The Best of 50 Random Cardinals Cards

An impulse by fills a few binder needs. 

Fresh off a victory at Busch Stadium on Tuesday night, I decided to take the plunge and buy one of those overpriced plastic containers of baseball cards from one of the numerous team stores. If I had scrutinized the packaging label a little more carefully, I may have realized that this random assortment was going to be nothing but old cards -- junk wax era, to be specific.

While everything was firmly rooted between the years 1981 and 1993, I did actually knock out a few things on my want list. Besides, at least I didn't throw down $34-plus-tax for a Topps flagship blaster, right?

I have quite a few Conlon cards, especially from 1991, but I didn't have this particular variant. Like many junk wax era sets, there were variations galore, as internet sleuthing has discovered that many sets from this era had two or three distinct versions of every single card in the set (check out 1987 through 1991 Donruss, for example.) This particular Conlon set is notable for its first printing lacking MLB logos, while its second (and seemingly identical third) printing has the logos. I am missing a lot of the "no logo" versions.

Check it. No logo.

I'm quite sure I never saw a single 1993 O-Pee-Chee card until I was well into my 30s. Here's a good one of the recently inducted HOFer.

Yep, here's a regular ol' base card from the '80s that I needed. '84 Donruss is fancy Donruss, though. Go figure. How many '84 Donruss Don Mattingly cards do you own? Be honest!

Finally, a couple of the Cards cards were randomly from a 1989 Louisville Redbirds set. I am cool with this. If there had been boxes of random (Cardinals affiliated) minor league cards available, I probably would have bought out the whole store.