My Annual Post About A Relic Card

I am always amazed that card companies still make relic cards.  In the span of 20 years we have gone from collectors knocking themselves over to own a small inch sized piece of Tony Gwynn's jersey fixed on the front of an Upper Deck card, to having to sort through dozens of Mark Grudzielanek game used bat cards to find the decent cards in the dollar bins at card shows.

The old ones are still great cards in my opinion.

Mass produced, problems with the relics actually being authentic, companies putting "event" used jerseys on cards, etc.  There are dozens of reasons that people stopped collecting relic cards, but I am surprised that the little square and circular pieces have not just completely gone away.  There will likely always be a place for the premium patch pieces companies use for high end products, but the small piece relics are basically irrelevant.    

I have seen a few products in recent years that have gone to using authentication stickers on relics.  Not sure how popular I would say the cards were, the ones in my collection are there strictly because they were also autographed.

Doubtful I would have a Dallas Keuchel relic card just because.

Welp.  I was purchasing a Jim Edmonds card off of Ebay, just because who wouldn't want to own a card of Jimmy Ballgame wearing some awesome 1990s pinstriped Angels uniform.

I owned one of these hats in college, definitely a go to hat in the collection.  I always check out sellers other items when I am after a card.  Why pay for shipping multiple times?  That's when I ended up with a relic card of Evan Longoria.

The authentication sticker, which tiny, is almost as big as relic swatch.  This card is out of Tribute, which is a nice product, but I see no reason why this won't be in dollar bins soon.  The one redeeming quality about the card happened when I typed the number into the MLB Authentication page.....

The relic comes from a 2016 game between the Rays and Yankees, which did not end very well for the Rays.......

However, this is a Longoria relic, and he did have a hit in the game.....

so at least the relic is not from a game where he just sat on the bench.  Until next year relic cards.....

You Didn't Even Leave The Bench

I like the idea of the stickers on the Strata cards which make the jersey swatch on the cards have a specific game attached them.  The whole game used relic thing has gotten a bit stale in the past few years and there have also been some serious doubts raised along the way about how "game worn" some of these items that are swatched and put onto baseball cards truly are.  

Strata puts that all to rest with the stickers.  Here is my first Strata card of the year......

I saw this card on the cheap, and since Keuchel won the Cy Young Award last year, decided to go for it.  I know it does not really fit into my collection anyway or anyhow.  Still nice to pick up a cheap card of a player who has won a Major Award.  More specifically I was sort of hoping that perhaps that jersey swatch/patch would be tied to some cool game from last year.  20th win or a playoff game, something.  

Here's what I saw when I plugged in the sticker number......

I went ahead and went to the box score section on Baseball-Reference to check out what happened in the July 25th game between the Astros and Royals.  I can tell you that the game went 10 innings and was won by the Royals on an Alcides Escobar walk off single.  

Unfortunately, the game was start by Scott Feldman, not Dallas Keuchel.  Meaning that the jersey/patch piece on the front of this Strata card probably just hung out on the bench in Kaufmann Stadium for a few hours one night in July before it made its long journey onto the front of this baseball card.