I Needed Some Boxes, Maybe A Few Cards Too

I have been doing a lot of sorting the past few weeks, which probably deserves a post, but not today. Instead, I wanted to post a few cards I picked up while I was purchasing a few boxes from my local card shop this past weekend. It's a newer card shop that I wrote up a few weeks back, but I am impressed every time I stop there. Lately, it's been for boxes. 

Figured I needed to check out some cards. 

Here is a quick rundown.  

First up, is an Adley Rutshman rookie card from Bowman Chrome. I am not an Orioles fan, but I do like a lot of their young players. I saw Adley a few year back in Durham, figured I would add a few of his cards when I get a chance. This was a good starting point......

Also fairly inexpensive.  

Next, an unexpected Cardinals find. This is a 2001 Bowman Chrome Stan Musial rookie reprint. Not sure the scan does this card justice, but I really like the sepia background with the greyscale photo, all with the trappings of a Chrome card. Nice to see a good blend of some vintage and modern design elements on the same card.  

Here is the back, which includes the serial number out of 299. Not the rarest Musial card by any means, but I was not expecting to find a serial numbered of The Man when I walked in the door of the card shop.  

I also found a few Snell commons.......

My effort to collect some non-autographed Blake Snell cards also should probably be there own post, but I will wait until I have time to write about some more exciting cards. There are in the fifty-cent bin at the shop.

Next up......

A few vintage cards. The Curt Flood is probably my favorite card out of the group.  All the players have a connection to the Cardinals or Durham Bulls with the exception of Norm Cash who once tried to take an at-bat against Nolan Ryan with a table leg.  

I demad a game-used table leg card, but nobody has come through for me.  

Let's Talk Tobacco

Two years ago, I worked on putting together a set of 1964 Topps Giants cards. It took me roughly a year to complete, but was fairly inexpensive compared to other 1960s baseball card sets. Giants was a fun project for three reasons:

1.The set was small

2. The cards are inexpensive outside of a few short prints

3. It's a good looking set. 

I have decided to work on another card project based largely based on the fact that it largely fits the same criteria as the Topps Giants set. So, for the next year or so, I will be tracking down cards from the 1952 Red Man Tobacco set trying to put together a complete run of 52 cards. 

The good news is that I already have three cards from the set, which leaves me with 49.  

Here are the three, all of which are missing their bottom tab.  

Obviously Stan is one of the better cards in the set and I have a really clean copy. I would love to upgrade to a clean copy with the tab attached to the bottom of the card, but that is low on the priority list. In fact, I am fine collecting cards without the tabs. Feels like that may make this an easier project, less expensive too.  

There is also Eddie Stanky.  

This is another very clean card.  Love the pinkish background.  

Last.....

Alright, Red is a little rough around the edges with a few other creases. He's going to get replaced at some point during this project.  

So, here is where we stand on this project.  

I need 49 cards. I have:

National League: 

16. Stan Musial 

19. Al Schoendienst 

23. Eddie Stanky 

Around The Card Room, Take 13

The end of the school year can be hard on elementary school students. There are plenty of happy children on the final day of school who are ready for summer vacation and the challenges of a new grade level. However, there are also plenty who are sad and disregulated at the thought of having to learn a whole new set of rules and routines the next year. 

Others are sad for different reasons........

At the end of the 2004 school year, I had a student experience what he perceived to be the worst day of his school career. The reason? He found the perfect end of year gift for me and he forgot it at home. After an hour of crying, we tried calling mom and dad, but his parents both worked and could not leave to bring a gift to school. He spent the day in tears and kept telling me, "I got your gift from my grandma's neighbor. It's the best gift ever"

He was tight-lipped with the details about grandma's neighbor.  

Dad emailed me that afternoon and assured me they had found me the most incredible end of year gift, repeated the part about finding it at his grandmother's house, and that they would drop it off at school the next day while the teachers were having their end of year work days.  

I was not overly worried about the gift.  

End of year workdays are so boring. Lots of papers to file, cleaning, and everyone just wants to finish as quickly as possible to start summer break. I can do paperwork so long, but I eventually need a break. In the middle of the morning I walked through the office and saw a brown paper bag stuffed into my mailbox. 

It was crisp and had my name written on it in black marker.  

I pulled it out of my mailbox and I knew it was the gift from the student. Knowing it came from his grandma's neighbor, I figured it was a trinket of some sort or vegetables from their garden. Obviously neither, because I don't blog about vegetable gardens. When I picked up the bag and looked inside, I could it was a baseball, but I couldn't see the writing. 

I picked it up and turned it over..........

Nobody has ever given me a better end of year gift from their grandmother's neighbor.  

Bear With Me

I found more retail baseball cards this past weekend. 

I think we have officially moved past the pandemic retail card craze. 

The Target next to my house had physical fights over sports cards that required police intervention during the pandemic. They pulled them from the shelves and they have not returned.  

Fighting. Over. Cards. 

So, the cards from this post came from my local Wal-Mart, which is low on my list of places to shop. I recently wrote about the Wal-Mart that is halfway between the Duke and UNC campuses. The Wal-Mart near my house is interesting for different reasons. It's the cultural intersection of suburban-dwelling transplants and old farmers who can tell you what kind tobacco was grown in your neighborhood before it was developed.  

That's for a different post.  

Unfortunately, I bought a box of Donruss, but bear with me, it does get better at some point. 

I was intrigued since the last few packs of Panini cards I opened were not actually all that bad. Baseball card money is finite, so I am usually carefully and picky about what I buy and how much I spend. I should have looked up the cards online before I handed over money for these cards.  

Here is the basic design.  

There are a lot of cubes and rectangles with different depths. Maybe it's my ADD, but I feel like my eyes are drawn away from the picture of the player and onto the design of the card. Catchy designs are good, but not when they are overwhelming and busy.  

The back is the same.  

The write-up is terrible.  

It's hard to make an argument about someone being the best in baseball history when the stat involves getting hit by pitches. Do people at Donruss know how many times the Marlins have thrown at Ronald Acuna? I bet they account for at least half the total.  

There are other disappointing aspects to this year's Donruss set beyond the base cards. The Diamond Kings cards, long-time personal favorites, now feature a background that looks like a floral sofa pattern from some 1980s living room. 

The inspiration for the background of this Jose Ramirez card?  

There are plenty of other half-assed cards also appeared in the box.  

There is some sort of 1988 Donruss redux.  

Where is the rest of the border?

Why is half of it whited-out?  

Why is the colored pattern on the border on the adjacent corners from the original?  

GET. THE. LITTLE. DETAILS. RIGHT. 

I am not even a details person and it bothers me. 

 

I saved this for last.  

Donruss included some retired Hall of Famers on their checklist, but they could not just airbrush out the logos on their uniforms. They had to take it an extra step and add trim to their jerseys. The Brooks Robinson card leaves me speechless. Ozzie?  The red trim is terrible.  

At least Panini still includes the Rated Rookie cards in Donruss.  

I managed to pull Rated Rookie cards of Vidal Brujan and Juan Yepez. I am still not sure what the Rays are going to do with Brujan. He's played well with Durham this year, but he's played all over the field. I am not sure if they are trying to turn him into a super-utility type or the Rays just do not know what to do with him. Shortstop is obviously taken for the next decade. Yepez has been excellent for the Cardinals. One of the few players who has hit well.  

Then there is this.....

Rated Prospects?  

This feels like New Coke or M&Ms filled with pretzels.  

Okay, so bear with me for a few more cards.  

As bad as the base cards are in the 2022 Donruss set, the inserts are actually pretty nice.  

I pulled two Diamond Marvel cards. I am not a comic book collector, but I like the design here merging them with a baseball card. The cards have a nice finish too. Not sure if it comes through on the scan.  

The other pleasant surprise with 2022 Donruss was the quality of Stan Musial cards. 

Who saw that coming?  

For a card with the logos airbrushed off, this is really nice. I also like the choice of using a black and white photograph versus the red, gray, and black boxes around the edge of the card. Perhaps, Panini should have used black and white photos for more cards.  

The last card is just incredible.  

Growing up in St. Louis, I have spent my whole life listening to stories about Stan Musial. I am not sure that any of them made me think of Stan as being ferocious. What attributes does Stan share with a bear?  

I am not sure, but this is pretty awesome.  

Wandering.

Last week the Rays sent Wander Franco to their Minor League camp, meaning he is likely going to spend a big chunk of his summer playing for the Durham Bulls.  How many times have the Durham Bulls had the top prospect entering a season?  

It's been a few.  

I am really excited to see him play, which would normally mean that I would be searching Ebay and Facebook groups for a few of his cards.  How many have I bought this spring?  

Well, there is this one....

 

That's it.  

I felt well prepared knowing that there is a healthy market for Wander Franco cards, but have you seen the price of his cards?  His autographs are all around/over $100.  Some of base cards and serial numbered cards are kind of pricy for a player with less than 200 games in the Minors. So, after looking at my baseball card budget and weighing whether or not to spend some money on the upcoming Durham Bulls players, I have decided that I am going to skip the entire team over at the moment.  

That's right.  A blog with a heavy slant on collecting Durham Bulls cards is not collecting Durham Bulls cards for the moment.  I am sure that I will find a few players on the team later on this summer.  Surely, someone will be more in the Michael Brosseau price range at some point.  In the meantime, I decided to redirect my Durham Bulls budget for this spring into a single card.  

I know it's a bold move, but I stand by the decision.  

I have a copy of this card, but this one is nicer than the one in my collection and it's Stan Musial.  Do you really need a reason to buy a Stan Musial card?  I cannot think of one, especially considering this autographed card is cheaper than a Wander Franco autograph.  

2,000

It's taken over 8 years, but this is my 2,000 post.  I had thought about doing some sort of really cool countdown of cards I have posted, or something like that.  I scrapped all of those ideas.  Instead, I am just posting one cool card that I got last month while trading off a few high end modern cards.  No Project 2020 cards were used to trade for this card.  

I think it speaks for itself.  

This 1954 Red Hearts Stan Musial card is my second really nice vintage Cardinals pick up of the summer along my 1959 Topps Bob Gibson rookie card.  There are not very many Musial cards out there, especially from the middle of his career.  Love the coloration on his uniform and hat.  Peak 1950s.

The card is in pretty good condition, just a few minor physical flaws.  The corners are rounded at the top of the card, with the bottom right having some slight paper loss.  Yes, the centering is also off, but I can live with those sorts of problems.  

You can see the centering again on the back of the card.  Nice little write up at the top of the card.  I like that they included the story of why Stan's nickname is "The Man".  I also really like that they put his fielding stats on the back of the card.  That's not common.  

This was a pretty good way to do my 2,000 post.  Thank you to everyone who stopped by during that time to read about my baseball cards.  

A 1980s Card Part 50 - 1988 Topps Stan Musial

A little bit different 1980s Cardinals post for this week with my feature card being a "Turn Back The Clock" card from the 1988 Topps set.  I actually really liked these cards as a kid.  There was zero chance my parents were going to let me drop a couple hundred dollars for a nice vintage card of a Hall of Fame player from the 1950s or 1960s, but these cards at least gave those players a presence in my collection.  

At least, that's the way I felt at the time.  

Here is the Musial card.  

It's even got a picture of his 1963 Topps card on the front, which is the year the back of the card will talk about when we get there.  

Now, if you have never seen one of these before, you might be a little disappointed looking at the back of the card.  I generally ignored the back as a kid, choosing to focus on the fact that I had a Stan Musial card.  As an adult, I am tremendously disappointed at the back.  The card has Stan Musial on the front, surely the back will be all about Stan Musial, and showcase him as one of the greats of the game.  

Well, not so much.  

Let's work our way down the card.  Again, you have the 1963 year at the top, along with the "Twenty Five Years Ago" heading at the top.  

The various facts from the season featured on these cards were always more of odd occurrences variety than actual highlights.  Never any mention of who won the World Series or MVP, someone who reached a career milestone, or things that might have been truly historic that season.  If they made these cards today, they would have things like, "Junior Lake wears wrong Cubs road jersey in a game against the Pirates" 

or "Edwin Jackson has not pitched for all the teams in the league, but he's getting pretty close"  

In 1963, Sandy Koufax won the pitching Triple Crown and Willie Mays hit his 400th home run.  Pete Rose won the Rookie of the Year Award.  Might have been a nice touch to mention some of those highlights, especially since these cards were made when kids were actually still collecting cards.  

The Musial section of the card is roughly the bottom third.  I guess it's decent, but I think it would have been nice to give some of those numbers a little more context.  When he retired he was the National League leader in almost all the counting number stats outside of home runs.  Saying he had 3,630 hits and more than 700 doubles is nice, but giving the ranking makes his place in history stand out a little more.  

While it was nice to say, "Of course I own a Musial card" when this card rolled around, Topps really could have done better with this subset by focusing more on the player shown on the front.  I have some good Cardinals cards the next couple of weeks.  Going with some of the bigger names and more important cards for the last few months of these posts.  

Cards I Love Part 14 - 2003 Topps Chrome Record Breakers Stan Musial Jersey Relic

Did you read Part 13? 

No?  Read here. 

Yes? 

This is the second single card that my wife bought me at the card shop in St. Louis.  It was my Christmas present in 2006, along with the Yadier Molina autograph.  It's a Topps Chrome Record Breakers relic card.  The relic actually looks old, not just something from an old timers game, but who knows at this point. 

I really like this set.  I do not own the set, but I own a lot of the cards.  This is a good mix of a modern design with an older player.   

Can we talk about the record listed on the front of the card for a minute?  

I like math.  I teach math.  When I saw the number 86 extra base hits in a season, I thought that there was something wrong with that number.  That's a large number, but I know Pujols had several seasons near 100 extra base hits, and they were short of Musial's best seasons.  

So, entering the 1946 season the Cardinals Top 5 extra base hits leaders in a single season were:

1. Rogers Hornsby 102

2. Joe Medwick 97 

3. Joe Medwick 95

4. Jim Bottomley 93

5. Rogers Hornsby 90 

Johnny Mize actually had 86 during the 1939 season, which he later topped during the 1940 season.  The "record" total on the Musial card was actually good for only 8th best on the Cardinals all-time single season extra base hit list in 1946.  I say that as if it's a bad thing, the players on this list are all great names.  Also, the 1946 season was also early in Stan Musial's career.  Two seasons later in 1948, Musial had 103 extra base hits in a season, which is the actual franchise record.   

Stan hit 39 home runs, and managed to lead the National League in both doubles (46) and triples (18) during his record breaking season. All the time, pitchers only struck out Musial 34 times that season.  

Perhaps Topps should hire someone to do some better research on their baseball cards.  

Great card, and a great Christmas present. 

Cards I Love Part 9 - 1948 Leaf Stan Musial

I do not know if anyone has ever done a list of the greatest Cardinals baseball cards, but the 1948 Leaf Stan Musial would be near the top of the list.  I also really like his 1948 Bowman card, I just don't own one, so this Leaf card is the best Musial card in my collection.  It's one of the best cards of the best Cardinals player of all-time. 

I picked up a copy of this card about five or six years ago after having a good month selling off some cards from my collection.  It felt like a bit of an accomplishment to pick up this card.  There is not a really cool story, other than the fact that I found a pretty clean copy, and went for it.

This is my copy.  

The centering is way off, and I am fine with that.  The surface has a few little dings, and I am fine with that too.  The edges and corners pretty are clean.  

I had a dream card as a kid, and it's got a post coming up in a few days.  As an adult, I am not sure that I have had a singular dream card, but this has been one of my favorite cards I have picked up over the past couple of years.  If I had to rank all the vintage cards that I have added to my collection since I have been blogging, this would be at the top of the list.  

A 1980s Card Part 18 - Topps Circle K All-Time Home Run Kings Stan Musial

Stan Musial is currently 31st all-time in home runs. When Musial retired from baseball in 1963 he was considerably higher up the list.  Stan The Man ended his career with 475.  He's also still 3rd overall in doubles and 19th in triples on top of all the home runs.  Stan hit a lot of extra base hits, some went over the wall.  I think that's a fair way to describe his home run total.

Anyway, Circle K made a set of home run hitters in 1985.  They are essentially the same design as the Glossy Mail-In sets that Topps used to put on their wrappers back at this time, but the photos were a mix of black and white and color photos. 

White border, name in small print in the bottom corner, similar finish too.  Mine is not really well centered, but I picked this set up for next to nothing a card show long ago.  The set is great, Stan is just a little off.  Might need to fix this at some point.

The back of the card is odd.

I am sure if I sat here and thought about it a little longer I might be able to think of another set that has player stats in two different columns, but one is not popping into my head at the moment.  Just a really bizarre way to design the back of the card.  If the point of the set is to show the players with the highest home run totals, I am sure that they could have come up with a better way than to list all 22 years that Stan played.  Even Ralph Kiner, who only played 10 years, has his stats split into two different columns.

I just look at the front of the card.  It's nice. 

Weekend Countdown: Top 10 Bowman Cardinals Cards

It's Bowman season.  People spending hundreds of dollars for cards of players in the Florida State League.  Here are the rules for this week:

• Bowman cards include the old Bowman cards too, not just the ones from the 1990s and 2000s

• There are only Bowman cards in this post.  Not Bowman Chrome, Heritage, Draft, or even autographs.  

• The cards in the list have to show the player in a Cardinals uniform. The Scott Rolen Bowman rookie is a sweet card, but he's in a Phillies uniform.  

• These are my favorite Bowman cards based on baseball cards, not playing career.  

Count it down.  

10. 1994 Bowman Dmitri Young 

Bowman was a prospect heavy set at this point, and Dmitri Young was the prospect of all Cardinals prospects back in the day.  I guess if I touched the Oscar Taveras card, he probably surpassed the hype of Dmitri Young.  Maybe.  

9. 2012 Bowman Carlos Martinez 

Carlos was a big deal as a Minor Leaguer, but also a perfect example of how out of hand people get with the Bowman comparisons.  I believe that Pedro Martinez was the name that was frequently thrown around when C-Mart was coming up through the Minors.  He's not Pedro Martinez, just a really good pitcher.  Who spent more than $100 on a Carlos Martinez Bowman card?  (I know people did).  

8. 1951 Bowman Marty Marion 

Remember when I used to get the Bowman Draft sets and pick on all the airbrushing?  This Marty Marion card is from a great set, but the picture on my copy has always bothered me.  It looks grainy and pixelated, sort of like a Bowman Draft card.  I know cleaner copies have better pictures, but I got this dirt cheap at a card show complete with staple holes at the top.  Still love the card.  

7. 2009 Bowman David Freese 

If we put David Freese's first Bowman card on a different design, I would probably rank it higher, but I really am not a fan of the 2009 Bowman set.  The giant box with the facsimile signature on it is way too big.  

6. 1990 Bowman Ray Lankford 

Personal bias, plus the rainbow borders on these look sweet.  

5 . 2004 Bowman Yadier Molina 

Flies under the radar a bit as a good Bowman card.  Obviously a card that may not touch some of the other cards on the list in terms of style, but Yadi turned out to be a good player.  What 70 something number do you think he is wearing in this picture?  Got to be Spring Training.  

4. 1951 Bowman Enos Slaughter 

Love the picture on the card, even if it is crinkled on my copy.  The dark background looks good, sort of like an Olan Mills photo.  

3. 1955 Bowman Tommy Alston 

Alston was the first African-American player on the Cardinals.  Always felt like this was sort of an iconic Cardinals card.  The 1955 Bowman set has always been distinct with the television design, like that Alston got a baseball card right away too.  Also a North Carolina guy from Greensboro.  

2. 2001 Bowman Albert Pujols 

The best modern Bowman Cardinals card, and the best right handed player in the history of the team.  

1. 1948 Bowman Stan Musial 

The best vintage Bowman Cardinals card, and the best left handed player in the history of the team.  

Y'all Crazy

Last summer the Cardinals drafted Nolan Gorman in the first round out of some high school in Arizona.  He had a good summer in Johnson City with the Cardinals Rookie Ball team, also spent a few weeks with the Peoria Chiefs in A Ball.  Good year, seriously. 

The first Nolan Gorman cards in a Cardinals uniform, he was in a few USA Baseball sets, came out late in the fall in Bowman Draft.  I really like Nolan Gorman, I hope he becomes a good player, but y'all are crazy. 

Do I want a Nolan Gorman Bowman Draft?  Yes. 

Let's see what people have spent on them.

$675?  The guy is in A Ball.  '

$395.  Speechless.  

$600 Benjamins.  What the hell? 

Listen.  The lawn chairs on my patio are not comfortable enough for me to spend $600 on a baseball card, but if I were going to risk the aftermath of buying one card worth that much money I would go with something from a more proven player. 

Look at what $500 on a Stan Musial card buys you.....

That's quality.  

Still, I did not give up my dream of owning a Nolan Gorman autograph in a Cardinals uniform.  I need to break out the USA Baseball one for a post one of these nights.  In the meantime, this card cost me an Andrew Jackson.....

and I am not sleeping on a lawn chair on my patio tonight.  This is from the Bowman Best set, so I am not sure what makes this card twenty-some dollars and the cards above $500.  I love collecting baseball cards, but somedays I do not understand people.