The Card That Woke Up the Neighborhood… aka 2010 Topps Chrome Rack Pack

Opened a Chrome Rack Pack from Target over Christmas break. Mom was napping. First, a Carpenter orange refractor from the three card bonus pack in the retail rack packs.

“A Jon Jay autograph!!! Its a refractor!!! It’s a GOLD refractor!!! Its numbered to 50!!!…”

“Mom!!! Guess what I got?!?”
“I *heard* you from upstairs Isaac…”

He's Back!

Hey All - If anyone is still listening out there, Isaac wants to bring the blog back. He'll be nine in may and wants to do this on his own. I'll help him out with scanning, spelling / grammar and maybe the oddball baseball artwork / design post ( does that make me a contributing editor???) but aside from that, he wants to do it on his own. Well... maybe the occasional post from my phone too.

Look for posts on box breaks from Santa, his "hit" streak at the Cardinals Winter Warm Up last week, and updated trade posts soon.

Ichiro... at McDonalds!

Not card related, but we finally bought tickets to the Cardinals / Mariners series in June after much brow-beating by the little guy. Even at eight, Isaac has a long term view of things and begged for tickets to see future HOF-er Ichiro as this may be the last time he's in St. Louis prior to retiring. Even better, a friend of ours pitches BP for the Cardinals and will have passes for us to be on the field for both BP sessions! As with the Wrigley Field trip this month, stay tuned for pics.

Well, I guess its slightly card related. St. Louis area McDonald's ran a promo this month where certain value meals came with random baseball cards and each card came with a discount off of Cardinal tickets. We used the $20 off per ticket code to save $80 on Field Boxes for the Mariners game!

Here are five of the nine cards we have so far. Plenty of doubles if anyone wants 'em.

King Tut

Here's another Flea Market find - A Negro Leagues postcard.

On reverse:

GLOSS
TONE

THE INDIANAPOLIS CLOWNS are

Negro American League's famed "Showmen" and "Baseball Wizards." Large size 8 x 10 gloss photos of any featured player or of entire team can be obtained by mailing 25c per photo desired and your address to Clowns, Box 64, Tarrytown, N.Y.

MFD BY FORT WAYNE PRINTING CO., FORT WAYNE, IND.

Venturing into Enemy Territory

Well, its official. We have tickets to see the Cardinals and Cubs at Wrigley Field later this month. I don't have the tickets in hand yet, but I'm told they're infield field boxes directly below the Cubs broadcast booth. Isaac's aunt is working on pre-game field passes and entry into something called the Stadium MVP Club. Details to follow...

Crazy Eight

Isaac turns eight today! In honor of this momentous occasion, Isaac opened eight random packs of UD Signature, Topps 2009 U&H, and 2009 T206 during breakfast this morning. Out of those packs, he pulled these… in addition to a few Cardinals. Chicle packs to come later.

How’s that to start the Birthday!

2011 Topps David Freese

We went to the game today. Isaac kept score for the first time, he and his sister collected Albert Pujols MVP bats, and David Freese locked up the ROY award. Ok, just kidding... maybe just a pic for next year's Topps Set. For all the talk of Heyward, who is a *beast* everywhere else, Freese is hitting over .350 with 3 HR's (admitedly all this week), 16 RBI's, and manning third base on a serious playoff contender. Heyward is definitely the favorite for ROY but if you're looking for a dark horse it may just be Mr. Freese... or maybe Jaime Garcia.

Anyway, here's a nice pic of Freese's home run swing today courtesy of stltoday.com.