Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXIV

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

Today I'm thankful for prizes, Bernard Gilkey, and Gregg Jefferies. Also family and all that usual stuff too.

1991 Topps Stadium Club #402 Bernard Gilkey
1994 Score #420 Bernard Gilkey
1995 Pinnacle #62 Bernard Gilkey
1996 Donruss #49 Bernard Gilkey
1994 Donruss #9 Gregg Jefferies
1994 Leaf #56 Gregg Jefferies
1994 Studio #51 Gregg Jefferies
1994 Topps - Black Gold #35 Gregg Jefferies
1995 Upper Deck - Trade Exchange #TC5 Gregg Jefferies

I've apparently never posted a 1994 Studio card before, which I find hard to believe, but there it is.

Gilkey was part of the Cardinals when I first started watching baseball. I should really put together some kind of project with members of that team. He's probably better known for his time with the Mets, both due to performance, and being in the biggest market.

1994 Upper Deck
#265 Gregg Jefferies
#406 Bernard Gilkey

I always associate Gregg Jefferies with an episode of Who's the Boss, where Tony was watching highlights from his playing career with the St. Louis Cardinals. I believe it was a game against the Mets, and they didn't show the video, just very fake audio, and Gregg was mentioned as the first basemen.

eBay Wins #110

I won 6 auctions for cards, each stating they were random cards from a given set. The first two were 1986 Topps, and the last 4 were 1994 Topps. That wasn't exactly what I got, but I'm not complaining.

1986 Topps #241 Tony Fernandez
1986 Topps #252 Bobby Castillo
1994 Topps #67 Alex Gonzalez
1994 Topps #555 Chuck knoblauch
1994 Topps - Black Gold #7 Juan Gonzalez
1994 Finest #1 Mike Piazza

The Juan Gonzalez is from 1994 Topps, but it's a Black Gold insert. The Gold and Black Gold from 1992-1994 are some of my favorites, so this was a definite upgrade from some of the possibilities of a "random" card, like, say, Bip Roberts. That last card is from Finest, and I can't imagine why the seller would lump that into a random auction instead of selling it alone. I'd think it'd fetch better than the 1 cent gamble I placed on it. It is missing the protective covering, so maybe it was perceived to be in bad condition. Whatever the reason, I now have a nice shiny Piazza.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2719
Total Spent	$45.73
Per Card	1.682 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...

A Prize For My Prescience, part 6

[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]
[Part 4]
[Part 5]


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.

Here's the remainder of what was sent. Including the cards I meant to include in the other posts. Oops.

1994 Bowman's Best (- Refractor?) X91 Dmitri Young/Frank Thomas

Once again I can't tell if these Bowman's Best cards are Refractors or not. They're awfully shiny if not.

More Ozzies!

1994 Collector's Choice #334 Ozzie Smith/Team Checklist

1994 Upper Deck #360 Ozzie Smith

More McGwires!

1995 Upper Deck #35 Mark McGwire

1994 Collector's Choice #525 Mark McGwire

1994 Upper Deck #67 Mark McGwire

1994 Topps #340 Mark McGwire

1995 Topps #472 Mark McGwire

1994 Score #550 Mark McGwire

Does anyone else just find the look of this photo unnerving? He looks even less proportional than usual.

1996 Topps #145 Mark McGwire

1993 Leaf Mark McGwire

And finally, Nomars!

1995 Upper Deck #10 Nomar Garciaparra

1995 Topps #587 Nomar Garciaparra

I have this card in a factory set, but it's nice to have a loose one to look at or display.

Well, that's the last of it. Thanks to my readers who still read despite my obsessive need to tag all the cards. And of course a big thanks to Ryan for running a contest and sending such a generous prize. I was hoping for maybe a ten or a dozen cards in an envelope, so it was quite a thrill to get a big 200ct box in the mail.

A Prize For My Prescience, part 3

[Part 1]
[Part 2]

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.

Once again, I'll start with some set-completion needs:

2011 Topps Opening Day - Presidential First Pitches #PFP-4 Ronald Reagan

2011 Topps Opening Day - Presidential First Pitches #PFP-6 Woodrow Wilson

2011 Topps Opening Day - Spot the Error #3 Jose Bautista

Clearly, the error is a Canadian team in the American League. Though I guess it'd make even less sense in the National League.

2011 Topps Opening Day - Stadium Lights #UL-6 Chase Utley

2011 Topps Opening Day - Stadium Lights #UL-1 Joe Mauer

2011 Topps Opening Day - Stadium Lights #UL-10 Ryan Braun

2011 Topps Opening Day - Mascots #M-21 Fredbird 

He's missing a bat. This would have been a good Spot the Error card. Oh well.

Here's the full list of 2011 Opening Day Ryan sent:
1 Carlos Gonzalez
24 Andrew Cashner
27 Andrew McCutchen
40 CC Sabathia
45 Desmond Jennings
51 Ben Revere
64 Miguel Tejada
78 Garrett Jones
79 Heath Bell
81 Jay Bruce
103 Jose Bautista
104 Victor Martinez
105 Roy Oswalt
113 Wandy Rodriguez
147 Josh Hamilton
160 Carlos Lee
161 Jose Tabata
168 Tim Lincecum
173 Joakim Soria
176 Jason Heyward
181 Josh Beckett
190 Elvis Andrus

And now, more Ozzies!

1993 Score #562 Ozzie Smith

1994 Topps Stadium Club Team #301 Ozzie Smith

1994 Select #30 Ozzie Smith

1990 Kmart #4 Ozzie Smith

1988 Donruss - Bonus MVPs #BC-22 Ozzie Smith

1992 Donruss #432 Ozzie Smith

1993 Pinnacle - Cooperstown #9 Ozzie Smith

1994 Bowman #424 Ozzie Smith

1993 Upper Deck #146 Ozzie Smith

1994 Topps #320 Ozzie Smith

That's all for this installment. Believe it or not I think there's probably at least 2 posts-worth more cards to go.

A Contest win from The Diamond King

I won a contest at The Diamond King over a month ago.  He was kind enough to offer up some Beat Up Vintage for merely answering a question on his blog. 

1979 Topps

#411 Sisler/Cobb

#415 Brock/Brock - I love that he gets featured twice on 1 card

#430 Dave Parker

1974 Topps

2 Hank Aaron 54-57

4 Hank Aaron 62-65

He sent 2 of each of these!

1973 Topps #400 Gaylord Perry

1972 Topps #37 Carl Yastrzemski

1971 Topps

#180 Al Kaline

#525 Ernie Banks

These were looking pretty rough, so I didn't even pull them out of the sleeve.

1955 Bowman #216 Preacher Roe

Man is this one beat up, but I don't care; it's 56 years old!

1993 Topps - Gold #119 Pedro Munoz

1994 Topps - Black Gold #42 Sammy Sosa

I'm a fan of the Topps Gold and Black Gold, especially from 1992, so these are great additions.

Next up, some Nomars!

2002 Fleer Genuine #93

1999 Upper Deck MVP - Swing Time #S6

1999 Upper Deck HoloGrFX - Starview #S6

1998 Studio #60

I really liked Studio, in fact I have the whole set of 8x10s from 1997

The Vintage was the real prize in the contest, with the Gold and Nomars thrown in since they are some of my favorites.  I really enjoy the 70s cards (and 50s!) because I started collecting in the 90s and don't have a lot of older stuff.  Even though I was a big Nomar fan, my collecting waned around 1999-2000, so those cards nicely fill in some gaps too.

A big thanks to the Diamond King!  And go check out his blog!