Bowl Pick 'Em Contest Winnings, Part VI

College football will be here again before we know it, 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

2016 Topps
#46 Jhonny Peralta
#106 Jordan Walden
#107 Kevin Siegrist
#134 Yadier Molina
#146 Stephen Piscotty
#217 Lance Lynn
#244 Matt Carpenter
#319 Adam Wainwright

I still haven't bought any 2016 Topps cards. The other was from winning the subcontest within this same contest, picking the Belk Bowl. The only Cardinal in that prize was Pat Neshek, now with the Astros, so these were still all new to my collection.

2016 Topps
Back to Back #B2B-9 Red Schoendienst/Stan Musial
Berger's Best #BB-16 Steve Carlton
Pressed Into Service #PIS-6 Stan Musial
Perspectives #P-25 Ozzie Smith

Here we have more 2016 Topps, all inserts and all Hall of Famers. I'm glad to see Ozzie Smith has been included more and more in sets with older players. And I'm always happy to get Musial and Schoendienst cards.

April Card Show Purchases

When I got Whitey Herzog's autograph, I had some time to shop while waiting for my number to get called into line. Here's what I found that I felt was worth buying:

1987 Topps #243 Whitey Herzog
1990 Topps #590 Ozzie Smith
2013 Gypsy Queen #144 Red Schoendienst
2016 Heritage #14 Jhonny Peralta

4 base cards? Of course not, that'd be quite the waste of space for the sellers paying for table space. I bought 4 complete sets, but I decided to just post a representative card from each here. The 1987 and 1990 Topps came from a seller who said he just bought a large collection of hand-collated sets. In fact, he had so many junk era sets, he didn't have time to go through each one and verify they were complete, so he instead put them on his 2 for $5 table with a sign disclosing they may or may not be complete. He told me he trusted the guy personally, but he didn't want to upset anyone if they had missing cards. I flipped through them pretty fast, but mine did appear to be complete.

From the same seller, I also bought the 2013 Gypsy Queen base set, after looking up in Zistle and seeing not only was I nowhere close to completing it, I only owned one card from the set. I was kind of surprised by that, but that's just one of the sets that I never got around to buying in 2013. I'm really glad I have Zistle as a resource to look up my collection in cases like that; I would have guessed I already had most of the base set.

Finally, I purchased the 2016 Heritage base set (without short prints), saving myself the cost and time that go with opening retail blasters, which is how I usually buy Heritage. I think I did OK on the price of $35, based on what they're going for on eBay. I certainly saved myself $5 off the cost of the first two blasters I would have bought, and I probably would have bought a few more. I won't get any insert cards, but I rarely chase those anyway. They're just nice bonuses that come with my set building.

I've started to feel like buying full sets is the better way for me to go. I'm not making some huge change to my collecting, except I'll probably purchase full sets a little more often, and slightly fewer packs. I'll still buy packs and boxes for some sets, like the relatively cheap Opening Day, or ones where I really like the inserts.

December Card Show Autographs

After skipping November, I returned to the monthly card show in December, and came away with quite a handful of autographs.

Red Schoendienst     Tom Herr
 Bob Tewksbury     Jack Clark     Ron Hunt

That wasn't even the full contingent of players signing at the show. Cecil Cooper was there, despite having no St. Louis connections I'm aware of. Also, hockey player Bob Plager was there. He's well-known locally from his time with the Blues and he continues to work for the team, but I just don't have the room to start a puck collection too.

As for players I did get, Red Schoendienst has been on my want list for quite awhile. I've missed a few of his signings for various reasons, so I blocked out my calendar and bought advance tickets to make sure I made it to this one. Ron Hunt only played for the Cardinals at the very end of his career, but he did play here, so I decided I should have a ball with his autograph. Despite having one of the shorter lines there, his line moved the slowest, because he really wanted to talk to every fan that approached him. I thought that was pretty great, he could have signed and gotten out of there in 30 minutes, but he took his time and actually thanked the autograph seekers. Tom Herr and Jack Clark were Cardinals just before I started watching baseball, and both were part of the 1985 team that nearly won the World Series, and both were also All-Stars earlier that year. Finally, there was Bob Tewksbury, who wasn't dominant during his playing career, but he was probably the ace of the Cardinals staff when I was first getting into baseball, so that was another autograph I was excited to get. My favorite memory of him, though, is when he played for Minnesota in 1998 and lobbed some eephus pitches to Mark McGwire to keep the ball in the park.

2013 Allen and Ginter Set, Part II

As I mentioned in my last post of Allen and Ginter cards, I bought an almost-complete Allen and Ginter set (minus Puig), along with a separate purchase of the 50 Short Prints. Before I file it away with my "sorted" cards, here are the rest of the Cardinals from the set.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#108 Bob Gibson
#115 Stan Musial
#139 Red Schoendienst
#161 Enos Slaughter
#254 Lou Brock
#341 Ozzie Smith

6 Hall of Fame cards is a pretty good number out of a single set that mostly features current players. These players all have numbers retired by the Cardinals.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#125 Matt Holliday
#172 Jon Jay
#276 Lance Lynn
#283 Jason Motte
#340 Yadier Molina
#342 Adam Wainwright

There were also 6 Cardinals pictured in uniform in the set that are still on the team, though Motte hasn't been re-signed yet. Everyone else will be back, though.

2013 Allen and Ginter
#96 Jayson Heyward

Finally, here I have the newest Cardinal, Jason Heyward. I'll be interested to see how his 2015 goes, since it's his contract year, and what that ultimately means for his next contract, whether its with St. Louis or elsewhere. His acquisition puts 2 2014 Gold Glovers in the Cardinals' 2015 lineup, and may be the tipping point to make me decide to attend the Cardinals' Winter Warmup this year, to get an in-person autograph before he even plays his first game here.

All-Star Winnings, Part 10

Way back in July 2012, I won a contest at Cards On Cards. The premise was to pick the Cardinals player who would have the biggest impact on the game, determined Sabermetrically. I picked the right player, and got a pile of Cardinals for my trouble. They've been sitting in that same pile, haunting me, for quite some time, so now is the time to show them to you.
Part [ I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII | VIII | IX ]

The flurry of Cardinals continues with my second cousin, Todd Stottlemyre.

1996 Pinnacle #357 Todd Stottlemyre
1996 Collector's Choice #688 Todd Stottlemyre

1996 Pinnacle Summit #37 Todd Stottlemyre
1997 Collector's Choice #198 Todd Stottlemyre

I'm sure card companies do this to other teams too, but when it's the Cardinals, I really notice how their home uniform seems to show up very rarely. The Cardinals have never worn a red jersey (at least in modern times), so those shots in red are from spring training or pregame warmups.

1991 Topps Archives 1953 Al Schoendienst
2005 Upper Deck Classics #20 Johnny Hopp
2005 Upper Deck Classics #80 Red Schoendienst

Speaking of Red, here are two more Red Schoendiest cards, and Johnny Hopp. Johnny won 4 World Series rings in his career, 2 with the Cardinals, and 2 with the Yankees, but if you had mentioned his name to me before I saw this card, I would have no idea who he was.

All-Star Winnings, Part 4

Way back in July 2012, I won a contest at Cards On Cards. The premise was to pick the Cardinals player who would have the biggest impact on the game, determined Sabermetrically. I picked the right player, and got a pile of Cardinals for my trouble. They've been sitting in that same pile, haunting me, for quite some time, so now is the time to show them to you.
Part [ I | II | III ]

Today's subject is a man who managed the Cardinals too many times to count, and coached most of the time he wasn't managing, Red Schoendienst.

1972 Topps #67 Red Schoendienst
1981 Donruss #431 Red Schoendienst
1990 Topps Traded #113T Red Schoendienst
1992 Studio #262 Red Schoendienst
2006 Fleer Greats of the Game #74 Red Schoendienst
2007 SP Legendary Cuts #93 Red Schoendienst
2007 Topps - Distinguished Service #DS24 Red Schoendienst
2008 Donruss Threads #47 Red Schoendienst
2011 Topps Gypsy Queen #62 Red Schoendienst

As the cards get more recent, Red's picture seems to get younger. Of course, that's because the first few picture him past his playing prime as a manager, and the rest are throwbacks to his playing days. Upon my reentry into collecting in 2010, I was happy to see cards of guys like Red showing up, even though he's no longer manager or even a regular-season coach for the Cardinals.

As a side note, 1981 Donruss cards are paper-thin, aren't they?

Half of a Trade from The Daily Dimwit

Oh no, Matt's not going to do yet another trade multi-post, is he?

No, don't worry.  Not this time at least. Sam over at The Daily Dimwit sent me some cards in exchange for future considerations. I haven't done enough considering yet to send stuff back, thus this is half of a trade so far.

There was a nearly full 200-count box, but you've all seen plenty of 2011 Gypsy Queen base cards, so here are the Cardinals and the SP, just for fun.

2011 Gypsy Queen #39 Johnny Mize

2011 Gypsy Queen #62 Red Schoendienst 

2011 Gypsy Queen #70 Rogers Hornsby

I also got the Cubs card of  Hornsby, but didn't realize it till after I scanned these.

2011 Gypsy Queen #75 Albert Pujols

2011 Gypsy Queen #99 Ozzie Smith

2011 Gypsy Queen #97 Stan Musial

2011 Gypsy Queen #190 Jaime Garcia

2011 Gypsy Queen #340 Miguel Olivo (SP)

Thanks, Sam!

A Prize For My Prescience, part 4

[Part 1]
[Part 2]
[Part 3]


Ryan at The Great Orioles Autograph Project sent me a whole bunch of cards for picking the Cardinals to win the World Series, and it is of course my duty to show you the cards and link to his blog.

In this edition, random cardinals Ryan threw in!

1992 McDonald's Cardinals #46 Bob Gibson

1992 McDonald's Cardinals #30 Lou Brock

1992 McDonald's Cardinals #9 Joe Medwick

1992 McDonald's Cardinals #16 Grover Alexander

1992 McDonald's Cardinals #52 Bruce Sutter 

Somewhere deep in my basement, I think I may more of these McDonald's cards, because they look really familiar. One day I hope to get time to dig in and find out.

1993 Ted Williams #90 Bob Gibson

1994 Yoo-hoo #6 Bob Gibson

I think I need this set. The yellow is even more garish in person. Plus I love Yoo-hoo, and there are only 16 cards.

1992 Studio #262 Red Schoendienst/Checklist

I don't care if it is a Checklist, I'll always take a card of Red.

1988 Donruss - HOF Diamond King Puzzle Stan Musial

I found myself wondering how hard it might be to find this completed puzzle. Surely lots of folks who didn't complete the puzzle discarded the pieces, or at least didn't keep them in very good shape. Also I don't think Stan had quite the god-like status he now holds in St. Louis in 1988. Sure, he was loved, but the way the fans react these days, you'd think he invented the game. That's not to say it's undeserved, just makes me wonder how precious collectors would have found this puzzle card 20+ years ago.

1995 Summit - Nth Degree #8 Ken Hill

OK, so Ken Hill doesn't really belong in this crowd. But the card is so shiny!