.  The lime green distorts the red somewhat.    

    

  

Card Show Recap

Saturday was the first time in 2 months that my son did not have a soccer game and/or a band competition.  Both those activities have come to an end for another season.  What better way to waste a Saturday than to hit up a card show.  Luck was on our side as there was a 100-table show about an hour away in my daughter's college town.  While my wife took her clothes shopping, my son and I spent a couple hours looking at cardboard.

Being my first show in 2 months, I was excited to hit some bargain boxes and add some vintage Cardinals to the collection.  We managed to do a little of both.  Dime boxes were nowhere to be found except for some recent Topps base cards.  Dollar boxes were the norm at this show, but we did manage to find a few quarter boxes.  We pulled 8 cards, 3 of which were Cardinals.

Nothing earth-shattering here, but all welcome additions. 

Our next stop was a dealer from whom we had bought a few vintage cards from before.  He remembered us and produced a newly restocked box of $1 cards.  We found 9 Cardinals from my want list.

Hard to pass up 1959 Topps cards for $1 each.  The Grammas has some surface issues, but overall these are in good shape.  At the very least, they are good placeholders until I find better copies.

I doubt I will upgrade any of these 1960 Topps cards.  Slight fuzzy corners, but I do not mind that at all.

The last 3 include a 1962 Topps, 1965 Topps, and  1975 Hostess.  No upgrades needed here either.  

Our final purchase came from a dealer with some numbered cards in a $1 box.  He cut us a deal by charging $5 for these 8 cards.  

I was thrilled to find the short print rookie cards for $1 each before the discount.  I rarely see these types of cards at shows.  With most being over 20 years old, I doubt many are floating around.  

We spent $20, including admission.  I was looking for a nice vintage Musial, Brock, or Gibson to add, but no luck.  I saw a few graded copies, but I prefer raw.  Maybe next time.