eBay Wins #242

If you buy a bunch of random cheap cards, you're going to get a fair bit of 1989 Donruss. I've got enough that I'll have to split it across at least 2 posts.

1989 Donruss
#3 Pete Incaviglia
#8 Cory Snyder
#10 Kevin Seitzer
#11 Rick Reuschel
#12 Johnny Ray (x2)
#14 Andres Galarraga
#15 Kirk Gibson
#16 Fred McGriff
#18 Jeff Robinson (x2)

I've always liked Diamond Kings.

1989 Donruss
#19 Vince Coleman
#20 Dave Henderson
#21 Harold Reynolds
#23 Frank Viola
#26 Don Mattingly
#27 Checklist
#30 Cameron Drew
#32 Erik Hanson
#34 Greg Harris

1989 Donruss
#37 Carlos Quintana
#39 Cris Carpenter
#41 Dave West
#42 Randy Johnson
#43 Mike Harkey
#44 Pete Harnisch
#45 Tom Gordon
#47 Alex Sanchez
#57 Greg Brock

There aren't a ton of huge stars past the Diamond Kings, but here's a Randy Johnson card I've wanted for awhile.

1989 Donruss
#59 Craig Lefferts
#61 Danny Tartabull
#65 Mark Davis
#67 Dennis Eckersley
#69 Mike Scott
#71 Tom Browning
#73 Mel Hall
#76 Juan Samuel
#89 Charlie Leibrandt

1989 Donruss
#90 Frank Tanana
#94 Mark McLemore
#99 Kevin McReynolds
#100 Checklist
#102 Dave Martinez
#107 Pete O'Brien
#111 Keith Moreland
#114 Brook Jacoby
#115 Keith Brown

1989 Donruss
#118 Bob Forsch
#120 Willie Wilson (x2)
#121 Tommy Gregg
#122 Jim Rice
#123 Bob Knepper (x2)
#124 Danny Jackson
#125 Eric Plunk (x2)
#126 Brian Fisher (x2)
#127 Mike Pagliarulo

1989 Donruss
#129 Lance McCullers
#133 David Palmer
#135 Greg Walker
#136 Kirk McCaskill (x2)
#138 Andy Allanson
#139 Rob Murphy
#142 Scott Fletcher
#143 Steve Balboni
#145 Ozzie Virgil

This is the first time I've tagged a Rob Murphy card. I don't remember him playing for the Cardinals at all, but apparently he did in 1993 and most of 1994, making 123 appearances in relief. Those weren't the greatest years for the team, including the strike season, so maybe that's why he doesn't stand out in my mind.

1989 Donruss
#149 George Bell
#156 Tim Wallach
#160 Von Hayes
#175 Ted Higuera
#180 Alan Trammell
#181 Vince Coleman
#186 Mike Greenwell
#187 Billy Hatcher (x2)
#191 Cory Snyder

1989 Donruss
#192 John Candelaria
#194 Kevin Gross
#198 Kal Daniels
#200 Checklist
#201 Joe Magrane
#212 Mickey Brantley
#222 Rick Mahler
#225 Mitch Williams
#226 Chuck Finley

1989 Donruss
#227 Mark Langston
#228 Jesse Orosco
#229 Ed Whitson
#230 Terry Pendleton
#231 Lloyd Moseby
#232 Greg Swindell
#233 John Franco
#234 Jack Morris
#235 Howard Johnson

These all came out of the half-cent pile, so the 90 cards plus 8 duplicates were just 49 cents.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	4425
Total Spent	$58.75
Per Card	1.328 cents
Change	-0.018 cents

Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXXVI

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

The end is tantalizingly near. Is that even a sensible adverb in this situation?

1982 Kmart #12 Orlando Cepeda
1987 TCMA 1934 Cardinals #4 Ripper Collins
1990 Fleer - All Stars #5 Joe Magrane
1990 Pacific Legends #65 Orlando Cepeda
1992 Action Packed #22 Wally Moon
2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes #24 Frankie Frisch

Today I've got some old guys, and Joe Magrane, who's quite young relative to the rest, but with what I have left, he fit into this group. It's always nice to expand my collection to new players. I had no previous cards of Wally Moon (though I did meet him in person and get an autograph), Frankie Frisch, or Ripper Collins, and I had just 2 Orlando Cepeda cards, from 2010-2011 and picturing him as a member of the San Francisco Giants.

Zistle Trade #21

This trade was proposed through Zistle, but was with a fellow blogger, Mark Kaz, of This Way to the Clubhouse. Here's his post on my half (or I guess it's now his half) of the trade.

I put a lot of cards on my wantlist. I probably shouldn't do that, because I'll never acquire all of them unless I come into enough money to buy them all, and also enough money to quit my job to focus on tracking them all down full time. But at least it gives traders a wide swath the choose from in order to snag some of my duplicates. This small trade covered some set fillers and some Cardinals-specific wants as well.

1986 Topps Traded #82T Jose Oquendo
1990 K-Mart #12 Joe Magrane
2011 Topps Opening Day - Superstar Celebrations #SC-12 Matt Garza
2012 Topps Update #US185 Donovan Solano
2012 Topps Update #US285 Ian Kinsler
2012 Topps Update #US319 A.J. Pollock RC
2012 Topps Update #US322 Jordan Danks RC
2012 Topps Archives #134 Chris Carpenter
2012 Topps Opening Day - Elite Skills #ES-2 Alex Gordon

The old cards in the trade were a 1986 Topps Traded of Jose Oquendo, the secret weapon, who also played for Mark's New York Mets. The regular 1986 cards seem fairly easy to come by, but the traded sets, as usual, are a bit less common to find. The only other card from that set on my wantlist is Todd Worrell, though a quick look tells me I never went through and exhaustively added all the Cardinals. That would cover the two in uniform, but I collect all Cardinals in any uniform, so I'll be adding Will Clark, Dane Iorg, Joaquin Andujar, and more to my want list. You can see how it balloons so easily.

The full 33-card 1990 K-Mart set is on my want list, and Joe Magrane leaves me with 12 cards to go. I'll bet Nolan Ryan is the last one I'm able to acquire.

Opening Day is a set so cheap that I often decide I'm going to try to acquire every insert among the more common sets, basically everything but autographs/relics/printing plates, and the Alex Gordon and sideways Matt Garza cards are two of those inserts from 2011 and 2012.

I think I completed 2010, 2011, and 2013 Update, but never 2012 for some reason. But, I'm now 4 cards closer on that quest, too.

Finally there's Chris Carpenter from 2012 Archives. I really haven't jumped into Archives with both feet, but I do like getting the Cardinals from the sets. It's a level of restraint rarely seen from me when making my want lists.

Thanks for the trade, Mark! You knocked 9 cards off my want list, but thanks to the attention I paid to 1986 Topps traded, I added 12 more to it.

Zistle Trade #17

Zistle has allowed me to whittle down my want list bit by bit, while helping others do the same with my doubles. I've got a lot of overproduction-era Cardinals still missing from my collection, so every now and then someone finds me and can knock off quite a few of them. This particular trader just wanted a Joe Carter card in return, and as a Blue Jays fan, had a few Todd Stottlemyre cards for me, too.

1985 Topps #683 Whitey Herzog
1990 Fleer #243 Cris Carpenter
1990 Fleer #251 Ken Hill
1990 Fleer #252 Joe Magrane
1990 Fleer #253 Willie McGee
1990 Fleer #261 Scott Terry
1990 Fleer #263 Denny Walling
1990 Fleer #264 Todd Worrell
1990 Topps #6 Vince Coleman RB

These were the last of the 1990 Fleer Cardinals I needed, so that's one more team set off my list.

1990 Topps #591 Todd Stottlemyre
1991 Topps #348 Todd Stottlemyre
1992 Topps #607 Todd Stottlemyre

As I've mentioned before, Todd Stottlemyre and his father, Mel, are distant cousins of mine, which is why I started collecting his cards in earnest. Now since I've widened my collecting net to anyone who has suited up for the Cardinals, I've got two reasons to collect his cards, so I'm glad to have 3 more off my list. The sender wrote a note saying he figured he'd have more Stottlemyre cards I needed, which caused me to check my list and see my want list was far from containing every card of his I don't have, so I've rectified that now. Thus, the net result of this trade for me was my want list increased by several dozen cards. Hooray progress?

PWE Time!

Stealing Home, from All Trade Bait, All The Time recently sent me a PWE. If you're sick of seeing Cardinals on my blog, well I'd suggest you don't read it? But this one has more than just Cardinals, have a look.

1991 Studio #235 Joe Magrane
2013 Topps - Chasing History Gold Foil #CH-87 Lance Lynn
2014 Topps - #157 Lance Lynn

OK, I tricked you. the first 3 were Cardinals, including a nice shiny Gold foil parallel I wasn't really aware existed. If not for the rainbow shininess of the card, I probably would have just filed the Lance Lynn away with my other Chasing History cards.

1998 Topps #268 Nomar Garciaparra
2000 Upper Deck MVP - Pure Grit #G9 Nomar Garciaparra
2002 Donruss #12 Nomar Garciaparra
2003 Leaf #23 Nomar Garciaparra
2003 Leaf - Certified Samples #LC-14 Nomar Garciaparra
2004 Topps #200 Nomar Garciaparra

I get lots of Cardinals in various ways, but I don't get as many Nomars, mostly because among players I collect, he's the only one that never played for St. Louis. 5 of the 6 were new cards to my collection. I inexplicably already have 3 copies of that 1998 base card, and a search of my blog doesn't show any of them arriving in the last few years, which means I probably had them all in 1998. I thought I had the 2004 card, but it turns out I have the Opening Day version. My Nomar collection isn't all that big, so these are a nice addition and gives it a relatively large boost.

Thanks for the PWE, Stealing Home!

eBay Wins #139

Today it's 1989 Bowman, the junk wax cards that always seems to have bent tops or bottoms due to the slightly elongated size compared to 99+% of other cards. These actually weren't bad, despite being shipped with other regular sized cards.

1989 Bowman
#305 Rob Dibble
#432 Joe Magrane
#450 Dennis Rasmussen

Since 1989 is still prior to my baseball-watching days, I did have to flip these cards over to the back to verify that I read the signatures correctly. I'd recognize Joe Magrane anywhere, and I would even have a decent chance at spotting Rob Dibble, but I don't think I could pick Dennis Rasmussen out of a lineup.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3134
Total Spent	$49.87
Per Card	1.591 cents
Change	-0.001 cents

College Bowl Game Contest Win, Part 17

For the 2012-2013 College Football season, I entered the College Football Pick 'Em contest hosted by madding of Cards on Cards. I've won several of his contests over the years, and he always dumps a ton of Cardinals on me when I do. Yet, I think this time he may have outdone himself. I may have to work hard to get them all posted before the 2013-14 College Football season starts August 29, and I start posting my Power Rankings again.
[ 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 ]

1987 Fleer Update #U-71 Joe Magrane
1988 Donruss #170 Tony Pena
1988 Fleer #38 Steve Lake
1988 Leaf #181 Jack Clark
1988 Score #202 Todd Worrell
1989 Donruss #466 Luis Alicea
1989 Topps #1 George Bell
1990 Donruss #531 Carlos Martinez

Glorious Junk Wax! There are probably plenty of copies of most of these cards floating around, except perhaps the Donruss Doppelganger that is 1988 Leaf.

By now you've probably heard about Jack Clark's recent troubles caused by his big mouth, when he said he knew for sure that Albert Pujols has been juicing for years. Those are big allegations that require at least a little bit of evidence before you go mentioning them on the air. To give a local perspective, his co-host is notorious for being a sports shock-jock, and fired from nearly every station in town that ever employed a sports talk guy. I can't stand him, and I'm always glad to hear him go, so I don't stumble across his show when radio-surfing. Jack Clark has now retained one of the biggest names in high-priced attorneys in St. Louis, Chet Pleban. It's not clear to me whether this is to sue his (former) employer, or defend himself against the lawsuit Pujols has publicly threatened.

I knew Jack Clark has a bit of a reputation as a hothead, but I guess since St. Louis media don't usually hammer their hometown guys too hard, I never really knew his whole story. Apparently he's had trouble with Hall of Famers ranging from his Managers Frank Robinson and Lou Piniella, his teammates Ozzie Smith and Tony Gwynn, and now likely Hall of Famer Albert Pujols. As a side note, can we get Lou Piniella in the Hall of Fame as a manager please? Clark's apparently just got an attitude problem, and has for years.

I don't like negative posts, so let's end this one with Tony Pena making John Olerud feel silly.

...and then another guy named Brian Johnson.

Stay on your toes out there; it's the only way to save yourself from trick plays.

eBay Wins #74

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.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2390
Total Spent	$42.75
Per Card	1.789 cents

Random Cardinals from Josh, Part I

I won a little contest at Royals and Randoms, just for doling out an opinion. The randomizer fell my way, and here's what showed up in the mail.

1983 Topps #734 Steve Braun

 The oldest card of the bunch, nearly as old as me. I must admit I don't think I've heard of Steve Braun though.

1987 Sportflics #173 John Tudor

I'm not sure why I even scan Sportflics cards. They never look nice like they do in person.

1991 Classic Game
#29 Joe Magrane
#173 Todd Zeile

Now we're getting to the guys I remember.

1991 Fleer - Team Stickers - Cardinals 

I wish I wasn't so hung up on keeping my cards in good condition so I could stick these stickers on things.

1995 Flair #410 Brian Jordan

 This is my first 1995 Flair card, I think, unless there are some in my unsorted boxes.

2005 Turkey Red #39 Preston Wilson

I like all of the Turkey Red sets, so I've got most of the Cardinals (and former/future Cardinals) on my wantlist. This knocks one more of them off, which is always appreciated.

More next time...

March Radness Win, Part V

[Part I]
[Part II]
[Part III]
[Part IV]

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.

How much more can there be? In this post, I'll show a good mix of late 1980s Cardinals.

1987 Topps
#7 Todd Worrell
#440 Willie McGee

It's weird for me to see Todd Worrell as the closer, since he was the setup man by the time I started paying attention. And doesn't the 1987 set just scream wood paneled station wagon?

1988 Topps #380 Joe Magrane

The younger people in town learned the Cardinals used to have a pitcher named Joe Magrane earlier this year, when his daughter was briefly on American Idol.

1989 Topps
#259 Larry McWilliams
#578 John Morris
#640 Willie McGee

Two guys I've honestly never heard of, and St. Louis's favorite standing ovation target, Willie McGee.

1990 Score #68 Jose Oquendo

The Secret Weapon! He's played every position for us, including Manager (fill in), 3B Coach, and I think even 1B Coach (fill in again).

1990 Bowman
#183 Joe Magrane
#185 Todd Worrell
#186 Jose DeLeon
#194 Willie McGee
#200 Jose Oquendo

Some nice 1990 Bowman here, with a lot of repeated players from above, and Jose DeLeon.

1990 Donruss
#516 John Morris
#536 Jose DeLeon

Finally, here's two more 1990 Donruss for my longest project ever, completing this set. I think it's been about 18 years since I bought a bunch of these and started trying for the set.