The Wallet Card

The latest craze sweeping the blog community is the "Wallet Card", an idea introduced by defgav at Baseball Card Breakdown.

I think we all understand the general idea by now, so I won't go into too much detail. Pick a card to carry in your wallet for a year, and take the occasional photo of it in your surroundings. I can't say I gave it a whole lot of thought; I just thumbed through a row in my duplicates box until I found something that I thought was meaningful.

However, there is one set out there that would be completely perfect for this trend.

1995 Studio Gold Series #42 Andres Galarraga

1995 Studio! They're designed to resemble credit cards, with holograms, rounded corners, and raised lettering. If I had some extras kicking around, I'd totally pick one of these. The above card, which was recently sent to me by William at Foul Bunt, is only the ninth card I own from that set. Alas, I have no duplicates to spare, and I don't want to ruin this one of The Big Cat by carrying it around all year.

So what did I end up choosing? I'll give you a few hints. It's a Rockie, of course. There is gold foil. The design matches the first factory set I ever purchased. And it's a player I've met in person.

1994 Topps Gold #372 Joe Girardi

Joe Girardi, who now manages the Yankees, will be accompanying me in cardboard form throughout 2015. I always liked this 1994 Topps set, so much so that I spent $45 on the factory set at the young age of ten. Rather than just a base card, I figured I'd go a little bit upscale by picking the Topps Gold parallel. And I met Mr. Girardi for an in-person autograph signing at the now-closed Rockies Dugout Store in Boulder, Colo., along with Eric Young.

It's a nice card, and this was my favorite parallel set as a boy. It's not quite to the level of The Junior Junkie, who picked Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie card from 1989 Upper Deck, one of the only overproduction cards that still holds some decent monetary value.

Come back throughout the course of the year and see what adventures Mr. Girardi encounters.

Update: I was just looking over some previous posts, and it turns out that this one came to me in a trade from The Card Papoy all the way from France!