Twenty one

Once again I am the recipient of someone else's generosity.  Unexpectedly, I received an envelope yesterday from Julie at the A Cracked Bat blog.  Needless to say, it was full of Blue Jays for the collection.

I was able to break the ones I needed down to 5 groups of 4 + the one card that stood out on its own.  So let's take a look at twenty one cards that have been added to the collection.

Standing out of this group of 4 Bowman Chrome cards is Spider man Kevin Pillar, who has made it a bit of a habit so far this season of stealing extra base hits with some great acrobatics in left field.  If you haven't seen the catch that he made off of Tim Beckham on Jackie Robinson day, here's a video clip for your perusal.

2012 Topps minis are up next, featuring 4 players that are no longer with the organization.  Yes, that includes the recently released Ricky Romero on the bottom of the stack. 

4 members of the '91 AL East championship squad that lost in 5 games to the Twins in the ALCS.   I've always liked that photo of Kelly Gruber, it kind of looks like he's holding the bat on his shoulders while he's behind bars.  I still need quite a few of the '92 Topps gold parallels, 21 of them by my count, so I'm grateful to have these 4 in hand.

My first 2015 Gypsy Queen cards in hand.  Not bad.  I can't say that I'm a huge fan of the design, but I'm not turned off by them either.  I had a hanger box in my hand last weekend when I went to Wal-Mart, but then thought better of it and grabbed a rack pack of Heritage instead (the Miguel Cabrera SP that I pulled was worth it).

I don't recall having ever bought a pack of '14 Stadium club, so the EE and Roy Halladay cards are definitely a first look for me.  I like them, the information bar (for lack of a better term) at the bottom doesn't take anything away from the photos, which are first rate.   The Daniel Norris is just the 2nd Museum Collection card that I own (R.A. Dickey being the other).  What always strikes me as odd is the thickness, kind of unnecessary for a base card IMO.

Finally, card #21 is a great auto from Panini Hometown Heroes of Tony Fernandez.  Doing a little look back on the history of the franchise, I found out that Tony is 3rd in total WAR in team history (the top two are pitchers that have cards above, I'm sure you can guess who they are).  Adding Bell and Fernandez in the past couple of weeks has kind of made me want to chase more autos/relics of players that were part of the great teams the Jays had between 1985 and 1993.

Julie, thank you very much for the great envelope.   The cards are great and very much appreciated!

thanks for reading, Robert