The Minty Big Cat

This is seriously a card product that people buy?  5 cards for $1,250?

That's steep, so the cards have to be incredible right?  Absolutely.  I love how they look.  I also love the fact that I bought one of a really good player for $9.99.  Considering you have to average $250ish per card to break even I am not liking the odds of getting anywhere close to your money back if you buy a box of "The Mint"

Sounds kind of snooty.

Well, the cards are really really good looking at least.  This is my $9.99 autograph.

There is a little chipping on the bottom of the card, but for $9.99?  I am really happy with this card.  I know in yesterday's post I promised an autograph of Andres Galarraga in a Cardinals uniform which this is not, but I promise the next time I write the words Andres Galarraga and autograph in the same blog post it will be accompanied by a picture of an autographed card of him wearing a Cardinals uniform.

A Venerable Old Card Part 29

Last year I picked up a "pack" or box of Topps Archives Signature while I was at a card show in Raleigh.  I pulled an Andruw Jones autograph that just happened to be a 1/1.  Sounds pretty cool, but it was not a card of Braves Andruw Jones.  Nope, it was the worst version of Andruw Jones you could possibly imagine:

Dodgers Andruw Jones.  

I know a few Dodgers fan and I feel pretty safe in saying that Andruw Jones is a four letter word to most of them.  So, in spite all of the great things this card has going for it:

• It's an autographed card of Andruw Jones
• It's an Allen & Ginter card
• It's a 1/1
• Have I ever mentioned that Andruw Jones has a very nice signature?

Throw out all of those positives.  The correct answer for teams that Andruw Jones can have a card for are: Braves, Yankees, and maybe the White Sox.  Although the White Sox one feels like a bit of a stretch too.  Which brings me to this week's card.....

I went looking to see what Cardinals cards were available in the Archives Signature set after it hit the card shops a week or two back.  After scouring the trade groups on Facebook and the auctions on Ebay I have are Dennis Eckersley, Eric Davis, Andres Galarraga, and Mark Mulder.  

If you are not a Cardinals fan that sounds like a decent list of names.  If you are a Cardinals fan and remember the contributions of those players you probably feel a little bit let down.  This is actually the second year in a row that Cardinals fans have had a list like this to choose from in this product.    

A quick run down:

• Eric Davis- I love Eric Davis, but he was at the end of his career as a Cardinal and was only a part time player at that point.  1999 was a bad year, 2000 was really good with a .303/.389/.429 slash line.  Still, he had a lot of other good years that Topps could have used that would probably be a bigger draw to collectors.  As a Cardinals fan, I have a bunch of Eric Davis autographs.  They are all Reds cards and I am cool with that.  
• Eck - He was also at the end of his career.  The two years he spent in St. Louis were his worst as a relief pitcher and he was upset at the fans towards the end of his time since they booed him for blowing saves.  
• Mark Mulder - He won a World Series ring with the team in 2006 by sitting on the bench after his shoulder fell off.  Not his fault, but the Cardinals traded for him and he never made a serious contribution to the team winning.  
• Andres Galarraga - The Big Cat was brought over to be a power hitter for the Cardinals post Whiteyball era.  Manager Joe Torre and hitting coach Don Baylor supposedly knew what had caused him to regress in his later years as an Expo and were going to turn him around.  He broke his hand in the third game of the season, played poorly during the first half of the season, but well enough for Don Baylor to take him to Denver when the Rockies hired him as their manager.  

Every team has players like these.  Good names with good careers, but for whatever reason they never worked out in that place.  As a Bulls fan, Rays fans will shake their head with approval over this name being in this category, I often think of Hideki Matsui.  

After some contemplation I have decided that it would actually be pretty cool to own a few more Cardinals cards of one of these players.  I am pretty sure that all four of them have appeared in this space at different points over the last few years, but more than likely they were cards of them wearing the uniform you'd most likely associate them with: Eck and Mulder with the A's, Davis as a Red, and Galarraga as an Expo and Rockie.  

I have to say though, I have always really liked Andres Galarraga and have a pretty nice run of his cards in my collection.  In fact, one of my favorite 1990s autographs is his Stadium Co-Signers card with Larry Walker.....

two former Cardinals with really nice signatures.  This is just an awesome card.  There are other cool Galarraga cards around my boxes of cards outside of this one, but almost none of the cards I own of Galarraga feature the Big Cat with the birds on the bat.  

I know he has about a dozen Cardinals cards in all.  The first card of his that I ran across when I started writing this post was this cool 1992 Bowman card.  

I am not sure what is going on with the wind breaker, but I am sure if his arms weren't going across his body there is probably a Cardinals logo or something there somewhere.  Those pants are weird considering the team had abandoned the polyester uniforms at the end of them 1991 season in favor of the button up unis.  Pretty much the same thing they wear now.   Since there is a batting cage in the background perhaps Andres wore some old pants around the ballpark pre-game.  

Not sure that Galarraga in a Cardinals uniform is as cool as say Piazza in a Marlins uniform, but I am going to track them all down.  Some of the standard sets that I collected every year in the 1990s like the Topps base set are already somewhere in my collection, but there are several other Galarraga Cardinals cards that were in other sets that I did not touch.  I need an autograph too.    

So, here's to a few more Andres Galarraga cards in a Cardinals uniform

Duff Man. Oh Meh.

The Rays picked up Matt Duffy from the Giants in the Matt Moore trade and promptly sent him down to the Durham Bulls on an injury rehab assignment.  Since he is on the Rays I considered picking up one of his cards, but since he played in Durham it ended up on my to-do list.  

Now, I would much rather have an autograph than a relic card, but Duffy appears to be one of those players whose on-field performance and hobby prices are a little misaligned.  Don't get me wrong, he had a solid year for a player under 25 in 2015 going .295/.334/.428 with 12 home runs, 6 triples, and 28 doubles.  However, he's also not Kris Bryant or Nolan Arenado.  The 2016 season has seen a step back from Duffy, but his autograph prices seem to be in the $10 to $15 range for a lot of the cards for sale on Ebay and sites like COMC.  

I'd rather have a Matt Carpenter autograph for that much.  

After spending a few scrolling through Matt Duffy cards, I ended up finding something that looked pretty sweet on my computer screen, and still even looks pretty good sitting in front of me on my desk.  

This is also my first Strata card of the year.  If you remember last year I found a bunch of these cards, really liked them, but marveled at how anyone broke even opening up these cards.  Really, I'm still enjoying my Steven Souza autograph from last year.  Rodon and Kluber too, I just didn't pay anything for any of them.  

Same with Duff-Man here.  

Of course, the best part of getting a Strata card is typing in the little code on the sticker to found out when and where the player wore the jersey.  Off to the MLB Authentication site I went and this is what my Matt Duffy jersey back as....

I saw the date of the game, went to Baseball-Reference, and typed in the date for the box score.  I was hopeful when I saw that the Giants won the game 8-0 on a complete game shut out by Mad Bum.  Then I clicked the box score.  Sigh.  

It seems like every Giants player in the line up did something to contribute to the eight runs except Matt Duffy.  A giant bagel.  So, lets stick to the positives for a moment:

I now own a cool card of a player who appeared in a few games this year for the Durham Bulls.  

Let's also point out a few other details surrounding Matt Duffy.  Like I said earlier, Duffy is having a down year.  He did little to change that after coming over to the Rays in the trade.  I am even more skeptical about the fact that the Rays have decided to play him at shortstop.  I get Evan Longoria, but then let's trade for a usable part.  

To re-work a Simpsons catch phrase: Duff Man.  Oh Meh.  

First Hallmark, Now Topps

Sometime in the spring of 2004 I took a little bit of time out of my Saturday morning to drive to 1,000,000 Baseball Cards in the western part of St. Louis County.  It's been one of the more successful sports cards shops around that city, many other stores have been shuttered over the last twenty years.  On this particular Saturday I was going to check in on the dime and quarter boxes of Cardinals cards, along with any new wax that might catch my eye.

Surprisingly upon walking into the store I was handed a stack of cards and told it was National Trading Card Day.  There were an assortment of football, basketball, and baseball cards in the stack with cards from all the major brands of the day.  I'm not going to say that I was jumping up and down over the free cards, but free cards are free cards.

My favorite card out of the bunch has to be the Donruss Albert Pujols.

I never added National Trading Card Day to my calendar and I have not celebrated it since the day I was told about more than a decade ago.  I have run across the group of cards celebrating the "holiday" a few times over the years, but I don't give them much thought.  

Until this year earlier this summer.  

A few weeks back I was hanging out doing the things I do in a day: Working, driving to work, probably doing something around my house, and hanging out with my wife and kids.  It might have actually been kid when this took place.  Out of the blue, half of the card collectors on my Twitter feed, like literally half of my Twitter feed, and every Facebook card group I belong to started stammering about National Baseball Card Day. 

Naturally, I had to dig out the boxes with my set from 2004 thinking that National Trading Card Day and National Baseball Card Day were the same thing.  They were not.  National Trading Card Day has apparently disappeared, but never fear Topps invented National Baseball Card Day.   

Just like we can count on Hallmark to give us National Secretary's Day and National Office Assistant Day and Office Staff Appreciation Week, we now have card companies making up holidays.  Personally, I am hoping that National Baseball Card Day goes the way of National Trading Card Day and quickly disappears.  

However, it appears that Topps did give out cards or packs of cards.  I am not sure.  I personally received absolutely nothing from them.  I blame the airbrushing article, or maybe I was just not aware of how to receive the cards or packs this year.  

Anyhow, I ended up with a National Baseball Card Day Baseball Card.  They appear to be nicer than the cards that were given away for National Trading Card Day.  

Albert Pujols cards are nice, but Stephen Piscotty autographs are better.  As much as I like the idea of having Stephen Piscotty cards, especially the autographed variety showing up in my mailbox, I am still not thrilled with the idea of having a holiday for baseball cards that Topps somehow invented to promote snazzy and shiny cards.  

I actually made a post on National Baseball Card Day before I knew that shiny cards were being showered on collectors and that said "holiday" was created by a large company who happens to be in the business of baseball cards.  Initially I thought that it would be more of a holiday (no quotes-real celebration) that celebrated cards in general.  Collectors could share out cool stories about cool cards in their collections, non-collectors can tell you stories about how they used to collect, and others can just look at you crooked because you're thirty something and still collect baseball cards.

Just me?  

I am happy to have a nice Stephen Piscotty card, but he has had nice cards in almost every Topps set this year.   Just my opinion, but if we are going to have a card company created holiday, perhaps Topps should shower some kids with cards and not adults who turn around and sell and trade the cards to other adults.  After all, if they truly want the "holiday" to stick around and combine it with free stuff, perhaps there would be no better place to start than sparking a kids interest by giving them something cool that can be a good moment to share during a future National Baseball Card Day.  

I.O.U. - Farewell J.P.

Monday marked the end of the season for the Durham Bulls.  On Sunday night the Bulls played the Norfolk Tides and catcher J.P. Arencibia helped the team win with a home run and three RBIs.  After the game J.P. was named Player of the Game and was interviewed on field.  During that interview J.P. announced that he would be retiring from baseball following the Bulls final game Monday afternoon.

Chris over at Watching Durham Bulls Baseball wrote up an excellent piece on J.P. Monday morning that is worth a read.

I spend time in each of my articles writing about baseball, but for me there is always the baseball card side of almost each of my blog posts.  I spend a lot of time on the Durham Bulls in this space, yet my last two Farewell posts have felt a little bit incomplete simply for the fact that I did not spend much time writing about Desmond Jennings, and we are in the same spot here with J.P. Arencibia.

Arencibia has now been on the Bulls for two years and had a significant impact on the team.  Yet, I have not devoted a single post to the veteran catcher.  Last season he played 99 games with the Bulls, hit 22 home runs to lead the International League and drove in 65 runs.  After spending the first part of the season with the Leigh High Valley Iron Pigs (Phillies) he came back to the Bulls.  For the year he hit 16 home runs, 16 doubles, and 49 RBIs in 89 games.

In my 10 years living in Durham I have seen more than a few older players pass through town in hopes of reviving their careers.  Players like Kevin Witt, Chris Richard, and Dan Johnson all had a huge impacts with the Bulls and helped make them one of the most successful Minor League franchises over that time.

Many were rewarded with a cup of coffee at some point with the Rays.  J.P. was no different.  Last season he played 24 games with the Rays hitting 6 home runs in 73 plate appearances.  Sounds pretty good.  The Rays still have games this year, but it would seem that J.P. is not getting the chance to play a few in Tampa this year.

As for the baseball card side of the post.  Well, I have done a really poor job of finding J.P. cards the last two years.  I know sometimes I get cards and never write them up into a post.  That's not even the case here.  I just don't have many cards of him.  After digging through my shoeboxes of autographed cards I came up with one.....

That's it.  Usually I can come up with something good.  I don't even have the Topps Opening Day card with him and Orbit with the "J.P. Arencibia Double Dips" sign.  I don't even know where or when I got this Topps Chrome autograph.  Probably back in 2011.  

Anyway, this is not really a good Farewell post in terms of cards.  After checking out the J.P. cards that I could I own, I have come to understand that almost every cool card of his, minus a very select few, could be had for less than $5.  I am going to go ahead and say that I owe J.P., and all of the people who read this blog for cards of Minor Leaguers, a big I.O.U.  I will give you a good J.P. post with cool cards. 

A Venerable Old Card Part 27

1989 was a good summer to be a Cubs fan.  The team led by Don Zimmer ended a four year run of alternating Mets and Cardinals division crowns which started in 1985 when both teams won over 100 games.  The Cubs had won the division in 1984, come within a game of the World Series, but missed out.  The Cubs took a few years to rebuild jettisoning players like Dennis Eckersley, Steve Trout, Leon Durham, Gary Matthews, and Ron Cey.

The team kept Ryne Sandberg through it all, added 1987 NL MVP Andre Dawson from the Expos, and added a good core of homegrown young players.  Daytime watchers of Cubs games on WGN were treated to the stylings of Mark Grace, Jerome Walton, Dwight Smith, Joe Girardi, Mitch Williams, and Greg Maddux.  

The Cubs won 93 games that summer leaving the Mets 6 games behind and the Cardinals 7 games behind.  The team ran into the Giants in the National League Championship Series and promptly lost 4 games to 1, but the future seemed bright for the Cubs.  

One of the brighter young stars on the 1989 Cubs was NL Rookie of the Year Winner Jerome Walton.  Amongst kids in middle school who collected baseball cards he was awesome, second on the food chain behind the Ken Griffey Jr. Upper Deck card.  

My favorite Jerome Walton card was his 1989 Topps Traded card.  Most of the summer was spent in search of his Fleer card, but that was left in the dust once the traded set came out later in the year.  I have a few of these cards in my collection.  The 6th grade version of me was stock piling them for whatever reason.  

I still love this card.  The 1989 Topps set is absolutely worthless and can be bought in bulk for next to nothing, but I still flip through these a few times a year.  Topps used this design a year or two ago for the mini insert set in the packs of base cards.  I was a little peeved that they cut off the white border, but I still collected them.  

I am curious what this card actually sold for in hobby stores back in 1989.  As a middle school kid, my valuation of the card was something like this: No I won't trade Will Clark, Bo Jackson, or Jose Canseco for Jerome Walton, but I would give you a Bobby Bonilla or Wally Joyner.  Don't knock late 1980s Wally Joyner.  

I spent a few minutes actually looking up what Jerome Walton did to win the Rookie of the Year Award in 1989.  Why didn't Dwight Smith win the award that year?  Clearly not really into looking too much into the stats back then.....

Plus, Dwight Smith sung the National Anthem a few times before Cubs games.  Greg Harris looks like a pretty solid choice too and Andy Benes only played two months and his WAR wasn't far behind Jerome's.  Perhaps all of the middle school kids in St Louis County should have been all over this card instead....

Trading Card Co-Op

It's been awhile since I have had a chance to visit a local card shop here Raleigh.  It's been almost a year and half since the area has had a shop.  I have enjoyed hanging out at the card shows that are at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds during the hiatus.  There are always plenty of good cards at those shows, and it's fun to meet and talk to all the different collectors, but I have still missed having a card shop to call my own.  

A few of the collectors, who run some of the booths at the local card shows, have been working on a plan to bring back a card shop to the area.  After a lot of planning and hard work their shop, the Trading Card Co-Op, opened this weekend.  Sure, there was a tropical storm lingering around North Carolina during the beginning half of the weekend, but that was not going to stop me, and a bunch of other collectors, from making a trip out to the Grand Opening.    

If you live in the area, or are visiting the Raleigh area, the shop is in the Royal Building on Hillsborough Street across from Meredith College.  It's in the same building as The Brickhouse restaurant and Ben & Jerry's.  A convenient location, just a stop light down from 440.  

The shop has a really cool feel and has a little bit different set-up from other card shops.  The store is inside the building and collectors are welcomed by a glass facade, which makes up two of the four outside walls of the shop, and a nicely designed store logo on the front door.  

The inside of the Trading Co-Op has a really cool concept and feel.  From the outside doors it looks like any other card shop:  Boxes of new products on shelves, tables with boxes of cards, display cabinets, etc.  However, once you get inside the front door and start looking at the store's inventory and talking to the owners you will see why this is a unique and must see hobby shop.  

When I first visited the store I spent some time talking with Jimmy, who ran Big D's Card Shop and was also a fixture at many of the local card shows, along with James who is also a fixture (and organizer) at the local card shows.  There are several other collectors who frequent the local card shows who have also an interest in the Trading Card Co-Op, which is really where the shop takes on its flavor.  

The Trading Card Co-Op has much more of a card show feel than a card shop feel.  The display cabinets are each stocked by one of the steak-holders in the store.  There is literally something there for everyone.  When I visited on Saturday morning, I had a fairly busy day planned, and can honestly say that the forty-five minutes to hour that I spent in the store were insufficient to take in everything that I would have normally done on a visit to a card shop.  

Again, a stand alone brick and mortar card shop might be doable in that amount of time, but a good card show?  You can't pass up a good table, I have been there.  Only, at the Trading Card Co-Op you are looking in the standard card shop display cases.  

I started out with Jimmy's cabinet since he always has some Durham Bulls goodies lurking inside for me.  You can't see it too clearly from the picture, but there are some nice Blake Snell cards on the bottom shelf.  Jimmy is also the resident expert on the Carolina Hurricanes and always has a nice mix of hockey cards.  

I had actually done a little work with Jimmy on a few cards the week before the store had opened and picked up two nice cards, one Cardinal and one former Durham Bull. 

 Cardinals player first:

I have a bunch of the Cardinals autographs out of the Past Time Pennants set, but did not have the Gibby autograph.  Always a nice signature, plus he is wearing his trademark jacket underneath his jersey.  Jim Edmonds rolled like that for awhile too.  

Durham Bulls player:

I have not done much with memorabilia cards this year, but this one was too nice to pass up.  The card has the authentication sticker on it that Topps started using last year with the Strata cards.  I am typing this post while holding a baby, that's been most of my day, so I still need to look up the code to see when Archer wore this jersey.  

So, this is where the card shop feel kicks in.  After finding a pair of nice cards from one seller, I moved over a cabinet and found a few more nice things around the shop.  I picked up an Aledmys Diaz Optics rookie card from James.....

who had a stocked cabinet filled with all sorts of great baseball, football, and basketball cards along with some great autographed memorabilia.   If my budget had been a little larger I could have had a pretty fun time picking out some of the cards in here.....

Really I could go on and on about each of the different sections of the store, but I am not writing a dissertation here.  Let's summarize it this way:  The inventory is really strong in each of the cabinets and the collectors running the store are very knowledgable.  Here's a look at some of the other cabinets......

This is one of the cabinets (above) that I could have spent some more time on.  I see that Rodon on the top shelf.  Let's hope its there next week.  Some very nice hockey and football stuff in here too.  

This cabinet (above) was baseball heavy with a lot of nice modern stuff on the top and some vintage stuff underneath on the bottom two shelves. The vintage cards looked sharp.  The cabinet below had some great basketball autographs and cards, a little soccer, and a nice Piscotty card on top. 

a cabinet of autographs......

and more...

                  

They even have a cabinet with gaming cards. 

If I had spent another hour or two at the store I could have sat down at each of the cabinets and done a write up on each of them and had a lot of material for my post.  I feel that way moving from table to table to table at a card show sometimes too.  I picked out a few cards, but could have easily bought something from each and every cabinet in the store and the pieces would have been strong additions to my collection.  

There is even a section in the middle of the store with boxes sorted out by teams for collectors looking for some more inexpensive single cards.  I found a cool old Pacific Darryl Kile parallel numbered out of 70...

The store also sells packs and boxes, which is the direction I went, since my time was limited and I have been a little behind on my 2016 cards.  I missed the basketball, football, and hockey boxes, but in the picture at the bottom you can see the shelves wrap around most of the store.  They also post collectors opening boxes and their hits on their Facebook page. 

I decided to work on Stadium Club and Finest.  I know the post is getting long at this point, but everyone wants to know what came out of the boxes.... 

 Let's start out with the Stadium Club.  

The base set probably deserves its own post, or two, which it will get in the coming days.  I pulled two autographs out of the box.  First up, is Reds catcher Kyle Waldrop.

Waldrop has been in Triple A with the Louisville Bats for the last few years.  The Reds had him up the last week or two, but I believe he's been sent back down to the International League.  The Bats are out of the playoffs, so I am guessing that he might be done for the season after this weekend.  

Which brings me to my other autograph....

which belongs to Rangers pitching prospect Luke Jackson.  Kind of a different looking card, so I had to flip over to the back which revealed that I pulled.....

a 1/1.  While Jackson has not spent a ton of time with the Rangers this year, the former first round draft pick, is still rated by most publications as a Top 20 prospect in the deep Texas system.  In fact, several have him ahead of Michael Matuella, former Duke pitcher, who once was considered a candidate to go first overall in the 2014 draft.  

and the Finest.  I will do more pictures, less words....

all very nice, so the two autographs had a very strong Durham Bulls flavor to them.  First up is Andruw Jones.  Always a very nice looking signature....

and the final autograph was my favorite card I landed from the first weekend of the Trading Card Co-Op: 

This is just a great looking cards.  Not sure it needs a lot of explanation.  

Overall, I had a great time during my brief stop at the Trading Card Co-Op, but I am looking forward to my return visit in the very near future.  There is so much in the store and it is such a cool concept to have a card show set up and feel.  If you live, or have the chance to visit, the Raleigh area I highly recommend a visit.