Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part II

College football will be here again before we know it, so I've got to get my prize from last season's Bowl Pick 'Em contest at Cards on Cards posted! My prize for a second place tie was a very generously sized box of cards, so I felt a bit overwhelmed even sorting through them. I finally sorted them out by player, and, as usual, I'll plan to post them all eventually, but I might quit halfway through, we'll see.

Part I

1991 Stadium Club #379 Gerald Perry
1992 Stadium Club
#10 Joe Carter
#58 Rich Gedman
#103 Luis Alicea
#338 Gerald Perry
#386 Omar Olivares

I have less old Stadium club in my collection than I expected, but now I've got a half-dozen more. I think Joe Carter a buffer card stuck on the outside of a stack of Cardinals, but it's in decent enough shape to go into my collection too.

1992 Fleer Ultra
#563 Cris Carpenter
#566 Rich Gedman
1992 Upper Deck #478 Omar Olivares
1993 Leaf #438 Omar Olivares
2015 Topps
#628 Peter Bourjos
#678 Sam Freeman

I think I've said this before, but Cris Carpenter was the cause of much confusion on my part when the Cardinals brought in Chris Carpenter in 2004, and I thought they had reacquired Cris. I figured Cris had to be ancient by that point, though he was actually only 39.

Bourjos and Freeman are the first cards in my collection from 2015 Series 2, which is sort of splitting hairs because I do have some Series 1.

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part I

College football will be here again before we know it, so I've got to get my prize from last season's Bowl Pick 'Em contest at Cards on Cards posted! My prize for a second place tie was a very generously sized box of cards, so I felt a bit overwhelmed even sorting through them. I finally sorted them out by player, and, as usual, I'll plan to post them all eventually, but I might quit halfway through, we'll see.

2013 Topps Update - Blue Parallel #US4 Matt Adams
2015 Gypsy Queen - Mini #197 Matt Adams

It's hard to believe this is Matt Adams's 5th season in the majors. He still seems like one of the new kids on the team.

1993 Pinnacle #599 Rene Arocha
1993 Topps Stadium Club #712 Rene Arocha
1994 Fleer - Rookie Sensations #1 Rene Arocha
1995 Fleer Ultra #221 Rene Arocha

I was too young to really be aware of it at the time, but Rene Arocha was apparently the first player to defect from the Cuban national team. There was a great article about it in the New York Times a few months ago, you can read here.

1996 Donruss #92 David Bell
1996 Leaf #70 David Bell

Both of these cards are from the same year, yet Donruss claims David Bell wore #25, while Leaf clearly shows 27. He first wore 25 when he came over from Cleveland near the trading deadline, and switched to 27 later that same year, about 2 full seasons before Mark McGwire arrived. Yet, now that he's the Cardinals hitting coach, he's wearing 25 again, because Jhonny Peralta has 27.

2015 Gypsy Queen #27 John Lackey
2015 Topps Opening Day #29 John Lackey

I started out just grabbing guys from the beginning of the alphabet (I'm always sorting), but to cram as many cards as possible in while still tagging each set, I'm doing my best to stick players together who both have cards in common sets, like John Lackey and Matt Adams, who both had a 2015 Gypsy Queen in the package.

eBay Wins #237

Today's eBay lot comes from perhaps my favorite 1989 design, Score. Sure, it's overly simple, and the borders are multicolored but not team colored, but it looks very clean. Anyway, I had 26 penny cards, with a few duplicates mixed in.

1989 Score
6 Fred McGriff
14 Johnny Ray
26 Gary Pettis
29 Curt Young
34 Glenn Hubbard (x2)
58 Tim Teufel
71 Mitch Webster
89 Mickey Brantley

No Cardinals in the first scan, but there is Hall-of-Fame-eligible Fred McGriff. His vote totals appear to be too low to reach 75% in the next two years, but my completely subjective feeling is that he ought to be in.

1989 Score
91 R.J. Reynolds
109 Eric Davis
136 Howard Johnson
144 Andres Galarraga
165 Walt Weiss
205 Don Baylor
230 Lou Whitaker
255 Juan Samuel

Now we've got some Cardinals: Eric Davis and Andres Galarraga, as well as our former hitting coach Don Baylor. We lost both Baylor and Galarraga to the Rockies in 1993, making them my least favorite team for a short while, until I accepted the realities of players and coaches changing teams.

1989 Score
308 Bob Welch
323 Devon White
459 Doug Jennings (x2)
465 Todd Burns
537 Mike Gallego
610 Buddy Bell
614 Al Pedrique
624 Mike Harkey

Mike Gallego and Todd Burns, yes, that Todd Burns, were both Cardinals. And there's another card for my eventual RBI Baseball collection, Al Pedrique,

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4220
Total Spent	$57.22
Per Card	1.356 cents
Change	-0.002 cents

Zistle Trade #27

I'm not very good with keeping up a First-in-first-out system of stuff to post, because when this trade arrived in the mail I thought, here's a group of cards I can scan and file away quickly. First, because there were only 6 of them, and second, because they are all from the same 1993 Studio set, making the steps to sorting them much shorter.

1993 Studio
#47 Jose Canseco
#73 Chris Sabo
#117 Terry Pendleton
#119 Mark Whiten
#147 Lee Smith
#188 Joe Girardi

This trade knocked out about half of my remaining needs for this set, which was mostly just the Cardinals in the set. Although, upon further reviewing the set, I missed Bobby Bonilla, Will Clark, Vince Coleman, Royce Clayton, Larry Walker, Andy Van Slyke, Delino DeShields (Sr.), Willie McGee, Lance Johnson, and Tino Martinez. I must not have ever looked through it exhaustively, but added cards while searching for specific players. So, the net effect of these trade is 4 more cards on my want list. This is actually a set I really like, and I may try to finish it at some point, but for now I'll just try to get at least the rest of the Cardinals.

eBay Wins #236

Today's lot is from 1989 Topps Traded, and once again came out of a large box of A's I purchased. There's a certain Andy Warhol nature to it.

1989 Topps Traded #82T Mike Moore (x4)

Do I need 4 copies of the same Mike Moore Topps Traded card? Probably not, which is why 3 will go in my trade list. I'll likely never wind up getting rid of them, though. These came out of my half-penny box, which means I add just another 2 cents to my total.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4194
Total Spent	$56.96
Per Card	1.358 cents
Change	-0.001 cents

July Card Show Autographs II

There was another, much smaller - as detailed by CardinalsFan16 on All Cardinals All the Time - card show at the same location as the normal monthly one, but just 6 days later. I've been to their Saturday shows before, and they are typically smaller, but this one was practically nonexistent. There were 3 autograph signers though, all relatively recently retired former Cardinals that I didn't yet have in my collection.

Fernando Tatis          Octavio Dotel 28         Skip Schumaker 55

I promise that says Fernando Tatis on the left. It's at least consistent with other images I see online of his signature, but I made sure to catalog that one right away, because I might never decipher that if I had to. He's probably most well known in St. Louis for hitting 2 Grand Slams in one inning against Chan-Ho Park in 1999. Several people had him inscribe something related to that, though I wonder if those turned out legible.

Octavio Dotel was only a Cardinal for half a season, but it was the second half of 2011, meaning he was part of the World Series team.

Skip Schumaker was also a part of that 2011 World Series team, and was the player at the plate when the infamous Rally Squirrel ran through the batter's box, as you may recall seeing in 2012 on a Topps short print. That card is still tough to find reasonably priced, but there were several people with giant photos of the event for him to sign.

eBay Wins #235

Today I've got a first for my blog, my first 1989 Fleer Update. I figured I had posted something from this set before, but I haven't. In my collection I had just 5 unique cards from the set, all Cardinals. I've got duplicates of all of them, though, including 12 Dan Quisenberrys for some reason. I'm pretty sure these were mixed into a big lot of A's I bought cheap, and came out of my half-cent box.

1989 Fleer Update
#U-55 Mike Moore
#U-56 Tony Phillips

I think I'll start ranking my mood on bad days from Mike Moore to Tony Phillips. Neither of them look very pleased to be on their baseball cards here. At least Tony's appears to be a candid shot. I'm guessing Mike was going for a tough guy look, but he just seems mildly annoyed.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4190
Total Spent	$56.94
Per Card	1.359 cents
Change	0 cents

July Card Show Autograph

I was supposed to get 3 autographs at the July Card show, but one player missed his plane, and the other rescheduled for an unpublicized reason. But Donovan Osborne showed up, and here's what I got.

Donovan Osborne
                   -31-

Of the three Cardinals scheduled that day, he was the longest-tenured, playing 7 seasons for St. Louis, so the crowd wasn't as disappointed as they might otherwise have been. Bill Madlock was also there signing, but he doesn't fit into my collection. I've shared this story on my blog before, but why not, I'll do it again, because it's my most vivid memory of Donovan Osborne. I was at a game with my dad when Donovan came to bat with the bases loaded. They put season stats up on the board at that time, and I saw he had 0 home runs that year. I figured he probably also had 0 for his career, which to that point was 3+ seasons, but I had no way of knowing that for sure. I told my dad he should hit a grand slam...and then he did. That turned out to be his only career home run, and made me awfully superstitious for awhile.

eBay Wins #234

These cards were actually purchased very recently, unlike some of the eBay cards I've had sitting in the to-post box for who knows how long. They came as an unopened pack to cover 7 separate "random 80s-90s card" auctions that I won for a penny each, all from the same seller.

1989 Topps Big
#4 Greg Walker
#23 Paul Runge
#56 Dave Valle
#57 Carney Lansford
#75 Jim Presley
#79 Jay Howell
#101 Dave Stewart

The closest thing to a Cardinal in this post is Carney Lansford, who was once a coach for the team.

My Zistle library claims these are my first 1989 Big cards, but I know I've got at least 15 from previous posts, which I just haven't put into my boxes of sorted cards yet, due to their size. I'm going to need some solution for that sooner rather than later, because I have several different large-size sets hanging around. I'm thinking I may just put a notecard sized "IOU" in the regular box in the position the cards should go, noting where the oddities are stored, sort of like when libraries have oversized items.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4188
Total Spent	$56.93
Per Card	1.359 cents
Change	-0.001 cents

Another Mall Autograph

Adam Wainwright made an appearance at a local mall on Saturday, July 2. Unfortunately, I already had late-afternoon/early-dinner plans with some friends who were visiting in town. But, luckily for me, the Cardinals game was rain delayed an hour or so that day, and Wainwright was the starter, so his signing was delayed for a while. When I got home from dinner, I decided to head straight out to the mall and see if I could catch him before he left (and see if there were even tickets left to buy). Obviously there were, or else I wouldn't be writing this post. There were probably about 20 people left in line when I bought my ticket, so I made it with 10-15 minutes to spare. Here's my prize.

Adam Wainwright 50

This autograph is probably the biggest star I have among current Cardinals players, with Stephen Piscotty probably coming in second. There aren't as many autograph opportunities for the star players, especially during the season, so I was glad I was able to make it to this signing.

eBay Wins #233

Today's eBay lot is a small one out of the half cent box. I'm reasonably sure I have some more of these cards somewhere, possibly still at my parents' house. Lucky for me they haven't moved since I was a toddler. But the design of these cards is so familiar to me. There's a 1988 set that looks the same, but I only have one of those in my organized boxes, which came from another eBay post. I'm sure they'll show up one of these days, as I never purged any cards from my collection, even during my hiatus from collecting new cards.

1989 Pacific Legends II
#122 Dick Radatz
#212 Phil Niekro

2 cards at 1/2 cent each comes up to a whole penny. Rounding being what it is, my average didn't appear to drop, but it should be right on the cusp of another drop the next time I have a post costing under 1.36 cents per card.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4181
Total Spent	$56.86
Per Card	1.36 cents
Change	0 cents

A Quadruple Contest Post

I've got 4 contests by other bloggers to promote all at once. I don't think I've ever had that many to do at once. Maybe you've entered some already, but just in case, keep reading.

First, it's Pull Tab Awareness Week. You can read about defgav's annual holiday here. It's a week each year we remind people to do 2 things when mailing cards in toploaders. First, don't use scotch tape, use blue painter's tape, because it leaves little to no residue. Second, fold the tip of the tape over itself a bit to make pull tab before you press it down, so people with short nails like me don't have to scrape at the edge of the tape to remove it. I've been doing this when sending cards in taped packages since last Pull Tab Awareness Week, and I'd love to see it catch on further.

Next up, Red Cardboard is back from a bit of a blogging hiatus and is holding a draft to get rid of some cards. They are mostly Reds, but there are a few other teams in there too. And since I collect Cardinals in other uniforms, I'll still be going for the Cincinnati-uniformed Dmitri Young and Mike Leake among others, if I get a spot in the draft.

Pack War is celebrating its 7th anniversary, or Blog-versary, with 7 prizes. So far only one has been been revealed, so you're likely in for a surprise.

Finally, there's a contest that didn't actually dole out any extra entries for promoting it, but while I'm here, why not? This one's for several 2016 Allen and Ginter prizes, whetting all of our appetites since the set isn't even out yet.



To recap, go enter all 4 of these by following these links:

Baseball Card Breakdown's Pull Tab Awareness Week
Red Cardboard's Cardboard Draft
Pack War's 7th Blog-versary
Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits' Ginter Contest

eBay Wins #232

Today I've got some 1989 Classic Travel Purple penny cards. These were part of a big box of Oakland A's that I bought, which had a fair amount of duplicates in it, such as 3 of these Todd Burns cards.

1989 Classic Travel Purple
#171 Todd Burns (x3)

The only other card I have from this set is a single Mark McGwire card that came from Junior Junkie awhile back. I looked up Todd Burns and saw he played for the Cardinals in 1993, though I had no memory of him despite watching the team pretty closely starting in mid-1992. Then I saw that I already wrote that in another post, and I didn't even remember that. Maybe my memory's just bad.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4179
Total Spent	$56.85
Per Card	1.36 cents
Change	-0.001 cents

Zistle Trade #26, Part II

[Part I]

This half of the trade has a lot more Ozzies.

1982 Fleer #582 Ozzie Smith
1983 Topps #24 Steve Mura
1983 Topps #74 Julio Gonzalez
1983 Topps #650 George Hendrick
1990 Donruss #663 Rick Reuschel
1990 Donruss - Bonus MVP's #BC-14 Julio Franco
1990 Score #220A Mike Aldrete
1990 Score #662 Paul Coleman
1992 Donruss #423 Ozzie Smith

I'm continuing to chip away at 1990 Donruss, and I'm down to error variations for the most part. This Rick Reuschel card is the corrected version. Donruss printed a bunch of the all star cards with All Star stats but with a header implying they were regular stats, and the corrected versions say All-Star stats. It's a subtle and mostly meaningless difference, but I figure, the cards aren't rare, so why not track them all down? Mike Aldrete's card is another error card, which says he's #25 on the back. As you can see from the photo, he was #24. Mike was the assistant hitting coach and then bench coach for the Cardinals a few years ago, so I've decided to collect his cards even though he never played for St. Louis.

The big cards from this trade are at the top of that scan, though, a nice 1982 Ozzie Smith, and 3 1983 Topps Cardinals. I collected every Ozzie Topps flagship base card many years ago, but it's good to start filling in the other brands.

Also, I was sure I've posted a Paul Coleman card before, but I don't have any post tagged with his name. He might be one of the Cardinals worst draft decisions. They chose him one pick ahead of Frank Thomas, yet he never made it to the majors.

1993 Leaf #229 Brian Jordan
1993 Leaf #297 Ray Lankford
1993 Leaf #328 Ozzie Smith
2013 Topps - 1972 Topps Mini #TM-99 Ozzie Smith

I really like these 1993 Leaf cards, so I'm not sure why I didn't have them yet. Now, I do. I was also glad to get a one of the modern Ozzie inserts, the 1972-style mini from 2013 Topps.

Zistle Trade #26, Part I

In my neverending quest for more Cardinals, I made another Zistle trade that knocked some out from multiple sets. I'm still a long way from even finishing base cards from common sets, partially because I want cards like Will Clark on the Giants, Todd Worrell on the Dodgers, and John Mabry with the Rockies.

1990 Fleer #54 Will Clark
1998 Score #128 Todd Worrell
2007 Topps Opening Day #214 Fredbird
2007 Upper Deck #675 John Mabry
2008 Upper Deck First Edition #53 Troy Percival
2010 Topps - Turkey Red #TR34 David Wright
2010 Topps - Turkey Red #TR57 Jimmie Foxx

I also picked up two more 2010 Turkey Reds, and I still need 62 of 100 from Series 1 and 2, and 12 of 50 from Update.

1995 Fleer - All-Stars #2 Frank Thomas / Gregg Jefferies
2008 Upper Deck First Edition #54 Albert Pujols

I ran out of space to tag all the cards in one post, so the rest are in part 2, but luckily for ease of scanning I stuck both horizontal cards in the same post. I still remember when Gregg Jefferies came to the Cardinals. I was skeptical, but he made it to the All-Star game. It seems like his career peaked around that time though, and he never really turned into a superstar. Albert Pujols was a pretty good first baseman for the Cardinals, too.