Zistle Trade #23

This Zistle trade was mostly from the junk wax era, but I haven't quite filled all those gaps in my collection, so there's a smattering of them on my want list. Oddly enough, my trading partner wanted some "junk" in return, so I figured, why not. I'm too lazy to look it up now, but I think it was mostly 89 or 91 Donruss.

1988 Topps #642 Bob Dernier
1990 Score #233 Ken Hill
1991 Fleer #633 Bernard Gilkey
1991 Fleer #636 Felix Jose
1991 Fleer #640 Jose Oquendo
1991 Fleer #645 Lee Smith
1991 Topps #112 Frank DiPino
1992 Fleer #589 Gerald Perry
1992 Score #544 Bernard Gilkey

One of these things is not like the others, and that is Bobby Dernier. The others are all Cardinals, and actually mostly guys I remember playing for the team during my childhood, except for Frank DiPino. As for Bobby, I added that to my list awhile back because he was the favorite player of a good friend of mine when he was growing up. I was looking through my collection for a card of his to perhaps try to get autographed through the mail, but I didn't have any, and thus I added a few I should be able to get cheaply to my want list. Now I just need to track down an address for Mr. Dernier, or figure out who he's working for.

1992 Donruss #427 Bobby Bonilla
1992 Donruss #442 John Smoltz
1992 Donruss #564 Deion Sanders
1992 Donruss #610 Bobby Bonilla

I recently purchased a 1992 Donruss Series 1 set, which actually quashed the first trade this particular trader proposed to me. He did it the day after I bought the set, before I thought to remove the series 1 cards from my want list. Luckily my oversight didn't frustrate him, and we worked out a deal removing those cards. Here are the series 2 cards I still needed. If you're not a Cardinals fan, you may have forgotten that Smoltz and Bonilla both finished their careers in St. Louis. It wasn't very long for either one, but I still consider them players I collect. I've waffled about whether I should start collecting Deion Sanders cards. He'd go well with my other two-sport-star collection target, Bo Jackson. He was also a part of the very first baseball game I ever attended. I'll probably complete this base set eventually anyway, so I went ahead and added it to my wantlist, and now I have it.

July Card Show Purchases II

Here's the other half of the Cardinals and other players I collect.

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen
#9 Bo Jackson
#25 Matt Carpenter
#27 John Lackey
#37 Mark McGwire
#44 Steve Carlton
#47 Ozzie Smith

That's a strong bottom row, with two Hall-of-Famers, and one that would have been, probably if he just handled the post-career PR a little better. Bo Jackson is one of the few players who never played for the Cardinals that I nevertheless collect, just because his story was so fascinating. I think the two-sport aspect gets me a little, too, because I considered adding Deion Sanders to my collections as well.

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen
#48 Shelby Miller
#49 Albert Pujols
#59 Adam Wainwright
#72 Carlos Martinez
#84 John Smoltz
#99 Roger Maris

This half netted me 6 uniformed Cardinals and 5 other Cardinals, for a total of 13 uniformed and 8 other. I wanted to say "former", but both Smoltz and Maris are pictured with teams they played on before St. Louis. I wasn't expecting a full 8% of the base set to fall into my personal collection, but here we are. Certainly that's somewhat due to the Cardinals recent success, and at the expense of other teams, so I will enjoy and appreciate this while the winning lasts. 

A New Hall of Fame Cardinal

Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Craig Biggio never played for the St. Louis Cardinals, but one guy in this year's Hall of Fame class did, albeit quite briefly. John Smoltz made his last 7 career starts for the Cardinals in 2009, along with 2 innings in relief in the NLDS. Of course, almost no one outside of Boston or St. Louis - and probably even very few inside those cities - will ever think of Smoltz as a member of any team but Atlanta, which is where he earned his Hall of Fame plaque.

2009 Topps Heritage #507 John Smoltz

I wasn't sure if there were any cards showing him in a Cardinal uniform at all, or if I had any, but a quick search through Zistle showed me he had several issued, and I own exactly one, this nice horizontal Heritage card. The Cardinals picked him up on August 19, so it's actually pretty impressive that this card made it into the Heritage High Numbers set for 2009.

Looking at the current and upcoming Hall of Fame Ballots, I may be waiting a while for my next post like this. The best chances, though still slim, appear to be Lee Smith, Mark McGwire, Larry Walker, Jim Edmonds, Edgar Renteria, or Scott Rolen, and those last 3 won't show up on the ballot until 2016, 2017, and 2018, respectively.

2013 Allen and Ginter Set

You read that title right; we're throwing back allllll the way to 2013.

I bought the full set (almost) from Nachos Grande last year, and it's been sitting on my shelf as I procrastinated entering the cards into my Zistle account. I actually purchased the non-SPs only, and this was also at the beginning of Puig-mania, so a Puig-free set was offered at a substantial discount, so I decided to take a chance that Yasiel Puig would cool off a bit, along with the prices for his cards. So far that doesn't seem to be happening, though. In any case, the set I purchased was 299 of the 300 base cards. In a separate purchase, I bought all 50 of the SPs, so I'm at 349/350, needing only a Puig to finish off the set.

I decided while flipping through the cards again that I'd go ahead and post the Cardinals like I normally do, but there were a large number of them by my criteria. I tried to split them up somewhat logically, though with all of the retired players the divisions became a bit fuzzy. Today was supposed to be players who have moved on from the team.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#5 Albert Pujols
#12 Dan Haren
#20 John Smoltz
#27 Shelby Miller
#46 Colby Rasmus
#93 A.J. Pierzynski

The Shelby Miller trade caught me off guard, and I had to re-scan my cards. Also, I don't know what I was thinking putting A.J. Pierzynski in this pile, even though he is technically a free agent right now. He could still be a Cardinal next year, though he may just as easily be playing somewhere else. Also, Smoltz retired after a partial season with the Cardinals, so one could argue he should have been in the next post, with guys like Ozzie Smith.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#183 Ryan Ludwick
#189 David Freese
#208 Allen Craig
#235 Carlos Beltran
#245 Mark Buehrle
#284 Will Clark

Will Clark's another guy who finished with the Cardinals, though he clearly had the most productive years of his career elsewhere. And Mark Beuhrle has never been a Cardinal, though I still suspect he'd give them a pretty good hometown discount. I like to track his cards just because he grew up in the same town as me.

In conclusion...these are some random 2013 Allen and Ginter cards of guys I collect for reasons not limited to playing for the Cardinals?

eBay Wins #90

A lot of the penny cards I pick up on eBay are late 80s to early 90s commons, so here's a refreshing sight:

2010 Bowman - 1992 Bowman Throwback
#BT1 Jimmy Rollins
#BT14 Troy Tulowitzki
#BT20 Michael Young
#BT50 Victor Martinez
#BT64 David Wright
#BT89 Tim Lincecum
#BT101 Ivan Rodriguez
#BT107 John Smoltz

2010 reprints of early 90s commons!

The last 2 cards are actual reprints from the 1992 Bowman set, with 1991 statistics on the back and everything. The photos are amazingly fuzzy compared to the other 6 cards with modern photos of modern players.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	2486
Total Spent	$43.71
Per Card	1.758 cents

College Bowl Game Contest Win, Part 9

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.
[ Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 ]

2009 Heritage
#40 Ryan Ludwick
#124 Jason Motte
#327 Kyle Lohse
#368 Aaron Miles
#501 Shane Robinson
#507 John Smoltz
#518 Blake Hawksworth
#590 Jarrett Hoffpauir
#652 Tyler Greene

There are quite a few young guys in that bunch, especially Motte and Robinson who are still with the team. The oldest guy is probably Smoltz, who pitched for us late in the year and his whole stint still seems a little surreal to remember. Also, horizontal cards can actually look pretty good when the whole set matches.

2009 Heritage #220 Tony La Russa

...nevermind. At least it's a manager card. But still, this kind of chicanery prevents a set from looking nice in a binder. Maybe if we can get Topps to go all-vertical or all-horizontal by 2015, then 2064 Heritage and beyond won't suffer from this problem. I do like the old Cardinals logo up top, though.

2009 Topps 206 #159 Rick Ankiel

This card only goes with the rest of them in that it's an old-style, current player card, and I figure, that's good enough. Now if we could just get rid of that Ankiel mystery beard...

This Break is so 2007, Part I

When CaptKirk42 of the aptly named CaptKirk42's Trading Cards Blog opened up a break of 5 boxes of 2007 baseball cards, I jumped right in to claim the Cardinals and my 2 random teams. It was slow to fill so each slot wound up with 3 random teams, which also caused me to pick up the Dodgers as well, in hopes of a Nomar Garciaparra card or two. In all I got the Athletics, Braves, Cardinals, [Devil] Rays, Dodgers,  Mariners,  Royals, and Twins.

First up, we have the 2007 Bowman cards, confusing subsets, insert sets, and all.

2007 Bowman - Prospects
#BP46 Trey Hearne
#BP68 Jarrett Hoffpauir

I don't think we're going to see either of these guys back in MLB, though Hoffpauir actually played for the big club in 2009, enough that I remembered his name.

2007 Bowman
#56 Dan Haren
#59 Jim Edmonds
#124 Chris Carpenter
#138 John Smoltz
#163 David Eckstein
#175 Albert Pujols
#183 Jeff Weaver
Gold #27 Brian McCann
Gold #105 Eric Chavez

As usual, here are all the base cards of anyone who ever wore the birds on the bat. McCann and Chavez didn't, but I only had 7 for this scan, so why not add some Gold, right?

2007 Bowman - A-Rod Road To 500
#130, 139, 151, 156

This was one of the best parts about landing the Mariners; a whole insert set of one player. As for a fun Cardinals connection, 3 of the 4 pitchers mentioned played for the Cardinals. There was Chris Carpenter, Jeff Suppan, and Arthur Rhodes. Not bad for a career AL player.

2007 Bowman Chrome - Propects
#46 Trey Hearne

Trey Hearne again. Cards like this are what make Bowman a little disappointing when it's a few years old. It's Chrome, and it's my team, but I've never heard of the guy.

2007 Bowman - Blue Parallel
#56 Dan Haren #024/500

It's an eBay 1/1! #024 and he's wearing #24! I'm rich!

2007 Bowman - Prospects Blue
#BP133 Jarrod Saltalamacchia #188/500

Finally, this was the big hit from Bowman, a Jarrod Saltalamacchia autograph. I kind of feel bad for the guy for having to sign such a long name 500 times for this card, although it looks like he's got a bit of a shortened version going here. Salty has been a player I've liked for some time, maybe because of his unique last name, maybe because he's a catcher like I sometimes tried to be. Either way, with many less impressive autograph subjects in the checklist, this is great pull.

2012 Gypsy Queen Extreme Value Blaster

I recently picked up a blaster of Gypsy Queen at Target for $11.99. Normally these are $19.99, a little more than I can convince myself to pay for the 48 cards inside. But, for a quarter a card, I went for it. I've decided this set isn't old enough for a pack-by-pack breakdown, so here are the inserts and Cardinals.

2012 Gypsy Queen
#201 Allen Craig
#208 Adron Chambers

 Each pack has 1 mini card, and here's how those broke down.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Mini Parallel
#21 Mat Latos
#158 Rickie Weeks
#177 Nick Markakis
#183 Heath Bell

These are stated at 1:1, but they can be replaced by rarer mini parallels.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Mini Straight Cut Back
#69 Troy Tulowitzki
#115 Kurt Suzuki

I really should have scanned the backs since that's the only difference, but these Straight Cut Backs are inserted 1:6 packs.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Mini Gypsy Queen Back
#261 John Smoltz

Again, I really should have scanned the back. This Gypsy Queen back is also inserted 1:6 packs. And I'm still referring to him as Former Cardinal John Smoltz.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Mini Black Border
#305 Matt Cain

Since the black minis are inserted 1:12 packs, and this has a high number, I figured I had something rare with this one, but apparently the minis 301-350 are not short-printed this year. Still, a cool card of a guy who just won a World Series, and really did a number on my Cardinals in the process.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Future Stars
#FS-JH Jeremy Hellickson
#FS-JU Justin Upton

Future Stars is an interesting name for a set featuring a 2-time All-Star. It's much better than the Bowman gamble on guys that may be no-names in a few years.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Hallmark Heroes
#HH-MM Mickey Mantle
#HH-SM Stan Musial

That's a pretty good pair, Mantle and Musial, especially for a Cardinal fan such as myself.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Sliding Stars
#SS-DG Dee Gordon
#SS-JW Jemile Weeks

Feet first, guys. You'll eat much less dirt that way.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Moonshots
#MS-AP Albert Pujols

Oh, Albert. That Angels uniform still doesn't look right on you.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Glove Stories
#GS-DJ Derek Jeter

This card features the ridiculous play Jeter made against the A's, in which he flipped the ball and it seemed to make a left turn mid-air to get Jeremy Giambi at the plate.

2012 Gypsy Queen - Blue Framed Parallel
#80 Ryan Braun #015/599

Finally, a nice parallel carried over from last year, the framed parallel. Last year was green, and this year's is Blue, and numbered to 599. But mostly I like how cool it looks and feels. I'd like to pick up a few Cardinals from this subset, so if you have any and would like this Braun, drop me an e-mail.

March Radness Win, Part VII

[Part I]
[Part II]
[Part III]
[Part IV]
[Part V]
[Part VI]

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.

Big Pile, part 1

Have you ever set a bubble mailer aside and totally lost track of it, then found it months later? That's what I did with the Big Pile contest at Royals and Randoms. Based on his blog posting about when he sent it out, and being extremely conservative with postal delivery times, I'll say I've had these for a full 4 months. Oops.

Well, I figure I'm better late than never in posting the cards and sending him a big thanks, so here's part 1.

1992 Pinnacle #9 Andy Van Slyke

I don't remember Andy Van Slyke as a Cardinal, but he does to the Fox Sports Midwest studio commentary for the Cardinals now. Of course, his son just helped the Dodgers finish off a sweep of us the other night with a late-inning pinch hit HR.

2005 Topps Chrome #16 Chad Tracy

Oooh, shiny.

2000 Fleer Twizzlers #8 Sammy Sosa

At first I thought this was a Fleer Tradition card, but the back is numbered 8 of 12 and has a subtle Twizzlers logo.

2010 Allen and Ginter #235 Carlos Guillen

2009 Goudy #85 Alex Gordon

2007 Turkey Red #29 Alex Gordon

I'm no Alex Gordon fan per se, I just happen to really like both Turkey Red and Goudey.

1990 Topps Mini League Leaders #56 Mike Scott

1990 Topps Mini League Leaders #47 John Smoltz

Former Cardinal John Smoltz, I don't care if it was only 7 appearances, that's what he'll always be to me.