2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 16 & 17

Every. other. post. 

What was in my mailbox today?  What will be in my mailbox tomorrow?  You already know the answer.  It's a Blake Snell autograph.  I am making a strong push to get to 25, there are not many I am missing at this point.  They are generally low numbered cards that I am going to have to get for the right price, and probably can never manage to get them all.

On to the cards. 

There are two because they are from the same ridiculous set, but they are two different cards.  I liked these cards when they first came out a few years back.  Now, they are starting to get a little annoying.  These are both from the Topps Archives Signature Series. 

The top card is a buyback of a 2015 Bowman card that Snell signed 99 copies of, while the bottom card is a 2018 Topps card (Aqua Fresh Design) that is also numbered out of 99.  I do not mind buybacks, but it seems ridiculous to do a buyback of a card that is one year old.  Silly.  

The good news is that I have added two more Snell autographs, they were fairly inexpensive, and I am now going to go do some work for my day job.  

One Simple 1990s Card

For the past year and a half Monday has been my day to pick out some cards of a Cardinals player from the 1990s.  I am going to skip my 1990s Cardinals post about a player this week.  I am not a person who keeps a schedule, so much as I keep a routine.  Certain things happen on certain days, and everything works out fine.  At the moment, my routine has been skewed.

Next week I will bounce back. 

For this week, I am just going to show off a really nice 1990s Cardinals that found its way into my mailbox this past weekend.  One of my favorite Cardinals players from that era.....

I know, the scan is not great. 

This is from the 2018 Topps Archives Signature Series, which is a set of cards that Topps recollected and then had players sign them.  This is from the Postseason edition.  I have been looking for a Brian Jordan card out of this set for awhile, but I was looking for the right card. A card from either 1996 or 1997 was preferred over the other options. 

Jordan only appeared in the Postseason with the Cardinals during the 1996 season, hence the reason why I was looking for cards from those two seasons.  I ended up with a 1997 Topps, which has a picture of Jordan from 1996.  Kudos to Topps for remembering his Postseason performance that year, or is he in here because of his years with the Braves? 

Let's pretend someone knew what they were doing. 

During that Postseason, Jordan hit a series clinching home run against the Padres in the National League Division Series off of Trevor Hoffman. 

Later in the Postseason hit a game winning home run against the Braves in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series.....

The Cardinals were up 3-1 in the NLCS after that game, but then lost three straight games to Tom Glavine, Greg Maddux, and John Smoltz.  

Back of the card.  

Again, a little fuzzy on the scan.  I am tired.  Hope your Monday has been good. 

A Prospect and A Hall Of Famer

I recently had a chance to pick up a really nice looking card of Cardinals pitching prospect Alex Reyes.  Two years ago he was one of the better pitching prospects in the game, but had an elbow injury and missed last season.  Reyes is going to miss the first month or two of the 2018 season, but he should be back at some point late in May, or early in June.  

Alex Reyes is one of those prospects that has tons and tons of baseball cards.  There were a lot of cards made of him last year, this year has been a little slower.  Card companies have moved on to other prospects, but their are still some nice cards of Reyes floating around.  I recently was able to pick up a really sharp looking Reyes card from a regular trading partner.  

A look at the card......

  

Five Star is a really high end product with some really nice features, but luckily the prospect cards in the set are really affordable.  This card from the 2017 edition has an excellent design.  I like the dark grey in the background combined with the bright color picture of Reyes, and the signature in silver pen.  I know that this card does not have the lowest serial number of the colored cards that are in Five Star, but in my opinion this is probably the best looking looking of those parallels.  

Nothing like an orange Cardinals card.  

Reyes was a tremendous talent before he injured his elbow.  Hopefully he can bounce back and regain his form from the end of the 2016 season when the Cardinals used him down the stretch.  

I also managed to pick up another Cardinals card while I was trading for the Reyes card.  Not quite who you would think of when I say Hall of Famer and Cardinal in the same sentence.  It was still an attractive, nice looking card, and it was a really affordable card.  

This is from the Postseason version of the Topps Archives Signature product.  I am not quite sure why Topps made a regular season and a Postseason version of this product last year.  Although, if you were going to pick a good moment in Dennis Eckersley's brief career as a Cardinal, the 1996 Postseason is a good place to look.  

Eck pitched in a total of 6 games that year in the NLDS and NLCS for a Cardinals team that came within a game of the World Series.  He totaled 7 innings in those 6 games, did not give up a run, and struck out 6 batters.  Easily his best moment, since the back of the baseball card stats for the regular season with the Cardinals were not up to the standards he set while he was pitching with the A's and others.  

Considering these cards come one to a box, which cost somewhere between $40 and $50, I was more than happy to find a Cardinals card from the set for a fraction of the cost.  The scratches on the scan are all on the case and the card is serial numbered, but the numbering is in a weird spot next to Eck's cleat on the right side of the card.  

Bargain Archives

I have been slowly working on assembling a few Topps Archives Cardinals autographs from this past season.  I posted a copy of my Andres Galarraga Archives card a few weeks back featuring the Big Cat with the Birds on the Bat.  As I pointed out at the time, the Cardinals players that were included in this year's Topps one per autograph box (one card per box too) were really known for playing elsewhere.

Maybe you do remember some of these players as Cardinals, so I can at least safely say that their best days were spent elsewhere.  Probably a safer statement.  My latest Cardinals Archives autograph fits that description well.  Here is the card.....

Sorry the scan is a little fuzzy.  My scanner seems to not like these cases.....

Mulder is best remembered for his time with the Oakland A's, but was traded to the Cardinals before the 2005 season.  He helped the team reach the playoffs that year before falling to the Astros in the National League Championship Series.  He started out as the ace of the Cardinals rotation in 2006 even hit the first home run at the current Busch Stadium....

At some point Mulder's shoulder pretty much fell off and he was not really ever heard from again.  He did get a ring for being on the Cardinals roster that year.  The pitching challenged team also ended up adding spare part Jeff Weaver from the Angels to deal with injuries to players like Mulder.  

Not that I am ever happy to see a player get injured, but that whole Jeff Weaver rental worked out pretty well as I recall....

Needless to say the Mulder Cardinals year's were not his best, but he was still apart of a World Series winner, so it's nice to add a copy of a Cardinals autograph to the collection.  As an added bonus, the person selling this card had a few other Archives autographs on the cheap.  

Here are my other three cards.....

Damon on the Rays is kind of cool.  As a Durham Bulls guy I kind of have become a pretty big Rays fan.  Similar to Mulder, Johnny's best days were spent elsewhere, but it's not like he was terrible during his time in Tampa.  I am pretty sure that his Rays cards in Archives are his only certified autographs in that uniform.  Cheap card, can't pass it up.  

The next two are cool 80s players....

I remember Baines as a White Sox, A's player, and with the Rangers.  He and Willie McGee, briefly, were also my favorite players on the 1990s A's teams.  Truth be told, at the time, I was not really a huge fan of McGwire and Canseco.  Especially Canseco.  Annoyed the hell out of me in Middle School.  Baines was cool though.  

Tony was in the humongous Fred McGriff, Roberto Alomar, Joe Carter trade, plus he was on the Blue Jays when I was a kid.  The Blue Jays were always a cool team in my book.  I liked the unis and a bunch of the players on that team.  Tony kind of bounced around for awhile, again always liked him.  I am pretty sure he has some other autographs out there besides this one.  This card was just kind of there....

2015 Snorting Bull Awards: Worst Baseball Card

Some days the Gods of Quality Control frown on the card markers.  Other times certain card companies make alarmingly terrible decisions.  I never really have to think too hard on this one.  Two years ago Topps put two players on a baseball cards in their Topps Update product that did not make it to the All-Star game.  Bard was in Triple A by the end of April and Wigginton was released at the beginning of July.  

Last year we had the Ron Gant Cardinals autograph and the Wade Boggs softball jersey from the All-Star game.  Softball jersey is a pretty self explanatory terrible card especially in a high end product like Dynasty.  Making a Ron Gant autograph in a Cardinals uniform, for those not familiar with their history together, would be akin to making a Jonathan Papelbon card in a Nationals jersey.  Maybe not quite that bad, but not far away.  

The winner this year?  I knew it the second I saw the card....

This card is just too terrible not to win.  This Craig Biggio 1/1 autograph comes out of the Topps Archives Signature product.  It's a per pack autograph of a Topps buyback card.  Some of the cards are really cool, most have a low serial number, and there are plenty of 1/1s.  I pulled one last weekend.  The set is actually a pretty cool concept.  Old Topps brand cards, not just Topps base set cards, signed and serial numbered.  Why on Earth is there a Donruss card in this product?

I guess there could have been a shortage of Biggio cards in the nickel bin at the card shows Topps bought back their cards.  It's possible it just got mixed into a stack somewhere along the line, or Craig Biggio thought it would be awesome to see if Topps was actually paying attention.  Whatever, it's just bad quality control.  Not cool Topps.