Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXIX

College football will be here again before we know it IS HERE, 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

We're starting to run out of bowls, but I've still got some cards to show. I'm doing decently in this year's contest, too. I'll finish today in the lead, but not the top Max Points Possible, so I'm not quite in control of my own destiny.

All of today's cards are from a fun time in collecting and in my baseball-watching life. 1993-1995 weren't great years for the Cardinals, but for whatever reason, it's when I really started getting deep into baseball despite their struggles.

1993 Fleer - Rookie Sensations #RSA9 Mike Perez
1993 Fleer Ultra #111 Mike Perez
1993 Fleer Ultra #462 Rheal Cormier
1994 Leaf #110 Rheal Cormier
1994 Leaf #130 Mike Perez
1994 Upper Deck #357 Mike Perez

That Leaf Rheal Cormier is in rough shape. It was actually what I would consider packing material, stuck on the outside of one of the bricks of cards to protect the good stuff within. I'll still throw it into my collection, but noted with it's bad condition so I don't accidentally try to trade it off to an unhappy partner.

1994 Upper Deck #422 Rheal Cormier
1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #229 Mike Perez
1995 Leaf #351 Tom Henke
1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #196 Tom Henke
1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #199 Mike Perez
1996 Donruss #320 Tom Henke

Tom Henke's glasses always made him look old to me. He came to the Cardinals for his final, age 37 year. He even made the All-Star game in 1995, and he wasn't the only player from the team, since Ozzie Smith also went. (I have this theory that having 2 players from a given team in the All-Star game legitimizes both of their appearances, whereas a lone player could arguably be below All-Star caliber, but the best on his team at a position the league needs for the game, and so make one despite not really "deserving" it.)

1994 Upper Deck #529 Alan Benes
1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #464 Tom Pagnozzi
1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #481 Rheal Cormier
1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #641 Alan Benes

To finish off, I have some Alan Benes and Tom Pagnozzi cards, left out of the previous posts to feature those two, and one last Rheal Cormier, who is wearing 52 on all the cards in this post, but later switched to my favorite jersey number, 37.

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part IV

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 II III

1992 Fleer Ultra - All-Rookies #10 Donovan Osborne
1992 Studio #95 Donovan Osborne
1992 Upper Deck - Scouting Report #SR19 Donovan Osborne
1993 Fleer - Rookie Sensations #10 Donovan Osborne
1994 Fleer Ultra #269 Donovan Osborne
1994 Fleer Ultra #563 Brian Barber
1994 Fleer Ultra #265 Rich Batchelor
1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #24 Brian Barber
1996 Pinnacle #167 Brian Barber

Once again I'm always surprised how many Cardinals I'm missing from relatively common sets. These were all new to my collection, even the Donovan Osbornes that I was sure I've seen before.

1992 Upper Deck #702 Brian Jordan / Donovan Osborne / Mark Clark

Horizontal cards are always a pain when trying to put like cards together because there's no nice way to scan them together. So this one stands here alone, staring you down like these three menacing Cardinals rookies. The 1992 team wasn't really that good, though.

eBay Wins #155

Today I've got one single card from 1993 Fleer, purchased for a penny on eBay. This one was actually part of a larger lot, but I like to split them up by set.

1993 Fleer #154 Will Clark

Players who get traded to the Cardinals for a partial season in the twilight of their careers just give me one more player to collect, since I like to have any card of a player who ever played for the Cardinals. With Will Clark being a 6-time all star, he has many cards to chase down through the years, especially the junk wax years. But, I think the only one I have picturing him as a Cardinal is from the Tis the Season box, which I posted just a few days ago. That's based on a cursory Zistle search of "Cards I Have" for "Will Clark" and "Cardinals". I get a lot of Jack Clark and Mark Clark, but only one of Will. He finished his career rather strongly in St. Louis - a 1.081 OPS in 51 games according to Baseball Reference -  but still opted to retire at the end of the 2000 season.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3254
Total Spent	$51.04
Per Card	1.569 cents
Change	0 cents

Giant Pile of Prizes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk, Part 5

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

1999 Pacific
#100 Wil Cordero
#102 Jaime Navarro
#337 Lou Collier
#141 Dante Bichette
#159 Frank Catalanotto
#165 Seth Greisinger

1999 Pacific
#309 Ryan Christenson
#343 Abraham Nunez
#365 Ken Caminiti
#377 Rich Aurilia
#438 Jose Cruz Jr.
#446 Pat Hentgen

Back in the mid-to-late 90s, I used to buy a different pack of cards each week, which is about all I could afford. Typically it'd be whatever new release Sportscards Magazine convinced me I should get. If multiple new sets came out in a week, sometimes I'd buy two, and sometimes I'd just have to wait and get caught up. That buying started tailing off in 1999, which I can tell because while I have a few cards from many different sets in 1999, I don't have any Pacific. I'm sure these weren't a high-priced set, which is the only other reason I would have skipped them. But now, I've got a pack or more, with the 12 above and one in the next scan.

1999 Pacific #450 Woody Williams
1997 Fleer - Million Dollar Moments #31 Bob Gibson
1996 Pinnacle #305.3 Paul Molitor
1995 Topps - Cyberstats #140 Darrin Fletcher
1994 Collector's Choice #649 Terrell Wade
1993 Fleer - All-Stars #AL4 Pat Listach

I figured I'd throw the remaining horizontal cards into this scan with the Woody Williams. I've got so many of the Million Dollar Moments cards that it's frustrating that I'll never be able to complete the set. At best I can hope for the 45 commons out of the 50 that were needed to collect the grand prize. With regard to that Paul Molitor card, I like the decimal number. Maybe Topps could implement this for their silly SP variations. The reason here is that he hit .3053 for the season, and Jeff Bagwell hit .3056. Other players who hit from .300 to .308 were featured on cards 300-308, but I guess Pinnacle couldn't decide on which .305 guy to leave out.

1995 Bazooka #87 Chili Davis
1995 Stadium Club #166 Brent Gates
1996 Upper Deck #232 Alex Ochoa

Finally we have a few more random singles out of the box. I want to love the Bazooka set, but the design is almost too simplistic. Sometimes less is less. Also, this is my second Alex Ochoa card from this prize pack.

We're finally starting to empty the box...

A Prize For My Prescience, part 5

[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]



Ryan at The Great Orioles Autograph Project sent me a whole bunch of cards for picking the Cardinals to win the World Series, and it is of course my duty to show you the cards and link to his blog.

In no particular order, some Mark McGwires!

Did you know Mark appeared in no less than 6 cards in 1993 Upper Deck? It might have been more, but I'm sure not going to go look it up. I do have evidence of 6 though, all sent in this package.

1993 Upper Deck #566 Mark McGwire

1993 Upper Deck #493 Award Winners - Mark McGwire

1993 Upper Deck - On Deck #D18 Mark McGwire

1993 Upper Deck - Future Heroes #60 Mark McGwire

I have other cards from this Future Heroes insert set. I must say I don't really get it, as it features current stars. Maybe it should have been Future Legends or something.

1993 Upper Deck #420 Checklist/Mark McGwire

There's a nice play at the plate in the background in case you can't see it. Mark appears to have decided to hit the catcher in the face rather than slide into home.

1993 Upper Deck #49 Bash Brothers Ruben Sierra/Mark McGwire

I think we could have let the Bash Brothers thing go when Jose Canseco left.

1988 Bazooka #13 Mark McGwire

Here's another oddball set I like. At just 22 cards, I think 1988 Bazooka is going to go in my want list as well.

1988 Rite-Aid Team MVP's #23 Mark McGwire

This one will probably not go on my want list. If nothing else, because of the misplaced apostrophe in MVP's.

1995 Collector's Choice #130 Mark McGwire

1995 Collector's Choice - You Make the Play #25 Mark McGwire

1995 Collector's Choice Special Edition #45 Mark McGwire

1993 Stadium Club #478 Mark McGwire

1993 Fleer #710 Mark McGwire

The back of this card refers to Mark as the "Lone Basher" now than Jose Canseco left. Fleer must not have gotten the memo about Ruben Sierra's promotion.

1994 Fleer #268 Mark McGwire

I always though Mark had squinty eyes for a baseball player, which you can really see in this card. Maybe they just caught him after contact here, but he always looked like he was struggling to see in St. Louis.

That's it for today. I'll wrap up the end of this package in post #6.

Free Cards from Cards on Cards

I've been holding off on this post while I try to get my scanner to work, but I'm irritated with it, so you get photos with trapezoidal cards!


Free? That's right, Cards on Cards ran a Free Fleer Group Break a while back.  The boxes were 1995 Fleer Update, 1993 Fleer Ultra Series 2, and the1993 Fleer flagship set.  Since it was free, I figured I had nothing to lose, and jumped in to take the Cardinals with the caveat that I was only getting what he didn't want.  When the time came for the 2nd team, I took the A's, who were my second favorite team for a long time.  As you'll see, it paid off with some PC hits.

First up, the packing material:

I had actually completely forgotten about this break, even though I read all the posts about the Fleer box breaks. So when I opened the envelope and saw Sandy Alomar facing me, I thought I had received someone else's trade package.  I then realized some beat up junk wax was being used to protect the outside cards.  After opening the first team bag I remembered the break and excitedly tore through the stacks.

1993 Fleer

All cards included:
124 Rheal Cormier (2)
125 Bernard Gilkey (2)
126 Felix Jose (2)
127 Ray Lankford (2)
128 Bob McClure
129 Donovan Osbourne (2)
130 Tom Pagnozzi (2)
131 Geronimo Pena (2)
132 Mike Perez (3)
133 Lee Smith
134 Bob Tewksbury
135 Todd Worrell (2)
136 Todd Zeile
290 Lance Blankenship
291 Mike Bordick (2)
292 Jerry Browne
293 Dennis Eckersley
294 Rickey Henderson (2)
295 Vince Horsman (2)
296 Mark McGwire (2)
297 Jeff Parrett (2)
298 Ruben Sierra (2)
299 Terry Steinback (2)
300 Walt Weiss (2)
301 Bob Welch (2)
302 Willie Wilson (2)
303 Bobby Witt
Rookie Sensations: 9 of 10 Mike Perez

1993 Fleer Ultra

All cards included:

460 Rene Arocha
461 Brian Barber
462 Rheal Cormier (2)
463 Gregg Jeffries
465 Omar Olivares
466 Geronimo Pena
467 Allen Watson
603 Scott Brosius
604 Storm Davis
605 Eric Fox (2)
606 Goose Gossage (2)
607 Scott Hemond
608 Dave Henderson
609 Mark McGwire
610 Mike Mohler
611 Edwin Nunez (2)
612 Kevin Seitzer (2)
613 Ruben Sierra (2)
Dennis Eckersley Career Highlights #1

1995 Fleer Update

All cards included:
U-70 Jim Corsi (2)
U-71 Mike Harkey (2)

U-72 Dave Stewart (2)

U-73 Todd Stottlemyre (2)
U-153 Allen Battle

U-157 John Frascatore (2)

U-159 Tom Henke

Diamond Tribute 7 of 10 Rickey Henderson (2)

There were quite a few of my favorite players in there, including A's who later became Cardinals (McGwire, Eckersley, Stottlemyre).

Thanks for a great group break, especially for the price!  I'll definitely have to send some extra stuff in our next massive trade.