The mailday roundup from January 1, 2024, my first mailday of the year, was full of Connor Wong cards. There were some other random cards as well, such as the next step toward 1,000 Jason Varitek cards. But, Varitek is not the only player headed for a major milestone.
1. 2022 Topps Chrome Logofractor Future Stars Autograph Orange. Serial-numbered to 25, this card was graded, but I do not really care to own graded cards for the most part. I did make an exception for my Play Ball Moe Berg card. Surprisingly it came cheaper than I have seen other copies of this card.
2. 2022 Donruss Optic Rookie Autographs Navy Blue Cracked Ice. I now have 19 variations of this same card. This autograph is serial-numbered to 35.
3. 2023 Topps Heritage 1974 Stamps Carl Yastrzemski/Carlton Fisk/Rafael Devers/Jeter Downs. Boy, Jeter Downs sticks out like a sore thumb among this group of players, doesn't he? Yaz and Fisk are Hall of Famers and Devers is a big star. Downs has done virtually nothing at the Major League level and is joining his fifth organization this year.
4. 2023 Topps Chrome Update Prism Adam Duvall. We are still waiting to see if Duvall will be a One-Year Wonder. He started the 2023 season on fire, but then got hurt and took awhile to get going again. He ended up hitting .247/.303/.531 with 21 home runs and 58 RBIs. He played in just 92 games though. It would have been interesting to see what he could have done with a full season at Fenway Park.
5. 2023 Topps Allen & Ginter Mini A&G Jason Varitek. Varitek card #998 is a mini parallel from Allen & Ginter. Two more to go.
6. 2023 Donruss Dom DiMaggio. At some point we need to try to give players some kind of credit for missing years of their career to military service. DiMaggio accumulated 33.5 WAR during his 11-year career, but he missed three years of his prime to service in WWII. The two years bookending that time he put up 5.4 and 4.5 WAR. He could have easily added on an additional 12-15 WAR to his career numbers. That would still leave him short on career WAR, but would likely push his peak closer to Hall of Fame numbers.
7. 2022 Topps Chrome Gold Wave Refractor Connor Wong. With this card, Connor Wong is at 500 cards in my collection. That seems utterly insane that a player with less than a full season's worth of games is at 500 cards in my collection. Yet, here we are.
8. 2022 Panini Absolute Rookie Baseball Material Booklet Signatures Black/White Seams. I kind of love this card with the silver ink on the black leather. Just a striking signature.
9. 2022 Panini Prizm Red Wave Prizm. Serial-numbered to 99, this is card #502 in the Connor Wong collection. This is one I was kind of surprised when I saw. I thought I would have gotten most of the higher numbered Prizm parallels.
I get the feeling you're going to pass 1K before then but I just got a Varitek card from a seller who had another card I was interested in (needed to justify the shipping costs, when did they balloon to $5.99?!), once it's in I'll send it your way.
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