Relaxing With Some Cards

This week has kicked off my summer vacation.  I teach, but I have a little bit of a different schedule.  I work for roughly nine weeks at a time, rarely less, sometimes more, before I get three to four weeks off.  Again, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less on the breaks.  I often travel with my wife and kids, but I also spend time attending baseball games.....

and working on my baseball cards.

I need to post an updated picture of my card room, but I have come a long way since last summer.  This popped up on my Facebook memories feed today.....

My closet team boxes have been switched out for set boxes, which has been a slow process over the last few years.  I also had a doubles table, which was just a large wood desk covered in extra cards that I pulled out as I was assembling sets.  Some of those cards have been traded, some have been given away, some have been boxed up, and others have gone to other odd places.

Beyond sets, I am also working on some of my Cardinals cards today.  I picked out a few of my favorites to share on this post.  I am going to go with two new autographs and two new cards of one of my favorite current Cardinals prospects.

Autographs first, prospect cards second.

First up is a Tommy Pham from this year's Tier One set.  Before last year there were not that many Tommy Pham autographs floating around out there.  I was actually lucky enough to pull one out of a Topps box a few years back.  Pham seems to be in almost everything nowadays.  He's got a nice autograph, and while he is not having his best year, I still enjoy watching him play.

I like the looks of this card too.  The diamond pattern, the hues of gray in the background, and best of all, the on-card autograph is very nice.

Next.

I like Jack Flaherty.  I am not sure how good of a pitcher he will be in the long run, but I am hopeful that he will continue to pitch well.  More than a strikeout per inning, an ERA under 3.00, and a WHIP right around 1.  Seems like he might be a nice one-two punch with Carlos Martinez the next few years.  I like the the horizontal layout of the Pham more than the Flaherty, but all of the Flaherty autographs from this product are all vertical cards.

Prospect cards.

Tyler O'Neill is probably my favorite Cardinals prospect at the moment.  The guy hits home runs, offers something that the Cardinals really do not have at the moment.  When the Cardinals traded for him last summer his cards were fairly inexpensive.  He's hit really well this year between a brief stint with the Cardinals and Triple A.  The prices on his cards have been creeping up this year, but I am still trying to slowly add some of his cards.

This is from last year's Bowman set.  I know there are a lot of different refractors, colored parallels, etc in Bowman.  This card is a mega box refractor.  I am not sure why Topps/Bowman has gone to all the different types of cards with different patterns in the background.  Who knows.

Last card for this post, another Bowman.  This is from the 2016 Bowman Chrome set.  The Top 100 Prospects inserts have been a long running item in these sets for the last eight or nine years.  Not sure what the point of the Top 100 Updates set is exactly.  The back of the card has a little blurb about him, but nothing insightful or having to deal with his status as a good prospect.