Red Cardboard's Mostly Reds Cardboard Draft, Part 1

A long, long time ago, Red Cardboard held a draft, and I received my cards, looked through them, and put them in my "to post" pile. I'm going to have to implement a queue rather than a pile, I think, or else some stuff's just going to never get posted.

As a Reds fan, most of the prizes offered were Reds, but I managed to find the former/future Cardinals in disguise, along with cards from a few sets I just like. Here are the first few cards from the results.

1970 Topps Super #31 Vada Pinson
1975 Topps #623 Rookie Infielders (Phil Garner, Keith Hernandez, Bob Sheldon, Tom Veryzer)
1977 Topps #23 Dan Driessen
1993 Denny's #22 Joe Oliver
1996 Metal Universe #149 Barry Larkin
1997 Bowman - International #76 Brett Tomko
1999 Fleer Ultra - Gold Medallion #10G Brett Tomko
1999 Fleer Ultra - Gold Medallion #146G Dmitri Young
2003 Upper Deck Victory #29 Adam Dunn

I envisioned this looking a bit more like a collage and a bit less like a poorly played round of Tetris, but what can I say? That Vada Pinson really threw off everyone else. It's got some markings on it, but it's my first card from 1970 Topps Super. Since I keep the bulk of my cards in standard sized boxes, I now even more urgently need to implement some sort of plan for oversized items, much like a library does.

Two other nice vintage cards are Keith Hernandez in his pre-mustache days, and a rough looking Dan Driessen. All 3 of the oldest cards features guys who made at least a stop with the Cardinals, along with Dmitri Young and Brett Tomko. For some reason I always think Joe Oliver was a Cardinal too, but he wasn't, and I can't figure out who I must be confusing him with.

There are plenty more, but as usual, the blogger label limit tells me when I've had enough for one day.

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!