Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXXVIII

College football will be here again before we know it IS HERE IS OVER, 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 XXIV XXV XXVI XXVII XXVIII XXIX XXX
XXXI XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV XXXVI XXXVII

Do you ever just feel too lazy to turn a horizontal card sideways?

1998 Topps Stadium Club #48 Delino DeShields
1998 Score Rookie/Traded #RT158 Delino DeShields
2004 Playoff Honors #180 Jim Edmonds
2004 UD Diamond Pro Sigs #87 Jim Edmonds
2008 Upper Deck Goudey #193 Troy Glaus
2009 Topps Allen and Ginter #193 Khalil Greene

Since I didn't really collect from about 2000 until late 2010, a lot of the specialty sets from that time seem very obscure to me. I'd never heard of Upper Deck's "Diamond Pro Sigs", for example. It looks like the base cards have signatures printed on in foil. The only other card from the Playoff Honors set I have is an Albert Pujols, which was also in this prize package.

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXII

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

1996 Topps #232 Matt Morris
1997 Bowman's Best #197 Matt Morris
1998 Donruss #110 Matt Morris
1998 Score Rookie/Traded #RT56 Matt Morris
1998 Score Rookie/Traded #RT203 Ron Gant
1998 Topps #128 Matt Morris
1999 Upper Deck MVP #173 Matt Morris
2002 Topps Total - Award Winners #AW25 Matt Morris

Matt Morris came along just as the Cardinals were starting to get good for the first time in my baseball-watching life. He had several really good years, culminating in a third place finish to Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling for the Cy Young award. He couldn't quite get them to split the vote and sneak in there.

1999 Topps #131 Ron Gant
1998 Upper Deck #203 Ron Gant
1998 Fleer Tradition #380 Ron Gant

Ron Gant was in my first in-person baseball game, although on the Braves at that time. In my head it feels like he was a big part of the team for a long time, but he was only here 3 years, and played 5 seasons afterwards and 9 before.

Donuts from Johnny's Trading Spot, Part II

Several weeks ago, I read a post at Johnny's Trading Spot titled Instant mini collections up for grabs. "Up for Grabs" always gets my attention, so I threw my name into the mix. They were supposed to be randomly assigned, but through a lucky draw and one trade, each of the winners wound up with exactly what they originally wanted most. For me, that was cards with batting donuts.

Part I

I don't have much time to write much today, so just enjoy these donuts, along with an inordinately large number of Dan Walters cards.

1994 Score
#478 Jeff Gardner
#556 Darrell Whitmore
1998 Score Rookie/Traded #RT165 Matt Williams
1995 Collector's Choice Special Edition
#31 Chili Davis
#77 Ray Lankford
#111 Robby Thompson

1993 Topps
#85 Sandy Alomar
#273 Dan Walters
#318 Willie Wilson
#324 Willie Randolph
#326 Gary Varsho
1993 Topps - Gold
#85 Sandy Alomar
#318 Willie Wilson
1993 Stadium Club #175 Dan Walters
1993 Upper Deck #632 Chris Gwynn

1994 Score #60 Lenny Dykstra
1995 Stadium Club Members Only #46 Manny Ramirez
1993 Upper Deck #172 Dan Walters
1995 Studio - Gold Series #44 Lenny Dykstra

Zistle Trade #2

I got this trade proposal within a day or two of my last Zistle trade. They seemed to come out of nowhere, although I had added a lot of cards to both my have list and want list in the preceding weeks. I didn't recognize the name, so I don't think this person is a blogger, but if you are, and you sent me these cards, please let me know.

1990 Fleer #151 Andy Benes

The pride of Evansville, Indiana, Andy Benes. He was born there and went to college there, something I learned when browsing college brochures back in high school. I wonder if they know he's on a SLU Billboard in town.

1992 Score #223 Ray Lankford

1993 Upper Deck #461 Ray Lankford

Ray Lankford should have been even more of a fan favorite than he was. After all, he refused to sign with the Cubs the first time he was drafted, and signed with us the following year. And we love giving the Cubs a hard time.

1992 Fleer #592 Ozzie Smith

1992 Score #590 Ozzie Smith

1994 Pacific #604 Ozzie Smith

I'm surprised there were 3 Ozzie commons I didn't have, but here they are. Pacific is a little more believable, but surely I would have had an opportunity to pick up the Fleer and Score cards sometime in the past.

1996 Topps #211 Nomar Garciaparra

1998 Score Rookie and Traded #RT35 Nomar Garciaparra

And we finish with one of my favorite non-Cardinals, Nomar Garciaparra.

This wasn't a big trade, neither in number of cards nor total "book value", but it fell right in the wheelhouse of my collecting habits. Those are the most satisfying trades. Now I just need to finish entering all of my collection in Zistle, and of course, add more cards to my want list.

Baseball Cards from Bo, Part I

Bo from Baseball Cards Come to Life contacted me about a trade, and he even did all the work picking cards from both my wantlist and tradelist to set up the swap. Here's the first part of my haul.

1990 Bowman
#187 Frank DiPino
#189 Howard Hilton
#192 Ray Lankford
#193 Todd Zeile
#196 Milt Thompson
#198 Vince Coleman

So a funny thing happened, I negotiated this trade while madding was putting together a prize package he obviously pulled mostly from my wantlist, so you may have just seen some of these cards.

1990 Kmart
#10 Doc Gooden
#17 Don Mattingly
#20 Cal Ripken
#21 Jose Canseco
#23 Rickey Henderson
#26 Bret Saberhagen
#27 Jeff Ballard
#31  Fred McGriff
#32 Mark McGwire

1990 Kmart
#33 Tony LaRussa and Roger Craig

Bo knocked out 10 of the 28 I still need for the K-mart set. It's a little cheesey, but I like it. This set sort of borders on oddball, but it does have the familiar little Topps logo there. Of course it doesn't hurt that the set is entirely stars.

1998 Score Rookie and Traded
#RT207 Jeff Suppan

Sometimes I browse Zistle.com for random Cardinal players, and tick the wantlist icon on any of their cards I don't have. I'm sure that's the reason this Suppan showed up on my list. I never even knew he was a Diamondback.

That's all for this round; I'm out of tag space!