College football will be here again before we know itIS 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.
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.
It seems like anytime I accept a trade on Zistle, one or two more offers come right away, so here's my second trade post this week. I got the higher volume on this trade, sending just two Mike (pre-Giancarlo) Stanton cards for these 10. Looking at the names in the trade offer, I was expecting to see a bunch of Cardinals, but in 1992, only Jose Oquendo was on the team. The rest became Cardinals later in their careers, except Lance Johnson who started in St. Louis
1992 Donruss
#259 Larry Walker
#267 Lance Johnson
#269 Rick Honeycutt
#277 Delino DeShields
#280 Jose Oquendo
#295 Jeff Brantley
In the background of Jose Oquendo's card, there are clearly two more Cardinals, Andres Galaragga and Ozzie Smith
1992 Donruss
#296 Les Lancaster
#314 Mike Gallego
#325 Mark Whiten
#372 Gregg Jefferies
These are the first cards I've posted of Les Lancaster, Mike Gallego, and Rick Honeycutt, by my reckoning.
It's fun to see a group of cards like this, all with players who were Cardinals, but on lots of different teams. My style of collecting means my "team set" completion takes a bit longer, but the result is more complete, too. I've still got 31 cards on my want list from 1992 Donruss.
I won 97 auctions for individual 1991 Leaf cards this time around. The seller couldn't find one of them, and asked if he could replace it with another card from the set, and since I was agreeable to that, he sent me two replacement cards. So this bundle is 98 cards for 97 cents. The cards were just curved enough to make them annoying to scan, so I've trimmed this post down to just the 11 Cardinals in the stack.
1991 Leaf
#23 Pat Borders
#45 Chuck Finley
#139 Delino DeShields
#193 Mike Morgan
1991 Leaf
#226 Bryn Smith
#227 Todd Stottlemyre
#234 Mark Whiten
#268 Danny Jackson
Mark Whiten made me want to be an outfielder, because it was simply amazing to see him throw the ball from to the warning track to home plate on the fly. I'm not sure how many runners he actually threw out, but he certainly made runners think twice about tagging up, much like Molina seems to give would-be base-stealers pause.
1991 Leaf
#350 Danny Cox
#376 Ken Hill
#403 Lance Johnson
These cards really aren't curved that badly when I put them in sleeves, but for some reason it took me way too long to line them up on my scanner.
Before these 98, I had 23 cards from the 1991 Leaf set. There were a few duplicates, but now I have 116 cards from the set.
Ah, 1990. In the fall, I started 3rd grade, and still had no interest in - or knowledge of - baseball or baseball cards. Yet, 1990 is one of the biggest years by quantity in my collection, since they've been cheap and plentiful from the time I started collecting in 1992 all the way until now. Here are 40 more for 40 cents.
1990 Donruss
#163 Joe Magrane
#555 John Costello
There were 2 uniformed Cardinals out of the 26, which I guess is twice the expected value of a random assortment in 1990, when there were 26 teams. I'll call that a win.
1990 Donruss
#11 Kevin Mitchell
#47 Julio Machado
#116 Greg Minton
#122 Dwight Evans
#170 Kirk McCaskill
#189 Rob Dibble
I'm a Diamond King fan, and Rob Dibble's still around baseball, so those are good ones.
1990 Donruss
#194 Darren Daulton
#214 Mike Moore
#239 Tommy Gregg
#282 Mike Devereaux
#294 Ivan Calderon
#333 Bob Milacki
I was a bit of a bandwagoner as a kid, so when the Phillies were back to back champions I took an interest in them, making that Darren Daulton card stand out to me. [Edit: The Blue Jays beat the Phillies in 1993, but the Braves in 1992. Thanks to Mark for pointing that out.]
1990 Donruss
#345 Erik Hanson
#383 Dave Magadan
#389 Jose Alvarez
#430 Ken Howell
#538 Joey Cora
#541 Wes Gardner
It felt like Joey Cora would be such a huge star at one point, but he seemed to level off. Now, he needs to run far away from Ozzie Guillen if he wants another MLB coaching gig.
1990 Donruss
#557 Rick Dempsey
#629 Vance Law
#631 Todd Frohwirth
#651 Steve Lyons
#698 Steve Cummings
#709 Larry McWilliams
Psycho! I like cards of guys with other ties to the game, whether it's coaching or broadcasting, so maybe I should start a side collection. That would cover a big percentage of players though. Also in this bunch, Larry McWilliams is a former Cardinal too, but a group of 24 cards scans much more nicely than 23.
Alright, enough with the red borders, let's see what's next.
1990 Topps
#224 Delino DeShields
#725 Terry Pendleton
This is Delino in his pre-Cardinal days. Also, I associate Terry Pendleton so strongly with the Atlanta Braves that it always seems weird to see footage or cards of him as a Cardinal.
1990 Topps
#143 Rafael Belliard
#195 Tim Burke
#243 Barry Jones
#349 Steve Finley
#401 Kevin Mitchell
#402 Eric Davis
2 All-Stars isn't bad.
1990 Topps
#425 Bill Landrum
#524 Daryl Boston
#537 Mark Grant
#554 Jay Buhner
#593 Scott Bradley
#658 Donell Nixon
As a guy who had normally kept a shaved head (except for a brief time in college), I appreciate Jay Buhner. Also, there's this:
Of course, Frank shortchanged Jay here. He had 40 HR in 1995, the "last year" to which he was referring in this clip.
On a statistical note, I shattered the 1.8 cents/card mark with this purchase, coming down from 1.802 to 1.789.
When I claimed the Cardinals - and Mark McGwire and Todd Stottlemyre - in the pack-per-day giveaway held at TribeCards, I had no idea just how many cards I'd wind up with, and how many different players. So that I can tag all of the sets and Cardinal players, I've broken this up into a series of who knows how many posts. Thanks for all the cards, David.
[ I | II | III | IV | V ]
2005 Topps Total
#492 So Taguchi
I'm surprised this is the first So Taguchi card I'm posting to my blog. I'm still making up for my lost decade of collecting.
1998 Stadium Club
#48 Delino DeShields
When trying to sort through the huge number of cards, I mis-sorted this 1998 Stadium Club away from the others in Part I.
2007 Upper Deck
#948 Kelvin Jimenez
I still can't believe there are over 1000 cards in 2007 Upper Deck.
1986 Topps Traded
#46T Mike Heath
Traded cards are much harder to come by than regular flagship cards, so I'm always glad to get one of these, especially a Cardinal.
2006 Upper Deck First Pitch
#184 Reggie Sanders
I rooted against Reggie Sanders for so many years with the Reds, and in 2001 with the Diamondbacks, I had to flip 180 degrees when he signed with the Cardinals.
I "won" a prize, in that I managed to have the worst bracket of all in Cards on Cards March Radness contest. I legitimately tried to win, in fact I didn't even realize there was this consolation prize until the contest was over, because I stopped scoreboard watching about 2 rounds into the tournament because I did so poorly to start off. The good thing about winning cards from a fellow Cardinals fan is that he can't resist dumping a whole bunch of his Cardinal duplicates on me, which I'm more than happy to take.
I've reached the end of this prize, but this post has the most cards of all. Lucky for you, they're not all scanned. You'll see what I mean at the end.
As I flipped through the 1990 Donruss from the package, I set aside anyone who was a Cardinal. This wasn't based on research, just memory, so I may have missed a few. And I actually had to look up Chris Sabo because I thought I knew he was a Cardinal, but I don't really remember it, if that makes sense. As it turns out, he played 5 games for us after the White Sox released him in 1995, but was again released during September.
1990 Donruss #41 Andy Benes #42 Delino Deshields #210 Dennis Eckersley #230 Will Clark #242 Chris Sabo #349 Tom Henke #378 Jamie Moyer #578 Larry Walker #674 Pedro Guerrero
1990 Donruss #695 Eric Davis #697 Mark McGwire Bonus MVPs #BC-12 John Smoltz #BC12A John Smoltz (Erorr)
I've bid on this Tom Glavine/John Smoltz error card on eBay a few times, but it always seems to go a bit high because of its perceived value.
So, how many non-Cardinals were there from 1990 Donruss? Oh, about this many:
1990 Donruss, sleeved and ready to be sorted
I haven't gone through them completely yet, but it looks like if this doesn't complete my 1990 Donruss set, it brings me very close. What an awesome prize for a blog contest. Now of course, I realize if my want list consisted of refractor parallels and cards numbered to 25, instead of lots of cards widely considered junk wax, I'd probably have gotten a much lighter envelope, but I love these cards. That's the cool thing about collecting instead of investing in cards; show me a bunch of ugly 1990 Donruss card and I can get as excited as one fancy relic "from no particular event". To sum up, thanks again to madding, and go follow Cards on Cards.
