Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part XXXV

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

Let's sort some cards!

1998 Bowman's Best #146 Braden Looper
1998 Fleer Tradition #397 Kent Mercker
1998 Fleer Tradition #415 Braden Looper
1998 Fleer Tradition #541 Cliff Politte
1998 Topps #485 Braden Looper/Cliff Politte/Brian Rose
2009 Topps #612 Joel Pineiro

I've apparently never posted a Cliff Politte card, and now here I have 2. He only played one year with the Cardinals, and started just 8 games. I sometimes amaze myself at how much more time I must have had for baseball in those days. I could easily lose track of a guy like that now, but I can easily remember him on the team. Braden Looper is another one I remember from his first stint with the Cardinals, which was only 4 appearances. He came back after some time in Florida and New York, though.

1997 Topps #477 Braden Looper/John Patterson
2009 Upper Deck #880 Joel Pineiro
2014 Munnatawket Allen and Ginter #34 Matt Carpenter

That Matt Carpenter isn't just your average Allen and Ginter mini (which are also good cards, for the record). It's from a custom set made by a friend of Nachos Grande, in the 2008 Ginter style, but with an ad for Munnatawket bats on the reverse. I've seen these on a few blogs in the past, but usually as part of the full set. This set might be harder to chase than something from the 60s, so I'll probably just be content with my anachronistic Matt Carpenter card, appearing to feature him 3 years before his MLB debut and 1 year before he was drafted.

Zistle Trade #16 Part II

My Zistle trading binge continues, and this time I got enough Cardinals that I had to split into two posts just to tag them all. In return, I sent off some 2011 Topps Lineage cards, several of which were triples and quadruples, because I bought several discounted packs and blasters of that set.

Part I

1983 Fleer #613 Gary Gaetti
1990 Upper Deck
#225 Ozzie Smith
#278 Milt Thompson
1992 Donruss
#116 Kent Mercker
#163 Brian Hunter
#208 Tony Pena
#424 Chris Sabo
1993 Hostess
#18 Andres Galarraga
#25 Ken Griffey, Jr.

Since I made these trades at the same time, I wound up trading for the Chris Sabo card twice. But, I'm not too upset about it. The main draw in this trade was the Hostess cards. I'm not sure how many Hostess Baseballs I ate in the summer of 1993, but I feel like it was on the order of dozens. Before these two, I had 25 unique cards from the set, and 9 duplicates. A quick blog search indicates I've received 4 in trade, and sent off a few, so that probably means I got at least 30 from eating the baseball cakes. Most importantly, I now need only 5 more to finish the set.

I found it surprising that these are the first cards I'm posting of Andres Galarraga, Brian Hunter, and Kent Mercker. I'd especially expect a card of Galarraga to have come up by now.

Another nice card in the trade is the Gary Gaetti rookie card. He first played a few games in the majors in 1981, and in an era before the modern Bowman, he didn't get a rookie card until he completed his first full season in 1982.