Contest Reminder! And... Nado, Chuck and the Unwanted Dodgers

Catching up with a @nightowlcards summer trade package. 

Before we get into it, there's less than 24 hours left to sign up and make your picks for my annual Bowl Pick 'Em Contest. Picks are locked in at the start of each game.

 

Back in August, I received a small envelope of cards from Night Owl which was chiefly comprised of Dodgers cards. This is, of course, both the blessing and the curse of being a team collector. You end up with a lot of cards of the players that play for your favorite team, and you end up with heaps of dupes. Next thing you know, you find yourself in the midst of listing more than 8000 dupes on your "For Trade" list on TCDB (well, maybe that's just me.) Fortunately, Night Owl found an outlet for a few of his unwanted extras because of this Cardinals collector's bad habit of trying to put together old sets without actually opening packs.

I did find a couple of Redbirds in the package, including this charmingly off-center Chuck Taylor (not the inspiration for the Converse shoes?) and a nice red framed Diamond Kings Nolan Arenado. The Cardinals always look good in red.

The rest of the envelope was dedicated to Bowman Heritage cards from the '00s. The 2004 set is one of the few where I've actually picked up a handful of packs to open, so I actually have a decent amount of it. Someday I might feel brave enough again to buy loose packs on eBay, but now is still not the time for that.

I'm also partial to the 2005 set, which is based on the 1951 design. There's something nice about the simple block letters on the black background. I wonder if it felt modern at the time.

Cesar Izturis shows up again here and gets an action shot. Half of these guys are actually former Cardinals.

The first Bowman Heritage set, from 2001, is one of the most boring. You're stuck with modern black and white head shots which largely fail to look like the original 1948 set. It wasn't until the final two Bowman Heritage sets from the '00s where the level of boring approached this again. I have opened plenty of packs from 2006 and 2007, but there's virtually no chance of me opening a 2001 pack as it's the Pujols and Ichiro year.

A Big Box of Bo Cards

 
@BoRosny, not Bo Jackson. 

Right before the big blog anniversary group break, long time blogger Bo of Baseball Cards Come To Life! contacted me about trade involving a vintage project he had going. I cobbled together what I could, vintage-wise, and made sure Bo had a sizable package coming back in the group break. The sheer volume of what I got back was crazy, though!

Check these stacks of (mostly) '00s set building fodder! Great stuff. I don't see a lot of cards from these sets in trade packages anymore, now that there's more than a decade between these sets and the present day.

Let's look back into the past at some of these.

Ooh, a Bowman exclusive rookie card? What does that even mean? Tell me, Omar Infante!

Here's Jason Isringhausen, not long before he became the Cardinals closer for the mid-'00s years.

It's FOX broadcaster Eric Karros. Karros was coming up right when my interest in cards was dying out.

It's Tim Raines... Jr? Huh.

Besides the wonderfully black & white 2001 Bowman Heritage set, there were cards from other sets. Like this guy. Bear Bay is the name. Baseball on the sun is his game.

2002 Bowman Heritage brought us the weird signature box, but The Big Hurt isn't fazed about it.

1953 Topps is such a nice design.

Hey, it's the recently deposed Cardinals skipper in a Giants uniform!

Speaking of Cardinals, Bo included a healthy share of Cardinals for my team collecting needs (aka the biggest needs). It doesn't appear that I had a first year (2006) Allen Craig card in my collection, so this is certainly cool.

Speaking of cool, I am always pleased to add another Jim Edmonds card to my collection. And yet, I need so much more!

I always thought @ithrow88 was one of the best Twitter names.

One thing I have discovered in trying to figure out what was going on with cards in the long period of time where I didn't care about cards is that Tino Martinez had a lot of Cardinals cards. That surprises me, for some reason.

We end with a Finest card, which was in its 9th year at this point. Did they still have the protective coating for this set? I always want to peel that stuff off, but I don't for some reason.

Some Old Throwbacks

I enjoy these older new sets fashioned after much older cards. 

Mr. Haverkamp was the big winner way back in January for the annual Cards on Cards bowl pick 'em dealie, and as a big thanks for his prize, he sent me a big stack of old cards from sets I collect. Specifically, these are mostly from sets that came out before this blog was a thing (10+ years ago) and I wasn't really collecting. I really like these sets, and should probably spend more time on them. Fortunately, thanks to one gracious contest winner, I am a bit closer to these goals. I am in the process of digging up some stuff to send back because I certainly wasn't expecting to receive anything back for sending out a prize.

There were a bunch of cards in the package, so I just chose my favorite from each set.

Carl Everett doesn't (or didn't... does anyone know what he's been up to these days) believe in dinosaurs, and almost in a comical way. I have no recollection of him actually playing for the Mariners. He was one of the guys who showed up on prospect cards in the early '90s when I was still a teenaged collecting geek who went on to have a career largely out of my consciousness.

Every card I've ever seen from the 2002 Bowman Heritage set has a facsimile autograph on the front where Freddy Garcia's name is. Did they misplace his rookie contract? Did his autograph look like something mildly offensive? I don't know the story behind this. It's strange to think that Garcia was at one point considered Seattle's ace.

Did you know there was another Garciaparra? Me neither. His tale isn't nearly as tragic as Larry Yount's, but his Wikipedia entry is rather short (and short of intrigue).

Mr. Haverkamp sent me two foil parallels from the 2007 Bowman Heritage set, and the other one was a good-for-nothing Cub. We get cheatin' Manny by default.

Speaking of cheating... nah, this obviously isn't Starling Marte. I like the older Heritage sets before MLB and Topps came to the agreement to tighten up their rookie card/prospect rules because they contain a lot of names that came and went before I ever heard mention of them. I do think it limited their collecting appeal a bit, though.

2001 Bowman Heritage

Want List: 

1 Chipper Jones
8 Derek Jeter
61 Matt Lawton
89 Mike Piazza
104 John Franco
127 John Lackey
135 Marquis Grissom
138 Josh Beckett
145 Jose Lima
146 Dante Bichette
147 Randy Keisler
154 Robin Ventura
155 Rondell White
158 Sidney Ponson
221 Ryan Franklin
269 Tony Blanco
288 Scott Seabol
304 Chase Utley
321 Jay Payton
326 Carl Everett
328 Jay Bell

(SP)
331 Adrian Gonzalez
332 Juan Rivera
333 Tony Alvarez
334 Xavier Nady
335 Josh Hamilton
336 Will Smith
337 Israel Alcantara
338 Chris George
339 Sean Burroughs
340 Jack Cust
341 Henry Mateo
342 Carlos Pena
343 J.R. House
344 Carlos Silva
345 Mike Rivera
346 Adam Johnson
348 Alex Cintron
349 Miguel Cabrera
350 Nick Johnson
351 Albert Pujols
352 Ichiro Suzuki
353 Carlos Delgado
354 Troy Glaus
355 Sammy Sosa
357 Vladimir Guerrero
358 Manny Ramirez
359 Luis Gonzalez
360 Roy Oswalt
361 Moises Alou
363 Tony Gwynn
364 Hideo Nomo
365 Tsuyoshi Shinjo
366 Kazuhiro Sasaki
367 Cal Ripken Jr.
368 Rafael Palmeiro
369 J.D. Drew
370 Doug Mientkiewicz
371 Jeff Bagwell
372 Darin Erstad
373 Tom Gordon
374 Ben Petrick
375 Eric Milton
376 Nomar Garciaparra
377 Julio Lugo
378 Tino Martinez
380 Jeremy Giambi
381 Marty Cordova
382 Adrian Beltre
383 John Burkett
384 Aaron Boone
385 Eric Chavez
386 Curt Schilling
388 Jason Schmidt
389 Johnny Damon
391 Edgardo Alfonzo
393 Jose Canseco
394 Ryan Klesko
395 David Cone
396 Jason Kendall
397 Placido Polanco
398 Glendon Rusch
399 Aaron Sele
400 D'Angelo Jimenez
401 Mark Grace
402 Al Leiter
403 Brian Jordan
404 Phil Nevin
405 Brent Abernathy
406 Kerry Wood
409 Dmitri Young
410 Wes Helms
411 Trevor Hoffman
412 Rickey Henderson
413 Bobby Higginson
414 Gary Sheffield
415 Darryl Kile
416 Richie Sexson
418 Javy Lopez
419 Carlos Lee
420 Jon Lieber
421 Hank Blalock
422 Marlon Byrd
424 Morgan Ensberg
425 Greg Nash
426 Dennis Tankersley
428 Chris Smith
429 Jake Gautreau
430 John VanBenschoten
431 Travis Thompson
432 Orlando Hudson
433 Jerome Williams
434 Kevin Reese
435 Ed Rogers
436 Ryan Jamison
437 Adam Pettyjohn
438 Hee Seop Choi
439 Justin Morneau
440 Mitch Jones


[updated 4/3/26]