Authentic Souza

I posted my first card I picked up out of the Strata set a few days back.  I really liked the look of these cards and have been on the look out for a few other cards from this product.  My second Strata card arrived in the mail just a few days back.  A little different looking than the first Strata card which was just a straight autograph with no relic piece.

I have posted a few other Souza cards on here in the past.  While he did not come up with the Durham Bulls, I saw him in Triple A a few times with the Syracuse Chiefs (Nats Triple A team) and really enjoyed watching him play.  He was traded to the Rays last year and actually ended up playing a few games in Durham this year on injury rehab.  Back to the card....

I was curious about the jersey relics and the authentication stickers that appear on the cards.  Jersey relics were cool about fifteen years ago, but have been on the slide since.  Sure, I like cool patch cards, but I probably have a few thousand cards with a small grey or white jersey chunk on them.  The relic card has become a little stale and the authentication sticker is somebody's latest effort to freshen them up a bit.

I've heard good things and bad things about collectors looking up their relic item.  So, when I got this Strata autograph of Souza I opened the envelope and admired the autograph for a few minutes before I had to go enter the code into the MLB Authentication website.  Here's what I got......

Seems pretty legit.  Souza jersey from a game played against the Tigers in July.  The only thing that would make this card cooler would be to see if anything happened that day with Souza.  It would be a little disappointing to find out he sat on the bench, or worse, injured and not even on the active roster.  Good and bad possibilities raced through my mind.  I went to Baseball-Reference to check out the box score. 

Not a bad game for Souza.  It's not a game he hit a home run, or anything, but 1-3 for two runs scored is a nice line for just picking out a random box score and game from the Rays season.  Still have a few more Strata cards on the way.