#MyCardMonday

Way back in the day I started to rearrange my cards.  Yes, that's still happening.  I am dragging along slowly, but surely.  One day I will finish and do some sort of sort of celebratory post displaying the awesomeness of my reorganized collection.  Here are three years of the collection neatly stacked in a closet, just 29 more to go.....

This weekend I spent time working on picking up a few Topps Tek cards from last week's release and I also organized my 2005 cards.  There are a lot of 2005 cards in my collection, definitely some cool rookie cards that year, but there are a ton of sticker autographs.  I am not sure if was the height of sticker autographs, but certainly has to be in the running.  Anyway, after flipping through my 2005 boxes and pulling out all of my autographs I decided to pick out one of the cards I ran across for my weekly #MyCardMonday post.

Topps has always done a really good job of putting cool players, and others, into their Archives/Fan Favorite products.  Plus in 2005 it was one of the few products that was loaded with on card autographs.  As a Cardinals fan this was one of my favorite cards from that year.  I did not pull it from a pack, but I managed to snag a copy at a local card shop in St. Louis.  So, who is Walt Jocketty?

He is currently the Reds GM, but ran the Cardinals from 1994 through the end of the 2007 season.  Along the way he traded for some pretty fair players: Mark McGwire, Jim Edmonds, Scott Rolen, Edgar Renteria, and Mark Mulder.  Don't forget he also signed Chris Carpenter off the Blue Jays trash heap.  Pretty important GM for the Cardinals who helped them win the 2006 World Series.

This card is short printed, there are only 90 of them, but you can still find them floating around different places.  The card has a really dark background, with the green dugout and Jocketty wearing a blue sport coat, so he signed all of the cards on the bottom.  Not the best look for an autograph placement, but this card is still one of my favorites.

One Tough Dominican

Growing up in St. Louis during the 1980s meant that I had the opportunity to watch some great baseball teams that were based on speed, defense, and pitching during the decade long run of manager Whitey Herzog.  One of the most colorful figures on those teams was right-handed pitcher Joaquin Andujar.  The Cardinals picked up the front line pitcher from the Astros in exchange for outfielder Tony Scott.  Andujar was not much of a pitcher for the Astros, but helped the Cardinals win the 1982 World Series and the 1985 National League Pennant.  He won both of the games he started in the 1982 World Series against the Brewers including the Game 7 clincher.  He was not as effective against the Royals in the 1985 World Series and famously blew a gasket during the 7th Game of that series.  

Andujar won 20 games twice for the Cardinals, in 1984 and 1985, but was traded to the A's for Tim Conroy and Mike Heath.  Neither player really panned out for the Cardinals, but Andujar only lasted three more years pitching two seasons for the A's and his finale with the Astros in 1988.  He was out of baseball by age 35.  

Sadly today while I was eating lunch at work I opened my phone to check the news and saw the tweet from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  

I probably do not do enough for my collection of 1980s Cardinals, they were not too many stars on those teams outside of Ozzie Smith, but I have always loved the Andujar autographed card I scanned at the top of the post.  It's not the easiest autograph to find, but it's hard to say you have a collection of Cardinals player cards from the 1980s without a few good Andujars.  It's hard to see a favorite from my childhood gone.  He was "One Tough Dominican" RIP

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets From 2003

You know the routine: My favorite five sets from 2003.  I spent a lot of time flipping through my boxes of 2003 cards.  There was Topps, Playoff, Upper Deck, and Fleer.  I am not sure the total number of products released in 2003, but I have more than 20 different sets in my collection from that year.  Scary number to sort through and some of them are really not very good.  Here's a look at this week's list:

5.  EX- You guys know that I love these sets and sadly this was the end of the line for this product.  It was a great run while it lasted, but for whatever reason Fleer pulled the plug on this product after 2003.  I like that they went back to a card design that was a little reminiscent of the 1998/1999 products.  There are autographs and relics in this product, but I am not a huge fan of those.  Just the base cards.  I assembled this set in 2003 and took on assembling another copy of the set after I found a couple cheap boxes of this product floating around Ebay a few years ago.  Fun set to put together and there are still wax boxes out there.  

4. Donruss Signature-This was the typical huge autograph product.  One autograph per pack with plenty of cool names.  There were some base cards in each box too, but the autographs were the main focus here.  I opened one box, pulled an Andre Dawson autograph, and then went straight on to picking off single cards on Ebay.  The SRP on these was $50, and while I love Andre Dawson, he's not a $50 autograph.  Not many players are.  Like many of the other mega-autograph sets there are a lot of good players to pick up from this set on the cheap.  There are also a few negatives in there too: sticker autographs, fading sticker autographs, and chippy edges (see Eck).

3. Topps Gallery HOF- There were two Gallery products released in 2003: Topps Gallery and Gallery HOF.  Topps Gallery has modern players in it, HOF has Hall of Famers.  The latter has some great looking art work in the set and features, not only a lot of Hall of Famers you say regularly in Topps products, but also some less common names too.  Most Hall of Famers deserve a little cardboard love from time to time.  As a Cardinals fan I can find names like Musial and Gibson on cards in the set, but can also find guys like Dizzy Dean and Frankie Frisch.  Some cool autographs add to the set and the first coin cards also appear in this product.  If you like the Gyspy Queen/Allen & Ginter type of products, and did not collect in 2003, this should be a set you go back and check out.  

2. All-Time Fan Favorites- This was essentially the Archives products from the early 2000s, but a little more chaotic.  The early Archives products featured players first and last year's cards, but this set just featured a bunch of random designs.  Two things I love about this set: Lots of different card designs and autographs.  Great autographs.  Just like the modern version of Archives, Fan Favorites featured actual team favorites.  Sure Topps could have thrown a Stan Musial autograph into the set and Cardinals fans would have gone crazy and bought all of them up, but Willie McGee was there instead.  He's not a Hall of Famer (hate to crush you if you believe that-yes there are people that do), but there is no denying he is really popular around St. Louis.  Right?  

 1. Topps Heritage- I swear I won't make Topps Heritage first every week, but this remake of the 1954 Topps set is awesome and incredible.  Both.  There are a lot of different variations here with colors and logos on the card, but the base set is just a really well done remake of the original.  The boxes are still around, but quite pricey.  Base sets, with no short prints, are not bad prices and often can be found for less than $50.  Lots of short prints lots are floating around too.  You cannot go wrong with the early Topps Heritage sets.  

Three Cardinals Relics

A really quick post for Sunday morning.  I have lots of things to do today to make sure that my final day of the Thanksgiving holiday counts.  There are leaves to mulch, papers to grade, lesson plans to write, and I owe the little guy some time kicking around the soccer ball.  I picked up three Cardinals cards last week on one of the Facebook auction pages.  Really good stuff if you have never ventured into one of the groups.  I was originally targeting a Willie McGee Bat Relic.........

which I won, but once you win one, you might as well stick around for the combined shipping on a few others.  I ended up adding a nice Lou Brock relic from the 2013 Topps Tribute and a Bob Gibson from the 2004 Tribute set.  I believe I already owned a copy of the Gibby jersey, but it will make for some nice trade bait somewhere along the way.