The Retail Card Aisles of Northern Michigan - Part 2

On the previous post, I shared a few of the cards that I picked up while visiting my in-laws in northern Michigan. The card aisles of the two large box stores in town, Meijer and Wal-Mart, both had more packs of cards than I have seen living outside of Raleigh during the past year and a half to two years.  

A quick refresher. 

 

The Meijer card aisle is on the left, Wally World on the right.  

For this post, I am just breaking the cards into brand rather than by location purchased.

First up is another pack of the Panini Chronicles cards. Again, I am still confused as to whether or not these cards all come from a single set or they are different sets packaged together. I don't care enough about Panini to research the answer and I fear it's a rip off of the 1998 Donruss Collections product.  

If you don't know that one, the card manufacturer Pinnacle re-released all of their Donruss and Leaf products at the end of that year, but they put some foil finish on the cards. In my opinion......

I have three highlights from this pack of cards. 

On the left is Akil Baddoo. I saw him with the Tigers this summer and enjoyed his style of play. I am looking forward to picking up some more of his cards this year. More Akil later in the post. 

In the middle is Clayton Kershaw. This is the same style card as AJ Puk and Gregory Polanco cards from the previous post. Again, the card has a nice finish on the surface and the thick card stock is always a plus. The Pete Alonso is another acetate card, but it's different from the three in the previous post. Are the acetate cards supposed to have variations like the Topps Tek cards?  I love acetate baseball cards, but the line pattern on this one is boring.  

Next up is a few cards from Topps Archives. I have really become torn on this product in recent years. Topps has gone completely overboard with reusing former designs in current products. At some point they are going to completely ruin the Topps Heritage product. However, for the moment I still really enjoy the autographs and a few of the inserts in this product. Topps does come up with some nice cards here.  

Topps did a really good job of picking out photos for the 1970s players. Not a Nolan Ryan fan, but good job putting him in an Angels uniform. Dick Allen and Mike Schmidt have great 1970s hair. The uniforms in the picture are an added bonus. The red version of the White Sox uniforms is underrated. I felt like the 1970s players had the best looking cards in this year's set.  

Next up is a pair of Movie Poster inserts. These are really neat.  

Most of the cards are team themed, like the A's card on the left. However, I do really like the Black Aces poster card.  The black and white photo with the red background really pops. The term "Black Aces" was coined by long-time Indians and Twins pitcher, Mudcat Grant. There are players who fit Grant's description left off of the card. One of those players was Grant himself.  Give credit where credit is due.  This would be a better card if Grant had been included.

Just my two cents.  

I did not land many Cardinals cards in my packs of Archives. My only two options were Lou Brock and Paul DeJong. I am sorry, but Paul DeJong is a no at the moment.  

Lou is an easy choice.  

My favorite Durham Bulls card....

I am going with this Evan Longoria insert, but let's talk about this card for a minute. This is card is the direction that Topps should take the Archives set.  This is a modernized version of a 1989 Topps Big card. They were a kid-friendly oddball set released that ran for several years. 

This is the original design.  

Topps always uses past oddball designs for insert sets in Archives. They should just make them the base set design for the entire product. Small change, but it would help to preserve the former flagship brand designs for future Topps Heritage sets. Again, just my opinion.  

Onto the last group of cards. These are out of the Update Series. I got two of these box toppers.  

I like the Satchel Paige card.  Big Papi.  Meh.  

I also ended up with two more Akil Baddoo rookie cards. Did I mention I hate when Topps overuses former designs?  I am going to ignore that for the 1986 Topps card on the left. That is a good looking baseball card.  

I also picked up a pair of Luis Patino rookie cards. He has been my go-to Durham Bulls player of sorts during the past year. However, the card on the right is a little ridiculous.  

Topps made Rookie Debut cards for a handful of players in the 2021 Update set. Read the small print there and you can see that Luis Patino actually made his Major League Debut in August of 2020. He was traded to the Rays in December of 2020, started the year in the Minors, and was called up by the Rays. I get the card on the left since Patino was both traded and called up to the Majors in the past year. I do not understand why he is getting a Debut card from a previous season.  

Favorite Cardinals cards.  

Ignore the previous comments about Topps reusing old designs here too.  The Molina has a Chrome finish, Arenado and Carlson are the regular card stock. I love the 1992 Topps cards. 

Favorite former Durham Bulls players in this set....

I am going with Blake Snell and Jake Cronenworth.  Easy choice.  

That's it for the card aisle. 

Slightly Let Down.

I was really excited earlier this year when Topps announced that they were putting out a set that was created with the owner of the Super 70s Sports Twitter account.  The Twitter account is sort of a cross between sports and pop culture with a heavy 1970s lean.  Sure, there is a little bit of 1960s and 1980s cross over in there from time to time, but the account generally does a good job of staying in its lane.  

For example........

Brilliant.  

I was hoping the set would be the Topps equivalent of the 2001 Upper Deck 1970s set.  If you collected cards at the time that set was released, you know that's a high bar to meet.  There were some really strong inserts, great names from the decade, and a solid autograph checklist.  I thought Topps was up for the challenge of matching cards like this one from the Upper Deck set.....

 

It took awhile for the box to show up, but last week it appeared in my mailbox.  I was excited to open the pack of cards.  It's one of the few current 2020 products that I have opened this year.  

The packaging inside the box was pretty nice.   

Now that I mentioned the Twitter account and the packaging, I am roughly 50% of the way through the highlights for this product.  The set has one major flaw.  Maybe I am being picky, but I am going to go ahead and borrow a meme from Mad Man and one of my current favorite sayings at work.  

Works great in 2020, usually more than once in a week.  

So, here is the problem.  Ohtani has nothing to do with the 1970s.  He wasn't even born in the 1970s.  Sandy Koufax did not pitch in the 1970s.  In fact, he retired in the middle of the 1960s.  It's not even like he pitched in the late 1960s.  I am not scanning on my cards from the box, they are on my Twitter if you really need to see them, but there were a lot of other non-1970s players.  

Not to keep harkening back the Upper Deck 1970s set either, but that product only had players from the 1970s, which is what made it a really great product.  I'd like to think there is still a market for that type of product 20 years later.  Has Topps looked around at who collects baseball cards nowadays?  There are a lot of people who would eat up a set filled with players from the 1970s.  

Here is the sad part.  

The 1970s cards that are in the set are really well done.  It's not like I am expecting a set of Hall of Famers.  J.R. Richard and Dave Kingman are definitely more in line with what I thought would be in pack of cards.  These are great cards.  The 1970s themed insert cards are even better.  I pulled three insert cards, one of which was an autograph, out of my box of 1970s Topps.

This card is a gem with Rich "Goose" Gossage wearing shorts for the White Sox.  

Lou Brock wearing sunglasses.  Yes, absolutely great 1970s card. 

This Gorman Thomas card is also awesome.  The mustache is magnificent, as is the long hair cover up his ears and the long side burns.  

I understand that I am being a little hard here.  There are truly some really great 1970s cards in this product.  If had to go back and keep my $20 and not order this box, I probably would have still picked up a few singles on Ebay or COMC at some point.  It's not a total disappointment, I just feel slightly let down.  

A 1980s Card Part 53 - 1987 K-Mart Lou Brock 25th Anniversary

I already used one of these K-Mart cards in a 1980s Card Post, but this is my favorite 1980s Lou Brock baseball card.  Such a great looking card, felt like it would be a good to post after Lou passed away recently.  There are not too many 1980s cards of the Cardinals Hall of Famer, with most being oddballs from TCMA or similar companies.   

Here is the front of the card.  

Great portrait photo on the front of the card.

The palm trees in background, really high probability that this was a Spring Training card from the 1960s. The Cardinals were still wearing button up jerseys.  There are not perfectly white either.  I am going to guess this is from the late 1960s.

Going beyond the 1980 Lou Brock cards, looking through a few stacks of my modern cards of the Cardinals great, this is one of the better overall portrait photos of him out there.  

Card back.  

The little bulleted lists at the top of this card save it from complete disaster.  Feels weird to make a card of a player like Lou Brock and not include stolen bases as one of the stats displayed on the card.  Whatever person designed this card really did a good job with that list to save the card from the stats listed below.  

Jubilant Cards

In my hunt for a few new Durham Bulls cards last fall, I ran across a Johnny Vander Meer card that was out of the 1976 Laughlin Diamond Jubilee set.  I did not know much about the cards when I found it, just really liked the looks of the card.  

Robert Laughlin made all sorts of cards during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.  Most of his sets are drawings or cartoons.  I actually found another Laughlin card in my collection after picking up the Vander Meer.  I am not sure when I got this card exactly, but it was probably in the last couple of years.  

This is from the 1971 Laughlin World Series set.  I am sure I own this card because of Jack Coombs, who was the long time baseball coach at Duke. Their on-campus baseball stadium is named after him.  His cards are quite pricey, so I only own oddballs of him that are typically inexpensive.  

So, back to the Jubilee cards.  I liked the Vander Meer card enough that I have been watching a few of these on Ebay, COMC, and a few other places.  I actually ended up picking up two of the cards last week.  It's only a 32 card set, so maybe this will be a project that I take on for the summer.  

This is one of the cards I was most interested in finding from the set.  

This is the only Cardinals card in the set.  Seems like in the 100 years of the National League there would be some other notable accomplishment by a Cardinals player that would be worthy of a card, but this was a recent event at the time this set was made.  I get it.  

This was my second card.  Pretty cool drawing of Brooks Robinson diving to stop a ball.  I did a little research to see if this is a specific event, or just the way that Laughlin choose to draw Brooks Robinson.  The answer is.......

The correct answer is Game 5 of the 1970 World Series against the Reds.  

I like both of these cards, and am looking forward to finding the other 29 cards that I have left to complete this set.  

Mailday From The Mitten

I received a nice envelope of cards a week and a half ago from Julie over at A Cracked Bat.   I will run through the cards in a minute, but I really need to get a business card or something catchy to stick into packages.  This is nice.....

My eight year old son was initially really excited about this package of cards.  He checks our mail as part of chores around the house.  If it is mail for me then it is a baseball card, and there is not much excitement over the mail for the day.  However, this package threw him off because the return address was from Michigan.  He was jumping up and down. 

My wife is from Michigan, so there are grandparents, aunts and uncles who live there are mail him stuff.  

Her hometown is actually on this map.  It's right there, next to one of the lakes.  It's a nice place.

So naturally, he opened the envelope and was a little disappointed to see that it was baseball cards, but I was pretty excited.  So, here's what I got:

First off, this was a card from a set that Julie had posted on Twitter, and we had spent some time talking about it one day.  I had never seen anything out of this Church's Chicken card set before.  Are there Church's Chickens in Missouri?  According to Google there are a dozen of them around St. Louis.  I just missed out on these back in the day.  There are even Cardinals players in the set. 

Love the design on these cards, they look like something from the mid 1990s too.  I am going to have to find more of these.  I appreciate that Julie introduced me to these cards.

More cards.

These three Cardinals are out of the 2003 EX set.  Always one of my favorite products from the late 1990s and early 2000s.  These are from the 2003.  Great looking cards.  

Next.  

I know that the Action Packed cards were an oddball set from the early 1990s that featured older players, but I do not know much about them.  I actually have two other Action Packed cards in my collection, a Bob Gibson and a Jerome Bettis, but I am a little fuzzy on how they got here.  Never really got into collecting Rams cards.  I love the photograph on the card.  Nice action shot of Lou Brock running the bases is always a winner. 

 I do not do much with Furcal, but he was on the 2011 Cardinals World Series winner.  Kind of easy to forget he was there.  This is a gold sparkle variation of his 2012 Topps base card.  Not sure the scan really did it justice, sometimes shiny and bright does not scan well, but it's a sharp card. 

This is a really sharp looking card of Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong.  Love the die cut.  

Last.  

There are not many Ray Lankford cards in this world that I do not own.  However, he is one of the few players whom I actively welcome duplicates of in my collection.  This is a 1998 Donruss Preferred card, which was not only a great set, but also a card from Lankford's prime years as a player.  The years where card companies sort of paid interest in him. 

A great package of cards.  Thank you Julie, I will get you a return package at some point in the near future. 

Cards, And A Bull, For Some Cubs

A quick trade post.  I am a little behind with a few stacks of cards on my desk, this is one group of cards that got lost in the shuffle for a week or two.  I picked these up from Shane, who can be followed on Twitter, or at his blog Off The Wall.  Good baseball card follow.

We worked out the trade around a group of oddball Cubs cards which had been sitting in card closet for a few years.  They were given to me by a college friend who was dumping off different parts of his collection.  I was sent a Facebook Message one day about a box of baseball cards, a few days later there was a box on my front porch loaded down with all sorts of 1980s Cubs oddballs.

As a Cardinals fan, it was really hard to fit them in with any part of my collection.  There were not any Durham Bulls players in those sets either.  Eventually, the Cubs cards just ended up in a random box, but luckily they have found a good home.

Which brings me to what came back in return for the Cubs cards.  Obviously, some cards that better match my collection.

Let's start off with a pair of Ozzie oddballs.

I was actually surprised to find that I did not have either of these cards.  I don't have any Wonder Stars cards in my collection, but I do have a bunch of the Jimmy Deans.  These were the prototypical oddball cards from the 1990s.  Love them both.

One other modern Cardinals card from the package.....

This is from the 2013 Topps Archives set from the 4-in-1 insert.  I like all the 1980s and 1990s stolen base guys on one card.  I was big into the steals, very nice.  

A few older cards.  

Next up is Reggie Smith from the 1975 SSPC set.  I always think of Reggie Smith as a Red Sox or Dodger, but he was with the Cardinals for a few years in the middle of his career.  Might be one of the better Cardinals players who really lacks a presence in my collection.  Not sure why, but just have never gone there.  I am a big fan of the SSPC cards too.  Simple designs are sometimes the best designs.  

Which brings me to my three favorite Cardinals cards in the package.  Love those cereal cards.  

First up is a 1962 Post Cereal Curt Simmons card.  He the majority of his career as a Phillie, but had some good years with the Cardinals in the early parts of the 1960s, including the 1964 season, which ended with the a World Series over the Yankees.  These Post cards are fun.  

Next up.  

I have done a bunch with these Kellogg's cards over the past six months, but mostly with the 1980s sets.  Nothing really from the 1970s.  This McGlothen is from the 1975 set.  Beautiful card.  I have barely touched these 1970s Kellogg's, I would really like to add more of these at some point.  This is a great start.  

I like the back of the McGlothen card.  The sketch in the top left hand corner, the old Cardinals logo in the top right corner, all the copyrights across the bottom of the card.  Definitely an interesting card back.  It even has his hobbies up at the top, feels like the 1990s Studio cards might have copied off of these.    

The last Cardinals card, which is tremendous.  Another Kellogg's card.  

This is from the 1970 set.  One of the best oddball card sets of all-time, such a great looking product.  The other Kellogg's sets have all sorts of colored borders and designs, but the 1970 set has this simple white border.  I think it makes the pictures really pop.  

The back is really pretty standard with the stats and player vitals at the top of the card.  These last two cards really make me want to go out and find some more of the 1970s Kellogg's cards.  They are a project for another day, but still going to get added to my baseball card to do list.  Even if it does not happen for a year or two.  

Last card in the package, and the only Durham Bulls related item.  

Jim Morris was a popular player in the early 2000s.  The movie "The Rookie" starring Dennis Quaid was based on his journey from high school science teacher and baseball coach, to player for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.  He was actually a Minor Leaguer for the Brewers and White Sox back in the 1980s, played a few seasons, but blew out his arm.  He made a bet with the players on his high school team that if they won their district championship he would try out for a Major League team.  There is more story in there, but he made his way through the Rays system, which included a stop in Durham, before he reached the Majors.  

It's a decent movie.  Not Bull Durham though.  

Overall, a really great trade package from Shane.  Some great cards in here that will have a good place in my collection.