The Archives of Jimmy Ballgame

I started this blog in the spring of 2012, which was well after one of my favorite Cardinals, centerfielder Jim Edmonds, had walked away from baseball.  I feel like I miss out on posting his cards since he does not really pop up in current products and I do not pick up too many of his cards anymore.  My Jim Edmonds card collection is not anything close to my Ray Lankford cards, but I have definitely spent a lot of time and money on assembling some nice cards of Jimmy Ballgame.

Initially I did not really touch his stuff with the Angels when he was first traded to the Cardinals during Spring Training in 2000.  I picked up my first Cardinals card of Edmonds out of the second series of 2000 Upper Deck and it was on from there.  Here is that first Cardinals Edmonds card......

So many good Edmonds cards over the years, I did eventually loop back and work on the Angels cards.  If I had to say that there are holes in my Edmonds collection it would definitely fall into those early years with the Angels.  Not sure that there were too many tough cards of Edmonds made during that time, but it just takes time to find them all.

My best early Edmonds card has to be this cool Minor League card I found earlier in the spring from his time in the Texas League with the Midland Angels.  Really sweet card.

With work to be done with some of the Angels years, I was happy to get a little bit of a respite to pursue a Jimmy Ballgame card that was issued this year in Topps Archives.  The best part is the fact that he is pictured in a Cardinals uniform on the card and the design in from one of his prime years with the Cardinals.

Here is a look at the card.....

Love the 2001 Topps card design and that was a pretty good year for Edmonds on the field.  It's also nice to see him back as a signer in a card set.  Edmonds has a really nice and very distinct autograph.  I am pretty sure Edmonds has not signed anything since 2004 or thereabouts.