Wednesday, February 2, 2022

I Love the Big Cardinals Trades

To nobody's surprise, the MLB contract talks went nowhere yesterday.  It is almost a sure bet the start of spring training will be delayed.  That means you will not see any action involving current players such as free agent signings and trades for the near future.  It was 1 year ago yesterday the Cardinals pulled off a big trade for Nolan Arenado.  That is just the latest in a a line of trades that brought players like him, Paul Goldschmidt, Scott Rolen, and others to St. Louis.  Who knows when the next one will happen.

At least I can still work out big Cardinals trade on my own of the cardboard variety.  Most of the time these involve other Cardinals collectors.  That was the case 2 weeks ago when TCDB member PartagasX and I worked out a large trade.  I sent him 100 Cardinals duplicates in exchange for 69 that I needed.  Over the weekend I finally had a chance to scan all the great cards.


It is rare for me to receive such nice vintage cards in a trade, mainly because I have no vintage to send back.  The oldest card I sent in this trade was from 1989.  These 4 1967 Topps cards are all very close to mint condition.  My scanner cut off the right edge of the Jaster card for some reason.  


It also cut off this 1968 Ricketts card. If you are wondering, Ed is the father of Scott.


These 1969 cards are also close to mint.  I like the simple design, but am not a fan of the yellow text.  


The 1970s portion of the trade features 2 1978 TCMA cards, a 1979 OPC, and a 1979 Hostess.  


Topps put out a ton of stickers during the 1980s.  The top 3 are 1984 OPC, McGee is from 1986, and the bottom Herr is from 1986 OPC.  I have mentioned before how baseball stickers remind me of the 1989 Red Foley book I still have.  That was back when the majority of people who bought cards did it for fun, not for profit.


1980s cards included a 1983 TCMA and a 1987 Jiffy Pop disc.  


I also received some great stickers from the 1990s.  These are all from the 1991 Panini Canadian set.  

These 3 1993 Panini stickers finished my team set.  The 1993 Action Packed Dizzy Dean leaves me 1 card shy of the team set.  Anyone have a Red Schoendienst laying around?


1993 was a popular year for this trade as these 2 Stadium Club Members Only cards are also from that year.  A lot of cards I need from the early 1990s are one of the Smiths.  Most other guys were just commons.


I traded away a small stack of minor league cards in this trade, but did receive 2 in return from the 1990 CMC set.  This is actually the second Clarke I received this month.  Go figure.



There was also a nice chunk of minor league cards from the 1994-1995 Fleer Excel set.  This 300 card set features 20 different Cardinals and a team checklist.  Not very many household names except for the Joe McEwing card in the middle of the third row.  


The last 2 minor league cards feature a 1995  Upper Deck Minors Future Stock parallel and a1995 Best short print.  The Lankford is not a minor league card, but is one I needed for a team set.  Not sure what he is trying to do in this photo.  Maybe get out of the way of a high and tight pitch.


The final 1990s cards are from 1999 Ultimate Victory and 1996 Ultra Gold Medallion.  


Starting the next decade are 4 cards from 2000.  The Omega Stechschulte is a short print numbered to 999.  The Eric Davis finish my Pacific team set.  All the 2000 Ultra Gold Medallion cards feature the arched die cut like the 2 above.  It is a nice idea, but it is hard to store them when you have horizontal and vertical cards.  


The lone card from the trade that gets its own scan is this 2001 Topps Through the Years Reprint Musial.  Stan deserves to stand alone.  


Most Topps Gold Label sets only have 3 or 4 Cardinals in them.  The 2002 set has 12.  I was surprised to see I only need 1 more after adding these 4.  Great looking cards like always.  The Gibson is from the 2002 Topps American Pie set.  


I will finish things off with 4 legends cards and a underrated pitcher on these 2003 cards.  The Durocher and Musial are from the Fleer Fall Classics set.  The Durocher is a team variation.  His other card is in a Giants uniform.  The Dean and Musial are SP Legendary Cuts cards.  The Dean is numbered to 1299.  The SPX card features Matt Morris.  He won 101 games during his 8 years with the Cardinals.  He appeared in 2 All Star Games and led the league in wins in 2001.  Pretty good stats for a guy who rarely gets talked about.  

With this recap, I am all caught up except for 4 trades that arrived on Monday.  With the terrible weather that is going to hit southern Illinois the next few days, I will have plenty of time to get everything files away.  As of noon today it is just raining here.  By 3 we could get some freezing rain that will change over to snow.  When it is all done sometime on Thursday we could have up to 8 inches.  It could be worse though as northern Illinois will have over a foot of snow. 
  

  


  
  


 




    

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