Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXXIX

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 XXXVII XXXVIII

And now for a few oddballs.

1987 Fleer - Stickers Baltimore/Atlanta with Cardinals backing (x2)
1988 Fleer - Stickers Chicago White Sox/St. Louis with Busch Stadium
1991 Studio #133 Joe Carter
1992 Score #433 Cal Ripken, Jr.

There were actually two of the 1987 Fleer Stickers, so I decided to scan the back of one. There was only one 1988, but it looks pretty much like 1987 with a green background on the front. On the back you see Busch Stadium, which is now often called Busch Stadium II since the Cardinals are now in their third stadium by that name.

The Carter and Ripken cards were more packing material. Those are two pretty big stars to be throwaway cards, but there's a slight crease in them, and the sets are pretty common ones to begin with. Carter also played for Baltimore, so I might pass these two along to a friend of mine for his kid, so he can try to indoctrinate him into his Orioles fandom.

Zistle Trade #23

This Zistle trade was mostly from the junk wax era, but I haven't quite filled all those gaps in my collection, so there's a smattering of them on my want list. Oddly enough, my trading partner wanted some "junk" in return, so I figured, why not. I'm too lazy to look it up now, but I think it was mostly 89 or 91 Donruss.

1988 Topps #642 Bob Dernier
1990 Score #233 Ken Hill
1991 Fleer #633 Bernard Gilkey
1991 Fleer #636 Felix Jose
1991 Fleer #640 Jose Oquendo
1991 Fleer #645 Lee Smith
1991 Topps #112 Frank DiPino
1992 Fleer #589 Gerald Perry
1992 Score #544 Bernard Gilkey

One of these things is not like the others, and that is Bobby Dernier. The others are all Cardinals, and actually mostly guys I remember playing for the team during my childhood, except for Frank DiPino. As for Bobby, I added that to my list awhile back because he was the favorite player of a good friend of mine when he was growing up. I was looking through my collection for a card of his to perhaps try to get autographed through the mail, but I didn't have any, and thus I added a few I should be able to get cheaply to my want list. Now I just need to track down an address for Mr. Dernier, or figure out who he's working for.

1992 Donruss #427 Bobby Bonilla
1992 Donruss #442 John Smoltz
1992 Donruss #564 Deion Sanders
1992 Donruss #610 Bobby Bonilla

I recently purchased a 1992 Donruss Series 1 set, which actually quashed the first trade this particular trader proposed to me. He did it the day after I bought the set, before I thought to remove the series 1 cards from my want list. Luckily my oversight didn't frustrate him, and we worked out a deal removing those cards. Here are the series 2 cards I still needed. If you're not a Cardinals fan, you may have forgotten that Smoltz and Bonilla both finished their careers in St. Louis. It wasn't very long for either one, but I still consider them players I collect. I've waffled about whether I should start collecting Deion Sanders cards. He'd go well with my other two-sport-star collection target, Bo Jackson. He was also a part of the very first baseball game I ever attended. I'll probably complete this base set eventually anyway, so I went ahead and added it to my wantlist, and now I have it.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part II

Part I

Next up from Junior Junkie: More Bo Jackson.

1990 Stadium News #BJ Bo Jackson
1991 Topps #600 Bo Jackson
1991 Upper Deck #545 Bo Jackson
1991 Upper Deck #744 Bo Jackson
1992 Donruss #470 Bo Jackson
1992 Score #361 Bo Jackson

That first card has no copyright notice on it, but 1989 Stats, so I assumed it was a 1990. A reverse Google image search led me to find that the set is called Stadium News, which I should have assumed, and I found several other cards from the set in Zistle.

1992 Topps #290 Bo Jackson
1992 Triple Play #164 Bo Jackson
1992 Upper Deck #555 Bo Jackson
1993 Leaf #316 Bo Jackson
1993 Topps #400 Bo Jackson
1994 Sportflics 2000 Rookie/Traded #150 Bo Jackson

These cards have brought me to a decision. I must find a black White Sox jersey T-shirt with Jackson #8 on it.

Tis The Season Winnings, Part V

Sometimes, I procrastinate posting and sorting some cards. Normally I don't pay too much attention to how long a particular item has been sitting on my desk, but given that this one was the Tis the Season contest from 2013, I've probably had it in my possession for a little over a year now. But, even with the long delay, I still want to throw Jeff at 2 by 3 Heroes some referral traffic while I show off my prize.
Part I II III IV

Today I've got even more of the miscellaneous Cardinals, Red Sox, and Yankees.

1992 Leaf #152 Scott Sanderson
1992 Score #420 Kevin Morton
1992 Stadium Club #522 Scott Terry
1992 Topps #724 Kevin Morton
1993 Select #142 Kevin Maas
1994 Collector's Choice #592 Jeff Reardon
1994 Collector's Choice #550 Roger Clemens
1998 Pinnacle #54 Hideki Irabu
1996 Topps #131 Tom Pagnozzi

In somewhat of an odd coincidence, I just posted another copy of the Score Kevin Morton card last week, and now I have a second copy of it, and another Morton.

Scott Terry wore my favorite number with the Cardinals, #37, a number which has almost always belonged to a pitcher on the team since Keith Hernandez left in 1983.

1992 Topps #498 Gerald Perry
1994 Upper Deck #223 Brian Jordan
1994 Collector's Choice #296 Bob Wickman
1994 Collector's Choice #432 Melido Perez

Here we have the horizontal cards from this bunch, two Yankees pitchers, and two Cardinals. Perry's stats don't look all that impressive from his Cardinals years, but I remember him as a key bench player. And Brian Jordan was one of the most talented athletes I've ever seen play in person. He could hit, steal, and field pretty well too. I even bought a Jordan jersey t-shirt in late 1998, which naturally was right before he ended up leaving for the Braves. I still have that shirt and wear it from time to time, along with my #4 Fernando Vina I picked up at a thrift shop looong after that number was handed over to Yadier Molina.

eBay Wins #154

Let's finish off 1992 and have a fresh start in my next eBay post with 1993 cards, shall we? I've got a Score, a Topps, and a Topps Gold Winner

1992 Score #420 Kevin Morton
1992 Topps #183 Brent Mayne
1992 Topps Gold Winner #37 Luis Polonia

Kevin Morton only played in MLB in 1991, throwing in 16 games. Brent Mayne and Luis Polonia had considerably longer careers. But regardless of the player pictured, these 1992 cards are my favorites. They're the first cards I bought in packs, and the first factory set I bought, too. I can remember stopping at the IGA each Sunday morning, and convincing my parents most of those weeks to buy me a pack of Topps cards, while they had them in stock. Those trips alone probably got me about 20 packs per year through 1994 or so, when I started visiting a card shop for most of my cardboard buying. Since 1992 Topps were my first cards, the Gold cards were my first inserts. Thus, I still dream of one day having a full 792 card run of the Gold parallels. These Gold "Winner" cards will probably delay the effort a bit, or at least cause me to build the most subtle frankenset ever, comprised of cards with or without the Winner mark.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3253
Total Spent	$51.03
Per Card	1.569 cents
Change	0 cents

Giant Pile of Prizes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk, Part 6

Sometimes when I win a contest, I set the prize aside until I have time to fully rummage through all of it. In this case I won a contest back in late September, and I think the "Small Flat Rate Box" arrived by early October. I opened it immediately, but it's been sitting on my desk, too daunting of task to sort, since then. I finally felt the need to dive into it, and give jaybarkerfan his proper thank you post.

Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Today I've got 10 singles and a pair of 1992 Score to show you.

1989 Upper Deck #373 Mike Henneman
1993 Conlon TSN #801 Sad Sam Jones
1991 Fleer #281 Joe Bitker
1991 ProCards #2225 Kenny Lofton
1991 Score 100 Superstars #44 Dave Parker
1992 Score #47 Travis Fryman

1991 Fleer is starting to appeal to me. Maybe it'll be the next classically ugly set I collect after 1990 Donruss. Also, that Dave Parker is from the same set with misplaced players I mentioned back in part 1, but this time I think Superstar is a fair label.

1992 Score #83 Jose Rijo
1993 Classic Best #136 Rick Gorecki
1993 Select Rookie/Traded #89T Kevin Roberson
1994 Donruss - MVPs #3 Jose Rijo
1994 Topps - Topps Gold #705 Jose Rijo
1995 Bowman #259 Marc Newfield

This stack was heavy on Jose Rijo. For those of you trivia buffs, he's in the elite club of players who returned to the game after receiving at least one hall of fame vote. Injuries kept him out of the game for 5 full seasons, enough for him to qualify for the ballot, but he returned for parts of 2 more seasons afterward.

There's just a little bit left in the box...

Zistle Trade #2

I got this trade proposal within a day or two of my last Zistle trade. They seemed to come out of nowhere, although I had added a lot of cards to both my have list and want list in the preceding weeks. I didn't recognize the name, so I don't think this person is a blogger, but if you are, and you sent me these cards, please let me know.

1990 Fleer #151 Andy Benes

The pride of Evansville, Indiana, Andy Benes. He was born there and went to college there, something I learned when browsing college brochures back in high school. I wonder if they know he's on a SLU Billboard in town.

1992 Score #223 Ray Lankford

1993 Upper Deck #461 Ray Lankford

Ray Lankford should have been even more of a fan favorite than he was. After all, he refused to sign with the Cubs the first time he was drafted, and signed with us the following year. And we love giving the Cubs a hard time.

1992 Fleer #592 Ozzie Smith

1992 Score #590 Ozzie Smith

1994 Pacific #604 Ozzie Smith

I'm surprised there were 3 Ozzie commons I didn't have, but here they are. Pacific is a little more believable, but surely I would have had an opportunity to pick up the Fleer and Score cards sometime in the past.

1996 Topps #211 Nomar Garciaparra

1998 Score Rookie and Traded #RT35 Nomar Garciaparra

And we finish with one of my favorite non-Cardinals, Nomar Garciaparra.

This wasn't a big trade, neither in number of cards nor total "book value", but it fell right in the wheelhouse of my collecting habits. Those are the most satisfying trades. Now I just need to finish entering all of my collection in Zistle, and of course, add more cards to my want list.

eBay Wins #54

I picked up these half-dozen cards on eBay for a penny each. Neither my record-keeping nor memory is good enough to tell you whether that was one rather random auction, or 6 different ones, though.

1986 Topps #209 Randy Ready
1986 Topps #314 Frank Pastore
1986 Topps #388 Dickie Noles
1986 Topps #433 Chris Codiroli
1990 Topps #638 Jeff Montgomery
1992 Score #626 Mark Leiter

I hope to put together the full 1986 Topps set one day, though it's not at the top of my list. Over the years it's gone from ugly to classic or even iconic in my eyes. I'm definitely no graphic design expert, of course.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2076
Total Spent	$39.23
Per Card	1.89 cents

March Radness Win, Part IV

[Part I]
[Part II]
[Part III]

I "won" a prize, in that I managed to have the worst bracket of all in Cards on Cards March Radness contest. I legitimately tried to win, in fact I didn't even realize there was this consolation prize until the contest was over, because I stopped scoreboard watching about 2 rounds into the tournament because I did so poorly to start off. The good thing about winning cards from a fellow Cardinals fan is that he can't resist dumping a whole bunch of his Cardinal duplicates on me, which I'm more than happy to take.

That's right, there's still more cards to go in this series. Kerry outdid himself on this prize.

1994 Fleer Extra Bases
#356 Rene Arocha
#359 Gregg Jefferies
#362 Mike Perez
#364 Bob Tewksbury
#366 Todd Zeile

This is a cool set, but if you've ever seen them, you know these aren't minis, these are larger than usual cards. Without doing any research or measuring at all, I'd say they're 1 inch taller than a regular card, so 2.5" by 4.5". Does anybody have any good ideas for how to store these? The best idea I have off the top of my head is storing them in a 500 count box front to back instead of side to side, but I only own 5 of them now. Surely I can't get ambitious again and put another set on my wantlist when I only have 5, can I?

1991 Score #677 Donovan Osborne

My favorite Donovan Osborne memory was at a game when he came to bat with the bases loaded. I told my Dad it'd be cool if he hit a Grand Slam. My Dad laughed, and Donovan delivered. Thanks to baseball-reference.com, I just learned I witnessed his only career Home Run. That's kinda cool.

1992 Score #516 Geronimo Pena

I don't remember as much about Geronimo Pena, except he was a solid platoon second basemen for a few years.

1992 Baseball Enquirer - Unopened Pack

Here's another unopened pack. I don't know anything about this set, but it looks to be unlicensed, a gag they explain away by calling them "Mystery Interview" cards. That's obviously a certain famous gambler on the back betting his card will be worth a fortune. I haven't opened this pack yet, so maybe I'll save it for the same day I open the 1988 Donruss pack.