Around the Horn: Houston Astros

Time for another entry in the "Around the Horn" series! This time, the Astros are up to bat!

The Astros were founded in 1962 and spent the first three years of their existence as the Colt 45's before moving into the Astrodome and being re-christened the Astros. 

The Astros has a plethora of great talent in the 70s ranging from Joe Morgan and Cesar Cedeno (two future Reds) to young fireballer J.R. Richard. The picture on the Jesus Alou card is just fantastic. Side note, I can't wait for Topps Heritage two years from now when they pay tribute to the 1971 set.

The great pitching carried over into the early 1980s when the Astros made the playoffs three times during the decade (1980, 1981, 1986). My favorite of this batch has to be the Lee May Swell oddball. Funny thing I just realized, I have cards of two players from the most important Reds trade in the 70s in Astros uniforms, Lee May and Joe Morgan (in the first batch). 

Here are four of my favorite Nolan Ryan cards I have covering his stint in Houston. I'm not a big Nolan Ryan collector by any means but these were all found in quarter bins or pack pulled and if I can find stuff of his cheap, then I'm all about it, especially stuff of him when he's not in a Rangers uniform.

Here's a curiosity ... two Phil Garner cards from 1982 Donruss. I was confused as heck when I found these in the giant box of 1982 cards I bought at the community yard sale last spring. It turns out the one on the right in a reverse negative error card. Pretty cool!

Moving towards the 90s now and the "Killer B's" of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. Instead of taking pictures of all my cards of a certain player/player collection, I'm just going to narrow it down to my favorite 3-4 cards of a particular player.

These Craig Biggio cards are my four favorites of his and I really, really like the Panini Diamond Kings cards. I'd honestly forgotten I had it until I was digging out cards to show off. I've got two copies of the 1989 Donruss rookie, I can't remember how I acquired them but I know one of them was pulled from a 100-card repack.

Jeff Bagwell is someone I really don't have a lot of cards of but he's definitely someone I need to acquire more cards of. The 1992 Topps card is the actual one, not one of the numerous reprints floating around out there.

I love collecting Reds players from the mid-90s regardless if its before or after their run with the team. Eddie Taubensee was the primary catcher for the Reds from 1994-2000. I always liked watching him as a player and he was pretty solid behind the plate.

When I'm sorting through cards trying to find stuff to talk about, I always come across a few curiosities, like this Miguel Tejada card. I'd completely forgotten about him playing two seasons in Houston towards the tail end of his career.

Same goes for J.D. Martinez, who is absolutely crushing the American League right now. I'd completely forgotten his first big league team was the Astros. That was during the lean years where losing at least 100 games a season was almost a guarantee.

Speaking of the lean years, Jose Altuve came along in 2011 for an Astros team that lost 106 games that year in what was their second to last year in the National League. He's always a guy that I see playing with a smile on his face and seems to enjoy every minute of every game. I've started a small Altuve collection as he's one of the players on the Astros I really enjoy watching.

Here's one of my favorite cards from Topps Archives last year. Everything on this picture just works, the orange of the uniform, the green of the railing on the dugout ... everything. It's too bad Archives this year really couldn't come anywhere close to this.

As far as short-term stops go, I honestly don't have too many as far as the Astros go. I think this Carlos Beltran card would probably be as close as I can get though. He had a full year stint in Houston in 2017 and another half-season with the Astros way back in 2004.

I think this card in particular is one of my favorites of this year. Not only does it show him as a member of the Astros, it's also a sunset card (meaning the his last regular issue card after his final season), plus look in the background, there's actually a sunset! It's a perfect card for a player that went out on on top and will eventually be in the Hall of Fame someday.

Last year, the Astros stunned everyone and won the World Series, their first. They'd been to the World Series one other time, in 2005 against the White Sox and got swept. I honestly didn't think they had a chance against the Dodgers last year but I was really happy to see them get their first championship, especially after all the city went through last fall with Hurricane Harvey and the catastrophic flooding thereafter.

That's another edition of "Around the Horn" in the books. On deck .... the Toronto Blue Jays.

A Steal of a Retail Deal (Part 1)

I told myself I was going to stop buying stuff just to review on the blog. Well, that kind of went out the window with this purchase. Over the Easter weekend, Target had a whale of a deal on cards. Blaster were on sale for $16.99 each and hanger boxes were on sale for $8.49 each. Also, on the Cartwheel app there was a $10 off a $50 purchase coupon and there was a free pack coupon on each blaster of Heritage. To go along with this, my mom got me a $75 Target gift card as an Easter gift.

Naturally, I had to take advantage of this rare sale. I had come in search of some Gypsy Queen but they were well stocked with Heritage. I settled for eight packs of Gypsy Queen (four of which came out to be free thanks to the $10 off coupon and the free pack coupon on the blaster), one Heritage blaster, and two Heritage hanger boxes. Grand total for all this? About $48.

I'll focus on the Heritage cards here and share the Gypsy Queen cards in a follow-up post. I can't remember which cards came out of the blaster or the hangers so I've just sort of mixed and matched here.

First off, before I get to the cards, I wanted to take a moment and comment on the Heritage pack design itself. Since I'd yet to open any actual packs of Heritage this year, this was my first glimpse at what the pack itself looks like. I have to say, I kind of dig it.

I'm going to try and show cards of players I don't think I showed on my initial round of Heritage. I can't guarantee though there won't be repeats. 

Yay! Rookie Cup cards! It may just be me but I kind of think the Rookie Cups fit better on Heritage than on flagship.

Nice to see that the Mariners finally signed Ichiro. 

When Strasburg was a rookie, I had club seat tickets for a Reds game to see him against Johnny Cueto. That was quite the game.

Between the hangers and the blaster, I got four short prints (including two Lonnie Chisenhall cards). I'd forgotten completely about Brandon Phillips' stint with the Angels last year. 

The lone Reds card I got that wasn't already a duplicate and it's one of the baseball flashbacks insert. 

And here are the Target exclusive inserts. I think that Rhys Hoskins might be a duplicate but I'll have to go through my Phillies cards to make sure.

While these weren't the best boxes and I didn't get any variations, it was still a fun rip. I think I'm good on Heritage now probably until High Numbers comes out this fall. If I want any more singles or inserts, I'll probably dig for them at card shows or the like.

A Blaster of Opening Day on Opening Day

I bought this when I picked up the two hanger boxes of Heritage a week or so back. I probably should've used better judgement and gotten a third box of Heritage for the same price but oh well. Since today is Opening Day, and the Reds Opening Day game got postponed until tomorrow for the first time since 1966 due to rain what better time that now to rip into this.

Keeping with my tradition this year, here's the first card from the first pack I opened. Not a bad start and I noticed the "future stars" heading is gone from the card.

Here's some cards of a few players I don't remember pulling cards for when I binged on Series 1. I really like the Alex Bregman card with the daylight and the orange uniform. It makes me long for nice spring and summer days where I can leave the snow and the cold behind.

A couple cool horizontal cards. Love the Green Monster in the background of the David Price card.

I got exactly one blue parallel, that being of Whit Merrifield. 

The Opening Day set is more based around inserts than anything else. Out of the eleven packs, four held these "Team Traditions and Celebrations" cards. I got the vaunted "The Freeze" card

I really like these team Opening Day inserts and the pictures are just amazing.

I guess these are supposed to be what players are up to in Spring Training? 

But here's my favorite thing of the Opening Day cards ... mascots!!! And I got three good ones, the Phillie Phanatic, the Rally Monkey, and our hometown mascot Mr. Redlegs.

As I mentioned though at the beginning, I think this ten dollar could've been better spent elsewhere, for example another hanger box of Heritage or a couple Gypsy Queen hanger packs. Oh well, lesson learned I suppose. Now, back to watching baseball that matters!

2015 Panini Contenders Baseball Blaster Box

I've been looking forward to this. Contenders is something I've wanted to rip into for a while now but I haven't had the time to make it to the card shop to pick up a few packs. However, during a post-Christmas run to Target for some misc items, I made a quick stop by the card section and there it was, the last box of Contenders left on a shelf that had otherwise been picked clean. We've got seven packs with six cards per pack, let's dig in.

Here are the two guaranteed autographs ... Aristides Aquino and Max Wotell. Aquino played just up the road in Dayton this season for the Reds low-A affiliate there. Wotell looks to be an up and coming Mets prospect. These will go really nice is my box of "good stuff".

These cards are nice but they don't scan good at all. Anyway, these are some really nice young players that I didn't think I would land ... Alex Bregman, Andrew Benintendi (local guy!), and the top overall draft pick, Dansby Swanson. 

The thing I really like about Contenders is that you get older players mixed in with the newer players all in their college uniforms. I think that Ozzie Smith card with the black and white photo is great.

Some of the other cards I got in the box. Frank Howard in the OSU colors is a beautiful card. The collegiate connections inserts are pretty neat too, I like the one that shows Will Clark and Rafael Palmiero.

This was well worth the $20 price for a blaster and I'm definitely going to get more of this. For the price of nearly three packs in the card shop, you get seven here with two guaranteed autographs. I'll have this over Bowman any day of the week.