Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Steal of an Autograph

I think I drafted a few blog posts the last few years about how Topps has continually repeated the same four or five Cardinals players in all of their products.  Every year, every product: Matt Adams, Kolten Wong, Matt Carpenter, and maybe an Ozzie, Lou Brock, or Bob Gibson.  Instead of making a singular post that catches all of my feelings on the topic, I have complained across dozens of other posts about baseball cards.  Like this.....


I (traded for/bought) this Kolten Wong card from a (card show/card shop/Facebook Group).  Kolten is (sitting on the bench/been demoted to Memphis/playing poorly in the outfield) at the moment.  He has had a lot of cards recently, he's been in every single Topps product this year, and frankly Cardinals collectors are a little tired of his cards.

Of course, it's really not that bad and I am probably a little misguided here.  Topps has done a decent job during the past year of picking up Cardinals newcomers like Stephen Piscotty, Brandon Moss, and Tommy Pham.  There have also been a few cool players from past Cardinals teams like Terry Pendleton and some not so great cards of players like Ron Gant.  Not cool as a Cardinal, yeah Durham Bulls.

Still, I was really impressed when I started searching out for a few Tier One autographs a few weeks back and found that Topps had included a Cardinals autograph of one of my Cardinals childhood favorites.......


I have been on a roll lately with Vince Coleman cards.  In the past two months I have picked up a cool version of his 1986 Topps rookie card from the Topps Vault and a copy of an autograph booklet with Coleman and Ozzie Guillen.  I cannot promise that I will continue to post more cards of Coleman, but if people keep making new cards of him I am going to try to add them to my collection.
As a Cardinals fan growing up Coleman was the ultimate offensive weapon on the 1980s Whiteyball teams.  It might seem odd to people who watch modern baseball, that a player whose only tool was speed could have that big of an impact on the game, but Coleman did it every night.  If you have a few minutes I found this awesome clip from the 1988 All-Star Game of Vince producing a run, basically by himself.


Pretty typical of what happened when Coleman got on base: stolen bases, pressure on defense, errors, pass balls were all magnified by speed.  I think we are a Tommy Herr and Tony Pena Cardinals autograph away from having the mid 1980s Cardinals players covered in Topps autographs.  

3 comments:

  1. Couple the repetitiveness of the poses and Kolten's current performance I look to be picking these up on the cheap.

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  2. Gonna need to find me a copy of this Coleman. Loved watching him and McGee back in the day. Speaking of Willie... sure wish he'd sign more for Topps products. It's been over 10 years since he's had an Archives Fan Favorites autograph.

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, Willie is a really low key guy though. He did have a Panini autograph a year or two ago, but he seems to just be enjoying retirement and staying out of the limelight. He not only doesn't sign for card companies, but I also don't think he shows up at any signing events either.

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