National Baseball Card Day (Observed)

I had a floating holiday since New Year's Day was on a Sunday - I decided to finally take it today, and of course I took the opportunity to head over to my local card shop. Finding Clemente above was worth the trip alone!

I missed National Baseball Card Day on Saturday, so I decided to celebrate today! The shop had a quarter box with 2017 Archives, Heritage, Stadium Club and Series 2.

I felt like I had purchased a lot of Archives already, but I still managed to find a decent stack of new to me cards.

Not a big Pedroia fan, but that's an instant classic. Series 2 had several fantastic shots as well.

I snuck in one more vintage card in there - this one had about 5 staples in it at some point, which made it very affordable for me!

My first Topps Silk parallel! There was a box of odds and ends with sigs, parallels and relics, ranging from 2 bucks all the way up to 20.

I found this Park pinstripe relic in the same box. Rumor has it that Park and the Twins might be working on a buyout, which would be understandable given his struggles.

I also purchased a pack of Topps Chrome, which netted me this bonus card, so I guess I didn't miss out on NBCD after all! Did anyone pull a Minnesota Twin in their packs? I think Sano was the only guy this year, maybe Joe Mauer was in the checklist too...

Going Clubbing

Aw. Yeah.

Stadium Club is back in 2017, and the base cards do not disappoint.

The inserts are a little bit on the boring side - do we need these . . .

When we could have 1-2 dozen more of these?

Lots of parallels - Gold, Chrome, etc. Beam Team is not a terrible insert. I didn't pull anything die-cut or clear/acetate this time, maybe they are more rare, or maybe there aren't any?

Gotta show the Twins! I am pretending the Danny Santana card is actually a Jorge Polanco card (Polanco is on the left.) I dig the card either way. Buds at the bat rack!

Pulled a Joe Mauer as well, but still short of the full base team set...

What about hits, you ask? I mean, the base cards are where Stadium Club shines. Even though it's nice to pull a Pujols /50, I'm more interested in base cards.

I'm conflicted - this is a SSP photo variation, so I should have been pumped to get this card from my favorite National League team. But Hamilton's regular base card is really cool! I didn't get one in the box, so hopefully I can find one in the wild.

Each box contains two signatures - Ryan Schimpf was pretty much what I was expecting to pull - either a Padre, a Marlin, a Ray... Schimpf is probably on the high end of my predicted autograph.

Kevin, check it out! So, I bought two boxes of Stadium Club- box number 2 is remaining sealed until it's my turn for the Transatlantic Triple Break, but I already pulled a great card for the break! This signature is a Refractor, numbered to just 10!

Overall, this box was exactly what I was hoping for - fantastic base cards, a few surprises, a few Twins. I still think they could reduce the inserts to just Beam Team and parallels, and I would have liked the box to have a higher number of base cards, but otherwise this is just what the doctor ordered.