Belated showing of belated Christmas cards

Slowly unpacking and working my way back to speed. Let's start with some cards I received on my recent trip.

As I mentioned before there were no cards under the tree for Christmas. That's not a problem, except for a bit of hurt feelings. There was cash under the tree and we all know what to do with that.

The results of that cash are still to come. But meanwhile my sister-in-law bestowed upon me one of those glorious Target gift cards (I hear people get ridiculous things like wicker baskets and pillows with that bit of plastic. Just mind-boggling). And, for good measure, she wasn't scared to give me actual cards, too.

But let's start with what I bought with the gift card. I grabbed a box of this year's Stadium Club and a discounted box of last year's Archives. Yes, yes, I know, last year's Archives. I'm powerless in the face of a green $12.99 sticker.

As you know, those were the four designs chosen last year. Not great decision-making by Topps. The '73 cards were the only ones I got a thrill over looking at and turning over. Some of the 1980 cards were just ridiculous, like this Chris Owings card. And when I say I don't want to see another 1989 card again, I mean it.

The insert extras will be heading other places where they may be more useful. But I gotta show this one just to prove that I can pull cool Kershaw cards myself -- but only after I have them already.

Moving on to Stadium Club.

What you see here are the only two cards I needed from the blaster for my SC set. Shame on me for buying a blaster this far into the set-completing process (an instant no-no if I was using my own money). But shame on Topps for its crappy, cynical collation. This is in my top five for what's wrong with Topps. This is a 300-card set. I needed 59 cards to complete it before buying this blaster. I get two. That's twisted. And now I'm not going to collect Stadium Club next year, officially.

But L@@K at all the inserts and pointless parallels I received!

You know how I feel about Stadium Club extras -- not needed in a base set this glorious. These will all be sent out to other people. I don't feel the need to hang on to a single one.

So let's move on to the pack from my sister-in-law.

As I've said before, my sister-in-law doesn't know a thing about baseball (football is her game). But she has a knack for picking out something snazzy as if she really does know about cards. In the past it's been Bowman Chrome and such other sophisticated fare.

This time it was a 4-pack Topps Chrome hanger. Above is the first pack. I've opened exactly two hangers of this stuff this year. The detestable Bumgarner and Sonny have been the first cards in each pack. Charming collation again.

Pack number two is more interesting. Purple's not my color (nor Miguel my player), but that sure is pretty and numbered to 250. If you're going to make my sister-in-law spend 63 cents per card, you better make it beauteous.

Final pack. Couldn't have less to say about those four.

Let's see what showed up in the pink parallels:

A Devil Ray. Wonderful. Let's make the next two a Mariner and a Marlin, just so I can look at these five years later and say, "nope, still can't trade them."

This is better. Over the years, I've pulled more exclusive orange and pink chromy Cardinals by far. Cards On Cards is very fortunate. He owns many more pink parallel shiny Cardinals than I do pink parallel shiny Dodgers (in fact, I don't know if pink parallel shiny Dodgers even exist).

Last one is former Brave Tommy LaStella now working for the Cubs. I should be able to unload this relatively easily.

And those are the cards that I was able to produce out of Christmas.

It's really more trade fodder than anything else. But I'll be getting some key stuff for my collection soon. I guarantee you there will be no Devil Rays or sob stories about collation in that post.