Donuts from Johnny's Trading Spot, Part IV

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

Shouldn't Friday always be Donut Day?

1990 Fleer
#292 Steve Buechele
#301 Pete Incaviglia
#559 Von Hayes
#560 Tom Herr
1990 Topps
#143 Rafael Belliard
#325 Robby Thompson
1990 Topps Traded
#65T Candy Maldonado
#85T Junior Ortiz

I've never heard whether there's any sort of interesting story behind it, but for some reason 1990's Tom Herr was 1987's Tommy Herr.

1987 Donruss
#140 Tommy Herr
#169 Keith Moreland
#183 Terry Pendleton
#485 Bob Brenly
#622 Dave Henderson
1989 Donruss
#309 Rafael Santana
#346 Mickey Hatcher
#355 Gene Larkin
#484 Wallace Johnson

It still fills me with cognitive dissonance that Terry Pendleton was a Cardinal longer than a member of the Atlanta Braves. I started watching baseball in 1992, so I never saw him play for us firsthand, and I didn't find out that he did until years later.

1990 Upper Deck
#86 Neal Heaton
#148 Ernie Whitt
#232 Ron Gant
#240 John Moses
#289 Eddie Williams
#298 Mike Scioscia
#306 Mike Heath
#419 Tim Laudner

1990 Upper Deck was clearly big on the donut photo on the back of the card, favoring action shots for the most part on the front.

1990 Bowman #332 Jerry Browne
1989 Fleer #219 R.J. Reynolds
1989 Fleer #573 Steve Jeltz
1990 Donruss #456 Glenn Braggs
1990 Donruss #798 Chris James
1991 Leaf #36 Spike Owen.

eBay Wins #146

Today I've got a half dozen 1991 Leafs (Leaves? No, I checked. Pluralizing proper nouns doesn't work that way), picked up for a penny each on eBay.

1991 Leaf
#306 Scott Fletcher
#410 Roger McDowell
#414 Norm Charlton
#416 Chris Nabholz
#424 Dave Rohde
#431 Jamie Quirk

I always like to look up information on the more obscure Cardinals among my somewhat random eBay wins, and Jamie Quirk played just 48 games for the Cardinals, in 1983. He had an 18-year career, but only played 984 games. Over his career, he played every position but Center Field and Pitcher at least once. It seems like you don't see a lot of that anymore, backup catchers playing fielding positions. Occasionally a big hitting starter like Yadier Molina or Buster Posey will get a "day off" - at least for their knees - at first base, or a promising hitter will be outright moved for a new promising catcher, like Joe Torre or Todd Zeile's move to Third Base.

I now have 121 unique cards from the 1991 Leaf set. I already had a copy of Chris Nabholz's card, but the other 5 were new. With only 528 cards in the set, I'm over 22.9% of the way to completion.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3223
Total Spent	$50.73
Per Card	1.574 cents
Change	-0.001 cents

eBay Wins #113

I won 97 auctions for individual 1991 Leaf cards this time around. The seller couldn't find one of them, and asked if he could replace it with another card from the set, and since I was agreeable to that, he sent me two replacement cards. So this bundle is 98 cards for 97 cents. The cards were just curved enough to make them annoying to scan, so I've trimmed this post down to just the 11 Cardinals in the stack.

1991 Leaf
#23 Pat Borders
#45 Chuck Finley
#139 Delino DeShields
#193 Mike Morgan 

1991 Leaf
#226 Bryn Smith
#227 Todd Stottlemyre
#234 Mark Whiten
#268 Danny Jackson

Mark Whiten made me want to be an outfielder, because it was simply amazing to see him throw the ball from to the warning track to home plate on the fly. I'm not sure how many runners he actually threw out, but he certainly made runners think twice about tagging up, much like Molina seems to give would-be base-stealers pause.

1991 Leaf
#350 Danny Cox
#376 Ken Hill
#403 Lance Johnson

These cards really aren't curved that badly when I put them in sleeves, but for some reason it took me way too long to line them up on my scanner.

Before these 98, I had 23 cards from the 1991 Leaf set. There were a few duplicates, but now I have 116 cards from the set.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2821
Total Spent	$46.74
Per Card	1.657 cents

eBay Wins #82

Today's selection is some decidedly common cards, of a 1989 to 1996 vintage. I hope you'll enjoy it.

1989 Donruss #279 Denny Walling
1991 Leaf #291 Jeff Russell
1995 Stadium Club #428 Melvin Nieves
1996 Topps #235 David Yocum

Denny Walling played 18 seasons in MLB, and parts of 3 for the Cardinals, yet I really don't know anything about him. I'm sure any Astros fan knows him, since many more of those 18 years were with Houston.

As for Jeff Russell, the photographer caught his arm at the exact angle that makes me say "That's why I'll never be a pitcher".

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2433
Total Spent	$43.18
Per Card	1.775 cents

eBay Wins #78

Happy All-Star Tuesday everyone. Even though "it counts", I don't really feel like I've got skin in the game, so I just sit back and enjoy the matchups, and root for my Cardinals a little too.

This lot had a fairly diverse number of sets and years for just 8 cards, and gave me one more card in my quest for every Cardinal ever.

1987 Topps #127 Vance Law
1987 Topps #245 Willie Upshaw
1991 Leaf #272 Gerald Perry
1991 Leaf #415 Greg Cadaret
1991 Leaf #429 Alvin Davis
1991 Leaf #479 Mike Flanagan
1991 Leaf #524 Tommy Greene
1995 Stadium Club #434 Ramon Martinez

This Ramon Martinez is my first 1995 Stadium Club card. Back when I was but a young collector, Stadium Club was too "premium" for me, and I tended to focus my meager buying into many packs of a few sets. After a couple of years of intentionally skipping a particular brand, it was hard to break the habit, even when I switched to buying a 1 pack of everything. I don't think I ever actually bought a Stadium Club pack, though I have acquired non-1995 cards through the years.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2411
Total Spent	$42.96
Per Card	1.782 cents