Cards Upon Cards Upon Cards
I want to preface this post with a statement: I’m typing this while watching a real major league baseball game. That seems incredible. It’s not even an Astros game! Right now I’m watching Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ketel Marte try to rack up points for my fantasy team, but just the fact that there is any watchable* live baseball right now is joyous.
Anyhow, my latest post was full of little TCDB swaps that had rolled in over the past few months, but there have been plenty of packages from Twitter pals and most importantly – because they care the most fondness with them – several of my regular trading pals from around the blogosphere. So, after whipping up that post I started in on a draft of several of these packages. Then I put all of that on hold because I realized that three of them were from our esteemed pal Kerry at Cards on Cards. The first envelope arrived back in march and held a brand spankin’ new Jeff Bagwell Pennant Fever insert from 2000 Pacific Aurora. Heck yes, we’re off to a great start.
* I would love to have watched KBO games, but we are cord cutters and the time gap was also prohibitive.
Before we get to the new stuff, I wanted to highlight these puppies. Elarton, as has been mentioned much here before, was one of my favorite Astros during his day. The Pettitte is notable because I still have big gaps in those earlier Heritage sets, so this ’06 issue was quite welcome.
Alright, now on to the new blood. Fire was great last year, and the Blue Chip parallels look particularly awesome, even for the inserts. There aren’t too many inserts in Fire and they come in the regular, Blue Chip, and “Gold Minted” parallels, so this Gurriel made me examine what I had left to chase. I’m down to needing just the Gold Minted.
Speaking of blue cards, Kerry sent along another blue Josh James, this one from 2019 Opening Day. I’m hopeful that James will rebound after an up and down year in 2019 – especially because he’s one of my relievers at the moment.
There were a few other new Astros: a long-awaited Bregman from Prizm, a swell Framber Valdez from Diamond Kings, and a flashy Kyle Tucker insert from 2019 Chrome. Tucker got an RBI double today, so perhaps Ted will finally get to blossom in our mutant season.
There were a couple of non-Astros cards in the envelope as well – a collegiate Bregman that was definitely welcome and a cheeky Rob Manfred. Gotta love Kerry’s sense of humor.
Envelope two must have arrived shortly after Opening Day. Well, after what should have been opening day, because these Astros I needed were fresher than fresh. I still need several of these.
There were some aces from Heritage in there as well, including an old Oswalt from Bowman Heritage. I don’t remember what year those are, offhand.
But the whoppers in this envelope were a pair of Purple Chrome refractors from this year’s Heritage. Yowza! Thanks, Kerry! Shiny Heritage is always awesome.
The last envelope arrived not too long ago – a little after Bowman finally arrived and was findable on the shelves. I hit the base Astros pretty quick, pulling three and swapping for the other, but I still needed all of these prospects, which Kerry sent over. Strikeout machine Christian Javier made his big league debut tonight, and I anticipate that we’ll see Whitley before the 60 game season is over, if we make it that far.
There was some old Bowman in there as well: some stellar 1994 Bowman cards of Astros that I was still missing. I love this set, perhaps irrationally, but it just looks so clean. These additions rule, and also made me realize that Oscar Henriquez has an actual Astros card. His only other I’m aware of is a 1998 Fleer Tradition that has him in his Astros uniform but is really a Marlins card.
The real reason for the latest envelope was this quartet of Astros from 2019 Topps of the Class, a promo set that rewarded kids for good grades if they brought their report card into a participating card shop. I don’t know how Kerry got his hands on a bunch of packs, but he announced them as a break of sorts and I immediately bit on the Astros. These seem to be Big League cards with a gloss coat and a new logo. This checklist was a lot longer than I thought it would be, with 100 cards and 7 Astros on it, so this knocked out a bunch of them. Finally, Kerry snuck in a red card, with this red foil version of Carlos Correa’s Opening Day card. Thanks so much for the cards, Kerry! I’ll hit you back soon.