Stack Of Stadium Clubs

Stadium Club came out awhile ago, there are a lot of repeat signers for the Cardinals and Rays who are in multiple 2018 products, so I took my time trying to add a few cards.  I really like the Stadium Club cards.  Topps has done a great job of bringing this product back over the past few years and reviving it's 1990s branding of being a high quality set with high photography. 

I have done some posts in the past just to showcase some of the base cards from the recent Stadium Club sets.  They are fun sets to sit down with and just flip through the cards.  So many great photographs. 

In keeping with putting together fewer sets this year, I have actually decided to add single cards of the Cardinals and former Durham Bulls players, along with a few other cards that I thought looked really nice.  Obviously, I am going to showcase my autographs for my post this evening. 

I managed to land a pair of Cardinals cards and a former Durham Bulls player.  However, I am going to start out with a different card.  I participated in a charity break awhile ago.  It was for a good cause, I was given two spots in a case and got whatever autographs were pulled. 

One of them was one of the Cardinals players, the other was a 1980s nemesis of my favorite team.  Pretty sweet looking card.....

If you ever saw a Darryl Strawberry at bat, this is a pretty cool moment in the whole process of how he swings a bat.  He always had a leg kick when the ball was being thrown and his bat was angled forward.  You can tell this is a second before he swings, or maybe he took the pitch.  Either way, it's a cool moment in time.  

Here is a look at the swing on a pretty crazy looking home run.  Apologies for the announcers.  McCarver is on this video and he's the better of the two.  

On to the Cardinals.  

Flaherty has been a priority of sorts for my Cardinals collection.  The was my second autograph out of the charity break.  I am a believer in the abilities of Jack Flaherty.  I like the red Spring Training jersey with the green grass in the background.  Nice contrast.  I also like that you can see his grip on the ball.  I'd guess some sort of changeup.  

Next. 

I am posting a Tommy Pham card on the day he was traded.  It's got a nice photograph.  I will miss Tommy, but I understand why the Cardinals traded him.  I made my peace with it about thirty seconds after I saw the news of the trade.  

Let's share a good Tommy Pham moment and move onto the last card.  

Last one is a former Durham Bulls card.  

Tim Beckham has been in a few different sets this year as an autographed card after having a good half season in Baltimore.  It seemed like a change of scenery really helped, but he's not having a very good year at the moment.  The Orioles have cleaned house the last week, so I am pretty sure that Beckham and Chris Davis will now be covering the entire infield.  

Relaxing With Some Cards

This week has kicked off my summer vacation.  I teach, but I have a little bit of a different schedule.  I work for roughly nine weeks at a time, rarely less, sometimes more, before I get three to four weeks off.  Again, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less on the breaks.  I often travel with my wife and kids, but I also spend time attending baseball games.....

and working on my baseball cards.

I need to post an updated picture of my card room, but I have come a long way since last summer.  This popped up on my Facebook memories feed today.....

My closet team boxes have been switched out for set boxes, which has been a slow process over the last few years.  I also had a doubles table, which was just a large wood desk covered in extra cards that I pulled out as I was assembling sets.  Some of those cards have been traded, some have been given away, some have been boxed up, and others have gone to other odd places.

Beyond sets, I am also working on some of my Cardinals cards today.  I picked out a few of my favorites to share on this post.  I am going to go with two new autographs and two new cards of one of my favorite current Cardinals prospects.

Autographs first, prospect cards second.

First up is a Tommy Pham from this year's Tier One set.  Before last year there were not that many Tommy Pham autographs floating around out there.  I was actually lucky enough to pull one out of a Topps box a few years back.  Pham seems to be in almost everything nowadays.  He's got a nice autograph, and while he is not having his best year, I still enjoy watching him play.

I like the looks of this card too.  The diamond pattern, the hues of gray in the background, and best of all, the on-card autograph is very nice.

Next.

I like Jack Flaherty.  I am not sure how good of a pitcher he will be in the long run, but I am hopeful that he will continue to pitch well.  More than a strikeout per inning, an ERA under 3.00, and a WHIP right around 1.  Seems like he might be a nice one-two punch with Carlos Martinez the next few years.  I like the the horizontal layout of the Pham more than the Flaherty, but all of the Flaherty autographs from this product are all vertical cards.

Prospect cards.

Tyler O'Neill is probably my favorite Cardinals prospect at the moment.  The guy hits home runs, offers something that the Cardinals really do not have at the moment.  When the Cardinals traded for him last summer his cards were fairly inexpensive.  He's hit really well this year between a brief stint with the Cardinals and Triple A.  The prices on his cards have been creeping up this year, but I am still trying to slowly add some of his cards.

This is from last year's Bowman set.  I know there are a lot of different refractors, colored parallels, etc in Bowman.  This card is a mega box refractor.  I am not sure why Topps/Bowman has gone to all the different types of cards with different patterns in the background.  Who knows.

Last card for this post, another Bowman.  This is from the 2016 Bowman Chrome set.  The Top 100 Prospects inserts have been a long running item in these sets for the last eight or nine years.  Not sure what the point of the Top 100 Updates set is exactly.  The back of the card has a little blurb about him, but nothing insightful or having to deal with his status as a good prospect.

Phamtastic

At the beginning of this year I had pledged to put together less sets in order to focus on current single cards of players and teams that I collect, or filling holes in sets from previous years.  There have been a few different sets put out so far this year, so here's how I have done....

I have a Topps Series 1 set put together mostly because one of the parents at the school I teach at bought me a bunch of packs.  It wasn't hard to put together, didn't really cost me much, and it did not take up a lot time.  I also got a good current year project off of this project......

with the 1983 Topps insert set.  I have a whole bunch of these cards and I am getting close to finishing off this set.  It's not been very expensive, but it has taken some time to track down the cards.  There are a lot of these 1983 rehashes that are being sold and traded in lots, they make for quite a few duplicates, but I am done to just a few cards.

The others.....

Donruss?  Absolutely not happening.  

Heritage?

 

Just a Jack Flaherty autograph.  Pretty nice card.

Which brings me to this week.  There are two different Topps products that have come out this week, with Gypsy Queen coming out at the beginning, and Tribute coming out today.  I have scoped out a few single cards from each of the products, but I am not touching the base cards from these two sets.  One of the first cards that I scoped out showed up in the mail earlier this afternoon.

I was happy that Topps got a Cardinals player outside of Luke Weaver, Matt Carpenter, and the other usual suspects to sign something....

that they put into packs of cards.

I have other Pham autographs, but he just has not been used in dozens of card products.  At least not yet.  The best part of getting a Pham autograph at this moment is that he's probably the best player on the Cardinals at the moment.....

Phamtastic.  

I might have another Cardinals card or two that I might track down from this set, and there are definitely a few Durham Bulls related cards on their way already.  

Things I Am Sorting...Part 2

I might have to do two of these posts this week.  During Spring Break I began the process of remodeling my baseball card room.  My card room has always been my little corner of the house complete with a television I bought in 2004 and refused to throwout and some old furniture.  Same as the television, not parting with any of it.  New furniture and television along with a little calmer paint job means that a lot of cards that were sitting out got put away.

Here's a look at the paint job.  The room was red, now two different colors of grey...

The cards that got put away were kind of put places.  Anywhere.  

Before the remodel I had set out a lot of doubles from different sets that I had sorted out onto a desk.  I not only put the cards away to avoid the risk of paint splatter and drips, but also because I got rid of the desk.  The cards on the desk were put into about a dozen 800 count boxes, four 3,200 count boxes, and the rest were stacked up in a closet.  The top view of the desk is on the right, closet on the left.  More on these cards later in the week.

There are plenty of cards to sort at the moment, so I am focusing my time and energy today working on sorting out my cards from Topps Series 2 and Pro Debut.  I opened a box of Series 2 awhile ago, I just haven't made a post about them.

There are all sorts of photo variations and the whatnot in there, so here are my hit cards....

This Pham autograph is obviously my favorite.  He had an autograph in Topps Update last year, but for some reason it is crazy expensive.  I understand that Cardinals collectors can be rather enthusiastic at times, but come guys...he's a fourth outfielder.  I like picture on the card and Pham has a nice signature.  Here are my other two cards.....

I am really burned out on the manufactured cards this year and probably plain pieces of relic too.  Yawn.  The base set is what you would expect out of a base Topps set, same with the parallels.  I have not pulled an acetate yet this year, haven't bought one either, think that's going to change soon though.  

Which brings me to my last thing I am sorting this week.  I ended up with a box of Topps Pro Debut about two weeks ago.  I am not going to recount the whole story about how the box came to be in my house, but I made a trade and ended up with the box.  It's not what I traded for.  Reminded me a little bit of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry gets a van and Kramer tries to trade for it, but instead of a van it was baseball cards.....

I actually really like the cards, not quite sure why I did not pull the trigger with my local card on buying a box of this product.  Minor League cards are way up my alley.  I could do a post with just the base cards, and will at some point, but for the moment I will share my hits out of the box.

First up, my two autographs.  

Justus Sheffield was a first round draft pick of the Indians in 2014 and is playing this year in the Carolina League with Lynchburg.  I have seen the Hillcats this year, but I missed out on seeing him pitch while they were in town.  Currently he is striking out about a batter per inning, has a 3 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio, and has an ERA just below 4.  Not bad.  Baseball America has him ranked as the fourth best prospect in the Indians system at the moment.  

Next up is Brewers outfield prospect Omar Garcia.  Well, I am not sure that this guy is much of a prospect actually.  Garcia is in his fourth year in the Brewers system, is unranked on every top prospect list out there, and has played just 11 games at Double A.  He's a speed guy, but the problem is that he does not always get on base.  Last year he stole 53 bases for Brevard County, but had a .318 OBP.  That's not going to hack it.  

Next.  The manufactured stuff.  

Franklin Barreto is a really good pull out of a prospect set.  He's one of the better prospects in the minors at the moment, most major publications place him in the Top 50 and at the top of the list for the A's.  He was originally a Blue Jays international signing, but was traded for Josh Donaldson.  There are different levels of the pennant cards, with this being the gold, and numbered to 50 copies.  

Two more.  

Umm.  I have seen this card before, but you can never have too many Wool E. Bull cards.  Last one, promise.  

I also landed a printing plate of Mariners pitcher Edwin Diaz.  There are always a few guys in the Pro Debut set who have cracked the Majors and Diaz is one of them.  He's appeared in 17 games this year for the Mariners and has some really good numbers like: 17.3 K/9, 2.89 FIP, and a 164 ERA+.  This card pictures Diaz on the Jackson Generals, Double A, where he started the season and skipped over Triple A.  He was a starter in the Minors, but still had good numbers with high strikeout totals.  

An Online Set? Why not.

The baseball season starts and I always have to check out the rosters for my teams to find a few projects for the season.  New players, new cards.  Old players, new cards.  All sorts of combinations of those words.  So, this post started sometime last fall when the Cardinals brought up outfielder Tommy Pham.  He's been in their system forever, just never stayed healthy.

He had a good end of the season and had a nice Postseason moment when he hit a home run against the Cubs in Game 1 of the NLDS.

and all of the Cardinals collectors lost their minds over Tommy Pham cards.  He has an autograph in the 2015 Topps set, but they are fairly expensive.  I decided to wait for the excitement over Tommy Pham to die down a little.  I went on Ebay, put a few of his cards on my watch list, and kind of ignored them for awhile.  

Prices came down a little bit on a few of his cards and I found a really cool looking Topps card of Pham that I thought looked really cool.  There was a Buy It Now and also one or two floating around in auctions.  

Pretty nice card.  I didn't know much about this card when I first started watching it, so I did a little digging and found that there was also a Stephen Piscotty card in this set.  Then I found out there were only 13 cards in the whole set.  Then I found a set for $10.  I bought them all.  They are all numbered out of 99 and are print run 99.  Pretty cool.  I guess Topps sold these sets in their online store.  Kind of cutting out the card shops there big guy....

The cards are also oversized at 5x7.  Not only are they postcard sized, but they also appear to be made out of the same material as the common postcard.  Perhaps an Office Max Brand index card.  The cards are really thin and the George Springer card has a little ding on the bottom right corner.  Here's a look at the other 12 cards......