Keepers from the Box o' Fun

Everything I kept from the huge $10 box. 

I did actually manage to find a place in my collection for a few cards out of the huge box that I purchased recently (let's get some trades going!) Let's take a look at what you won't be getting if you trade with me, because that's fun.

See! Stuff! At very reasonable prices! With two exclamation points!

Here's a pair from the big stack of 2003 Donruss Team Heroes. This isn't the greatest design or best set really, but it does contain a nice mix of young players (like these two), established stars and former players/legends. Bud Smith goes into my binders because he's still pictured in a Cardinals uniform, even though he has moved on to Philly. And Carp goes into the Carp binder because he's Carp.

Here's another group that illustrates my point of what I do collect. Cardinals. And Cardinals that have moved on to other teams, as long as they're still shown in Cardinals gear. The Terry Pendleton in the old road blues looks nice, although a more era appropriate team logo would have fit better here.

There were a ton of 2004 Donruss Classics cards. Because it's a relatively small set, I have cards of some guys many times over.

Surprisingly, there was a weird bunch of basketball cards from the 2003 UD Top Prospects set. I will probably have a hard time unloading these as there were a lot of lesser known European players mixed in with players in college uniform only, with no NBA team affiliation mentioned. I did keep this card of Viktor Khryapa, who would begin his NBA career with the Blazers. To date, I have no other Khryapa cards, so this will start a new spot in the Blazers binders.

An addition to my DK PC is always a good thing. This is from 1997, the set with the weird shiny embossed player nameplates.

Most of the box was base cards, but there was a little stack of parallels from the 1998 Score Rookie & Traded set. I pretty much always need '90s parallels.

Like I mentioned, this team collecting goes the other (more logical) direction with me as well. Here's a guy (we'll call him Reggie) who has joined the Cardinals but is still pictured with his former team. The card says "Cardinals" and the logo is there, so that's enough for me.

Finally, this was the biggest and most random surprise out of the box of surprises. This is the lone card from the '70s and, needless to say, the lone signed card in the bunch. If it had been any other team, this would have ended up as someone else's random surprise. Is it real? Well, I don't know if there are too many people going around forging Eric (don't call him Harry!) Rasmussen signatures these days, but I guess you never know.