More Contest Thanks

This time I'm showing some cards I won from All Cardinals All the Time, a blog that obviously caters to my interests. The contest to celebrate 2 years was a simple game guessing the serial number of one of two Alex Reyes cards, and I won with lucky #13.

2014 Bowman Draft - Top Prospects #TP-62 Kris Bryant
2014 Bowman - Chrome Prospects #BCP47 Alex Reyes - Autographed
2015 Topps Tier One - Dual Swatch Relics #DSR-VG Vladimir Guerrero

The first part of the prize were these Bryant and Vlad cards. The autographed Reyes was a nice throw-in, if you can call an autograph of a team's #1 prospect a throw-in. We'll have to wait another year to see if he lives up to his hype, since he just completed Tommy John surgery after feeling some arm problems in the first days of spring training.


The rest of the prize was a Jumbo pack of 2017 Topps. Since I'm not terribly proactive when it comes to baseball cards, these are my first 2017s.

2017 Topps
#99 Michael Wacha
#302 David Freese
First Pitch #FP-21 Jon Lovitz
Gold Parallel #159 Justin Verlander #1690/2017
MLB Awards #MOY-2 Dave Roberts
Silver Slugger #SS-11 Mike Trout
Topps Salute #S-47 Trevor Story
Rediscover Topps Promo Mark McGwire

With 6 inserts and 30 base cards, one in-uniform and one former Cardinal seems like a pretty fair rate. Even though it pictures him in a Cubs jersey, I really like the Jon Lovitz first pitch card.
At first I thought that McGwire card was one of the 1987 style inserts, then I thought it was just kind of a throwaway advertising card after seeing the back, but upon looking at the checklist, it appears this is an actual insert set called Rediscover Topps.

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 XXXIII

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


With the pro football season winding down, I'll run through these a little faster now. Today's them is "Horizontal cards and others in the same set or with the same player". Catchy, right?

1996 Topps #167 Danny Jackson
1999 Upper Deck Victory #439 Mark McGwire
2000 Skybox Dominion #37 Mark McGwire
2000 Skybox Dominion #102 J.D. Drew

I like the shiny sets from 98-2000, which was really the heyday of collecting for me the first time around. Skybox Dominion just reminds me of when there were so many products I couldn't keep track, and would buy maybe a pack from each product per year.

1996 Topps #431 Jaime Bluma/David Coggin/Steve Montgomery/Brandon Reed
1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated World Series Fever #34 Ron Gant
1999 UD Choice #130 Mark McGwire
2000 Skybox Dominion - New Era #18 Adam Kennedy

Here are the aforementioned horizontal cards. Can you tell 98-99 was the homerun era? Also, for its time, that prospect card had a decent hit rate, with 3 out of 4 players making it to the major leagues. Steve Montgomery is shown as a Cardinal, because they drafted him, but he was traded for Dennis Eckersley before he made it to St. Louis.

eBay Wins #217

Once again, collating all my miscellaneous penny wins by set has led me to a large amount of cards that won't fit in one post. Enjoy the first 96 1987 Topps, and their woodgrain borders that remind me of the old paneling in my parents family room. I actually had duplicates of a few, which I noted in the captions. I didn't think I really needed to see scans of all 3 Marvell Wynne cards.

1987 Topps
#3 Dwight Evans
#11 Indians Leaders
#24 Tony Walker
#29 Jimmy Key
#37 Marvell Wynne (x3)
#38 Dennis Leonard
#51 Mel Hall
#69 Lonnie Smith
#70 Charlie Hough

Fun fact about Lonnie Smith: He was traded from the Cardinals to the Royals in 1985, and became the first player to face the team he started the season with in the World Series.

1987 Topps
#83 Mike Davis
#85 Kevin Bass
#92 Urbano Lugo (x2)
#93 Jim Leyland (x2)
#117 Jim Beattie
#127 Vance Law (x2)
#133 Jose Oquendo
#135 Mike Easler (x2)
#137 Jerry Willard

I met Jose Oquendo a few months ago. He looks younger now than he does on this card.

1987 Topps
#138 Roy Lee Jackson
#145 Charlie Kerfeld
#152 Toby Harrah
#156 Mariners Leaders
#162 Mike LaValliere
#165 Jeff Reardon (x2)
#166 Bob Boone
#170 Bo Jackson
#175 Bob Stanley

I also met Mike LaValliere. He doesn't have Jose's fountain of youth, but he's one of the funniest players I've met.

1987 Topps
#181 Cardinals Leaders
#183 Andy Hawkins
#187 Mark Huismann
#198 Lee Mazzilli
#202 Ricky Wright (x2)
#213 Randy Myers
#221 Vern Ruhle
#240 Steve Balboni (x2)
#241 Danny Heep

LaValliere and Ozzie Smith make an appearance on that Cardinals leaders card.

1987 Topps #243 Whitey Herzog
#245 Willie Upshaw
#249 Jim Pankovits (x2)
#253 Eddie Milner (x2)
#263 Stan Javier (x2)
#267 Howard Johnson
#271 Mike Brown
#274 Jeff Hearron
#278 Gary Pettis

For whatever reason, I didn't have this Whitey Herzog card until now. That's one more off the want list.

1987 Topps
#280 Jeffrey Leonard (x2)
#289 Bob Kipper
#308 Don Slaught
#309 Mike Young
#318 Jim Fregosi
#321 Mike Laga
#325 Garry Templeton
#333 Ken Phelps
#334 Ed Correa

Mike Laga is the only guy to hit the ball out of Busch Stadium II. He did it with a foul ball, though.

1987 Topps
#341 Mike Brown
#344 Joe Niekro
#347 Mickey Brantley
#350 Keith Hernandez
#362 Luis Quinones
#363 Jose Guzman
#366 Mark McGwire
#373 Jeff Dedmon
#385 Orel Hershiser

I've been seriously considering purchasing a 1980s powder blue Keith Hernandez jersey from Mitchell and Ness, because not only was he a great player, but he wore my favorite number, 37. Plus I don't see many Hernandez jerseys around town, whereas McGwires are still everywhere.

1987 Topps
#387 T.R. Bryden
#388 Geno Petralli
#401 Billy Jo Robidoux
#402 Mike Trujillo (x2)
#407 Jim Acker
#411 Darnell Coles
#438 Kelly Downs
#441 Dave Leiper
#461 Craig McMurtry

No Cardinals in this scan? Boooo.

1987 Topps
#464 Butch Wynegar
#465 Todd Worrell (x2)
#466 Kal Daniels
#467 Randy St. Claire
#468 George Bamberger
#469 Mike Diaz
#479 Bob Sebra
#480 Jim Rice
#497 Dale Mohorcic

And we wrap up with Todd Worrell's card featuring the Rookie Cup.

These were again out of my half-cent box, which I created to even out the less-than-a-penny-per-card lots I bought. So these 96 count for 48 cents in my tracker.

eBay Bargain Tracker
Total Cards Bought	3697
Total Spent	$54.39
Per Card	1.471 cents
Change	-0.026 cents

Me Too!

I've seen lots of 2015 Update boxes with the Chrome cards on your blogs, and had to get one myself. Let's see how I did. As usual I like to show off the Cardinals and inserts, lest I spend a ton of time scanning 9 cards at a time.

2015 Topps Update
#US106 Shelby Miller
#US214 Yadier Molina
#US338 Pete Kozma
#US373 Mitch Harris
#US393 Dan Haren
Pride and Perseverence #PP-8 Jon Lester
Rarities #R-3 Daniel Nava
Rookie Sensations #RS-6 Nomar Garciaparra
Rookie Sensations #RS-20 Tom Seaver

Shelby Miller's got an ugly hat, and Yadi's got a ridiculous gold chest protector, but I like All-Star game cards. It's not Topps' fault the game has started to look a bit silly.

Pride and Perseverance is a good idea for a set, featuring players with unique challenges, mostly medically related from the checklist. I think it might have been better if it didn't just look like a brown parallel, though. The other insert card of note in the first bunch is the Nomar Garciaparra, one of the very few players I collect that hasn't played for the Cardinals.

2015 Topps Update
Highlight of the Year #H-76 Hank Aaron
Tape Measure Blasts #TMB-11 Mark McGwire

Here are two more retired players feature on inserts. I guess it's a nice easy way to please everyone, having insert sets featuring not only the biggest stars of today, but all time. The McGwire card features a specific long home run he hit just a few months before being traded to St. Louis in 1997, and breaking the single-season record in 1998.

2015 Topps Update - Chrome
#US237 Craig Kimbrel
#US238 A.J. Cole
#US309 Howie Kendrick
#US308 Joey Butler
#US319 Will Harris
#US392 Odrisamer Despaigne
#US398 J.T. Realmuto
2015 Topps Update - Rookie Sensations Chrome #RSC-2 Ichiro Suzuki

Here's the big draw for these boxes, the Chrome parallels. There were 8 and they scanned nicely this way, so apologies to Joey Butler's card for being sideways. I didn't get any Cardinals in the Chrome packs, but I did get an Ichiro insert. The exclusive nature of these means I might be tempted to grab another box or two, and then try to trade for or buy the rest secondhand.

Zistle Trade #19

With today's trade I've filled in 7 more Cardinals cards in my collection, even though only one is actually pictured in uniform. I think I added the Fleer cards to my want list recently, possibly when I got the last of the uniformed Cardinals I needed in another trade. I should really just put the full sets from junk wax years on my list to make things easier, and pick and choose from the more rare sets.

1990 Donruss #697 Mark McGwire
1990 Fleer
#7 Mike Gallego
#67 Ken Oberkfell
#77 Pat Borders
#84 Tom Henke
#207 Gregg Jefferies
1993 Studio #90 Gregg Jefferies

The Donruss card is the error version of Mark McGwire's All-Star card. As you may know, some of them were put out with a subtle error, where the stats on the back are for All-Star games, but the stats header says "Recent Major League Performance". Corrected versions were issued, and I have so many cards from the set, I decided I'd try to complete a full base set, with all versions of the error cards included.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part X

Part I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX

Today's post finishes off the McGwires, and almost finishes the whole box that was sent to me.

1999 Topps #201 Mark McGwire
1999 Upper Deck #518 Mark McGwire(x2)
1999 Upper Deck - Opening Season Superstars #S2
2000 Topps #232 Mark McGwire
2000 Topps #469 Mark McGwire

The card companies were in full "post-homerun photo" mode by 1999, which I'll admit did capture Big Mac's 1998 pretty well.

2000 Topps - Own The Game #OTG6 Mark McGwire
2000 Topps Opening Day #1 Mark McGwire(x2)
2000 Upper Deck Ovation #18 Mark McGwire
2000 Upper Deck #537 Mark McGwire
2001 Fleer Genuine #54 Mark McGwire
2014 Topps - Future Stars That Never Were #FS-13 Mark McGwire
2014 Topps Archives #69 Mark McGwire

It still seems weird that McGwire only played one full season and 2 half seasons after setting the home run record at 70. Finishing off his cards from this package are two from just last year, featuring him back in his Oakland days. I'm glad to see him showing up in current products, even if it does just keep expanding my ever-growing wantlist.

I've got one more post to go in showing off this massive mailing from Junior Junkie.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part IX

Part I II III IV V VI VII VIII


Today I've got even more McGwires, including a good chunk of an all-McGwire set.

1998 Upper Deck Mark McGwire's Chase For 62
#1, #2, #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #11

1998 Upper Deck Mark McGwire's Chase For 62
#12, #13, #14, #15, #16, #17, #18, #19

There are 30 cards in Upper Deck's Chase For 62 set. I got 2 of them in a prize package 2 years ago, but I believe this was a boxed set, so I would expect most people would either want all 30 or none of them, and most of the sets are still together. But, I now have 17 of the 30, so we'll see how it goes.

1998 Collector's Choice #220 Mark McGwire
1998 Topps #325 Mark McGwire
1998 Topps #478 Mark McGwire (x2)
1998 Metal Universe #110 Mark McGwire
1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated Then and Now #113 Mark McGwire
1999 Topps HD #70 Mark McGwire
1999 Upper Deck Victory #429 Mark McGwire

Those last 2 cards - the 1999s - are both from sets I didn't previously have in my collection. My collecting started waning in 1999, so it's fun to see "new" sets from around that time. Sometimes I still get that "new set" rush and want to collect the whole thing, and Topps HD might become one of those.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part VIII

Part I II III IV V VI VII


Today, it's still McGwire time.

1997 Donruss #270 Mark McGwire
1997 Donruss #413 Mark McGwire
1997 Upper Deck SPx #SPX38 Mark McGwire
1998 Upper Deck #150 Mark McGwire

I always finish off my posts with horizontal cards, like they're second-class or something. But I like them, there's usually just less of them. The only second-class thing about this SPx card is how difficult it is to square up with other cards to scan.

1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #57 Mark McGwire/Andres Galarraga
1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #190 Mark McGwire
1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #330 Mark McGwire (x2)
1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice - Stick 'Ums #25 Mark McGwire
1997 Leaf #38 Mark McGwire
1997 Pinnacle #52 Mark McGwire
1997 Donruss Studio #8 Mark McGwire

There are 5 cards out of 1997 Collector's Choice, with 3 distinct ones from the base set. That's actually two copies of the same card in the upper right, but one has a slight dent in it that, I guess, changed the angle just enough that the scanner got a totally different color out of the shiny background. There's also studio, one of my favorite sets from when I really started collecting in earnest. One of these days I'll have to dig around and see if I have all of the 8x10s from that set. I believe I do.

1997 Upper Deck #297 Randy Velarde
1998 Upper Deck #9 Mark McGwire
1998 Upper Deck #205 Mark McGwire
1998 Pinnacle #63 Mark McGwire
1998 Topps Stars - Bronze #135 Mark McGwire #4269/9799
1998 Pinnacle Plus #196 Mark McGwire

After a McGwire cameo on Randy Velarde's card, we've made it to the Cardinal years. As you may or may not know off the top of your head like I do, McGwire was traded to the Cardinals at the trading deadline in 1997. He finished with a ridiculous-at-the-time 58 total HRs on the season, and broke the record with 70 in 1998.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part VII

Part I II III IV V VI

It occurs to me I haven't been doing the kind thing and actually linking to Junior Junkie's blog, for you, or for the search engine robots to boost him up.

I've got more McGwires today, slowly but surely approaching the end of his A's years.

1994 Donruss #335 Mark McGwire
1995 Donruss #460 Mark McGwire (x2)
1995 Score #377 Mark McGwire
1995 Topps Stadium Club #289 Mark McGwire (x2)

I had neither the 1995 Donruss or Stadium Club cards of McGwire, and now I have 2. It's always good to have a backup.

1995 Pinnacle Zenith #71 Mark McGwire
1995 Upper Deck #35 Mark McGwire
1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice #710 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps - Profiles #AL18 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps Finest #B162 Mark McGwire
1996 Upper Deck #151 Mark McGwire

I've seen those Oakland Oaks throwbacks on other cards before. They're a little odd on the typically green-and-gold A's.

1995 Pinnacle #196 Mark McGwire
1996 Sportflix #117 Mark McGwire

I needed both of these cards, which both show the best thing you can on a horizontal card of a slugger, the full swing extension.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part VI

Part I II III IV V

I hope you like Mark McGwire cards, because I've got another post full of them. Actually, I hope you don't like Mark McGwire cards, so you'll send them all to me.

1991 Topps #270 Mark McGwire
1992 Studio #226 Mark McGwire
1993 Duracell #9 Mark McGwire
1993 Donruss Triple Play #87 Mark McGwire (x3)
1993 Pinnacle #58 Mark McGwire (x2)
1993 Topps Stadium Club #595 Mark McGwire

I actually got 4 Triple Play cards, but 18 cards scan much nicer than 19. And, I figured you got the gist of it after 3 of them.

1993 Studio #141 Mark McGwire
1993 Upper Deck #566 Mark McGwire (x3)
1993 Upper Deck #493 Mark McGwire
1994 Pinnacle #300 Mark McGwire
1994 Topps Stadium Club #358 Mark McGwire
1994 Donruss Triple Play #5 Mark McGwire
1994 Upper Deck #67 Mark McGwire

Either the photos on the Pinnacle and Triple Play cards were taken at the same time, or this was one of Big Mac's daily drills. Even if it was, he's got the exact same jacket, and the sun's at about the same angle based on the shadow of his hat bill. I vote for two photos of the same practice.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part V

Part I II III IV


I've got a lot of McGwires to go through. I'm nowhere near the St. Louis years yet.

1990 Starline Long John Silvers #9 Mark McGwire
1990 Starline Long John Silvers #11 Mark McGwire (x2)
1990 Kmart #32 Mark McGwire
1991 Donruss - Bonus Cards #BC-9 Mark McGwire
1991 Score 100 Superstars #39 Mark McGwire
1991 Score #324 Mark McGwire (x3)

I think those Green-Bordered cards were some sort of Long John Silvers giveaway, from some searching around the web.

1991 Upper Deck #174 Mark McGwire
1992 Donruss #348 Mark McGwire
1992 Fleer Ultra #115 Mark McGwire (x2)
1992 Pinnacle #217 Mark McGwire
1992 Upper Deck Fanfest #32 Mark McGwire

The 1992 Upper Deck FanFest set is another new one for me. It's increasingly rare for me to get a card from a set I don't already have cards from, but that one and the Starline cards were both new sets to my collection.

Junior Junkie's Generosity, Part IV

Part I II III

The cards from the giant box continue. I've got mostly McGwires left. And this is going to take me awhile.

1988 Donruss #1 Mark McGwire (x5)
1988 Donruss #256 Mark McGwire
1988 Donruss - Bonus Cards #BC-23 Mark McGwire
1988 Topps #759 Athletics Leaders (x2)

Yes, there's a few duplicates, but with cards like Diamond Kings, who cares?

1988 Score #5 Mark McGwire
1988 Score #659 Mark McGwire
1989 Classic Travel Purple #190 Mark McGwire
1989 Topps #70 Mark McGwire
1989 Upper Deck #300 Mark McGwire
1990 Classic Update #T33 Mark McGwire
1990 Donruss #185 Mark McGwire
1990 Donruss #697 Mark McGwire

I was glad to see a few of the slightly harder-to-find cards, like the 89 and 90 Classic cards. Not that those are impossible, but there are certainly more 1990 Donruss or 1989 Topps around.

1989 Fleer #634 Jose Canseco/Terry Steinbach/Mark McGwire (X3)
1988 Score #648 Mark McGwire/Matt Nokes
1990 Fleer #638 Don Mattingly/Mark McGwire
1990 Upper Deck #36 Oakland A's Checklist
1989 Topps Big #34 Mark McGwire

I wonder how many cards featuring both McGwire and Canseco are out there. I got two different examples in this bunch, counting the one with Terry Steinbach. Don Mattingly and Matt Nokes also made appearances. I think my favorite cards of this post is the Topps Big, although now I've got even more of a need to figure out how exactly to store cards from that set. I'd be glad to hear any good ideas anyone has.

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. 

Turkey For Me, Turkey For You III: Turkeys in Time

If you get that sequel reference, you're probably just about my age, and, like me, you felt that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could do no wrong in 1993. Anyway, let's see the last of the Turkey Red trade from 2 by 3 Heroes.

2008 Upper Deck - Star Quest #SQ-16 Albert Pujols
2008 Upper Deck - Star Quest #SQ-32 Albert Pujols
2006 Fleer Ultra #38 Jim Edmonds
2007 Fleer Ultra #149 Jim Edmonds
2013 Gypsy Queen #80 Bob Gibson
2007 Topps #660 Yadier Molina
2003 Upper Deck Victory #88 Mark McGwire
1993 Topps #191 Sean Lowe

That's a nice pile of Cardinals to finish off the trade. With all the Cardinals cards I have stockpiled, I'm always kind of impressed to see just how many simple base cards are out there that I don't have, even though I know that shouldn't surprise me.

Zistle Trade #11 Part II

[Part I]

Yesterday I showed some cards from a recent Zistle trade, all from the junk wax year of 1990. As you can see, the rest were from about the same era.

I'm not sure why I put the Bill Buckner card on my want list, unless his name just stood out due to the famous play he didn't quite make for the Red Sox, while I was adding some other 1989 Fleer to my want list. Ultimately I hope to complete most of the easy-to-find sets like Donruss, Fleer, and Topps from these years, so I'm glad to have it. The rest of the players were all Cardinals at one time or another. I was sort of surprised I didn't have the 1987 McGwire, but I double checked my sorted cards and sure enough, I didn't.

1987 Topps #366 Mark McGwire
1989 Fleer #278 Bill Buckner
1990 Topps #261 Whitey Herzog
1991 Donruss #155 Todd Stottlemyre
1991 Fleer #635 Ken Hill
1993 Score #241 Ozzie Canseco

When I first started watching baseball, two of my favorite players besides Cardinals were the Bash Brothers, Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco. Imagine my surprise in September 1992 when I found out Jose's twin brother was in the minor league system, and came up to the big leagues when rosters expanded. He actually played 9 games in a row that year, from September 2-12 with a few off days, then disappeared for the rest of the year. Then in 1993, he played 6 consecutive games, May 7-13. That was the end of his major league career, though, after 15 games in St. Louis and 9 in Oakland.

Three Contests from Chavez Ravining

Alex at Chavez Ravining is running one of his contests again, and you have until Monday evening to go comment to enter. 3 different people will each win one Team USA relic card.

Now for the other two contests, those are in the past. That is to say, I won two consecutive contests at Chavez Ravining. The first contest was an effort to get Dodger Penguin up to 50 followers, which was achieved. I got my pick of Alex's trade bait, and I went with a shiny Pujols.

2013 Topps Chrome
1972 Refractors #72C-AP Albert Pujols

A week later, I won again! This time the prize was a nice relic from 2014 Topps of Ben Zobrist.

2014 Topps
Trajectory Relics #TR-BZ Ben Zobrist

At least Alex saved some postage by sending the two cards together. In both contests, I also won some Chavez Code points, which I'll have to get around to redeeming one of these days.

Also in this package, Alex sent the 4th McGwire card from the Mother's Cookies set. He sent the other 3 in our previous trade.

1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #1/4

As a Midwesterner, these are tough to find locally, since Mother's Cookies never quite made it this far. I'm keeping this one in its original wrapping too, since I can see both sides.

Thanks to Alex for the contests!

Trading for McGwires

Alex at Chavez Ravining was kind enough to scour my Zistle list for McGwires I didn't have, and in return I sent him some Dodgers for his Topps Team Set project.

1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #2/4
1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #3/4
1988 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #4/4
1989 Mother's Cookies Mark McGwire Set #3/4

I always see Mother's Cookies cards, but I haven't owned any until now. These arrived still in the plastic wrapper that protected them from the cookies, so I figured I'd leave the 25-26 year old plastic intact...for now.

1991 Upper Deck #656 "The Bashing Years"
1995 SP #185 Mark McGwire
1995 SP - Platinum Power #PP13 Mark McGwire
1996 Metal Universe #101 Mark McGwire
1996 Topps #145 Mark McGwire
1997 Topps #62 Mark McGwire

It's kind of funny to me that a 1991 card referred retrospectively to the late 80s as "The Bashing Years", since McGwire's 97-99 total was 193 Home Runs. In his 4+ seasons before 1991, he "only" hit 156. I know it's a reference to the Bash Brothers, but he had plenty of power left for his later years.

1996 Leaf Preferred - Steel #14 Mark McGwire

This card is actually printed on steel. These were inserted 1 per pack in 1996 Leaf preferred, so I'm surprised I didn't own any. That seems like exactly the type of gimmick that would have convince me to buy quite a few packs in 1996. I even only have 2 cards from the main set, both of which came in contest prizes. Maybe my LCS never had any for some reason. The printing is surprisingly high-quality for being on a metal substrate, and I've added a few Cardinals from the set to my want list.

That's all. Thanks to Alex for adding to my McGwire collection!

Junior Junkie's Birthday Gifts

Back in November, on Ken Griffey Jr.'s 44th birthday, Junior Junkie held a little giveaway. At stake were 44 cards, and the contest was simply a free-for-all. Everyone got to claim 2 cards, first come, first served. I managed to be the 6th one to see the post and claim cards, so there were 2 players I collect still on the board.

1997 Circa #148 Nomar Garciaparra
2000 Topps Chrome #468 RBI Leaders Mark McGwire/Manny Ramirez

 Just because you can't see Manny anywhere on the McGwire card, here are the backs

.

1997 Circa #148 Nomar Garciaparra
2000 Topps Chrome #468 RBI Leaders Mark McGwire/Manny Ramirez

For good measure, I even got an Allen and Ginter mini of Darryl Strawberry. He never played for the Cardinals, but for some reason lives in a suburb near me.

2013 Allen and Ginter
Mini #98 Darryl Strawberry

Thanks, Junior Junkie!