Jon Singleton and George Springer Panini Cards

I want to blog about cards, but I also kind of don't want to do anything at all. I am currently in Spokane, Washington, for some job training. That doesn't really have much to do with my lack of motivation, though. I've been feeling the same way at home lately, too. I guess it's just a symptom of my depression. I am normally pretty down anyway. My baseline mood is other people's low. I am used to it, though, and manage to be pretty functional and relatively happy a lot of the time. It seems like every 5-6 years, though, I go through an extended period where I just can't seem to get going on anything for a few months, and I barely function. I guess it's more of a physical depression than a mental one. I'm right in the middle of one of those periods now. I've been meaning to get to my doctor to see about a medication adjustment or something, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. It's all just part of the fun of managing a chronic illness, I suppose.

Speaking of a chronic illness, it seems like the Astros' offense can't generate any run support this year. I just got done watching Justin Verlander do everything he could (8 IP, 14 K, 0 BB, 3 H) to keep the team in a game against the Yankees, and the bats couldn't even generate a single run to back him up. Of course, the bullpen immediately gave up 4 runs after Verlander left the game, but I have to imagine things could have been different if there were a couple runs on the Astros' side of the scoreboard.

I think I already have at least one copy of all the cards in this post, but how can I turn down dirt-cheap relic cards of player collection guy Jon Singleton, especially when some of them feature George Springer, too? These all come from 2015 Panini Elite baseball.

This last one is pretty cool because it's a Christmas Card, bearing the coveted # 12 / 25 serial number. I think I have # 14 / 25 on the way to my house as we speak, because I have a hard time saying no to these things. This one has a pretty cool patch embedded in it, though, so I have that going for me.

Springer Singleton Back 2 Back Jacks

Here's a pretty cool card I picked up from eBay for my Jon Singleton player collection. I thought the presence of George Springer would drive the price up over my bid, but the other bidder gave up and the card went to me. It's a Back 2 Back Jacks Prime dual relic insert from the 2015 Panini Elite baseball set.

In looking at the card I thought maybe I already had a parallel of it, but I went back into my blog history and discovered that the card I was thinking of was a similar Classic Combos card from 2014 Panini Classics. With this being the Prime version of the card, it features some nice two-color swatches. If you look at the Singleton relic piece at just the right angle you can see a bit of white fabric along the bottom edge of the window, but calling it a three-color relic is a bit of a stretch. I feel a little silly typing so excitedly over a piece of fabric that has two colors on it as opposed to a piece of fabric with just one color. But I guess when you look at anything in the hobby (or really anything in most hobbies) with that kind of scrutiny they all seem a little silly. This card is numbered # 05 / 10.

The back of the card stretches the definition of back-to-back jacks, recounting a time when Carter and Singleton hit home runs in consecutive innings. I guess you do what you have to do to the narrative to match up the players you want on the front of the card.

A Small Stack of Singletons

I decided to put a few of my recent Jon Singleton pickups into one post, as usually my one-card / one-player posts aren't very popular. This one has been sitting in my Draft queue in one form or another for a couple of months now, waiting for the right time to write words to go with the pictures. This seemed like as good a time as any, since this is a fairly easy post and my wife and I are headed out for a weekend away to attend a workshop put on by the National Guard Chaplains. I was in Arkansas on our 11th anniversary last week, so this trip will serve as a belated celebration of our mutual toleration of each other over an extended period of time.

This first card comes from 2015 Panini Elite Baseball, and is a Members Only memorabilia card, not to be confused with the Members Only parallel from Topps Stadium Club. It features a nice colorful swatch of fabric and is numbered # 16 / 25. I haven't heard much about Singleton lately. Most of the press surrounding the Astros over the last day has been about Colby Rasmus becoming the first player ever to accept a Qualifying Offer, and how that puts the Astros in the difficult place of having to actually pay that offer. Colby is a gnarly-looking dude, but his last name is made up of the first part of my last name and he certainly seemed to be an integral part of the positive chemistry the Astros had going on this year. It will be interesting to see how the offseason plays out after Rasmus' big bombshell.

I already had one of these Stripe parallels from 2014 Topps High Tek, but when this one popped up at a reasonable price I decided to get it, too. There are rumored to be only 5-10 copies of each Striped parallel, so I've now got 20-40% of the print run on this Singleton card.

This card is a little more common, with an announced print run of 201 copies. It's the Black Foil parallel from 2015 Topps Stadium Club. The photo isn't exactly exciting compared to what you find on many other Stadium Club cards, as Singleton appears to be watching another pop-out coming off his bat. I still really want to pick up a full base set of Stadium Club from this year, but that just hasn't materialized yet. There aren't as many of them listed as there were when the product was fresh. I might have missed the best price window.

I'll close things up with this die-cut Status autograph from 2014 Panini Elite. I believe this is the Gold parallel. It's a pretty typical sticker auto. I am not sure why, but Singleton always seems to sign with a really thick marker. Maybe the markers start out pointy, but he applies so much pressure when he writes that the tip of the marker gets blunted. I don't know. Anyway, this one is numbered # 30 / 49.

That does it for this batch of cards. There's not a lot else to say about them. If Singleton doesn't pick things up a bit next year I can't see him getting a lot of love from the card companies like he has the last few years. The Astros have plenty of other young talent to take his spot in checklists. Hopefully he will at least have a few base cards and their associated parallels so I'll have something Singleton-centered to chase in 2016.