I Got Humpty Dumpty!

    I never thought I'd be so intrigued by an egg. This card came to me in a package from The Diamond King. And I have to say, I really like it, though it surprised me a little bit. 

    I got the package from Diamond King's last Serial Number Guessing Contest. Along with Humpy Dumpty and the 100 serial-numbered cards, he also gave me a bunch of filler cards. Diamond King warned me beforehand no to get too excited, but the 'fillers' he gave me were full of PC players. Here are all the guys in my PC that were added to the box:

    These nine Ripkens further advance my most-collected player (all were needs). There was also a bunch of shiny, which is always appreciated. The nasty glare messes with the picture, but I took pics about a month ago, so won't bother changing it now.

    Posey's the second-most collected player, and so adding these three was great too. And still more shiny for my collection. Love it!

    And another Pete Crow-Armstrong for the collection. I have high hopes for this kid going forward. (I need to stop photographing cards in their penny sleeves)

    Also some great Corey Seager cards. I also have hopes for the Rangers come next year. I still have my doubts with their pitching staff, but being able to extend Nathan Eovaldi is big, and trading for Jake Burger......I don't know how that will effect their offense. I can do nothing but hope for now.

    I really like the see-through card. I didn't notice it until the picture showed the table I had the card on in the background. And the addition of a parallel will always be appreciated.

    Six amazing deGrom cards. The 2015 Topps design is great, and it's a little bit funny to see deGrom as a 'Future Star.' I sure hope that he can make some magic for the Rangers. Magic mostly meaning that he starts more than ten games. Boy, we could sure use a full season outta him.

    And I'll round things out with a Troy Tulowitzki mini. He'll be getting his first shot on the ballot this year. We'll see how that one goes.

    Apologies for the lack of decent photos. I need to redo them, but all the cards are in a box now, and I don't want to mess with them too much for the time being.

    I think I'll do a top 20 countdown for the serial-numbered cards sometime in January. Thank you to the Diamond King for the awesome cards, and thank you for reading. Happy collecting!

Snow on the Field and a Childish Third Baseman

    Sometimes when you're bored and tired, and just can't sleep, you go and look at your baseball cards. It was on one such day when I came across some cards that made the wheels in my head turn (hence the stupid name for the post). After all, I don't typically post with valuable cards or anything, so I've gotta make it interesting somehow, or you lose business. That's just how it works these days.

    Anyway, some of these cards indeed were interesting, and worth (at least I hope) showing on the blog. Maybe it's just because I was tired and so my brain wasn't working correctly. After all, it was a long day. I had just finished coaching the championship game of my little brother's team (GGs boys!), and boy, that game was 'lit,' so to speak. In the end, we won 6-5. After this, we went out to eat. Then I tried in vain to crash, so here we are.

    Shall we start with Trevor Story? This 2017 Topps gold card is numbered 1530/2017. Not gonna lie, even without the numbering, I still love this card. The action shot is perfect. In Story's rookie campaign, he smashed 27 home runs in only 97 games, one shy of Colorado's record. Again, where did it all go???

    While looking at this card, two things to mind; what is he pointing at? And, it's slightly eerie that the fielder's arm goes through the boundary of the card. I thought that the border was there to mark the end of the photo, but whatever. Anyway, nice photo for a nice card.

    If I didn't have multiple cards of Realmuto on the Marlins, I would probably forget that he ever played with them. It's amazing to think that at the same time the Marlins had Realmuto (who they traded to the Phillies after a stellar age 27 season), Christian Yelich (who was traded in 2018 after two solid seasons) and Giancarlo Stanton (who they gave away right after he hit 59 homers). I wonder what they would've been had they kept them all.

    I'll always appreciate some good old Topps Holiday cards. Evan Longoria appears to be throwing right into the midst of a blizzard. Hope everything turns out alright for the Gold Glover. Longoria retired after the 2023 season, and probably for the better. He had been fighting off injuries and bad seasons for a while. I wonder how he'll fare on the HOF ballot. What do y'all think?

    I could've sworn I saw Dansby Swanson before on this post. I'm not really sure why know why, but as soon as I laid eyes on this card, I had to have it. That'll happen with me sometimes. I probably acquired it in a trade with fellow blogger GTT one of those days not too far into the past. 
    It appears that Swanson is staring into the depths of the soul of his baseball bat. Bet it wasn't doing so good for him that day. I went ahead and did my research on this, and Dansby didn't have a good day on 2018 Opening Day, going 0-for-4 with a strikeout.

    At the all-star break in 2016, Paul Goldschmidt was batting .297/.417/.513 with 15 homers. In the actual all-star game he went 0-for-3 as a PH/1B as the NL fell (like usual) 4-2 to the AL.

    Straight from his days as a Dodger, Kenley Jansen pitched to a 2.76 ERA in 2014, collecting 44 saves for the team at age 26. He is currently second in active MLB players in saves with 429 across his 15 years of service time. Craig Kimbrel, who has also been around for 15 seasons, has the lead with 430.

    I'm not sure if it's the batter or the first baseman that David Wright has the beef with, but he should be more mature than to stick his tongue out at him. I mean, come on.

    This 2010 Bowman card is one of my favorites, not because it's valuable, but because it's a great-looking card from a great-looking set. David Wright is one of my favorite players, and according to the back of the card, he was one of three players to hit .300 with 500 RBIs since 2005. The other two were Albert Pujols and Chase Utley.

    I've got nothing to say about this card other than that it's nice to see a young Jean Segura. In 2016 Segura had a stellar season in which he hit .319 and led the league in hits with 203. He had 20 homers, 102 runs, 41 doubles and 33 steals, finishing 13th in MVP voting. 

    2012 Topps Archives is a sharp-looking set. Buster was just coming off the season in which his leg was devastated by Scott Cousins. He would come back in 2012 to win both the batting title and the MVP award (not to mention Comeback Player of the Year) en route to a Hall-of-Fame worthy career.

    That'll about do it for this post. I hope you enjoyed reading my analysis of every card posted today. Man, I need to get more sleep. Anyway, have a great Monday, and Happy Collecting!

Flagship Collection Box

     For Christmas, my uncle gave me the 2023 Flagship Collection Box of Topps baseball cards. It is a hefty set, with 10 regular card packs, 3 flagship collection packs, and an oversized base card. Here's some of the cards that I liked from it.

The oversize card I got was Riley Greene; that was pretty cool because I really like him.

The Blue Foil Freddy Furmin is probably my favorite card I got.

It's cool to see Paul Goldschmidt surviving an explosion.

Those old-school looking cards are neat too.

Yes, the one on the right is Felix Bautista, not Adley Rutschman.

They call Nolan Arenado the favorite son. I feel bad for his brothers. 

And now for all 15 of my flagship cards:

Out of all of these, the Jacob deGrom is easily my favorite.

Well, that about wraps it up. Thanks for reading my first post, and I hoped you liked it. If you'd like to read more baseball stuff (not card related), check out talkinprobaseball.blogspot.com or thebaseballpessimist.blogspot.com (you may need to copy and paste the links.)

Thanks for reading!