A Season Starting PWE, Part II

Way back in March, Stealing Home sent out some PWEs to celebrate the start of the season. I saw a few others post theirs at the time, but I'm just now getting to mine.

Part I

This isn't one of my giant 40-part series posts, since, after all, it was just a PWE. Today I have the vertical cards, just because that's a nice way to split up the scan.

2014 Topps #157 Matt Adams
2015 Topps #261 Lance Lynn
2015 Topps #286 Trevor Rosenthal
2016 Topps #46 Jhonny Peralta
2016 Topps #106 Jordan Walden
2016 Topps Chrome #132 Stephen Piscotty
2016 Gypsy Queen #215 Matt Adams
2017 Topps #99 Michael Wacha

The danger of waiting too long to post some cards of current players is that if your team hits a swoon, they might not all be there anymore. Matt Adams went to Atlanta when Freddie Freeman got hurt, and Jhonny Peralta was just released. Jordan Walden has been a free agent since November, so he wasn't lost specifically during this season. That shiny chrome Piscotty saves the post, though.

A Season Starting PWE, Part I

Way back in March, Stealing Home sent out some PWEs to celebrate the start of the season. I saw a few others post theirs at the time, but I'm just now getting to mine.

As usual, I like to tag every Cardinal player and card set, and I just barely ran out of space, so even this PWE is getting split into 2 posts. So, today, let's see the horizontal cards.

2015 Topps #60 Michael Wacha
2016 Stadium Club #37 Yadier Molina
2017 Topps #234 Luke Weaver

I really need to get more of that Stadium Club set. I like it, even if it does look a lot like some mid 90s Fleer sets. The cards flanking that one are an interesting pair, as there's currently talk of demoting Wacha and/or bringing up Weaver to try to save this season.

Pull Tab Awareness Week Win Part 2

Here's the rest of my win for Pull Tab Awareness Week, 2016.
Part 1

2014 Panini Donruss #339 Michael Wacha
2014 Bowman Platinum - Prospects #BPP78 Stephen Piscotty
2015 Topps #522 Sam Tuivailala
2015 Topps Allen & Ginter #47 Lance Lynn
2016 Baseball Card Breakdown - Jose Canseco (91 Donruss)
2016 Baseball Card Breakdown - Aledmys Diaz (75 Hostess)

The 2014 Donruss and Bowman Platinum cards are from sets I never bought, so those are great additions to my collection, but I think my favorite card in this bunch is the Jose Canseco. I remember watching Homer at the Bat as a kid. It actually first aired just a bit before I started watching baseball, so maybe my fond memories are all from reruns. Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire were my favorite non-Cardinals at that time, so I was happy to see Jose in the episode, along with Ozzie Smith. These aren't officially licensed cards, but customs made by defgav himself. The back mimics the 1991 Donruss set as well, but makes clear these are from the 2016 Baseball Card Breakdown set. The Aledmys Diaz card is also a custom, styled after the Hostess cards from 1975. It's so well done I actually didn't realize it was a custom and tried to find it in Zistle by its card number, before noticing it also carried the Baseball Card Breakdown name.

A belated thanks to Baseball Card Breakdown for the contest, and the excellent customs.

Christmas Cards, a Few Months Late

I seem to always be trying to catch up, so here's some cards that arrived sometime in December, from ATBATT's 3rd Annual Operation PWE. There's something about an envelope of mostly different players and sets that just brings joy to opening the mail.

1991 Topps #343 Jose Oquendo
1992 Pinnacle #381 Andres Galarraga
2015 Topps #220 Shelby Miller
2015 Topps #336 Matt Carpenter
2015 Topps - Archetypes #A-11 Mark McGwire
2016 Topps Heritage #89 Trevor Rosenthal

I'm bad at staying on top of acquiring the Cardinals inserts when new sets come out. That Mark McGwire is a card I definitely should have already had, but didn't. As always, I'm surprised when I don't already have junk-era cards I receive, because it seems like I have so many cards from those years. But both the Oquendo and Galarraga fill holes in my collection.

1988 Topps UK Minis #72 Ozzie Smith
2016 Topps #254 Matt Holliday

I like these UK Minis, and I actually have a couple copies of the Ozzie card now. All the more reason to chase down the Vince Coleman and Willie McGee cards from that set. Then there's Matt Holliday, who just won't seem right in a Yankees uniform this year.

Thanks to Stealing Home for the PWE!

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XI

College football will be here again before we know it, 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

Let's see some Jon Jay!

2010 Topps Update #US203 Jon Jay
2010 Topps Chrome #178 Jon Jay
2011 Topps - Platinum Diamond Anniversary #295 Jon Jay
2013 Bowman #54 Jon Jay
2013 Topps Archives #7 Jon Jay
2015 Bowman #94 Jhonny Peralta
2015 Topps
#11 Jon Jay
#311 Jhonny Peralta
#527 Carlos Martinez

Jon Jay was traded to San Diego for Jedd Gyorko before this season. So far it seems to have been a decent trade. Unfortunately that means we no longer have a player to lead the team in High Sock Sundays.

2014 Topps Update
#US134 Tony Cruz
#US212 Randy Choate
#US260 Jhonny Peralta

Randy Choate became a free agent at the end of 2015, was a member of the Blue Jays organization (though never played for the MLB team) for part of March, and baseball reference now claims he's signed with the dodgers, but he doesn't seem to be on even the 40-man roster. I really thought Tony Cruz was being groomed to replace Yadier Molina when he retires - or goes to the AL to DH, but the Cardinals sent him to Kansas City, and he has since been sent to AAA. These are the first 2014 Update cards I have. That was a year I just didn't buy much current stuff at all.

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part V

College football will be here again before we know it, 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

2014 Bowman Chrome - Prospects #BCP42 Tim Cooney
2014 Topps Archives #178 Carlos Martinez
2015 Topps Gypsy Queen #72 Carlos Martinez
2015 Topps Opening Day #147 Carlos Martinez
2015 Topps Update
#US44 Tim Cooney
#US104 Steve Cishek
#US105 Brandon Moss
#US311 Carlos Martinez
#US348 Jonathan Broxton

Tim Cooney is one of the most anticipated pitching prospects for the Cardinals in awhile, but he's been on the minor league DL all year. Luckily we've still got Carlos Martinez, and a fair shot at a wildcard spot this year.

2015 Topps Update #US13 Tommy Pham

Ah, another lone horizontal card. Tommy Pham's a huge fan favorite. I just need people to stop making "Phamtastic" puns.

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part II

College football will be here again before we know it, 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

1991 Stadium Club #379 Gerald Perry
1992 Stadium Club
#10 Joe Carter
#58 Rich Gedman
#103 Luis Alicea
#338 Gerald Perry
#386 Omar Olivares

I have less old Stadium club in my collection than I expected, but now I've got a half-dozen more. I think Joe Carter a buffer card stuck on the outside of a stack of Cardinals, but it's in decent enough shape to go into my collection too.

1992 Fleer Ultra
#563 Cris Carpenter
#566 Rich Gedman
1992 Upper Deck #478 Omar Olivares
1993 Leaf #438 Omar Olivares
2015 Topps
#628 Peter Bourjos
#678 Sam Freeman

I think I've said this before, but Cris Carpenter was the cause of much confusion on my part when the Cardinals brought in Chris Carpenter in 2004, and I thought they had reacquired Cris. I figured Cris had to be ancient by that point, though he was actually only 39.

Bourjos and Freeman are the first cards in my collection from 2015 Series 2, which is sort of splitting hairs because I do have some Series 1.

A Rodney Hampton Contest Win, Part II

I'm falling a little behind on posting due to several days a week of NFL projections and NCAA Football Power Rankings, so now's the time I start catching up. I won this contest back in September, by guessing how many Rodney Hampton cards were in a lot purchased at Sport Card Collectors.
[Part 1]

1989 Donruss #182 Kirby Puckett
1989 Donruss #193 Mike Schmidt
1998 Donruss #40 Wade Boggs
2001 Fleer Futures #2 Manny Ramirez
2002 Donruss #39 Bernie Williams
2015 Topps - Gold #404 Tanner Scheppers #0528/2015

1989 Donruss is one of those junk wax sets I seem to always have plenty of, but with many of those, I'm often missing the big stars. So the Mike Schmidt card actually fills a gap in my collection. I did have a copy of the Kirby Puckett card already. One of these years I'm going to collect a full parallel set from Topps, like the Gold set of this Tanner Scheppers card.

1995-96 Topps
#277 Michael Jordan
#278 Patrick Ewing
#283 David Robinson
1997-98 Topps
#118 Keith Van Horn
#125 Tracy McGrady

I don't have a whole lot of basketball cards, but these are right in my wheelhouse. I rooted for Michael Jordan during his heyday with Chicago. It's hard to believe his comeback was now over 20 years ago.

1992 Elvis Collection
#23
#90
#167
#207
#247
#346
#397
#437
#457

1992 Elvis Collection
#473
#480
#525
#552

1992 Elvis Collection
#34
#54
#58
#110
#172
#174
#245
#251

1992 Elvis Collection
#425
#520
#603

I got two unopened packs of this 1992 Elvis Collection set as part of my prize pack. They're all new to me, as my non-sports collection is pretty small. I was happy to see the cards didn't have the dreaded melted sticky gloss, as many older unopened packs of cards do. They're all in good shape. There's a good mix of black and white and color images, and images from concerts, movies, and Elvis's life. I'd say my favorite is #425, featuring his white studded jumpsuit from a concert.

That's it for the prize package. Thanks again to Sport Card Collectors for the contest!

Another Sports Card Info Contest Win

There's a contest nearly every week at Sports Card Info, and sometimes two, so I'm there entering almost every single day. I've won a few of them over the years, and another recent contest went my way, so now I've got this nice red swatch from Yu Darvish

2015 Topps - Career High Relics #CHR-YD Yu Darvish

Topps made this a bit confusing by having Career High Relics in both series 1 and 2, with some of the same players, but the series 1 cards are inexplicably numbered CRH-xx instead of CHR-xx. But, I sorted it out, and I've got the series 2 K/9 Career High, as opposed to the Series 1 "Strikeouts in a Season" Career High.

Thanks to Sports Card Info for all the contests through the year, and my new relic.

2015 Is Here

Ok, it's been here for a few days. But, I've been entirely too busy to open the hanger box (is that the right term for the 72-card, $10 box?) I bought Friday at Target. I'll probably wind up purchasing a Jumbo box, rendering all of the base cards in this box expendable, but I decided to be less practical and more fun in my collecting from now on, and a $10 bill won't kill my budget. But, enough about my collecting philosophies; onto to the cards!

2015 Topps
#11 Jon Jay
#48 John Axford
#80 Adam Wainwright
#220 Shelby Miller

I consider any pack consisting of over 1/30th Cardinals a success, even if one is pictured as a Pirate and another (Miller) has already been traded away for Jason Heyward.

2015 Topps
Archetypes #A-22 Hank Aaron
Rainbow Foil #279 Coco Crisp
First Pitches #FP-06 Agnes McKee
Robbed #R-12 George Springer
The Jackie Robinson Story #JR-2 Serving His Country
Free Agent 40 #F40-5 Goose Gossage
First Home Run #FHR-05 Derek Jeter
First Home Run #FHR-10 Anthony Rizzo

The first time I flipped through the cards, I didn't notice this Coco Crisp card was a parallel. The Rainbow Foil effect is somewhat hard to discern with the colorful borders. For the First Pitch cards, I thought it was kind of a cool idea when I read about it, but of course I was focusing in on the celebrities like Jeff Bridges and Eddie Vedder. Even though my card has a 105-year-old woman I've never before known about, I'm still in favor of the set. In the second row, you can see I pulled the mandatory Jeter card, which was actually the first 2015 cards I saw in person. I was a little surprised to get 2 cards from the First Home Run set, though.

2015 Topps
Call Your Shot Game Card
Highlight of the Year #H-8 Ted Williams

I doubt that bar code has enough information for you to redeem my Call Your Shot codes, but in case it does, I've already entered, giving me a 1:1,000,000 shot against everyone else who opened 2015 Topps this week.

The Ted Williams highlight card is nice and all, but overall, I'm not that overwhelmed by the inserts from this box.  Usually at least one catches my eye, and the whole set makes its way to my wantlist. Archetypes is obviously full of big stars, so that may be one that I go after. When looking up the Williams card in an online checklist, though, I saw there's a Nomar Garciaparra card in that insert set as well. I'll definitely be trying to track that one down.

Well, that's my first taste of 2015 cards. I'm sure the next will come when I'm waiting in line at Target and feeling froggy, so that could really be any day now.