Around the Card Room, Take 15

Today is National Bobblehead Day, so I thought I would choose one from my shelf for today's post.  

I know some of these items have really good back stories, but this one is simple.  

Here is a Matt Holliday bobblehead that I bought in 2011.  

I decided to add a few different items to my collection after the Cardinals won the 2011 World Series and this bobblehead was one of them. If you don't remember how the Cardinals season ended in 2011, let me refresh your memory.  

It was also the season that Albert Pujols left the Cardinals to sign with the Angels, so Matt Holliday was the big offensive star still left on that team. He would have a few more good seasons in him and I was a pretty big fan.  If you read the early posts of the blog, which started in 2012, there are a lot of Matt Holliday cards.  

Here are the other views of the Matt Holliday bobblehead:

Love that this bobblehead captures Matt Holliday's batting stance and his large front leg kick. He was a really good hitter. Holliday's physique may be a little underrepresented on this bobble.  

Kind of wild to think that a little more than a decade after buying this bobblehead, Matt Holliday's son is now a Triple A baseball player who was largely responsible for eliminating my Durham Bulls from the playoffs last season.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 30

For the first time in five years the Cardinals missed the playoffs.  While the team has some nice young pieces on the roster, clearly the team needs a few adjustments if they are going to compete with the Cubs next year.  One of the likely changes is that the team will pursue a new centerfielder, move Randal Grichuk to left, and allow long time fixture Matt Holliday walk.

Holliday first arrived on the Cardinals in 2009 in a trade with the A's and has been a fixture in left field ever since.  For the last eight years he's been a pretty consistent performer: 20 home runs, close to 100 RBIs, a .300 batting average, a high on base percentage, and a little shaky outfield defense.  The Cardinals have also won a World Series and made the National League Championship Series three other times with Holliday in the lineup.

In his supposed last at-bat as a Cardinal, he ended up with another one two days later, he went yard against the Pirates.  A cool ending to some great years as a Cardinal...

I have watched most of Holliday's time with the Cardinals from away from St. Louis, but he actually spent a few years playing in North Carolina on his way to the Majors with the Rockies.  Holliday was drafted in 1998 and squeezed in about 30 games with AZL Rockies before the end of the summer.  His first full year was spent in the South Atlantic League with the Asheville Tourists.  

One of his first baseball cards featured him wearing a Tourists uni. 

If you do not remember the Just Minors cards they are still really easy to find and are really cheap.  They actually have some pretty cool autographs too.  I dabbled a bit with them back in the late 1990s, but I was not a huge Minor League collector at that point, so they did not hold my interest.  Pretty fun cards to look at now.  

Also note that Holliday is a third baseman on the card.  He actually played the infield until 2001.  In his first two and half years in the Minors Holliday made 79 errors at third.  While he was not a good defender in left either, that's a ton of errors.  

Holliday also later appeared for the Carolina Mudcats, but they were the Rockies Double A team at the time.  I am not sure if Holliday has a team issue Mudcats card, but if he does I will find it at some point.   He does have a 2002 Upper Deck Minors card with a Mudcats logo on the front of the card, but he is wearing an Asheville uniform on the card.  

The Mudcats did have a banner for him in the outfield, until they took it down.  

Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow

Way back in March of 2012 I made my first post on this space about a Brian Fuentes Triple Threads patch card from the 2009 All-Star game in St. Louis.  Over the last three plus years I have frequently sat down in front of my computer in my office and spent a little bit of my day typing about my baseball cards.  It's been a good source of stress relief at the end of my days and share the cards I enjoy with other people.  This is a great hobby and has been a part of my life since childhood and I will always value the time I spent working on this blog and the people I have met along the way.

During different points in making 1,257 blog posts I have taken an occasional break from writing, but nothing longer than a week or two.  Over the last half a year I felt a restlessness with my writing.  I have ventured out to explore writing opportunities beyond this blog, as well as exploring some different ways to do different things with this space.  After months of contemplation I have decided to "retire" this space.

I am not going to shut the door all the way on this space, but unlike the other breaks from my blog that were short term, this one will last much longer.  It could be several months, maybe a year, or maybe I am just going to let this space be the way I am leaving it after this post.....

While I am leaving this The Snorting Bull Blogger page, I am going to maintain both my Twitter and Instagram accounts to share out my cards.  Again, I have really valued my time and experiences here and look forward to still talking to many of you who have taken time during the past few years to read my ramblings on baseball cards.

One day I will be back, whether it is here, or in another space.  In the meantime, I will leave you with one last card.  I was looking for a good one to go out on and this card looks like a winner.....

Those Other Ginter Cards Part 1

A while back Topps started selling an anniversary version of the Allen & Ginter cards with black backgrounds instead of the usual white.  The black background cards were celebrating the tenth anniversary of the product.  The boxes were not prohibitively expensive, but sometimes I get really tired of the whole rehash thing, such as making the cards a different color, adding chrome to the cards.  Sometimes I will dabble into those products, but I usual limit myself by just picking up some interesting singles, or not opening a box and buying the base set.

The set has kind of grown on me over time.  A few of the card groups I am in on Facebook had collectors post pictures of cards from the set.  Very nice.  While I am not going to assemble a set in this case, I am going to put together a nice group of Cardinals, Rays, and former Durham Bulls.  I started by picking up four of the cards pretty cheap off of COMC.

Obviously a good start to the assembling the Cardinals and Rays portion of the full size set.  Still plenty of cards still left to find, especially considering I still haven't touched the minis.  The Cardinals team set looks like it has 14 cards, leaving me 10 short.  The Rays team set has only 5, so 4 away from finishing.  I am going to have to sort through the big list to track down all of the Durham Bulls, but all five Rays cards would also fit into that category too.  

#MyCardMonday

I picked up the a copy of the new 2015 Stadium Club set last week and have not really stopped looking at the cards yet.  There are tons of great looking pictures and cards in the set from all kinds of different eras of baseball.  A bigger post on the set is coming later this week, but until then I decided to pick out one card to use for #MyCardMonday

There are several other cool Cardinals cards that I could have gone with, but I like this card because it is one of those that can be traced back to a specific moment in time.  Here's what I see:

• Matt Holliday hit a home run in Busch Stadium
• Lance Lynn (31) is pitching for the Cardinals and has 5 wins
• Is that a Yankees player in the background?  

I think I found it.  Great card.  

Inkredible Holliday

One of the really underrated mega-sets of all-time is the 2006 Upper Deck set.  It's over 1000 cards and featured tons of goodies for collectors.  Lots of relics, autographs, and inserts.  High end, low end, and everything in between.  It's just a really cool product and might be my favorite Upper Deck set after the original 1989 set.  Definitely top three at worst.

The autograph list is quite impressive and their are a lot of big names out there for collectors to find.  Go on a big secondary market site like Ebay or COMC and you scan scroll through and get a good idea.  My latest edition is a pretty good name......

Holliday has been a really good player for the Cardinals the last five years, but at the time of this set's release he was maybe even better than he was at his Cardinals peak.  2006 was a really good year for the Rockies left-fielder as he posted a .326/.387/.586 line with 34 home runs 45 doubles and 114 RBIs.  He followed his 2006 performance up with a .340/.405/.607 line in 2007 with 36 hoers, 50 doubles, and 137 RBIs.  Holliday won two of the three legs of the Triple Crown that year, missing out on the home run title by 14 to Brewers first baseman Prince Fielder.

Of course, the Rockies also ended up in the World Series in 2007, due in large part to Holliday's efforts, but they came up short against the Red Sox.  Holliday played well for the Rockies that Postseason and had won of their only highlights from the series when he hit this late inning home run in game three.

Holliday eventually ended up with the A's and was then traded to the Cardinals.  Throughout his career Holliday has been a pretty good signer and has a fair number of autographs out on the market.  I am always amazed at how cheap his autographs as a Rockie are sometimes.  This card cost me less than $5.  Yes, it's a sticker autograph, but Matt Holliday, $5.....It's a good deal.  

2014 Topps Series 2- A Few More Thoughts

I opened a jumbo box of 2014 Topps Series 2 a week or so ago at my favorite local card shop Big D's Cards in Raleigh, North Carolina.  I really enjoyed the box and had a few favorite cards that I pulled from the box.  I posted a video, but no scans.  Here's my run down with the scans along with a little something extra:

First off my jumbo box was very Joe Morgan heavy.  Two of my big hits featured the Hall of Fame second baseman.  I pulled this awesome Gold Label insert out of the box.  The card is a duplicate design of the old Gold Label sets from the late 90s, early 2000s.  The card has a metal frame and is numbered out of just 99.  Really cool pull.

My second Morgan card was a copy of his ring card.  I picked up a few of these from Series 1 and was happy to see Topps put them back into Series 2.  There are some really good names in this set that I am going to have to add to my collection.  The biggest two would have to be Mark McGwire and Ozzie Smith.  Although, the Morgan will have to stay considering he was one of the best players in the history of the Durham Bulls.

I was also happy to see Topps continue the 1989 minis set.  I pulled a few of these out of my box including an Albert Pujols and Mark McGwire.  I have the first set in Series 1 almost put together, so the new group of cards will be a good challenge.  Topps also continued over a few other cards from Series 1 with a cool twist:

This Chris Sale card is a Series 1 card that I pulled out of my Series 2 box.  The card was inserted into the packs of Series 2 as a variation with the Sabermetrics stats on the back.  Like this:

I think this is a pretty good variation and they have been pretty popular amongst collectors.  They are pretty affordable too and a little bit easier to spot than the sparkle card variations Topps has been using the last few years.  My other two hit cards from the box:

and this one.....

Which leads me to my bonus item.  There have been a few cards from the Series 2 set which I have been trying really hard to track down.  My biggest challenge has been trying to find some of the jumbo jersey and patch pieces in the set.  Really cool looking cards.  There are jumbo jersey and patch cards of Mark McGwire, Shelby Miller, and a few other Cardinals.  This was my first one I landed.

A few more are going to show up here in the next few weeks.....

Museum Jumbos

I am still spending some time tracking down some more Museum cards.  The price of some of the jumbos has fallen slightly since product released a few weeks.  The prices for Museum cards are already a little bit low this year, so there are some really good bargains floating around out there for collectors.  This past week I managed to find two really nice jumbo Museum cards for my collection. 

First up is one of my favorite former Durham Bulls pitcher Chris Archer.  This Archer card is one of two variations he has in the Museum Collection on his jumbo cards.  This card is a swatch of his home jersey, but there is also a copy floating around with a nice piece of his alternate light blue jersey.  This piece of jersey is numbered to 50 which is one of the higher print runs of Museum Jumbo cards in the set.  Still trying to find a copy of that one.  Next...

The Matt Holliday jumbo card is numbered out of just 35.  There is also a copy of this card with a print run of 10 and a print run of 50, but I am not sure if he has any other colors or variations on his Museum Jumbo cards.  Just big pieces of white home Cardinals jersey. 

A Trip To Big D's Sportcards

It was a quiet afternoon on the homestead yesterday, so I decided a trip to my local card shop, Big D's Sports Cards, would make the day a little better.  Jimmy had set aside a cool autograph of former NC State player Julius Hodge.  For those not familiar with Julius, he played at State from 2001-2005.  He was an All-ACC selection several times and was the conference player of the year during the 2003-2004 season.  His two most famous moments at State were aggravating Chris Paul to the point where he punched him in nuts and wrecking everyone's NCAA tournament bracket in 2005 when he made a great play to knock out UConn.  (apologizes for the video quality).

Hodge lasted two years in the NBA playing for the Nuggets, Lakers, and Bucks.  He has since played a long career overseas dominating the Australian Basketball League and Twitter.  Here's my autograph:

Of course you can't go into a card shop and just walk away with an autograph, unless it's an awesome autograph, so I stayed and shopped for awhile and picked up a few nice cards for the collection.  Here's what else I picked up yesterday:

My 2014 Topps set is coming along nicely and Jimmy had a few really nice pieces I decided to add to my growing collection from last month's new Topps set.  I already have three of the class rings (Stan, Rickey Henderson, and Randy Johnson), but decided to add a fourth with this Miguel Cabrera ring.  I'm a pretty big fan of the Tigers slugger and enjoy picking up his cards, even if they have him in a Marlins jersey.  I also picked up an autograph and jersey card from the 2014 Topps set:

Both cards are kind of a roll of the dice for the coming season.  Just two players I have a good feeling about.  Davidson was traded from the Diamondbacks to the White Sox where he will be the team's starting third baseman this season.  He had a "cup of coffee" with the DBacks last year, and while the numbers are not great, there not terrible and I like some of what I see with the former first round pick.  Mainly, half of his hits were extra base hits, 9 of them, with less than 100 at-bats.  In the minors he had an OBP over .350 and had roughly half of his hits come in the form of extra base hits.  Not saying the average is every going to be great, but get on base and show some pop, can't go wrong.  Rondon?  See Tigers bullpen.  He's big and throws really hard.  Rondon is great in the International League, just waiting for him to show up in the American League.  

 

I also picked up two minis from the 2014 Topps set.  Both of these cards seem extra cool given that both were active and very good players at the time the 1989 Topps set was released.  The Raines card would be even cooler if Topps had put down his name as Rock Raines, which was on the original 1989 Topps card.  Speeding things up:

 

A Gold Parallel of Matt Holliday's 2014 Topps card.  I already have the red version.  

Three Shelby Miller cards.....

 

and a Max Scherzer Topps Heritage Chrome card.  A great haul and great day at Big D's.  

St. Patty's Day Holliday

It started out with Panini autographs, now I am buying their relic cards too.  I found a really cool copy of a Matt Holliday relic card last week and was able to add it to my collection on the cheap.  The card actually has a really good look outside of the fact that the card does not have any uniform logos since Panini does not have an MLB license. 

2013 Panini America's Pasttime Matt Holliday Jersey

This is one of those cards I would love to see Panini make with a license.  Would be pretty sweet.  Still I like the overall style of the card.  The colors give it a 50/60s kind of feel with the institutional blue color, the pennant, and the black and white headshot of the Cardinals left fielder.  The card is also limited to just 50 copies.   While I like the style and looks of the card, the jersey was also interesting to me. 

Nothing wrong with the scan, that is a green Cardinals jersey.  Obviously the jersey is likely from the Cardinals St. Patty's Day uniforms they wear in Spring Training.  Last year they looked a little something like this: 

 

Topps has also used the St Patty's Day cards recently too.  Check out last year's Triple Threads set and you will find a bunch of them spread out throughout the set.  In fact, most Major League teams put their St Patty's Day green items up for sale on the MLB auctions site towards the end of Spring Training.  Given the authentication problems that card companies have had in recent years with dealers selling them fake jerseys, I cannot say I surprised that card companies are going through MLB team sites to acquire actual authentic game used items for use in their products.  

The other cool thing about owning a unique piece of jersey, like a St. Patrick's Day or throwback uni, is that it is one of the few relics that can be tied to a unique game.  If you are looking for a few unique jerseys I would recommend checking out some of the White Sox relics in Topps products from 2012.  

2014 Topps Jumbo Break-Base Set and Parallels

One of my measuring sticks of a successful Jumbo Box is the percentage of set completed.  Some people like to measure the doubles in the box, but that is really disingenuous to think that the dupe rate is going to be low when you are opening a box of 500 cards for a 331 card set.  Get real.  So, I sat yesterday afternoon and assembled my Series 1 set and came up with 327 of the 330 cards.  That's slightly over 99% of the set.  Yes, I do have a big stack of doubles.  Luckily, I had walked to Target and picked up a few rack packs on Tuesday.  I manged to land the three missing cards: Elivs Andrus, Martin Perez, and Jason Grilli.  

Looking for a reason to put together the 2014 Topps Set?  I have got five reasons:


1. Red Parallels

There are a bunch of different parallels like normal.  Camo, Pink, Green, Yellow, and these.  I like red.  Cardinals and NC State.  SEMO too (look that one up).  These are like the Emerald Green cards of last year, so I will have to put together a set of Cardinals for this parallel set.  They are not serial numbered and seem pretty reasonable on Ebay.  I landed this Mariano, so that's going to look good with my Cardinals set.  By the way, I got one card out of the Cardianls set done.

I like any Cardinals card with the retired numbers in the background too.  Wonder if Matt Holliday caught this flyball?

2.  Final Regular Cards For Helton and Rivera 

I am sure that Topps will put Helton and Rivera in plenty of sets in the near future, but it's sad to see them make their final regular card appearance.  Both players have been great for the past twenty years or so and have been regulars in baseball card sets throughout that time.  If I have more time to flip through the cards I am sure I can probably find more players making their final appearance too.  Dawg, where's Lance Berkman?

3.  There's No AIRBRUSHING!

You want players in old uniforms?  You got it.  Thank you Topps for not airbrushing players into their new jerseys.  Peralta is still a Tiger.  McCann is still a Brave.  Both cards look fine.

4.  Throwback Uniforms

 

Lots of cool old uniforms in the set.  Reds, A's, Brewers, and many others.  Always like to see some of these in every set.  Topps has been putting plenty of these cards in sets recently and this year's Topps I is no different.  

 

5. Coco Crisp's Hair

 

Kind of a throwback to the seventies.  Where's Oscar Gamble?  

Trade Day At Big D's

My local card shop, Big D's Sports Cards in Raleigh, hosted their first trade day this weekend.  It had been awhile since I had attended a trade day, so I was really pumped up to see what a trade day would look like at my new favorite local card shop.  I had attended a few back in my St. Louis days, but Trade Days can be hard when everyone collects the Cardinals.  More of a Show and Tell Day, then trading.  I packed up a few boxes of autographs and relics cards, loaded them into a laundry basket, and headed out for the store. 

The atmosphere of the Big D's was great as usual.  There was a nice gathering of some of the store regulars to trade, the store owner Jimmy ordered some pizza, and the Broncos-Patriots AFC championship game was on in the store.  We had a great time trading, talking sports, and watching some football.  At the end of my time in the store I walked away with 4 Cardinals related cards for my collection.  Here are my latest four Cardinals related cards courtesy of the 1st Trade Day at Big D's Sports Cards:

2013 Bowman Hometown Stephen Piscotty

I started out picking up two smaller cards.  The first of the cards was this cool looking Bowman Hometowns Stephen Piscotty.  I had picked up a Trevor Rosenthal card like this last summer with a Missouri flag in the background.  I also have a copy of the Seth Maness card floating around which has a North Carolina flag.  I don't have a California connection, but Piscotty showed some pop and great plate discipline in two minor league stops last summer.  He's likely to end up in Double-A Springfield or Triple A Memphis to start the season.  He's a good hitter and his not far off from St. Louis, good investment. 

1993 Topps Black Gold Ozzie Smith

My other small pickup was an Ozzie Smith Black Gold card out of the 1993 Topps set.  This was the first Topps insert set featuring the gold concept which the company has used ad nauseum over the past two decades on their cards.  The 1993 insert set was put out in two 22 card series with 11 of each set belonging to National League players and the other 11 belonging to American Leaguers.   I did not have an Ozzie yet, so why not now. 

2007 UD Elements Matt Holliday Jersey/Auto

 

This card I can thank the store owner Jimmy for finding me.  He saw my post earlier in the week on these cards and had givenme the heads up on Twitter that he had the missing copy needed to finish off my run of Matt Holliday autographs from this set.  I love the purple pinstripe on the jersey swatch.  Last one for today....

2013 Topps Tribute Terry Pendleton Autograph

Pendelton won an MVP and a batting title in Atlanta, but actually started his career for the Cardinals and was their starting third baseman during their 1985 and 1987 World Series runs.  He was not much of a hitter during his time with the Cardinals, but was a good glove man at the corner.  I believe St. Louis Post Dispatch writer Bernie Miklasz once described Pendleton as a player who could "field like Brooks Robinson, but hit like Brooke Shields"  Terry Pendleton ended up have a nice overall career and has had a good run as a coach for the Braves since his retirement. 

Autographs Under The Radar

I spend a lot of time looking for autographed cards and often make it no secret that I prefer cards with on-card signatures versus cards with sticker autographs.  There are still some really cool autographs out there that feature autographs on stickers.  One of my favorite sets of sticker autographs comes from 2007 UD Elements set.  I started out collecting the set in order to pick up two different Cardinals players in the set.

2007 UD Elements Chris Carpenter Auto/Jersey 

My first autograph was Chris Carpenter.  I loved the look of the set with both the autograph and the jersey swatch.  I picked this card up and would later add a second Cardinals with a copy of the Matt Holliday card.

2007 UD Elements Matt Holliday Auto/Jersey

Even though Holliday is a Rockie on the card I decided this card would be a great add to my collection based on how much I liked the looks of the Carpenter card. After adding the Holliday card, my collection of Elements autographs took off.  I picked up a copy of the checklist and was really impressed by the names on the list.  The most expensive card in the autographed set belongs to Derek Jeter, but after that the rest of the players can be found for pretty reasonable prices.  And the other names on the checklist?  Pretty nice group of players.  Here are three of my favorites:


An Inexpensive Player

2007 UD Elements Jake Peavy Auto/Jersey

Every once in awhile I search the term AUTO on Ebay in the Baseball Cards category.  I set my sort feature to ending soonest and get ready to type in some bids.  Sometimes I find a lot of garbage that isn't worth owning, or sometimes I find cards that are ridiculously priced that are not selling for good reason.  Then, every once in awhile you find something going off that's a great deal.  Jake Peavy for $1.25?  Yes, thank you.  I am not saying that Peavy is the best player, but he's a nice player and pretty typical of the base line autographs in the Elements autograph set.

Corey Patterson, Brian Bannister, Joel Zumaya, and Khalil Greene are also cheapies in Elements.  I own all four, but if you are going to own a Corey Patterson autograph then might as well make it count for something.  A complete set of autographs is a good something.  The set gets better.

Current Stars & Players

2007 UD Elements Justin Verlander Auto/Jersey

Verlander might be at the top of the current players within the Elements set along with Miguel Cabrera, Hanley Ramirez, and Matt Holliday.  Cabrera and Verlander are probably the most expensive of the lot, but still can be found, with some patience, for less than $30.  Other current players offer some really good value.  There is a great Francisco Liriano autograph which is a steal given his performance last season for the Pirates.  V-mart and Ryan Zimmerman are also pretty solid autographs.

Hall of Famers

2007 UD Elements Jim Thome Auto/Jersey

Thome is one of my favorite autographs I own in this set.  I always liked watching him play and do not own many cool cards of the slugging first baseman.  This might be the coolest.  There is the aforementioned Jeter, Griffey, and a Cal Ripken too.  These four autographs are four of the more expensive autographs in this set, but are inexpensive cards relative to the prices of other autographs for these future Hall of Famers.  For example, two copies of the Griffey Jr. card have sold for less than $50 on Ebay.  A graded copy of the Ripken card sold for just north of Ripken.  Not too bad for that caliber of autograph.

2013 Snorting Bull Awards: Best Parallel Set

2013 Topps Emerald Green Parallels 

2013 Topps Emerald Green Matt Holliday 

I know a lot of collectors who dig the parallels.  I have seen checklists about diamonds and sepia and camouflage and everything under the sun.  Yet, rarely do I feel the urge to put together any of these sets.  If you collect parallel sets and are willing to part with something decent I will put together a huge stack of these cards and send them your way.  I think part of the frustration with them is that, like the variations, there are too many of them today.  Name a color and there is a parallel.  Some of them might be serial numbered, others not.  Some are only in Hobby Packs, while others are only available at Wally World (Wal-Mart) and others at Target.  99% of the time I do not care.  

I take notice when something changes my mind.  I saw a bunch of changes to the parallels this year in Topps, and while I am not knocking camo or pink cards, I love these green cards.  They have a cool look and I just really think they are catchy.  I managed to assemble a complete set of green Cardinals cards this summer and happily have them marked off in my box of inserts and parallels from this year's base set.  In fact, the Emerald Green Cardinals parallel set gets looked at at least once a week.  Love them.  

Now, hopefully Topps will keep these cards next year and will not do anything to mess with them or change them.  Bonus Emerald Green card, Jon Jay.  They should have done something cool with the picture of Tony LaRussa on the wall behind Jay.  

2013 Topps Emerald Green Jon Jay