Goals.

 Do I really want to review my goals from 2021?  

Not really.  I thought about skipping this post, but it is something that I traditionally write every year and I feel like it provides good closure. Honestly, I have really mixed feelings about my life as a card collector during the past year. Maybe writing a post will help out a bit.  

Let's get started.  

My first goal from last year was......

1. More Pre-1970s Durham Bulls Cards/Sets 

Flipping back through all my posts I made this year, I had a post about a missing Pat Darby card that I needed to finish off my collection of Durham Bulls cards from the 1975 Topps Mini set. I bought a copy of the Topps Mini card from someone on Sports Card Lots, but they accidentally sent me the regular full-sized copy of the card.  

I got the mini a few weeks later, shown below in a gigantic scan that makes the card appear not very mini.  It is mini. 

Not exactly pre-1970s, but it's pretty close.  

I searched through the rest of my posts for the year.  

There were not many, so it was not too difficult.  

Hmmm.

A week ago, I posted a new autographed card, from 2021 Archives, of Greg Luzinski.  "The Bull" appeared on the Durham Bulls in 1969.  That is a Durham Bulls player from pre-1970.  

 

That just about wraps up that first goal. How should I score that?  Is that 1 card, no cards?  As a teacher, how would I grade myself on this goal? Let's talk about that later in the post. 

2. A 1960s Set Project (Maybe Two) 

This one is going to be pretty good.  Yes, I worked on a 1960s set project. I bought and traded for a whole bunch of 1964 Topps Giants cards.  I am more than halfway done with the set. No, I did not finish the set project, but I got the Mickey Mantle card out of the way. That felt like a positive accomplishment.

 

I am going to ignore that part about a second set from the 1960s and rate this one as a positive. Again, I am not going to give myself a grade until the end of the post.  I have had fun working on this set and have really enjoyed looking at these cards and learning about the players. 

3. Find Another Former Bulls Player.....

I feel like I have actually found two new Durham Bulls players to collect, but also had a surprising twist with a former Durham Bulls player this year.  

My two new players were Luis Patino. He pitched for the Bulls during the 2021 season, but also made a few starts for the Rays. He's a nice pitcher, I figure he's likely to turn out pretty well. The Rays are good with young pitchers.  

 

I managed to find seven or eight of his autographs during the year along with a handful of base cards and serial numbered parallels. I have enjoyed collecting his cards, so I will likely continue to find more Patinos in 2022.  

 

I also spent time working on Jake Cronenworth cards. He was on the Durham Bulls in 2019, one of my favorite players from the team over the last few years. Cronenworth is a fun player to watch, very good hitter and he plays all over the field. Unfortunately, a lot of other people have also decided they like Jake Cronenworth. His cards have been a little more expensive than I would have anticipated and that has slowed me down a bit.  

I will still continue to collect his cards in 2022. Let's just hope some people lose interest in his cards.  Please, let's make Cronenworth more affordable in 2022. 

My last one is surprising.  

 

 

The Rays traded Blake Snell to the Padres in December of 2020. Naturally, half of Blake Snell's cards this year still showed him in a Rays uniform. Why? I don't know and I am not going to complain. 

4. Be More Consistent With Writing 

I use gifs a lot when I am teaching. They are fun and entertaining. I am going to summarize this goal using a gif.  

 The answer is no. 

How did I do? 

Let's be honest. It was not very pretty. There were many factors that I am not going to rehash in detail. I did not make many posts and they felt very random at times. Time and energy were certainly a major factor, along with drifting a bit as a collector.  I am going to move on from my 2021 goals and look forward to collecting in 2022.  

I will go ahead and set my goal for 2022.

1. Have fun collecting cards.  

That's it.  

I hope everyone has a great New Year!  See you in 2022. 

Random Ray - 2000 Topps HD

Topps HD was only made for a few years in the early 2000s. It was essentially an attempt to duplicate Stadium Club's photography with ultra-thick card stock. The base set cards were fine, but I originally got into this set for the autographs. The autographed cards were on acetate card stock. I am almost sure that this was the first acetate set that I really enjoyed. There are only four autographed cards in Topps HD.  I have the complete set.  

My favorite card.....

Rick Ankiel hitting back when Rick Ankiel was a pitcher. The other autographs are Adrian Gonzalez, Todd Helton, and Mark Quinn.  

Back to the base cards and Ray Lankford.  

This is the front of the Ray Lankford card from the 2000 Topps HD set. While it's not exactly Stadium Club, the photography on the front of this card is very nice.  I like how Topps did the design on the player name box on the side of the card.  

The box is discolored to standout, but if you look at the batting box lines and back of Lankford's card, it does not fully interrupt the action shot of Lankford. That astroturf looks terrible. I am glad there are not many astroturf fields left in the Majors.  

Back of the card.  

I like the back of this card for several reasons. I will start small and work my way up to larger items. First, I like that the player information box on the side mirrors the player name box on the front of the card in terms of shape, location, and orientation. The stat box is not really all that deep, but I like the white background with the black print. The stat box pops and the numbers are easy to read. The most obvious feature is the color photograph in the background. A little weird to see McGwire in the on-deck circle with Lankford batting. Usually McGwire hit third, Lankford hit fourth.  

Overall, this is a quality baseball card.

Sunday Night Procrastination

There are plenty of other things I could be doing at the moment. Most would be a better use of my time, but here I am writing about baseball cards and the whatnot. I have to work three days this week. I am not sure I am ready to teach tomorrow, but I am not going to worry about it at the moment.  

I spent the majority of my day doing chores around the house. I swept and mopped the floors, cleaned all three bathrooms in the house.  Cleaning is a good thing, most of the time.  That's a lot of productivity for a single day.  

I also took in the women's basketball game between NC State and Virginia. State is currently ranked second in the country.  

The Wolfpack ended up winning by 27 points.  Virginia is not very good.  

On to baseball card stuff.  

I have a huge stack of cards on my desk at the moment. There are so many cards that I could write about for this post, but I am going to stick with just one of them.  Mainly because it's already scanned and I have been procrastinating on the other cards.  Beyond scanning and school work, I have also been procrastinating on sorting too, which my wife files under baseball card cleaning. I am getting some side-eye about the amount of desk space my cards are taking up at the moment. 

I am going to put this card away after I write about it.  That's some productivity.  

Luis Patino spent a portion of the season in Durham, but eventually got called up by the Rays. He's signed a ton of autographs this year. I have not collected too many of them. The Rays got Patino in the Blake Snell trade with the Padres. His cards were fairly pricy at the beginning of the year, but they have gotten cheaper as the year has gone along. Nothing like a 21 year-old having an ERA of 4 to cool down the prices of his cards. I am sure you won't regret selling his cards cheap in four years. Keep sending them my way.  

Why this card?  I liked the appearance of this Stadium Club Chrome card. The finish did not show very well on the scan, but it's one of those shiny cards. The action shot on the front is just the sort of photography you'd expect on a Stadium Club card. I would also like to mention that Luis Patino has a great autograph. He's consistent too.  

Beyond the Luis Patino autograph, I also picked up an autographed baseball this week at work.  

One of the students in my class is Mackenzie Gore's cousin. She got him to autograph a baseball for me. 

It was fun writing this post. This was 10 minutes well spent.  

These Guys Are Actually Good?

I started collecting baseball cards in the early 1980s when I was in early elementary school. Some of my initial impressions of players from those cards lingered for a long time in my world.  At some point in late high school or early college, I realized that a lot of the "washed up, old guys" from those early 1980s sets were actually good players during the 1970s.  There were even a few lingering from the 1960s.  

As a baseball card collector, I have ended up circling back to collect cards of a few of these players.  This past week, I managed to snag two autographs from the 2021 Topps Archives set of players who appeared in 1983 card sets.  That was my first year opening packs and these two players seemed way past their prime. The six-year old version of me did not fully appreciate their skills for very likely superficial reasons.  

First up, Cardinals back-up catcher Gene Tenace.  

He was the Cardinals back-up catcher during the early 1980s.  Gene Tenace was a .230 hitter and managed a grand total of 12 home runs in the 2 seasons he played for the Cardinals.  Not exactly someone to be excited about pulling from a pack of cards.  I kind of ignored those 1970s seasons while he was playing for the A's.  

Some years later, I learned about the Gene Tenace from the 1970s.  He regularly hit 20 home runs a year?  Gene Tenace won the 1972 World Series MVP by hitting 4 home runs in a 7 game series against the Reds?  You're sure that wasn't Reggie Jackson?  

It turns out that before he was an old guy and the back-up catcher for the Cardinals, Gene Tenace was a good player.  It's true.  All of it.  There are other things that I really appreciate about his career beyond winning a World Series MVP and being a back-up catcher on the Cardinals. 

+Gene Tenace regularly walked more than he struck out.  

+Gene Tenace 1060 career hits and 984 career walks. 

+Baseball Reference has him rated as the 13th best catcher of all-time ahead of Roy Campanella, Buster Posey, and Yadier Molina. 

+Amongst modern catchers, Tenace has the second highest OPS (on-base percentage and slugging percentage) amongst modern catchers.  He's ahead of Johnny Bench, but behind Mike Piazza.  

He was a really good player.  Here is my latest Gene Tenace card.  

I am still waiting for Topps to make a card of him as a back-up catcher for the Cardinals.  

Next player.  

Those polyester White Sox softball uniforms were not kind to Greg Luzinski. "The Bull" was still a good player with the White Sox, but he was definitely a player ignored while I was collecting in the 1980s.  I think Luzinski was my first run-in with a professional athlete who did not look the part.  I first started to appreciate Greg Luzinski when I moved to North Carolina roughly 15 years ago and started reading up on the Durham Bulls.  

He was a member of the 1969 Raleigh-Durham Phillies, which was a renamed version of the Durham Bulls.  It was a really dumb idea to rename the team briefly, but it was not as bad as the team splitting half of its games between Durham and Raleigh.  Despite a lot of bad off-the-field decisions by the Phillies, the team absolutely bludgeoned the rest of the Carolina League.  It's arguable one of the better teams in the history of the franchise.  

The team led the league in almost every team offensive category and almost every team pitching category.  Many of the players on the team also were league leaders in individual categories. Luzinksi was an 18 year-old fresh out of high school and hit 31 home runs and drove in 92 runs.  

I have posted a bunch of Luzinski cards here over the years.  Been a fan for awhile.  

Love the 1960 Topps design on this card and Luzinski has a great signature.  

Overall, I am happy to add these two cards to my collection and I am glad that I learned a little bit more about these two players who were "old and washed up" when I first started collecting cards.  

A Finest Moment

Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame because of his great defense. Rightfully, there are a ton of cards that highlight his Gold Gloves and acrobatics in the field. However, there does seem to be one offensive highlight that appears on Ozzie's cards almost on an annual basis. One of the greatest Postseason home runs in the history of the Cardinals franchise.  

Great call by the late, great Jack Buck too.  

In sorting out some cards the other week, I noticed that I had not really done much with the Cardinals Hall of Famers this year. Last year, I found a Bob Gibson rookie card. I didn't need anything that big, but it does not quite seem like a full year of collecting baseball cards without a good card of Stan Musial, Gibson, Lou Brock, or Ozzie Smith. I went ahead and found my good Cardinals card last week.  

I love the picture on the front of this card.  It's what caught my attention. Every Cardinals fan knows this picture of Ozzie batting left-handed in a 1980s Cardinals polyester uniform. It is indeed a "Finest Moment".  

I was also impressed with the back of the card.  

Topps usually skimps on the back of the card. They actually did a little bit of research and a decent write up here. They left out the fact that it was Ozzie's first home run as a left-handed batter during his career.  Ozzie was a switch-hitter. However, the first sentence bringing up his whopping career home run total of 29 did a good job of giving the reader of how rarely Ozzie hit a home run. 

2021 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 5

Blake Snell has an autograph in the 2021 Topps Traded set. Considering he was traded from the Rays to the Padres, it is not really surprising that Snell ended up on the checklist. I was just really surprised when I finally saw the card. After all, the purpose of the Traded set is to show new players called up to the Majors and established players in new uniforms.  

Blake Snell on the Padres, right?   

Wrong. 

I am not going to complain about getting a few more Blake Snell cards in a Rays uniform.  It makes you wonder how far in advance Topps makes some of these cards.  I like the borrowed 1986 Topps design and the faux color scheme that they made for the Rays.  I like the action photo of Snell pitching on the front of the card.  

Card back.  

The back has the standard "Congratulations" message on the back.  It looks a little odd and out of place considering that Topps duplicated the player information and card number boxes from the 1986 Topps set at the top of the card.  Can we get some player stats?  

The Old Mall Card Shop

I am approaching ten years now in this space. During that time, I have made several vague references to a "mall card shop" near my house that I never really visited. I am not going to name names for this post.  Maybe in a future post. Mall card shops are not really ideal, I do not want to spend a lot of time rehashing all the various reasons. 

The mall with the card shop was in the process of closing prior to the pandemic.  The anchor stores were closed and the mall was filled with all sorts of odd shops.  One of the local high schools had even landed a space in the mall for their robotics teams.  I am not sure exactly when the mall officially closed, but the most recent pictures I can find show it completely shuttered. 

 

I had actually been to the mall card shop several times while the remaining stores were in the process of holding clearance and closeout sales, but it was primarily for a few large card boxes. I discovered a sweet table of old wax boxes on the last trip. I ended up buying a box of 1995 Emotion cards, which was a fun product back in the day.  

At some point in the last year, the mall card shop reappeared within a five minute drive of my house in a new development.  I was curious about the store, but did not make a visit. I figured it was likely going to be similar to its identity as a mall card shop and it's in a little bit of an odd place. The only thing I knew that was on that same street was a trailer park.  

Well, I needed some card boxes a few weeks back, so I loaded the little man in the car and made a visit to the card store.  Not my picture, but it looks nice from the exterior.  Yes, the trailer park is still there, just to the left in this picture. 

I dare say, I was impressed with the store. They had a decent selection of single baseball cards and a lot of wax. The little man spent a good thirty minutes looking through the boxes trying to find some Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt cards. He ended up with a nice stack of cards. I also ended up buying a few inexpensive Jake Cronenworth cards, but I was just more impressed that the store had card supplies.

Enter this week. We have been in the process of replacing the floors in our house. Our furniture has been moved around. On Wednesday, the little man could not hang out in his room, because our contractor was working on our staircase. 

 

What to do?  

We made another trip to the former mall card shop. Again, I was impressed by the store. The little man was able to track down a few single cards from the Cardinals, Tigers, and Rays players he collects. Those are his three favorite teams. I also ended up with a bunch of single cards that I am posting now, but also ended up picking up some Topps Heritage Minors. That's for a different post.

Here was my haul. All of these cards averaged out to roughly a dollar per card minus the last card. 

I have not really done much with collecting Paul Goldschmidt cards since the Cardinals traded for him in 2019. He was a nice player on the Diamondbacks, but I was not a huge fan. I feel like I have come around a bit after this past year.  Good player, borderline Hall of Famer.  I will try harder on Goldschmidt in the coming year. 

Next up is a MacKenzie Gore. He's from North Carolina and I have a connection to him through work. Not the best year in 2021, but I still think he has a bright future. 

The late 90s Gold Label sets were much better, but still not bad cards.  Picked up a Pujols and Goldschmidt. Not sure if the Class 1, Class 2, and Class 3 cards are the same as the original sets.  Pujols is a Class 3 card, which is why I asked. I believe those were short-printed back in the day.

Next three are all of the newest Cardinal, Steven Matz. Just a bunch of Topps Chrome singles, nothing too fancy. 

 

 

The bottom 1984 style card from the 2019 Topps set is my favorite Matz card out of this group.  I need to go through my Mets and Blue Jays singles from the last few years and see what other Matz cards I have hanging around.   

The next three are cards are all NC State players.  First up is Russell Wilson and Trea Turner.

 

 

Nice to see Russell Wilson shown as a position player with a bat in his hands. There are several Panini cards floating around where he is shown as a pitcher.  Russ was actually a second baseman. Heard he also played for the football team.   

Two T.J. Warren cards.....

I am a team behind on T.J.. The last time I posted one of his cards he was still on the Phoenix Suns. That was two years ago. He's played well on the Pacers so far, although T.J. has still had problems staying on the court due to injuries. Last year, T.J only played four games. This season, he has already missed a game or two with a foot injury. Still my favorite former NC State basketball player.  

Last card for this post.  

An old Durham Bulls favorite, Anthony Banda.  

He was really good for the Bulls a few years back, but has had a few arm injuries and bounced around to the Giants, Mets, and Pirates.  The Pirates used him as a reliever during the second half of 2021 and he seemed to find his stuff again. 

I picked up two boxes of Topps Heritage Minors while I was there. Not very mall-like prices on the boxes, plus I love Minor League baseball cards. That post is for another day. 

Random Ray - 1990 Score Rookie/Traded

Another week, another now defunct brand of baseball cards that I miss.  I really liked the 1990 Score set, which felt very close to the original 1988 debut product.  These are not expensive cards by any means and I loved the bright colorful borders.  Score cards also frequently had good action pictures.  Most of the 1990 Score Rookie/Traded cards have orange borders. Takes away a bit from the regular 1990 Score set that looks like a rainbow jello mold when sorted into a complete set with the different colored borders.  

The 1990 Score Rookie/Traded Ray Lankford card has him batting during a Spring Training game. The batting practice jersey and uniform number are a dead giveaway.  The only number Ray Lankford wore as a Major League player between 1990 and 2002 was 16 for both the Cardinals and Padres. The second number on his jersey is not clear in the picture on the front of the card, but you can see it's a 50 something.  I like the action photo of Lankford hitting.  

The back of the card.  

You can see Lankford's jersey number listed as 57.  I did not scan the Bernard Gilkey card for this post, but he is wearing 56 in his picture. Seems to be a pattern with handing out uniform numbers at Spring Training.  

Score used to write a short term player on the back of each player's card. Yes, there were always stats, but you could learn a lot about a player by reading their Score card. This is an update card, so naturally most of this information is about Ray's Minor League career. They got his Texas League MVP, which was his big accomplishment and they generally did a good job of describing him as a player.  "Contact hitter" is not quite right.

The headshot is nice.  Quality card.  

Oh, Hell No.

You may not know the name D.J. Funderburk, but there is a chance you've seen him on college basketball blooper videos or social media clips from last season. The full sequence of events is floating around on the internet, but NC State and Charleston Southern were playing in the opening game for both teams. After a couple of quick trips up and down the court during the first half, a player on Charleston Southern lost his dinner.  

D.J. Funderburk was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The arena was empty and D.J.'s reaction was preserved for all-time on the internet.  

Charleston Southern player pukes on NC State player during the game 🤮 pic.twitter.com/HOoY14LIAq

— Highlight Hoops 24/7 (@HLHoops247) December 30, 2020

D.J. Funderburk was a good college basketball player.  He scored 10 to 15 points a game and did a decent job of rebounding. I was not really thinking he would end up playing in the NBA and certainly was not on the look out for any of his cards.  However, D.J. did have a good performance in the NBA Summer League, which landed him a bunch of basketball cards.  

Love D.J., not the last card I am going to buy of him.    

As a baseball card collector, this feels really similar to Inception, but on thinner card stock.  I like the red and pink cloudy background behind the player picture with the white coloring at the top and bottom of the card.  The sticker autograph feels like a bit of a downer. This card would look really sharp with an on-card autograph.  

I wish the back of the card had some sort of write up about his career at NC State, but the majority of the space is just filled with a giant logo.  

Random Ray - 2001 Upper Deck MVP

This week's Random Ray is one of the last Ray Lankford cards as a Cardinals player. He was traded during the 2001 season to the Padres, so all of his 2002 cards are all with San Diego.  I believe he might have one card as a Padres player in 2001.  That's for another day.  

This week I am going with an Upper Deck MVP card. These were inexpensive cards that were sold at a lot of big box retail stores.  I believe it is supposed to be a notch up from the Collector's Choice cards.  Collector's Choice were inexpensive cards for kids and MVP were inexpensive cards for adults.  Something like that. I liked Collector's Choice better, but that's just me.  

This is a pretty standard MVP set design.  It's clearly made by Upper Deck, even if there was not an Upper Deck logo in the top left-hand corner, its just got that look.  The pixels on the left actually have the word "Lankford" hidden in them running top to bottom.  Sneaky, Sneaky.  

The picture is decent.  Clear action shot of Ray playing a game in Busch Stadium.  I wish the catcher was visible in the picture rather than having the pixels on the side.  It would be fun to see who they were playing here.  You know I am a big fan of figuring when pictures were taken on baseball cards.  

Back of the card.  

The little photo in the top, right-hand corner is a little odd.  It's off center and the background is really dark.  Ray is sitting in the dugout, which was painted dark green in Busch Stadium.  We can do better.  

The stat line is pretty simple, but also standard for Upper Deck baseball cards.  The write-up is a little odd being split between the top and bottom of the card.  However, I do like that they mention he is the career home run leader at Busch Stadium II.  Albert Pujols did not catch him before the stadium was torn down after the 2005 season.  

Overall, this is a decent baseball card.  I am not going to tell you I love it, but Upper Deck MVP was a solid product considering it cost roughly $1 per pack.  

Hang It In The Louvre

I picked up an incredible custom art card this past week. Mark Mosley is the artist of the card and can be found on both Twitter and Instagram under the user name IDrawBaseballCards.  Mark also has an online store where he sells both single custom art cards as well as small sets. He is a great follow on social media. You will enjoy his work.  

I discovered Mark's work a few years back when I stumbled across The Baseball Beyond Batting Average Podcast. Mark is one of the podcast hosts along with Andy from Baseball Card Backs on Twitter. Besides beyond a great podcast, they are both locals. Meaning the Triangle region of North Carolina. There are roughly 75 episodes of the podcast. If you enjoy baseball statistics, it's worth a listen. Mark and Andy interact heavily with the listeners of their podcast and favorite all my tweets criticizing Andre Dawson's 1987 National League MVP Award.  

I'm drifting.  Back to custom art cards.  

Mark frequently will post custom cards of players on their birthdays. Longtime Cardinals outfielder Willie McGee turned 63 a few weeks back and got a custom card of his 1986 Topps card on the IDrawBaseballCards accounts.  

Happy Birthday Willie McGee! pic.twitter.com/L9pY7ZHTjJ

— IDrawBaseballCards (@mosley_mark) November 2, 2021

I commented on the Tweet about getting Mark to making a custom card of a Topps proof photo from sometime in the 1980s featuring Willie McGee. The picture is truly bizarre, a complete head scratcher.  I have seen this several times as a "Caption That Photo" on Twitter and in baseball card groups on Facebook.  

The picture speaks for itself in a way.  Nobody really knows what is going on here, but there are so many questions that run through my mind about Willie McGee's half home and half road uniform.  Oh, there is also Mike Ramsey in the background.  What happened here? 

A day later Mark posted a custom card of the odd Willie McGee photo.  

I’m not saying Willie McGee had anything to do with it… but I’ve got questions. (Special request by @TheSnortingBull ) pic.twitter.com/sACaB4drZO

— IDrawBaseballCards (@mosley_mark) November 3, 2021

I was surprised that he made the card, but the best part was that a made me a copy and stuck it in the mail.  Any odd spots on the photos are from my scanner.  It's smudgy at the moment.  

This is just simply an amazing baseball card.  It is definitely going to find a prominent spot in my baseball card room.  I have a sweet Willie McGee bobblehead in there.  This would look good next to it.  

As an added bonus, Mark also sent a custom 1989 Topps All-Star Ozzie Smith card.  

This is a phenomenal card too.  

I would like to thank Mark for providing some great cards to look at online and for his generosity in creating and send me the custom Willie McGee card.  My baseball card room is not exactly the Louvre, but these cards have instantly become two of my favorites.  

Wandering When This Would Happen

The Minor League Baseball season ended a month ago.  My local rooting interest, the Durham Bulls, had a successful season.  They had a talented roster full of good prospects.  There was not much in Triple A that they did not win this year.  Here is a quick recap:  

Southeast Division crown 🏆
Triple-A East title 🏆
Triple-A National champs 🏆
Final Stretch winners 🏆@MiLB's Best Team 🏆

The accolades just keep coming as we've been named the Best Team in MiLB for 2021!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

— Durham Bulls (@DurhamBulls) November 9, 2021

While the Bulls were successful on the field, I have felt slightly unsuccessful with collecting the cards of the players on this year's roster. Specifically, Wander Franco. All year long I have wanted just one card of Wander Franco on the Durham Bulls. That's it. One card of Wander Franco. I have sat here waiting patiently.  

After months of waiting, my wish has come true. Not only did Topps make a Wander Franco card, they ended up making a total of 5 different cards of the Rays shortstop for the Topps Heritage Minor League set. They are all really nice cards that I managed to pick up over the past two weeks.  

Let me run through the new cards starting with Wander's base card in this set.  

This is easily one of the best Durham Bulls cards that Topps has produced since they starting making the Pro Debut and Heritage Minor League sets. I love the blue and yellow border on the card along with the picture that they used.  The alternative home jerseys for the Bulls are great, but they have never been pictured on a Topps card. A great added bonus. The Bulls have been wearing them for several years.  THat Bull logo has a real vintage feel and I believe was created based on a logo the team used early in their history.  

Here is a better look at the front of the jersey with Anthony Banda.  

The back of the Wander Franco card does not mention much about the Durham Bulls, but considering this was probably written at the beginning of the baseball season, maybe even before that, I cannot really fault Topps for leaving it out the time he spent with the Bulls.  

I was curious about the 555 foot home run mentioned in the write-up.  Did a little searching around the internet.  I came up with a video, but 555 feet seems like an extraordinarily generous measurement.  Yes, it was a long home run, but 500 plus feet is pushing it.  It doesn't help that the video of slightly better quality than a UFO or Bigfoot video.  

Here are the other 4 cards with less commentary.  

This is from the Pack Cover Inserts.  The original 1972 Topps packs had the same wording at the top of the wax packs, but they had a drawing of a baseball player throwing the ball.  I like the look of this card, clean and simple.  

Next up is the Topps Venezuelan sticker.  This is actually a card that I got out of a pack at the local card shop that is now a few miles from my house.  The card shop needs its own post, but that's for a different day.  The scan is not miniature, but the card is definitely small.  Love the green border with the green scoreboard in the background.  I'd track down the specific home run here, but it's a busy Saturday morning.  

Next up is a Baseball Poster insert.  I like the borderless card with the nice close-in action shot of Wander fielding and throwing the ball.  Not sure about the text box at the bottom, but the picture more than makes up for it.  I guess for a product that is styled after a 1972 baseball card, the stylings of the name box are probably pretty spot on for that time period.  

The last card is actually in the base set.  It's my least favorite Wander Franco card in this set, but I still love the card.  Great action shot of him running while he's looking in towards home.  

Overall, I am happy that Topps finally got around to making a few cards of Wander Franco on the Durham Bulls. As a toolsy player, I also really like that Topps used photos of him hitting, fielding, and running.  I was honestly worried that they were going to skip his time with the team earlier in the year.