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.

1994 Fleer Ultra from the Pack Stash

Today I'm digging back into the pack stash. I've depleted it quite a bit, which is good. I don't want to have too much unopened wax (or foil as the case may be) sitting around hiding my big hits. Of course, there's little risk to that with a pack from 1994. Let's see the cards.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#323 Chad Curtis
#342 Robin Ventura
#351 Manny Ramirez
#366 Wally Joyner
#378 Kevin Seitzer
#392 Pedro Munoz

Manny's the biggest star of that bunch, and I particularly enjoy playing-career-era cards of managers, so Robin Ventura's a good one too. Wally Joyner may get there too one day.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#408 Rickey Henderson
#411 Ruben Sierra
#499 Craig Biggio
#538 Quilvio Veras
#561 Rick White
#567 Tom Pagnozzi

This scan's got two Hall of Famers and two Cardinals, including Rick White, who played for St. Louis at the end of 2002. There's also lifetime Cardinal Tom Pagnozzi, who the reason Todd Zeile could be shifted to third base.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#307 Mike Mussina
#316 Otis Nixon
#404 Bob Wickman
#492 Chris Hammond
Hitting Machines #9 Mike Piazza

I would assume Mike Piazza will make the Hall of Fame, and Mike Mussina has a decent chance, too. That's a pretty good number out of a single pack, except for maybe tiny sets that have nothing but stars. That Hitting Machines card definitely lets you know this is a mid-90s set, if all the gold foil on the base cards didn't make it clear enough.

Pack Stash, Super Mega Jumbo Ultra

...which is the full name of Fleer Ultra before they changed it for showbiz purposes.

I reached back into the pack stash and found a pack of 1994 Fleer Ultra, Series 2. It's a huge pack by today's standards - 15 cards! (Edit: clearly a math degree doesn't prevent counting errors. There are 17 cards.) I got one Cardinal, which is probably a decent ratio, but 2 players I collect.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#310 Chris Sabo
#314 Mike Greenwell
#330 Bo Jackson
#337 Ozzie Guillen
#340 Jack McDowell
#343 Carlos Baerga
#347 Eddie Murray
#367 Brent Mayne

The non-Cardinal I collect is Bo Jackson. He played his last year for the Angels, something I probably won't have gotten right if asked as trivia. I also got former Cardinal Chris Sabo, Hall of Famer Eddie Murray, and future manager Ozzie Guillen.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#374 Pat Listach
#382 Wes Weger
#384 Rick Aguilera
#390 Shane Mack
#399 Xavier Hernandez
#412 Terry Steinbach

No Cardinals here, but the A's were my favorite AL team back when there was no interleague play. Now it seems odd to like any team my favorite team plays against every few years. As a kid, I think the real reason I was drawn to the A's was the uniqueness of a team wearing green, and Terry Steinbach's wearing plenty of it here.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#364 Tom Gordon
#401 Terry Mulholland
Phillies Finest #11 Darren Daulton

I almost didn't catch that the Darren Daulton card was an insert, until I sorted out the cards by number and saw there was no way it could be in Series 2. I'm always learning things I didn't know - or didn't remember - about older sets. That Phillies Finest set, to celebrate their world series appearance I guess, just has 10 cards of John Kruk, and 10 of Darren Daulton. I would have figured there would be a matching insert set for the actual champions, the Toronto Blue Jays, but none seems to exist.

eBay Wins #161

1994 wasn't the strongest Fleer Ultra set. They went a little overboard on the gold foil in the bottom 20% of the card. But, for a penny each, I'll take 2 more cards toward the set.

1994 Fleer Ultra
#321 Brian Anderson
#562 Luis Alicea

These two cards make 23 unique cards out of the 600 card set in my collection. I already had a copy of Luis Alicea's card.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3263
Total Spent	$51.13
Per Card	1.567 cents
Change	0 cents

182 Packs Giveaway, Part II

When I claimed the Cardinals - and Mark McGwire and Todd Stottlemyre - in the pack-per-day giveaway held at TribeCards, I had no idea just how many cards I'd wind up with, and how many different players. So that I can tag all of the sets and Cardinal players, I've broken this up into a series of who knows how many posts. Thanks for all the cards, David.
[Part I]

1994 Fleer Ultra
#565 Bernard Gilkey
#570 Allen Watson

1994 Fleer Ultra
#564 Clint Davis
#566 Ray Lankford
#569 Rick Sutcliffe

Fleer Ultra is one of the sets for which I'd like to complete the full run (1991-2007), someday, but man, is 1994 the ugliest of the bunch or what?

1997 New Pinnacle #103 Royce Clayton

Horizontal cards just mess up all my scanning plans.

1997 New Pinnacle
#67 Ray Lankford
#77 Andy Benes
#177 Dmitri Young
#188 Mark McGwire

Here's a good bunch from New Pinnacle, which is a weird name for a set when there was also a 1997 Pinnacle. Claiming Mark McGwire specifically also paid off here, since he's pictured on the A's. Card companies don't do many real subsets anymore, which made it take me awhile to track down that the "Aura" card was really just a base card.

2005 Topps #124 Mike Matheny

To finish off these sets, here's a nice action shot of current Cardinals manager Mike Matheny. It's hard to believe he'd be managing the team just 7 years later.

Pi Day 2013

Last year, I brought you Felix Pie - all 2 cards of his I owned at the time. And yes, I know the pronunciation is not the same as pi, but I'm a simple man, seeking out cheap laughs. This year, I hereby declare.

Pete Incaviglia Day

That's right, Pete Incaviglia. Did you know that - at least according to baseball reference's player listings - he's the only MLB player in history with the initials P.I.? I bet you didn't, nor did you care...nor do you care now. But here's ol' Pete anyway.

1990 Donruss #48 Pete Incaviglia

1991 Donruss #464 Pete Incaviglia

1992 Upper Deck #271 Pete Incaviglia

1993 Topps - ToppsGold #7 Pete Incaviglia

1994 Fleer Ultra #246 Pete Incaviglia

It was easy to choose the scans to use, because these are the only 5 Incaviglia cards I have, though I have multiple copies of the 1991 Donruss.

But wait, there's more.

1997 Topps #550 Pete Incaviglia

I don't own this card, but it won me a few other cards in the 2011 Prime 9 redemption set, when I picked it out based on a small cropped piece.

Now, everyone go enjoy some pie.

eBay Wins #55

Maybe I should just start calling these Penny Stocks or something. Although if a 1994 Fleer Ultra card isn't demanding more than a penny 19 years later, I don't think it's going much higher, unless I can corner the market like the guys in Trading Places.  Today you get 2 scans, because I couldn't tell the front from the back until I realized that I'm an idiot and the lower numbers are clearly the front. That's ok though, because pictured faintly in the background is former Cardinal Andy Van Slyke.

1994 Fleer Ultra #598 Checklist 402-498 Andy Van Slyke

1994 Fleer Ultra #598 Checklist 402-498 Andy Van Slyke

My per-card average keeps creeping downward with every penny card I buy. I don't normally bid on the checklists I see, but I did this time because this one featured a former Cardinal. Also, this card lets me see that I obviously need to add another card to my Todd Stottlemyre wantlist, #440.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2077
Total Spent	$39.24
Per Card	1.889 cents