Hugs and Marp Five Star

Five Star is always one of the better Topps autograph products every year.  I will never open the boxes myself, but after they have been floating around for awhile I am always willing to add a few of the premium autograph cards into my collection.  So, I went out looking for the usual assortment of Cardinals, Rays, and former Durham Bulls (see Rays).  There are a few Rays, a few former Durham Bulls, but I went with the Cardinals cards first and ended up with another card too.

First, the Cardinals autograph.  Topps has been really repetitive with the Cardinals the past two years.  The same players over and over again.  Makes it hard to get too excited about finding new cards.  While I have added a bunch of Matt Carpenter cards over the past two years, I really like Marp.  I am not sure if he is quite in the category of "there can never be too many cards", but he's really close to that level.  Here is his Five Star autograph.....

Some of the early Five Star designs had dark backgrounds.  I really like the lighter background and team logo in the background.  This card looks nice with the signature on the front.  In fact, I liked the looks of it enough to add a second Five Star autograph from the same seller.  I like saving money on shipping.  

I have had a bunch of different Freddie Freeman cards over the years and I always seem to end up trading them to people.  So many Braves fans, or one Braves fan I always trade with?  I go with the latter.  Anyway, maybe I will hold onto this one.  I think in the back of my mind I was hoping the Cardinals would trade for him when I bought this card.  Perhaps Freeman and Marp could hug at the end of every Cardinals win.  I would like to see that.