Better than a Blaster #1

I am starting an irregular series of postings titled “Better than a Blaster”. The purpose is to highlight lots of cards for about the price of a blaster ($19.99). This is a result of not picking up many Yadi cards lately due to the high prices of the newer cards and lack of supply of others. So trolling EBay I have been picking up lots of Cardinals cards for good prices. Please keep in mind as I begin to blog these lots that I stopped collecting in about 1985. This resulted in not having most of the Cardinals’ cards from the “Junk Wax” era.

Recently I came  across a BIN lot for $19.99 that had only been listed for a few minuets. What drew me to this lot were 2014 Topps Series 1 Matt Adams and Kolten Wong autos!

Boom worth the price of a blaster to me. They are sticker autos but autos nonetheless. How about a 2014 Series 1 Matt Carpenter black bordered parallel #29 out of 63! Wait there is more numbered goodies to come, 2013 Topps Triple Thread purple Bob Gibson #211 out of 650, and a David Freese purple #551 out of 650.

To wrap up the numbered cards is a 2008 Topps Chrome bronze Rico Washington #435 out of #599.  Wiki tells us that he was on the Cardinals’ roster for about 3 weeks in April 2008. After this he went on to play for a year for Uni-President 7-Eleven Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League and he is now with the Kansas City T-Bones.

The lot also included two unnumbered but equally as cool Topps' buybacks 1960 Joe Cunningham (6 years with the Cards) and a 1960 Solly Hemus (8 years as a player and 3 as a manager for the Birds).

Other cards included in the lot were four 2014 Topps Series I red-hot foils of Yadi (already have), Lance Lynn, Kolten Wong, and Matt Adams.  Two 2014 Topps' Ozzie Smith and Waino mini inserts were included as well. I am almost tempted to start two more PC collections of Waino and Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky. The last insert is a Shelby Miller The Future is Now from 2014 Series I. There were other cards included most of which were Topps and Bowman Chrome, which I may need but I am uncertain. This lot was well worth the price of blaster and I would rate the value at A+.