Group Break Loot From Cardboard Collections

I tried for a minute or so to think of a clever title for this post, but there's only so much you can do with "Cardboard Collections" and "group break". Man, I should really hire a title writer. I actually used to have some editing input into headlines and captions at my high school newspaper (this thing was quality, I swear) because I was solely in charge of making sure the stupid things fit using the computer program that we used. It was outdated, even for 1992.

Speaking of outdated, check out Todd Zeile signing autographs as some poor kid is trying to shove a 1990 Donruss The Rookies card in his general direction to get his ink on it. This is one of the stack of Cardinals cards I received from the very generous Colbey of Cardboard Collections from the free group break he held last month. Aren't those the best kind of group breaks? I surely think so.

The 1994 Upper Deck set seems like a really disappointing follow up to its nearly flawless 1993 set. The design is horrible, but at least Upper Deck seemed to continue with its great photography. I had stopped buying cards by this point, so I was fortunately never subjected to this stuff until long after the fact. That doesn't stop me from trying to collect all of the St. Louis cards, of course.

I probably have a few copies of this one, but it remains one of my favorite Ozzie photos. I'll just ignore the left sixth or so of the card.

This was my "hit" of the break... an Electric Diamond parallel of Mike Perez. I was all about Mike Perez back in those days. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot to be "all about" with the Cardinals clubs of the first half of the '90s so you could probably see how I could get behind a middle reliever/setup guy.

This is the lone Cardinal that I scored from the 1999 Stadium Club packs. I'm hoping to talk Colbey out of the Matt Holliday rookie that he pulled (and here I could have claimed two teams if I was on top of things.) I've found that I'm a fan of a lot of the Stadium Club designs that I missed over the years.

Pineiro reaped the benefits of a big season in 2009 by signing a huge contract with the Angels this past offseason. I am glad the Cardinals didn't attempt to compete with that deal, but at the same time they could really use him at this point. While it's true that he's had some problematic moments this year and his walk rate has nearly doubled, he's also striking out a ton more batters and... well... injuries have caused the Cardinals to get a little "creative" with their rotation of late. This card is one I needed, which means I'm down to just needing two Cardinal cards from the 2009 Upper Deck base set.

And, finally... Yeltsin! I am guessing that I randomly received this card because it's a card that couldn't be logically assigned to any baseball team. This actually becomes my second Boris Yeltsin card from the same set. I find it rather sad that there are multiple Yeltsin cards in any set.