Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXXVII

College football will be here again before we know it IS HERE IS OVER, 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 II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X
XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX XX
XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX
XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI

The giant prize pile is down to a large handful...

1982 Fleer #123 Ken Oberkfell
1983 Fleer #17 Ken Oberkfell
1991 Donruss #43 Ray Lankford
1991 Donruss #143 Brett Butler
1994 Topps Stadium Club Draft Picks #30 Carl Dale
1994 Topps Stadium Club Draft Picks #55 Yates Hall
1995 Topps Stadium Club #424 Ray Lankford
1999 Topps Stadium Club #21 Darren Oliver
1990 Upper Deck - Team Hologram Cardinals

I always find it interesting to see what happpened with Cardinals draft picks I've never heard of.
Carl Dale was sent to Oakland as part of the deal acquire my cousin, Todd Stottlemyre, and eventually made it to MLB with Milwaukee in 1999 after rosters expanded. Yates Hall appears to have played his entire career in the Cardinals minor league system, and only played through 1998, when he was 25, but only rose to AA.

Brett Butler, I'm pretty sure, was another "packing material" card, protecting a stack by covering the end. But it's in good enough shape to throw into my 1991 Donruss box, along with the Ray Lankford. Also, I promise that hologram is of a 1990s Cardinals logo, though it's pretty hard to tell that from the scan.

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.

eBay Wins #200

I'm not usually big on celebrating numbers just because they're round, so #200 will just be the next group of cards in my queue. In this case, it's a single 1982 Fleer.

1982 Fleer #266 Al Cowens

So maybe there's something a little special about this card. It's autographed. Is that Al Cowens' autograph? Could be, I guess, though I have no real evidence of that. I'm not sure if I ordered this as a random card, or the card was specifically listed. Thus, if it was singly listed, I don't know if it specified whether it was autographed. I really need to catch up on my eBay posts so I can remember stuff like that

I didn't notice the autograph until I went to scan, because it's even more faint on the card than it looks here. Real or not, I can't really feel bad about a penny card.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3390
Total Spent	$52.37
Per Card	1.545 cents
Change	0 cents

Donuts from Johnny's Trading Spot, Part VI

Several weeks ago, I read a post at Johnny's Trading Spot titled Instant mini collections up for grabs. "Up for Grabs" always gets my attention, so I threw my name into the mix. They were supposed to be randomly assigned, but through a lucky draw and one trade, each of the winners wound up with exactly what they originally wanted most. For me, that was cards with batting donuts.

Part I II III IV V

Last one!

1977 Topps #126 Rod Gilbreath
1979 Topps #165 Frank Taveras
1981 Fleer #545 Keith Hernandez
1981 Topps
#319 Rowland Office
#445 Ellis Valentine
#465 Bill Russell
#558 Barry Bonnell
#723 Bruce Bochte
1982 Fleer #209 Chris Speier

These cards were all "First Row" cards in my collection. I keep my cards stored in bpxes with 3 rows each, sorted by year and set. I always take notice when I acquire a card that is old enough to go in the first row. Right now that's anything 1984 or earlier, though 1984 Topps is getting close to being pushed into row 2. So, in total I've got 12 first row cards here.

1984 Donruss #285 Greg Gross
1984 Fleer #20 John Shelby
1984 Fleer #299 Tim Flannery
1985 Topps #496 Donnie Scott
1985 Topps #647 Rafael Ramirez
1986 Donruss #401 Terry Francona
1986 Fleer #270 Rich Dauer
1986 Fleer #278 Fred Lynn

Thanks again to Johnny's Trading Spot for the kickstart to my batting donut collection.

Zistle Trade #10

This was my first trade with a repeat partner on Zistle, BucCollector. Much like last time, these cards just cost me some Pirate duplicates.

1990 Donruss
#10A Brian Downing DK ERR (Reverse neg- on card front)
#650A Bo Jackson AS ERR (Stat header titled Recent ML Performance)
#700A Checklist 640 - BC-26 ERR (Missing #716)
#659 Nolan Ryan 5000K

I copied the exact description for each card directly from Zistle, since these were all error or variation cards from 1990 Donruss, and I'm not sure I could explain them any more concisely. I'm now about 35 total cards from finishing the full base set with errors, and with the Nolan Ryan and Checklist card, I believe I now have at least one variation of each card in the set.

1982 Fleer #113 George Hendrick
1988 Fleer #27 Vince Coleman
1989 Fleer #285 Bo Jackson
1991 Topps Traded #51T Jeffrey Hammonds USA RC
1992 Studio #96 Tom Pagnozzi
1992 Studio #170 Mark Whiten

How is it possible I've never posted a George Hendrick card before today? He even coached for the Cardinals for awhile. Bo Jackson is one of the few non-Cardinals I like to collect, so that's why his 1989 Fleer card was on my want list. At some point I decided I'd like to at least get the Team USA cards from 1991 Topps Traded, so that's why Jeffrey Hammonds was part of this trade. Pagnozzi and Coleman are obviously Cardinals here, and Mark Whiten joined the team a year after this card. I've still got 14 more current/former/future Cardinals to track down from 1992 Studio, though.

As with all trades, I'm just happy to knock 10 more cards off my gigantic want list, and be rid of some duplicates in the process. 

eBay Wins #116

Today I've got 9 1982 Fleer cards to show off. The corners are a little fuzzy, and what gloss was on the card is a little dulled, but I've learned I can't be too picky on condition on 30-year-old cards, especially those I get for a penny.

1982 Fleer
#58 Bruce Berenyi
#117 Jim Kaat
#172 Scott McGregor
#225 Craig Reynolds
#230 Joe Sambito
#425 John Wathan
#465 Butch Hobson
#558 Hosken Powell
#567 Juan Bonilla

There was just one Cardinal in the bunch, one of the longest-tenured pitchers ever, Jim Kaat.

Since this is my blog, I set the rules around here, and I've decided to change one. In the past I've generally shown my eBay lots as they arrived, resulting in some individual card postings, or sometimes a few that arrived the same day being shown together, and sometimes lots of 50 cards in a post. I wound up with quite a backlog of cards to show, with many different sets all intermixed in each lot. They were all a penny per card, so, under the principle of fungibility, I finally broke down and broke the lots apart, sorting the cards by set.

My plan is to go through the piles one (or maybe more for small piles) set at a time for efficiency's sake, until my eBay posting backlog is back to a manageable size. An advantage of this, too, is that I've been avoiding entering some semi-old cards in my want list, because I knew I had some cards from the early 1980s to present in my "to blog" pile, but I didn't really know which ones. Now I can peruse the 1982 Fleer list and add all of the Cardinals to my want list, for example, and continue to do so with other sets as I organize them.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2846
Total Spent	$46.99
Per Card	1.651 cents

eBay Wins #103

When I look for cheap cards on eBay, I don't often find any that are 30 or more years old. This seller had a bunch of auctions for 1982 Fleer, and I won 18 of them for the minimum bid of a penny each.

1982 Fleer
#384 Vida Blue
#389 Tom Griffin
#390 Larry Herndon
#410 Larry Gura
#412 Mike Jones
#452 Juan Beniquez
#453 Rick Burleson
#459 Ken Forsch
#463 John Harris

1982 Fleer
#472 Steve Renko
#473 Mike Witt
#53\26 Tom Hausman
#527 Rod Hodges
#528 Randy Jones
#529 Mike Jorgensen
#532 Mike Marshall
#533 Lee Mazzilli
#587 Tim Blackwell

Mike Jorgensen was probably the reason I learned what the word Interim meant, when he took over for the fired Joe Torre to finish out 1995 as Cardinals manager, before Tony La Russa arrived in 1996.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2573
Total Spent	$44.39
Per Card	1.725 cents

All-Star Winnings, Part 1

Way back in July 2012, I won a contest at Cards On Cards. The premise was to pick the Cardinals player who would have the biggest impact on the game, determined Sabermetrically. I picked the right player, and got a pile of Cardinals for my trouble. They've been sitting in that same pile, haunting me, for quite some time, so now is the time to show them to you.

1983 Topps Stickers
#135-136 Jim Kaat
#189-190 Dane Iorg
#283 Lonnie Smith

I was unaware of these Topps Stickers, but now I really wish I had known about them. Look at those sweet powder blues. There are plenty of Cardinals in the set, too, because there appears to be a World Series subset.

1982 Fleer #118 Tito Landrum
1985 Topps #113 Tom Herr
1984 Fleer #327 Jeff Lahti
1984 Fleer #660 Whitey Herzog (Checklist)
1986 O-Pee-Chee #94 Tom Herr
1986 O-Pee-Chee #171 Tito Landrum

More powder blues, Tito, Whitey, and O-Pee-Chee. This image pretty much sums up why we collect.

1987 Fleer #297 Ricky Horton

Wrapping up the older cards is current Cardinal broadcaster Ricky Horton, who goes by Rick these days. He's been doing that regularly for 10 years now, but he still feels new to me. Anyone but Jack Buck, Joe Buck, Al Hrabosky, and Mike Shannon probably always will.

eBay Wins #58

In this edition of eBay Wins, I have not 1, not 2, not 3, not eveen 6, but 7 penny cards. Let's have a look from youngest to oldest.

2001 Fleer Futures #195 Jace Brewer

I know MLB draft picks don't always pan out, but I would think a 5th rounder would have made it to the majors. Jace here appears to have finished with baseball in 2007, never reaching the Rays. That's the downside to sets like Fleer Futures, or modern Bowman. Normally you haven't heard of many of the players when the set is made, and odds are you'll never hear of some of them.

2000 Upper Deck MVP #77 Gerald Williams

If I really wanted to stretch, I could call Williams a former Cardinal. We signed him after his release from the Yankees in 2002, and sold his contract to the Reds about a month later. He never played a game for us (or Cincinnati), so I'll leave him off the list.

1997 Bowman #127 Anthony Sanders

1992 Topps Kids #120 Harold Baines

Topps Kids is one of the sets I'd like to complete, though it's not a priority yet. This card brings me to 1/12 of the set, 11 out of 132.

1991 Bowman #278 Mike Jeffcoat

I think Texas should stick to blue hats. This is just a classic look, and it's what I think of when I remember Nolan Ryan pitching for them.

1982 Fleer #186 Warren Cromartie

1982 Fleer #371 Von Hayes

And now we've jumped all the way back to 1982 with these 2 Fleer cards. The photos really are that fuzzy. For some reason I can remember Von Hayes as a player when I started watching baseball in 1992, despite him playing in the AL. I probably can't say that about many guys in the 1982 set. And apparently Warren Cromartie thinks he can bring MLB back to Montreal, or did as of last August.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2086
Total Spent	$39.33
Per Card	1.885 cents