3 Years!!!

Three years ago today I started my blog The Snorting Bull by posting a cool Topps Triple Threads card of one-time (for a short time) Cardinals relief pitcher Brian Fuentes.  He was not actually a Cardinal at this point, but I liked the fact that the card had patch pieces from the 2009 All-Star game in St. Louis.  I still have the card in my collection and proudly have the card in my stack of untouchables.  It's sentimental value is pretty high in spite of the fact that the card is a Brian Fuentes card.

Since starting my blog three years ago I have met so many cool people who share my love of card collecting and have taught my a lot about this hobby.   My 994 posts, this is 995, have given me a chance to share in the excitement of adding new cards to my collection, and also share the cards that were here long before I considered sitting down for a few minutes each night to type up something about a cool card or a cool player.  

I cannot thank my readers enough for taking time out of your day to stop by my little corner of the internet and check out what I have to say about baseball cards.  Writing about my hobby has been so much fun, and page hits are not my end all, but somedays I am just simply shocked at how many people stop by this page.  It has grown exponentially over the past three years.   I enjoy reading the comments, emails, DMs, PMs, Tweets, Facebook and Instagram comments, and finding fellow collectors who love collecting cards or just like talking about sports or life in general.  

Thank you again!

2015 Topps Heritage Part 2

I am on to the base set for the second half of my Topps Heritage post.  The 425 non-short-printed base cards are usually not too hard to find, but those 75 short prints and different variations always seem to take most of the summer to put together.  However, I am going to need a little bit of work to put together the 425 base cards.  I have not quite finished putting sorting the cards I pulled out of my two boxes and retail packs, but I am guessing I am going to need more than 50 base cards and 50 short prints.  

In going through the stacks of base cards and sorting them into a set I have narrowed my favorite cards down to three based on my baseball rooting and viewing interests....

First card that I love in the base set is Jason Heyward.  I know this is somehow airbrushed, but I am hoping this is a great year for Heyward and the Cardinals.  Pujols is gone, Holliday and Wainwright are getting older, it's time for a new star to take over for the Cardinals.  I have started to dabble in Heyward cards, but have not gone all in quite yet.  Still slightly nervous that he won't live up to expectations or he won't sign with the team at the end of the year.  Anyway, this is the first Heyward card in a Cardinals uniform that I have added to my collection and I am hoping there are many more to come.  Great card and easy favorite out of the Cardinals cards.  

Second card favorite card goes to former Duke Blue Devil Marcus Stroman.  I enjoyed watching The Stro Show during his time in Durham and also at USA Baseball.  I have followed him through the Minors and into the Majors last season.  This will be Stroman's first full season in Toronto and he should have a good year for a good Blue Jays team.  If you are on Twitter be sure to give Stroman a follow.  He is easily one of my favorite players to follow and you will appreciate how hard he works at his craft.  

Last card goes for a former Durham Bulls player B.J. Upton.  I am guessing we are probably down to our last card of the Braves outfielder with B.J. on the card instead of Melvin.  Upton was the star player of the Durham Bulls when I first moved to North Carolina a decade ago.  The first opening day I went to at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park was ended on an Upton walk off Grand Slam.  B.J. has had a rough couple of years with the Braves, and while I am guessing a turn around will likely not happen for B.J., but I hope he at least puts up respectable numbers.  

2015 Topps Heritage Part 1

I am going to break down my Topps Heritage boxes into two posts this weekend.  Even though my favorite local card shop closed recently, the shop owner Jimmy, is still helping all of us card collectors in central North Carolina with our wax.  I picked up two boxes of the popular annual Topps product which, this year, is based on the 1966 Topps set.  Here's a quick look at a base card......

More on the base set tomorrow morning.  I was happy that Topps returned to coding the backs of the Heritage set cards to help collectors pick out the different variations.  The bottom of the base cards feature the numbers 253 as the last three digits of the code.

I am going to focus on the variations and inserts that I landed in boxes in this post.  I pulled some nice cards and was happy with my boxes.  I would have loved to have landed an autograph, but the short prints and variations were really nice in my box.  Let's start out with the inserts, since they have been basically the same since the start of the Heritage product in 2001.  

The basic inserts in the Topps Heritage year in and year out are the Now & Then set, which features league leaders from the past year and design year, Flashbacks, which feature both sports and non-sports events from the design year, and the New Age Performers set, which features younger star players.  There are also Chrome cards this year.....

and there are also several different box toppers.  I pulled an original 1966 Topps card and one of these  mini card sheets....

My two relic pulls weren't bad.  I would have loved to have pulled an autograph, but two nice players here with the Wright having a centered pinstripe.  The Mauer also has a pinstripe, but it is way over on the very edge of the window on the card.  Now, my favorite parts, the short prints and variations.  

The high numbered cards, above 425, are short printed and seeded at about 1 in 3 packs.  There are a total of 75 short prints and I ended up with 19 different short prints in all.  The basic short prints have the 258 code at the end....

I pulled two variations on the short prints.  I pulled two of the action variations.  A Tanaka and a Puig....

and the code on the back of the action short prints....

Finally the best card of my box at the odds in 1 in 140 packs is this great looking Mike Trout Banner Swap short print.....

Nineties Night

I spent a little bit of time working on my 1998 Stadium Club set last weekend.  After much sorting I found a full base set and a bunch of doubles and some really good inserts.  I am probably far enough away on most of the insert sets that putting together a master set of inserts would be a difficult task, but I was really close on one of the cool inserts in the Stadium Club product.  

I am not sure that my scan does this card justice, but this card comes from the 15 card Royal Court insert set......

These cards had a nice silver foil finish and were seeded at 1:36 packs, or one per box and a half.  Somehow I ended up with 11 of the cards in my collection.  I am not sure if I had worked on putting together this set at some point, but they were there in the box.  That means I needed four cards, all of which were pretty decent cards.  

A little bit of shopping on COMC netted me the last four cards........

I am happy to close out a nice looking insert set from the nineties with these four cards.  I am not a huge COMC shopper, but I must say, if you are looking for a few cards to fill holes in sets it is a great site.  I ended up paying slightly more than $10 for the four cards and got flat rate shipping on the items.  I picked up one more card with this order, but I will save that one for another day....

More Topps High Tek

Not a lot of time for chatter today, but I wanted to show off the latest additions to the collection.  All of these cards are from the 2014 relaunch of the Topps Tek product and came into my collection via a trade for a few extra Rays autographs I had hanging around my desk.  I was originally going to cash in a single Alex Cobb autograph for a few base cards, but ended up being able to swap out an extra Steven Souza autograph for a cool 1990s autograph out of the Tek set.

Here's a look at the new base cards from the Tek set I added:

I still have some more Cardinals cards from the base set I need to add, and since I picked up the Pujols, maybe I should just go ahead and try to put together the whole entire set.   It would be a fun set to put together.  I also picked up one autograph from the set as well, which was not originally on my list of cards to add, but I really liked the looks of the card.....

I actually have another Edgar Martinez autograph in my collection, but it is not nearly as nice of a card as this on-card Topps Tek signature.  I know that he has signed for several different Topps products over the past two or three years, but I have just not added one of his cards to my collection.  I liked Edgar Martinez as a player, he was a great nineties players, so I will put this card in my box of autographs and shuffle my Donruss Signature sticker autograph out in a trade for something else...

Hit Bull, Win Steak Part 2

The Padres made a ton of trades this off season, signed a free agent or two, and now have a completely different roster.  I am not a Padres fan, but took an interest in their dealings when they took interest in Rays outfielder, and former Durham Bull, Will Myers.  The Padres ended up completing a three team trade where the Rays landed Rene Rivera, Jake Bauers, Burch Smith, Travis Ott, and Steven Souza.  I like the five players the Rays received in the trade, and look forward to seeing them all most of them in Durham, but was a little bit disappointed that they did not get outfielder Hunter Renfroe.

I like Hunter Renfroe.  I actually thought he was going to be traded several times this off season, but it never happened.  In fact, I went out and started pricing out Hunter Renfroe cards and took to the next level of just buying one of them.  Renfroe is a good prospect and his cards are a bargain at this point.  I was really hoping to add this card into my collection of Durham Bulls/Tampa Rays autographs.  I am still going to hold onto this card and think it's a great addition to my collection.

If you are not familiar with Hunter Renfroe I will give you a quick run down.  Renfroe was the 13th overall draft pick in the 2013 amateur draft out of Mississippi State.  He was an All-American there where he showed the ability to hit for power and was a great defensive outfielder.  Renfroe has now played a year and a half of minor league baseball for the Padres and has posted a .268/.334/.467 with 27 home runs and 100 RBIs in just 172 games.  FanGraphs rates his power at a 65 on the 70/20 scale.  He should start out in Double A next year, but should advance up to Triple A at some point, and maybe even a spot in San Diego.  Although, most belief, with a crowded Major League outfield that the Majors might be difficult to crack for Renfroe this season.

and what about other Renfroe cards?  Most of his rookies and autographs are in the 2013 late season products like Bowman Chrome and Bowman Platinum.  He does have some 2014 cards too, again almost all Bowman products or Topps Heritage Minors, but they are not anything you have to rush out and pick up now.  The 2013 cards of Renfroe carry a slight premium, but I am not sure that many people are aware of the potential for Renfroe at the Major League level.

Many of his Bowman autographs are found for less than $5.  If I had to pick a sleeper, these cards are on my radar, I would try to pick up one of his Leaf autographs.  In particular I would look for:

1.  His 2013 Leaf Trinity Autographed Patch Cards.....

That's roughly $10 for a jumbo patch and autograph for someone who seems capable of hitting 30 home runs in the Majors.  Think about the players who pulled that off last year?  Would you pay $10 for a card like this of Jose Bautista?


2.  2013 Leaf Glass Cards....

These are sweet cards and it's basically the same price as the jumbo patch card above.  You cannot go wrong with either one of these cards and it's a small price to pay for the potential that Hunter Renfroe has shown in the minors during his brief year and a half stay.

#MyCardMonday

As a baseball fan I am excited that we are getting close to the start of the season.  We are just 34 days (from Monday) from the first game of the season between the Cardinals and the Cubs.  As a Cardinals fan it seems like there are a lot of questions circling the team this spring.  The Cardinals always seem to have all of the answers and inevitably end up playing important baseball games in October.  One of the more intriguing stories at Cardinals Spring Training this year is pitcher Jaime Garcia.  

When Garcia is right physically he is a really nice pitcher.....

The problem is that Garcia has not pitched a complete season since 2011.  Since then there have been shoulder surgeries and thoracic outlet operations with very little pitching.  Garcia is back with the Cardinals this spring trying to win a spot with the team.  I am guessing that he will end up pitching in the minors on some sort of rehab assignment at the beginning of the year, but at some point he could very well help the Cardinals out with some starts during the season.  

The early returns look good: 

I would be excited to see the good healthy version of Garcia return to the Cardinals starting rotation and recently had to breakout my Garcia cards.  The card above is probably my favorite Jaime card that I picked up a few years ago from former blogger DodgerBobble.  He is still on Instagram and runs a great page with tons of autographs.  Anyway, the card comes from the Museum product with a nice on card signature.  Love the contrast between the blue ink and white background.  I like the faded area around the bottom of the card which gives a nice spot for the signature.