2013 Topps World Series Champions Buster Posey Patch/Autograph

Topps began issuing a set of relic and autographed cards from the previous seasons World Series Champion starting with their 2006 set which featured the White Sox.  The cards are usually pretty popular and usually get swallowed up pretty quickly.  I first took interest in the cards when I pulled a Frank Thomas jersey card out of a pack of 2006 Topps.

2006 Topps World Series Champions Frank Thomas Jersey

I thought the cards were a pretty cool idea, so I have made finding one card from the World Series champions card set a priority for my collection.  Some years I will settle for any card from the set if I am indifferent about the team, but other years I try to pick up a certain player.  For example, I was really excited to put together a few cards from the 2007 set with the Cardinals.  I could have easily gone after a Pujols card, or one of the other name Cardinals players, but instead went after a card of Jeff Weaver.  

2007 Topps Word Series Champions Jeff Weaver Jersey

Weaver pitched a great clincher game for the Cardinals in the 2006 World Series and had several other great pitching performances in the earlier rounds of the playoffs.  I figured if I was ever going to hunt down a Jeff Weaver card, this was the one to find.  While I wouldn't say no to a Pujols card from this set, they generally trade or sell for over $100.  Yawn.  Which brings me to this years World Series Champions addition:

2012 Topps World Series Champions Buster Posey Autograph/Patch

I am not a huge fan of the design of these cards, especially the blue plaid stuff up at the top of the card.   However, I love the patch piece with the gold, orange, and black piece.  Great piece of patch and Topps has sprinkled many great ones throughout the set with many of the Giants players including Posey.  Now, I've been on a bit of a Posey kick lately and figured that this would be a sufficient addition to cover having a card from this set for this year.  

The Snorting Bull's Guide To Chris Carpenter Autographs

Although Chris Carpenter is not officially announcing his retirement, I am going to consider last week's bad news about his reoccuring nerve damage in his throwing arm the end of his career.  I would love to come back here in this space next year and be completely wrong and spend a post eating my words.  I am just not counting on it.  Carpenter has been the greatest Cardinals pitcher during my lifetime and has been among the better Cardinals pitchers not named Bob Gibson.

My three favorite Carpenter games were the 4th game of the 2006 World Series, the fifth game of the Division Series versus the Phillies in 2011, and the 7th game of the 2011 World Series.  All really good games were Carp pitched at a high level on the biggest stage in the game.

The recent news also promoted me to take a little bit of time to shuffle back through my Chris Carpenter cards I've been able to pick up since he joined the Cardinals in 2003.  He's a pretty tough find for autographs, but I have been fortunate enough to add a few of his cards to my collection over the past decade.

First, a word of warning.  There are actually three different Chris Carpenter's that have autographed baseball cards.  There is Cris Carpenter who pitched for the Cardinals, Rangers, and Brewers during the late eighties through the mid 90s.  Cris Carpenter, spelled Chris Carpenter on the card, has an autograph in the 1996 Leaf Signature Set.  There is also Chris Carpenter who pitched for the Cubs and Red Sox the last two years.  He has lots of generic Chris Carpenter autographs for Razor products.  Then there is the real Chris Carpenter:

1999 Skybox Autographics Chris Carpenter Autograph 

Carpenter played during some of the large autograph sets of the 90s and early 2000s, but his only autograph during that time was this 1999 Skybox card.  The autograph is on-card which is extremely rare for Carpenter.  The overwhelming majority of his cards are sticker autographs.  This card is not too difficult to find and will set you back somewhere between $20-$30 depending on where you look.  

2007 UD Elements Chris Carpenter Jersey/Autograph

The UD Elements autographs are probably the next easiest Carpenter autograph to find depending on the variation of card.  I believe that there are two or three versions of this card with different foil colors and serial numbers.  It's a nice card that I have always enjoyed and again, not too difficult to find.  The price tag is going to be similar to the Skybox card, but the higher print run of 350, can sometimes drop below $20 on Ebay and Check Out My Cards.  

2007 MLB Artifacts Divisional Artifacts Chris Carpenter Jersey/Autograph

The remainder of Carpenter's autographs are very similar.  All of them are Upper Deck products, most are from the mid 2000s, and most of them have a low print of 25 or less.  There are several that I do not own, but they do not vary much from the last three that I am going to display.  Starting with the card pictured above from the 2007 Artifacts set.  

2007 UD Ultimate Collection Chris Carpenter Jersey/Autograph

He actually have several cards where he appears with another player, Roy Oswalt is a pretty common one, but I prefer single sighed cards for the most part.  Many of the single signed Carpenter cards also are attached to a jersey relic and in most cases you can find the card signed and unsigned.  

2009 Upper Deck Piece of History Chris Carpenter Jersey/Autograph

The Upper Deck autographs can be tough to track down especially if you are looking for one specific autograph.  If you are looking to add an autograph of a great pitcher and display a little bit of patience you can find any of the Upper Deck issues for around $30.  Sometimes the ones on Ebay end up in bidding fights and drift towards $50 or higher.  Personally, I am hoping that Carpenter will sign something on card in the future, but if not I have a nice collection going.  

2002 Donruss Studio So Taguchi Jersey Card

I am taking a break from my 2013 Topps cards for a few singles I picked up this past week.  I spotted a sweet So Taguchi jersey card and decided to try and work out a trade for it and ended up walking away with a few extras.

2002 Donruss Studio So Taguchi Jersey

So Taguchi was a Japanese outfielder who came over to the Cardinals before the 2002 season.  Many Cardinals fans were excited about the signing, but Taguchi spent a lot of time in AAA when he first arrived.  Eventually Taguchi made it up to St. Louis and was an extra outfielder for a few seasons including the 2006 World Series team.  In fact, Taguchi hit an important home run off of Mets relief pitcher Billy Wagner to win a game.  After securing the Taguchi card, I also ended up with three other autographed cards.  

2011 Bowman Chrome Alex Colome Autograph 

All three autographs were nice additions to my Taguchi jersey card, but this Colome card was probably my favorite of the extra three cards.  Colome pitched last season in Durham and I had been trying to pick up a copy of this card.  I just had not quite accomplished anything in terms of landing one.  Not sure that Colome will be in Tampa this year, but he is a hard thrower and I think he can be an effective relief pitcher in the future.  

2012 Bowman Jedd Gyorko Autograph 

I also picked up this Jedd Gyorko autograph which also filled a nice hole in my collection.  Gyorko played college ball at West Virginia and quickly made his way up through the minors.  He believe that he was a third baseman and has converted to second base, but he has a great bat and should hit in the majors.  Apparently even in Petco he will be a top offensive second baseman soon.  Again, this is another card I had been looking to add to my collection, but just had not had the chance or opportunity.  

2012 Topps Chrome Tom Milone Autograph

Last card in this trade is for a Tom Milone autograph.  He actually started his career with the Nationals and was traded to the A's for Gio Gonzalez before last season.  Seems like a solid starter and a solid cardboard investment.  Happy to add it to my collection.

2013 Snorting Bull Baseball Card Contest

One of the coolest things about having a baseball card blog is holding contests.  I have toyed with different contests during the past year and have decided to settle on holding a single contest every year centered around the launch date of my blog of March 8th.  This year's addition will be starting this afternoon and running through March 8th.  I have enjoyed my time blogging and do not plan on stop anytime soon, so this will be an annual event.  The rules and actual contest are going to be fairly simple.  I have learned that simple is better.  So, here goes:

1st Annual Snorting Bull Baseball Card Blog Contest

On March 8th I will be giving away one copy of a 2013 Stan Musial Commemorative MVP Trophy card to one lucky contest winner.  To enter the contest, you must simply follow the Snorting Bull blog,  like or friend my Facebook page, or follow our Twitter account.  You may enter up to four times if you follow my blog in all four places.  There are no trivia questions or crazy partial pictures of baseball cards to track down.  Pretty simple stuff.  On March 8th, I will randomly draw one follower from one of the sites to win the fantastic baseball card below.  

2013 Topps Commemorative MVP Award Albert Pujols

I am still working on putting together some more cards from the first series of 2013 Topps.  I know some people are probably ready to move on to other things, but this has really been the best base set that Topps has put out in several years.  I've completed my base set and several of the non-autographed, non-manufactured item insert sets.  I have now started to turn my attention towards finding a few of the nice manufactured items along with a few autographs or nice relic pieces.  The selection of Cardinals and Rays relics and autographs in the first series is limited, so a lot of my attention has been focused on the manufactured items which are very nice this year.  Yesterday, I added a nice Matt Kemp Silver Slugger award, but today I have a Cardinals card to share.  The Commemorative MVP award cards are a manufactured item with the MVP award being made out of a thin piece of metal.  The cards are about the thickness of a half-dollar.

2013 Topps Commemorative MVP Award Albert Pujols

I was happy to see that Topps threw in a card of Albert Pujols in a Cardinals uniform and picked this card last week.  It showed up in my mailbox yesterday and was excited to add it to my collection.  Upon taking the card out of its packaging I noticed one peculiarity on the card.  The picture on the card features Pujols wearing a Cardinals uniform, but the faux MVP trophy shows him as the American League MVP directly above his name in the center of the plaque.  However, Pujols has never won an MVP award as an American League Player.  

Flipping the card over on the back, the card seems to recognize the accomplishments of Pujols during the 2005 season, which was his first of three MVP awards.  However, Pujols won the award in the National League playing for the Cardinals.  I took a quick glance around Ebay and Check Out My Cards and found that all of the Pujols MVP award card feature this glitch.

2012 Topps Heritage Minor League Kolten Wong Jersey

I traded for the Pujols card and was able to pick up a second card in the trade.  This Kolten Wong card hails from the 2012 Topps Heritage Minor League set.  Wong seems destined to be the Cardinals second baseman of the future, so I have been trying to add cards here and there of the former University of Hawaii star.  The jersey piece on this card is pretty cool too.  It's clearly a piece of powder blue jersey, which none of the Cardinals minor league teams wear.  However, Wong appeared in the 2012 All-Star Futures Game in Kansas City and the players in the game wore powder blue jerseys.  Another nice addition.  

2013 Topps Silver Slugger Matt Kemp

2013 Topps Silver Slugger Matt Kemp

I am still working on my 2013 Topps set.  I've finished the base set and most of the inserts, which has lead me to chase down a few cool manupatch type cards to finish off my Series 1 cards.  I added a sweet Holliday patch card a day or two ago, but I think my card today beats out the Matt Holliday.  This Matt Kemp card is from the Silver Slugger manupatch set, but it's not really a manupatch.  The bat on the right side of the card is a small silver bat and the black piece beneath it is also metallic.  I am not sure about what type of card stock Topps used for this card, but it is probably the thickest baseball card I have ever seen.  

While the actually manupatches featured in the first series of the 2013 Topps set are slightly disappointing, some of the other manufactured cards are spectacular.  I have a few more to share early next week.  This is a really creative set concept and product from Topps.  While I have never assembled an entire manufactured card set I am tempted to work on putting this one together over the year.  Most of the cards in the set are around $10 with the exception of the Ken Griffey Jr. card.  I would imagine that Topps will also put out a second round of these in June with the release of the 2nd Series.  Hoping there might be a Cardinal.  

1998 Topps Tek Update: Yankees Cards

I had originally set my goal for finishing my Topps Tek set at two months.  However, I am on second Topps Tek update of the week and am quickly closing in on finishing up this set.  The best part is that I can also say that I finished up a trade for several of the other cards on my checklist this afternoon.  Maybe by the end of this month should be my more realistic goal.  I am hopeful.  There is one card that seems to be in short supply on checklist.

Earlier in the week I found a Yankees collector who was willing to part with their extras to help me out with my Topps Tek set.  While I already had the Orlando Hernandez added earlier in the week, I still took the card and am hoping to use it as trade bait for something still left on my checklist.  The other four cards I picked up were Bernie Williams, Chuck Konoblauch, Tino Martinez, and Paul O'Neill.  With the four new cards crossed off my updated list I am down to 26 cards.  

Updated list:

2 Kerry Wood, 3 Barry Bonds, 6 Frank Thomas, 16 Brady Anderson, 17 Vladimir Guerrero, 18 Dave Justice, 19 Chipper Jones, 21 Roger Clemens, 22 Mark Kotsay, 23 Tony Gwynn, 26 Andruw Jones, 29 Gary Sheffield, 32 Curt Schilling, 33 Robin Ventura, 34 Larry Walker, 42 Derek Bell, 45 Kenny Lofton, 51 Cal Ripken, 52 Jason Kendall, 60 Juan Gonzalez, 62 Jose Cruz, 64 Edgar Martinez, 76 Derrek Lee, 79 Jeff King, 80 Mike Mussina,  86 Mike Piazza