Serial Card Countdown -- The Grand Finale

    A huge thanks to The Diamond King for 100 serial-numbered cards. This post marks the last one in my countdown. I've moved on to my top five cards, and without further delay, here they are:

#5: 2019 Leaf Valiant Green Prismatic JJ Bleday Autograph (98/99)

    I like just about every aspect of this card. I think the design and background are spot-on (of course the color scheme works for me, because he's on the A's). I do like on-card autos, and this one looks very nice. A solid card at #5.

#4: 2019 Panini Crusade Pink Cody Bellinger (11/25)

    Panini Crusade is far and away my favorite Panini baseball card design. The designs are pristine, and the crests Panini uses for the cards are amazing. I wonder how Bellinger will fare in 2025 with the Yankees. He looks ready to have another solid season; it would be insanity to see him struggle like in 2021.

#3: 2017 Panini National Sports Collectors Convention Wrapper Redemption Memorabilia Rainbow Spokes Mookie Betts (22/25)

    Well that was quite the mouthful. Thanks to TCDB user jamestagli for clarifying just what type of card this is. It's a really nice card (it looks like Mookie is exploding); it's shiny, and has that lovely  (though a little bit plain) jersey swatch on it. I'm sure Mookie's headed for the Hall, the question is how much longer he can go. He hasn't shown too many signs of slowing down. other than getting hit by pitches and breaking wrists.

#2: 2018 Panini Immaculate Collection Rookie Auto Dual Materials Tyler Wade (09/99)

    This is a very intriguing card. The double patches plus the autograph are pretty cool, even though there's a ton going on in the card. I still think they did a good job with the card's photo -- Wade looks so young! I've always liked seeing player-used memorabilia cards, so the two and the autograph is really nice. Wade has been getting plenty of ABs in spring with the Padres. Maybe he'll play a lot?

    Now, we have really been through 99 cards, from the process of choosing the top 20 and then counting down all the way through card #2. The card about to be shown won the honors of the best card in the box. And that card is...

#1: 2023 Topps Pristine Gold Refractor Zach Plesac (35/50)

    This card was actually sitting on top of the box when I opened it and was therefore the first card I saw in the entire package. It's a real eye-catcher. The design is really good (the card is way nicer in hand than on the blog). Plesac has been in the majors since 2019, and in 87 career big-league games (86 starts), is 27-28 with a 4.31 ERA. Plesac lands #1 on my countdown. 

    So ends the serial card countdown. This was a fun little series that of course could not have been done without The Diamond King. Thank you for your generosity.

    Thank you all for reading the blog, have a great week, and happy collecting! Opening day's right around the corner, so good luck to your teams :)

Serial Card Countdown (#10-6) and the Return of Shiny

     Thanks again to The Diamond King for 100 awesome serial-numbered cards as well as some sweet post material. This the third of four posts where I count down my top 20 of the cards sent to me. After today's post we will be narrowed down to the top five (although you won't know what they are). I'm happy to announce that shiny is back and better than ever for this post, so if that's you're thing you may well enjoy it!

#10: 2021 Topps Update - Fast Friends Green Foil (326/499)

    It's really quite strange to see the word 'jell' on a baseball card. It doesn't remind me of team bonding, but more of desserts. Anyway, this card looks so much better in hand then on computer. Hopefully Bo Bichette and Vladdy can be a force once more this year. I'm not even a Jays fan -- it's plain sad to see flops like Bichette's 2024 season.

#9: 2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary Red Atomic Jacob deGrom (014/100)

    It's Jacob deGrom, which will explain partly why he's ranked so high. I like the design of the card, even though the 'Red Atomic' background doesn't fit amazingly with the orange and blue color scheme of the Mets. It looks good even so. I've already stressed how much I would like for deGrom to be healthy for 2025, so I won't go into detail right now :)

#8: 2020 Topps Big League Award Winners Rainbow Foil Jacob deGrom (077/100)

    Two deGroms in a row! I really like the Award Winners from 2020 Topps Big League (Mike Trout and Pete Alonso were featured on an earlier post). It's entertaining to see how these guys clean up after dirtying themselves up on the diamond. I think deGrom cleans up best out of the Award Winners I have.

#7: 2015 Bowman Purple Ice Troy Tulowitzki (39/50)

    This is a really nice card, and of one of my favorites. The Purple Ice design is perfect on the card for so many different reasons. This is easily one of the best cards in the box. 
    I'm a little bummed about Tulo getting kicked off the ballot this year, but it was inevitable.

#6: 2024 Topps Chrome Sonar Purple Refractor Esteury Ruiz (051/275)

    'Whoa!' describes my reaction perfectly when I laid eyes on this card. It's truly eye-popping. There is so much going on in this card. I don't think this would work well with any design other than the already neon design of 2024 Topps. The photo taken for this card was perfect too. Overall just a solid one.

    

    That's it for the penultimate countdown post. I hope you enjoyed the post, and next Wednesday will see the finale of the serial card countdown. Thank you to The Diamond King for the amazing cards which get better every week, and thank y'all for reading! Have a great rest of the week, and happy collecting!

Serial Card Countdown (#15-11)

      Thanks again to The Diamond King for 100 serial-numbered cards! The countdown of my favorite cards in the box started last week with numbers 20-16. As we move along today, we have a bit less shiny and a bit more throwback. Let's get started!

#15: 2007 Topps Sterling - Framed White Suede Tom Seaver (43/50)

    Starting the day at #15 is the brother of the Nolan Ryan card from the last post. This is a nice card of a player I really like. I didn't realize how much I liked the design of Topps Sterling until I got these cards. I'm surprised Tom Seaver isn't mentioned more in the 'Greatest of all Time' debate. 

#14: 2022 Panini Three and Two Baseball Black Parallel Harry Heilmann (8/8)

    This card has the lowest numbering of any card in the box at 8. The TCDB said this card is serial-numbered /99, so if anybody could tell me why this one is different, it would be appreciated. Though Heilmann retired 90 years before the card was made, I still like to see the photos of players from way back in the earlier days of baseball. (Thank you to Fuji for the clarification on the parallel)

#13: 2021 Donruss Dominators Blue Manny Machado (072/249)

    The card was so shiny and reflective that it was a little bit difficult to find the actual numbering down on the bottom left-hand corner of the card. Manny Machado has shown few signs of slowing up, and should be headed toward the Hall of Fame, barring any unforeseen events. I'd also like to comment on how many cards from Panini are making the list. Thus far three of them have made the top 20. Who knew?

#12: 2004 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Tools of the Trade Blue Ivan Rodriguez (139/250)

    My fondness of Pudge and the odd design of the card took this one into #12. I'm actually not a huge fan of such a small player photo, but the rest of the design is kinda cool. 

#11: 2021 Panini Diamond Kings Legacy Lithographs Holo Blue Rogers Hornsby (91/99)

    This is a nice card. It almost looks as if Rogers Hornsby is living in a cave. Hornsby was always one of those greats talked about with Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and the like, but looking back over his stats this morning, I remembered that he was in fact a beast: 

    He sported a career slash line of .358/.434/.577 and hit 301 home runs as a middle infielder in a time where homers were fairly uncommon (especially by today's standards). I had forgotten just how amazing he actually was. 

    Well, that wraps up this week's countdown. Next week we'll continue the countdown, headed for the top 10, before finishing the week after. Thanks again to The Diamond King for the awesome cards! And thank y'all for reading. Have a great week, and happy collecting!

Serial Card Countdown (#20-16)

    I won The Diamond King's last serial-numbered card guessing contest, and the prize was 100 numbered cards. Firstly, a huge thanks to The Diamond King for the cards! They are truly amazing, and I could take forever going through them.

    I said half an eternity ago that I would start the countdown, but never got down to it. Now I've finally started, and will hopefully remember to finish the four posts on the subject.

    I'm going to start the countdown of my twenty favorite of the numbered cards, and continue on down, posting every week until I get to number one. There were so many cards to choose from, so it was very difficult to narrow it down. But I finally did it, so here we go.

#20: 2020 Topps Major League Material Relics David Dahl (016/199)

    Alright, things get started with a former Ranger in David Dahl. The game-used patch took the card into the top twenty. Other than the lovely purple patch there isn't a ton on this card other than a decent action shot, but it's a great one. David Dahl has played seven years in the majors (2016, 2018-2021, 2023-2024) and is batting .268 with 324 hits and 46 home runs. He was an all-star in 2016 when he batted .302 with 15 home runs in 100 games.

#19: 2016 Bowman's Best Atomic Refractor Nomar Mazara (067/250)

    The design of this card was just too cool. Obviously, being a Rangers fan pushed it a little bit higher in the standings, but the background is plain awesome. Nomar played from 2016-2022, mostly with the Rangers, and in 684 games batted .256 with 85 home runs. He finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2016.

#18: 2018 Panini Immaculate Collection Clint Frazier (38/99)

    The patch on this card is enormous! And besides that, I like what they did with Frazier's photo -- it looks very....Panini. Well, that was the first word to come to mind anyway. Though Panini isn't my favorite brand of baseball cards, I like some of 'em (especially Panini Prizm...I dunno why, but I've always liked those). Clint played in the bigs from 2017-2023, and also played under the name Jackson Frazier.

#17: 2023 Bowman Chrome Pink Christian Yelich (082/299)

    Correct me if I'm wrong on the card identification, but I'm not very good at surfing the TCDB for unknown subsets yet. Anyway, I love Christian Yelich, and though the color scheme on the card is awfully strange, it resonates with me. I hope Yeli can have a healthy 2025 season, because it looks like he's coming back to form and I'd hate to see another season go down the drain, especially if it's one of his last good ones.

#16: 2006 Topps Sterling #76 Nolan Ryan (124/250)

    Three of the first five cards in my top twenty feature players who have played for the Rangers (not biased, shhhhhhhh). I really like this card, although it is a little bit difficult to read what the year was (I thought it was 2015 at first). I like the classic photo of Ryan tipping his cap, and think this is a worthy card to finish out the post with.

    Well, there's the top five cards in the countdown. I intentionally got the sheen on the cards -- I like that kind of thing, plus it helps to show how nice the cards look in-hand. I hope you enjoyed, and next Tuesday will be numbers 15 through 11. Thanks again to The Diamond King for the awesome cards, and thank y'all for reading. Have a great rest of the week, and happy collecting!

Paul Skenes and a Set Build

    If you wanna know who won the first annual blogoversary contest, you have to sit through this post and wait until the end :)

    A few weeks ago The Diamond King generously gave away 2024 Bowman Paul Skenes cards. So I claimed one. I got his PWE a little over a week ago and checked out the goodies inside. 

    This is the first Paul Skenes card I've ever owned. It's a sharp-looking card, and with my affinity for shininess, it doesn't disappoint. I wonder how Paul is going to fare in 2025; the league has already seen him once, but his stuff is other-worldly. What do y'all think?

    Now, in addition to this awesome card, The Diamond king also threw in a few cards for my extremely slowly progressing 2024 Topps Chrome Strokes build -- very generous.

    I now have five of the 25 cards, and all of them have come from The Diamond King. I'm trying to complete as much of the set as possible without buying cards online, and that proves to be an extremely slow process. But here I have received over 15% of the entire thing! Quite a nice and unexpected gift.

    So thank you to The Diamond King for the awesome cards! I feel like I've been thanking him a lot lately (this is the third post in a month where I've thanked him for cards). I still need to do my countdown the serial-numbered cards he gave me, but I keep forgetting. That'll be a project for the next week or two.

    Thank y'all for reading, have a great weekend, and happy collecting!

    Don't forget, I must announce the winner of my first Blogoversary's contest. I'm hoping to do a giveaway every year for the blog's birthday. Anyway, the winner, the first to have his name landed upon three times by the spinny wheel is.....

    Now John, if you could email me your shipping address, you can send it to doncardwellblog AT gmail DOT com, and I will get the cards sent out to you soon.

My First Blogoversary!

    127 posts ago, I had no idea that I'd still be around. But it's been a year, and we're still alive, so I guess that's victory number one.

    In my twelve months of blogging, I've posted 127 times, have 13,865 views, 16 followers, and 482 comments. Not too shabby by my standards.

    I never thought I'd still be posting on the blog a whole year after starting it up, but boy, am I glad I'm still here. Card-blogging has been a very pleasant hobby thus far, and I'm looking forward to year two!

    This first year has been eventful for me. I've made a few trades, sent out a few PWEs, received a few, won a couple contests, had computer problems, made excuses about them, and figured out how to fix them for good. I've also written some extremely corny posts in the process.

    Hopefully year two will have some better posts. I know that my collection is very small compared to y'all, and it won't help that I probably won't be buying up as many cards this year, due to life; there are some foreseeable events in the near future that will be taking up a lot of what would usually be my card money (there'll be a post on one of those events in a few weeks). 

    Also, rather than over 120 posts, I think I'll lower my standard a little bit this year. Things will be getting busier, and I want to take more time to write quality posts (takes a short time to scoff at myself, like that'll ever happen). Twice a week is still over 100, so I'll shoot for somewhere around 70-100.

    When I first started up the card blog, I knew very little about cards in general. I was just a guy who liked collecting them (especially the shiny ones) and trading. Then, after making a joke on my old blog, I started Don Cardwell with no idea of what I was doing. I also had some inspiration from The Diamond King and The Lost Collector, who I had read before starting my blog. I had actually emailed AJ of The Lost Collector when I first started Don Cardwell, and he sent me a really nice welcome email.

    I wasn't planning to keep my blog around for too long (if I were, I would've given it a better name). But the day I made my first post, I got a comment and a follower. And then a torrent more came. And then I decided to stay (to make the story brief)  Thank you to all who took the time to read and comment on my blog. 

    Thank you also to those who made trades with me. I don't usually trade by mail, but I've made a few since starting the blog, and expect to continue making them. I've also received some generous gifts, as well as trades that have seemed like generous gifts. The card-blogging community is a great one, I've learned. Y'all are so generous.

    Anyway, I'm keeping Don Cardwell around until I can't anymore. And hopefully that doesn't happen for a while. Of course, with fewer cards coming in in 2025, I'll have to improvise a little bit, but it can be done. Once more, thank y'all for the support and generosity over year one, and I'm looking forward to year two!

    

THE CONTEST

    Alright, now for the fun part. I've got a few cards to be given away as a prize to one winner. It's probably not the greatest of giveaways, but all things in time.

    Firstly, this contest is open to anybody who wants to comment on this post. It doesn't matter even if this is the first post of mine you've ever read. I'm not discounting you for waiting a year to read my blog :)

    Secondly, you have to comment. After all, how else will I be able to tell that you've entered? And also, you have to comment by noon (central time) on Sunday the 26th if you'd like to enter (I will not post again until then).

    Thirdly, in your comment I would like to know a favorite sports memory of yours. It could be anything -- from a great hot dog you had at Wrigley Field, to the time when you coughed up your popcorn laughing at the demise of your rival team, to the time you met your wife in the stands of a Brewers game (I haven't the slightest idea if that happened, but what the heck?). This is not obligatory, but I would be interested anyway.

    And finally, using the Whimsical Spinny Wheel (as provided by Wheel of Names), the winner will be decided, him being the one whose name is chosen thrice.

    And now, I shall show off all the junk-- I mean, prizes, of course, to be dumped (awarded) upon the winner of this contest. 

Two lovely 2024 Topps Chrome Cosmic cards of players on my rival team...

A couple other miscellaneous chrome cards (2024 Bowman 1st & 2023 Topps Anniversary)...

A couple autos of former Rangers prospects (pardon the blurs: they are Anderson Tejeda and A.J. Alexy)...

A few beautiful 2022 Panini Mosaic cards...

And finally....

An un-opened pack of 2024 Topps Update

    And of course, all penny sleeves and top loaders are part of the prize.

    Well, that about wraps up all I intended to cover today. Thanks for everything in year one, and here's to year two! And of course, have a great rest of the week, and....

Happy Collecting!!!

Although I didn't coin the term (who was the first card-blogger to use that?)...

Christmas Cards From The Diamond King

    I receiced a PWE from the Diamond King's Christmas giveaway. I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- the members of the card blogosphere are extremely generous (I have another PWE to post on later). 

    Han Solo was the card I requested from the Diamond King. I have a few Star Wars cards, and Han makes for a very nice addition. Harrison Ford is in so many good movies, from Star Wars to Indiana Jones to The Fugitive.... anyway, back to the cards.

    

    Han Solo was already a nice card, but he threw in more than just that. I also found that he sent me two PC players. 

    I've never seen the UK edition card before. This is card #75 of the 220-card UK set. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference to the card design other than the Union Jack on the upper left-hand side of the card. While researching this particular card, I found that there are multiple international versions of the cards, but I don't know how many (I only saw UK and Japan, and was too lazy to look any further).

    And we finish things up with the reigning World Series MVP. Oh, I really like this card. This is the first Chrome-Strokes card I've ever owned. 2024 Chrome-Strokes is only 25 cards, so maybe I'll try and complete it sometime in the future. Haha, I say these things, but I'll probably never actually get down to it. I prefer to dig through quarter and dollar boxes at the card store. We'll see how it ends up going. 

 

    A big thanks to the Diamond King for some more great cards! And thank y'all for reading, have a great weekend, and happy collecting!

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!

This is Downright Looney

    For Christmas (I believe it was this past one), my brother was kind enough to give me a binder full of baseball cards. I wonder why I didn't post this sooner... Anyway, this binder had a particularly interesting set of cards in it. Let's just say I didn't need to look through every card individually to see which 'good ones' there were. 

    The first page of the binder said it all:

    

    Lovely, isn't it? I looked through the whole binder, and it turns out that he gave me the entire 297-card set (or 594 if you count the back of the card like UD does). These are the only nine cards featuring 'players,' and the rest of the cards are comics. The players have some goofy stat line on the back, my personal favorite being Wile E. Coyote's.

It's no wonder he's a wretched pitcher considering that nothing from Acme works...

    

    I won't bother photographing the comics or anything for this post. Rather, I think we'll go with the other eight players. 

1-16: Bugs Bunny

    Oh great! Now the Dodgers have everybody! I love how they add in the part, 'Nothing about Bugs is average.' But I still kinda wanna know what his H/AB ratio is...

2-17: Daffy Duck

    I think I actually laughed like Elmer Fudd when I saw that he was second in everything to Bugs Bunny. The quote is charming.

3-18: Road Runner

    Uhhhhhh.....nothing much about this one, other then he always wins. Maybe the Yankees could have won the World Series had they kept him around. I find it interesting that they made him bat right and throw left, because in my baseball experience, that's pretty rare.

5-14: Sylvester

    Futility infielder? Seems a little bit harsh, but then again, it's Sylvester.

6-15: Porky Pig

    Porky's dillema seems typical of most broadcasters today. Seriously.

7-10: Tweety

    Again, besides a bunch of cheesy jokes, not a ton to say about this card. He makes Juan Soto look bad though when he acquires three times the walks.

8-11: Yosemite Sam

    Now we have a team I like. But of all characters, why Sam? I love what they did with his earned run total. Looks like Camilo Doval's not alone when it comes to wild pitching in San Francisco...

9-12: Tasmanian Devil

    It took me a while to figure out what was meant by 'Make nice hors d'oeuvres.' Now that I get it, I kind of wish that I still didn't. Earning the reputation as the worst interview takes real talent with all the competition he's been faced with.

    I think an Elmer Fudd card would have been a nice addition to the set, but all in all I really like it. I think they did well on the character bios for the most part, and the artwork is wonderful. Getting the entire set is great too. I've already added it to my TCDB collection, which is slowly gaining more cards and is up to about 370 now. I kind of just add as I post. I'm in no hurry.

    This would make for a happy ending, except for the part where I veer off to talk about something completely unrelated, but worthwhile nonetheless. The Diamond King is hosting another Serial Guessing Contest with 100 lovely cards to be given away to the winner. If you haven't seen it yet, then do it. (just click the link above). Wait, doesn't this make my chances of winning go down?!?!!??!?! Well, I do get a second guess for this, so I think it's way more than fair enough.

    I'm thinking of something Looney Tuney to end with post with, but nothing comes to mind except for throwing anvils in your face, and I don't wanna do that -- it means less people will read my blog! So, since I'm not going to cause any collateral damage, I think there's only one thing left to say...