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.