Three Contests from Chavez Ravining

Alex at Chavez Ravining is running one of his contests again, and you have until Monday evening to go comment to enter. 3 different people will each win one Team USA relic card.

Now for the other two contests, those are in the past. That is to say, I won two consecutive contests at Chavez Ravining. The first contest was an effort to get Dodger Penguin up to 50 followers, which was achieved. I got my pick of Alex's trade bait, and I went with a shiny Pujols.

2013 Topps Chrome
1972 Refractors #72C-AP Albert Pujols

A week later, I won again! This time the prize was a nice relic from 2014 Topps of Ben Zobrist.

2014 Topps
Trajectory Relics #TR-BZ Ben Zobrist

At least Alex saved some postage by sending the two cards together. In both contests, I also won some Chavez Code points, which I'll have to get around to redeeming one of these days.

Also in this package, Alex sent the 4th McGwire card from the Mother's Cookies set. He sent the other 3 in our previous trade.

1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #1/4

As a Midwesterner, these are tough to find locally, since Mother's Cookies never quite made it this far. I'm keeping this one in its original wrapping too, since I can see both sides.

Thanks to Alex for the contests!

Trading for McGwires

Alex at Chavez Ravining was kind enough to scour my Zistle list for McGwires I didn't have, and in return I sent him some Dodgers for his Topps Team Set project.

1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #2/4
1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #3/4
1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #4/4
1989 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #3/4

I always see Mother's Cookies cards, but I haven't owned any until now. These arrived still in the plastic wrapper that protected them from the cookies, so I figured I'd leave the 25-26 year old plastic intact...for now.

1991 Upper Deck #656 "The Bashing Years"
1995 SP #185 Mark McGwire
1995 SP - Platinum Power #PP13 Mark McGwire
1996 Metal Universe #101 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps #145 Mark McGwire
1997 Topps #62 Mark McGwire

It's kind of funny to me that a 1991 card referred retrospectively to the late 80s as "The Bashing Years", since McGwire's 97-99 total was 193 Home Runs. In his 4+ seasons before 1991, he "only" hit 156. I know it's a reference to the Bash Brothers, but he had plenty of power left for his later years.

1996 Leaf Preferred - Steel #14 Mark McGwire

This card is actually printed on steel. These were inserted 1 per pack in 1996 Leaf preferred, so I'm surprised I didn't own any. That seems like exactly the type of gimmick that would have convince me to buy quite a few packs in 1996. I even only have 2 cards from the main set, both of which came in contest prizes. Maybe my LCS never had any for some reason. The printing is surprisingly high-quality for being on a metal substrate, and I've added a few Cardinals from the set to my want list.

That's all. Thanks to Alex for adding to my McGwire collection!