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.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part VII

Part I II III IV V VI

It occurs to me I haven't been doing the kind thing and actually linking to Junior Junkie's blog, for you, or for the search engine robots to boost him up.

I've got more McGwires today, slowly but surely approaching the end of his A's years.

1994 Donruss #335 Mark McGwire
1995 Donruss #460 Mark McGwire (x2)
1995 Score #377 Mark McGwire
1995 Topps Stadium Club #289 Mark McGwire (x2)

I had neither the 1995 Donruss or Stadium Club cards of McGwire, and now I have 2. It's always good to have a backup.

1995 Pinnacle Zenith #71 Mark McGwire
1995 Upper Deck #35 Mark McGwire
1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #710 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps - Profiles #AL18 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps Finest #B162 Mark McGwire
1996 Upper Deck #151 Mark McGwire

I've seen those Oakland Oaks throwbacks on other cards before. They're a little odd on the typically green-and-gold A's.

1995 Pinnacle #196 Mark McGwire
1996 Sportflix #117 Mark McGwire

I needed both of these cards, which both show the best thing you can on a horizontal card of a slugger, the full swing extension.

Some 2 By 3 Cards

Wait a minute, aren't standard cards 2.5" by 3.5"? 2 by 3 Heroes is a little short each way, but that's OK,  because he gave me free stuff! First, the two from the very complex part of the contest, in which I had to choose the two cards I wanted. I picked two from 2011 Heritage to bring me a little closer to finishing that set.

2011 Topps Heritage - Then and Now #TN-8 Juan Marichal / CC Sabathia

2011 Topps Heritage - #470 Carl Crawford SP

I'm actually showing off two packages at once here, as Jeff also sent me a few cards for being extremely pedantic in the earlier part of his contest. He searched my wantlist and spotted some holes in the Lineage set.

2011 Topps Lineage
#2 Derek Jeter
#24 Tsuyoshi Nishioka
#26 Grady Sizemore
#37 Justin Upton
#107 Chad Billingsley

He also found a Kimball Champions card I was missing. I'm putting together this set extremely slowly, but maybe I'll finish it off one day.

2011 Topps - Kimball Champions #KC-38 Roy Oswalt

And here were some Cardinals thrown in for fun, McGwire and Ozzie, which I always appreciate.

1999 Upper Deck #518 Mark McGwire

2005 Upper Deck All Star Classics - #94 Ozzie Smith

1995 Upper Deck - Electric Diamond #60 Ozzie Smith

1996 Leaf Preferred - #31 Ozzie Smith

Thanks again to Jeff at 2 by 3 Heroes for the contests.

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.