2019 Donruss Blaster

I've had this blaster of 2019 Donruss sitting around for a while now. I actually bought it a week or so before Opening Day but due to other things, I haven't had the chance to open it until now. 

If you remember last year, I bought three packs of Donruss from the card shop and thought they were horrible. The pictures, the design, everything except the 1984 style cards was bad. Let's see if Donruss redeemed themselves this year.

Here are the base cards. As is the case with Donruss, there are no logos or nicknames. Not that I mind that too much when photos like this do their best to hide that that. The Rhys Hoskins card is a throwback uniform variation that I noticed after sorting these to be scanned. As far as the design this year goes, I don't really mind it. It's pretty simple and doesn't try to be something it's not (and doesn't have wavy lines all over the place either like last year).

Of course, there are nickname variations. These are painless enough.

The two Reds cards I got in my box. Scooter Gennett is inching closer to coming back and re-joining the team after injuring his quad right at the end of spring camp. It makes me wonder though, who will be the odd man out in the infield since Jose Iglesias has been a heck of a fill-in with both his glove and his bat, and Derek Dietrich I think may have usurped Jose Peraza as the everyday second baseman.

Here are a few of the Rated Rookies. I think there was one of these in every pack. These were literally chosen at random. Garrett Hampson is currently hitting .194/.224/.269 with Colorado and was actually optioned back to Triple-A as I write this. Kopech was 1-1 in only four games with the White Sox and will miss the entire 2019 season due to Tommy John surgery.

I think even the most ardent Donruss/Panini hater can probably find some good in the Diamond Kings cards.

Every year since Panini brought Donruss back, they've had the back end of the base set devoted to old designs. This year it's 1985, which I sort of enjoy. As a matter of fact, my favorite Donruss designs are probably from the years 1982-1987. I wonder what they'll do when they reach 1990 as they've already used it for a base set design in 2017.

As it is with Donruss, there's a boatload of parallels and the the like. The Rizzo is numbered to 484 and the design on the Ryan O'Hearn card is called "Independence Day". The back also feels like it's a vintage stock card or something.

Purple parallels! Very cool and very shiny.

Speaking of shiny, there's a four card "bonus" pack with the blasters and inside contained these super shiny cards. I think my favorite of these is the Jose Altuve "Action All-Stars" card. One thing I didn't notice until scanning these is that the Franchise Features cards have a different player on the reverse side.

And would you look at who's on the back of the Kris Bryant, that being Reds top prospect Nick Senzel, who is doing quite well for himself both at the plate and in the field. After seeing him play, I can see why the Reds released Matt Kemp.

So that's a blaster of 2019 Donruss. It's a definite improvement from last year. I like the inserts and parallels, and especially the "Action All-Stars" set.

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.

2015 Topps Update Holiday Box #1

Before getting too far along, I want to wise a Happy New Year to all my readers and issue a big "thank you" to everyone for reading this humble little blog. Since I started this blog at the end of July, I never imagined it would reach the popularity that it has with just under 5,000 views since launch. So, again thank you for reading and also thank you to all the great people that I've traded with such as Brian, Julie, Kevin, Matt, Adam K, Jeff, Tony, Gavin, and many others I know I'm probably forgetting. Thank you all for your support in 2015 and here's to a great 2016!

Now then, with that out of the way, as I noted a few posts back I got a nice haul of cardboard for Christmas, most of which was from my wife. Back in November, these Topps Update boxes were all the rage and I managed to procure two of them from my wife. Five packs of Update and two packs of Chrome Update. Here we go ...

No, you're not seeing double, that's a regular Evan Gattis Update card and it's Chrome brother. I found it sort of strange that I got both the regular and chrome versions of the same card. Oh well, if nothing else, these will display nice next to each other in the 2015 binder.

The best of the Chrome cards that were included. The Plawecki is a numbered parallel and pulling a Joey Gallo rookie card was probably the highlight of this box.

Moving along to regular Update, there honestly wasn't a lot to share when it comes to the base cards that were included. However, I did get all the cards shown above for the All-Star Game set I'm putting together, including a foil parallel of the Darren O'Day mystery man card. I'm not sure what the Jose Altuve card on the right is but it appears to be some sort of insert.

Overall, I'd say this was a pretty average box. I'm hoping that the second box might have some better stuff in it but we'll see.