Trading for McGwires

Alex at Chavez Ravining was kind enough to scour my Zistle list for McGwires I didn't have, and in return I sent him some Dodgers for his Topps Team Set project.

1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #2/4
1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #3/4
1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #4/4
1989 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #3/4

I always see Mother's Cookies cards, but I haven't owned any until now. These arrived still in the plastic wrapper that protected them from the cookies, so I figured I'd leave the 25-26 year old plastic intact...for now.

1991 Upper Deck #656 "The Bashing Years"
1995 SP #185 Mark McGwire
1995 SP - Platinum Power #PP13 Mark McGwire
1996 Metal Universe #101 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps #145 Mark McGwire
1997 Topps #62 Mark McGwire

It's kind of funny to me that a 1991 card referred retrospectively to the late 80s as "The Bashing Years", since McGwire's 97-99 total was 193 Home Runs. In his 4+ seasons before 1991, he "only" hit 156. I know it's a reference to the Bash Brothers, but he had plenty of power left for his later years.

1996 Leaf Preferred - Steel #14 Mark McGwire

This card is actually printed on steel. These were inserted 1 per pack in 1996 Leaf preferred, so I'm surprised I didn't own any. That seems like exactly the type of gimmick that would have convince me to buy quite a few packs in 1996. I even only have 2 cards from the main set, both of which came in contest prizes. Maybe my LCS never had any for some reason. The printing is surprisingly high-quality for being on a metal substrate, and I've added a few Cardinals from the set to my want list.

That's all. Thanks to Alex for adding to my McGwire collection!

Giant Pile of Prizes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk, Part 2

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

This part of the prize starts off with a huge pile of 1981 Topps. My collection previously only contained 3 cards from 81 Topps, and only 11 cards from 1981 in all brands.

1981 Topps
#11 Jim Wohlford
#12 Mark Clear
#65 Scott McGregor
#74 Mike Hargrove
#75 Reggie Smith
#87 Rick Camp
#108 Bruce Benedict
#127 Rudy Law
#164 Lamarr Hoyt

1981 Topps
#169 John Mayberry
#172 Gary Woods
#176 Mike Krukow
#207 Ozzie Smith
#252 Victor Cruz
#262 Sammy Stewart
#263 Brian Downing
#268 Jerry Royster
#270 Greg Luzinski

1981 Topps
#283 Billy Sample
#333 Sid Monge
#366 Mike Ramsey
#367 Denny Martinez
#371 Charlie Hough
#376 Ron Reed
#388 Andre Thornton
#398 Ross Baumgarten
#407 Ernie Whitt

1981 Topps
#407 Ernie Whitt
#434 Roger Erickson
#458 Randy Jones
#463 Milt May
#466 Bob Molinaro
#469 Jeff Leonard
#487 Dewey Robinson
#484 Max Venable
#494 Bob Walk

1981 Topps
#506 Phil Huffman
#536 Bob Owchinko (x2)
#542 Larry Bradford
#545 Johnny Grubb
#553 Tim Blackwell
#557 Chris Knapp
#561 Dennis Littlejohn
#581 Roy Howell

1981 Topps
#591 John Lowenstein
#594 Preston Hanna
#597 Rafael Landestoy
#599 Dennis Kinney
#609 Lynn McGlothen
#615 Rick Dempsey
#621 Tom Donohue
#624 Bob Welch
#639 Carney Lansford

1981 Topps
#644 Ramon Aviles (x2)
#645 Rick Reuschel
#652 Jon Montague
#657 Mike Cubbage
#694 Bud Harrelson
#702 George Medich
#705 Ted Simmons
#713 Bill North
#721 Toby Harrah

1981 Topps
#192 Terry Harper / Ed Miller / Rafael Ramirez
#664 Chicago White Sox
#685 San Diego Padres

Some of the cards have some fuzzy corners, or are a bit beat up, but I still wouldn't call 'em junk.

1989 Topps #163 Bob Forsch
1995 Collector's Choice - You Make the Play #37 Lee Smith
1996 Leaf Preferred #73 Mark Grudzielanek
2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces #30 Matt Holliday

To finish up for today, here's a collection of Cardinals in other uniforms.

There's still way too much left in the box...

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.