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.

Saturday Night Junkie Loot Post

Trading has slowed a bit with me, most likely due to my lack of timeliness in getting myself in gear and out to the post office. It's not really the "going to the post office" effort that proves to be daunting, it's usually my poor organization skills and failure to actually dig through my many boxes of cards to find stuff that people are looking for. I did get a bunch of stuff mailed out Tuesday and plan to take another stab at it by next weekend. I sent a few things to dayf along with my loot contribution to the Heritage blaster fantasy league. I honestly can't remember who is even on my team or how they're doing, but I guess that's fortunately not up to me to keep track of.

The Mark Mulder 2005 Studio Stars card is actually made of clear plastic, but it looks white due to the white backdrop from the scanner. I suppose I could have tried scanning it with the cover off, but that idea failed to make it to my brain until now.

Included in the package were a handful of 2002 Topps Heritage cards, one of the many Heritage sets that I'm trying to collect without actually making much of an effort. If you feel like you have nothing to trade me, this is a good place to start. Meanwhile, I love Bobby Bo's facial expression here. Hilarity.

Bill Ortega only made 5 appearances in the majors in his career, which is why I can never remember who he is. Thanks, baseball-reference.com!

Dayf was kind enough to send over 5 short prints from my 2009 Allen & Ginter want list. I'm down to needing 18 SPs and 7 regular base cards.

Hey guys, did you hear that I also like basketball cards? Well, that's only partially true. I really have no use for any NBA cards that aren't Blazers or Oregon alums. I don't have many Scottie Pippen Blazers cards, so this is a nice addition.

I was always a huge 'Sheed fan, which makes me feel a little sheepish. Here he is dunking on future Blazers cap space hog Raef LaFrentz.

I remember Erick Barkley at one point telling everyone that he was the best player on the team (or was it the best point guard?) I don't remember the exact quote, but he never amounted to anything in the NBA and was a waste of a late first round pick.

Finally, the Cardboard Junkie sent over a couple of oversized Mark McGwire goodies that I'll probably never figure out how to store. I'm saving the other one for a future Christmas themed post, but this Stadium Club Scenes card from 2000 has a nice view of Busch II.

"New to Me" Heritage and Turkey Red

NBC used to do some sort of promos for summer reruns that went something like "if it's new to you, it's not a rerun." Something like that, anyway. While their attitude might have been a little suspect (assuming that someone has not seen your show means it probably isn't very good) I think their selling point could easily apply to other things in life. Other things like... oh... I don't know... baseball cards?

You can probably see where I'm going with this. Cardboard Junkie's own dayf, who really needs no introduction, had some extra Topps vintage tribute cards (or is that tribute vintage?) and he found the right place to send them to. I have this rather insane idea of eventually putting together all Topps Heritage sets as well as the Turkey Red sets, and I got some extras from sets that came out before I was really aware and interested. Meanwhile, I have yet to complete a single set since I started this blog a year and a half ago.

I actually managed to pick up a healthy stack of 2006 Topps Heritage on the cheap at a card show this past fall, so I am in better shape with this set than the rest that I'm going to talk about here. There are some really nice looking cards in this set as some of them completely avoid the vintageification process and just concentrate on picture quality. One of the cards I received was a short-printed Pat Burrell card, which is highly appreciated.

Heading back to the start of the Heritage line, here's Izzy on the familiar 1952 design. My scanner decided to further accentuate the pinkness in Izzy's cheeks for some reason.

From a younger, fresh faced Jason Isringhausen to a cagey vet named Eric Davis. Eric the Red eventually became Eric the Redbird. For awhile in the La Russa era, it seemed like a lot of well-known '80s/'90s players made a stop in St. Louis before they headed off into the sunset. Ron Gant, Gary Gaetti, Dennis Eckersley, Will Clark, Larry Walker... all Cardinals near or at the end.

Moving onto 2002/1953, here's Larry Walker himself. With these cards, it looks like they started with player photos and sort of drew over them to make them look less photographic.

This design is far from my favorite design, although I'm not really certain why.

The backs look great, however. Without giving it too much thought, I might even be inclined to say that these are the best looking Topps card backs of all-time.

Did anyone know that Benito Santiago was still around in 2004? I certainly didn't. Santiago looks old enough to be a coach at this point.

I really think card companies should attempt to capture players in vintage uniforms on retro-style sets as often as possible. This Eric Chavez cards looks nice, even if the corresponding uniform may not have been used in the era that this design came from (1956?)

Now, it's onto Turkey Red. There was a nice, juicy stack of the 2005/2006 set (the numbering sequence that began with 2005 continued with the 2006 set and the design is exactly the same, so the lines are fairly blurry when it comes to which set is which) which included a handful of rookie logo rookie cards.

My only complaint with the 2007 set, which I am far closer to completing than anything else mentioned in this post, is that it was missing the colored parallels that were present in the first two retro sets. If there's ever a return to a full proper Turkey Red set (and I'm not saying there should be necessarily) then I hope that they bring back the red, black, white, etc. colored parallels.

Dayf was also kind enough to include a smattering of Cardinal goodies. I needed this Edmonds card for the player/team collection. In fact, I don't think I have any other 2004 Donruss Team Heroes cards now besides this one.

This is a Matt Morris Cracker Jack mini, which in true Cards on Cards fashion actually has a slightly larger than standard photo.

I would love to see a return of a Topps Archives or Fan Favorites type set in 2010. I think there's some sort of restriction on an all-retired player set now, though. I'm not sure if this carried over into Topps's new contract or not, but I would much rather buy something like this if it was released again than I would that Natinal Chiclets set.

Bazooka! Gadzooks! This card is more Cracker Jack than Bazooka, because it was definitely the surprise inside. I really like the newer Bazooka stuff and I do not have nearly enough bat cards to my liking, so this is great.

Thanks again to dayf. I hope to put another package to send again soon. But what do you get for the Junkie that has it all?

2002 Topps Heritage

Want List:

2 Darin Erstad

5 Mike Sweeney

13 CC Sabathia

17 Tom Glavine

18 Jason Lane

26 Mike Mussina

29 Carlos Lee

32 Ivan Rodriguez

33 Wes Helms

52 Ben Grieve

64 Corey Patterson

65 Aaron Myette

74 Scott Schoeneweis

78 Matt Williams

86 Ray Durham

87 Omar Daal

103 Carlos Febles

108 Danny Graves

109 Rich Aurilia

114 Derek Jeter

115 John Franco

116 Matt Stairs

118 Darryl Kile

124 Pedro Astacio

129 Marcus Giles

136 Mark Grace

143 Jack Cust

145 Frank Thomas

147 Greg Maddux

149 Hideo Nomo

150 Bret Boone

159 Bud Smith

162 Sean Casey

163 Jose Ortiz

164 Brent Abernathy

165 Kevin Young

171 Jose Lima

175 Juan Pierre

177 Craig House

179 Pat Burrell

180 Greg Gagne

186 Gookie Dawkins

189 Boomer Wells

190 Roger Cedeno

192 Julio Zuleta

193 Timo Perez

194 Billy Wagner

195 Craig Counsell

196 Bart Miadich 

199 Juan Uribe

200 Curt Schilling

201 Javy Lopez

203 Jim Edmonds

204 Pokey Reese

209 Pedro Feliz

210 Aaron Rowand

211 Masato Yoshii

213 Paul Byrd

216 Frank Menechino

218 Brian Boehringer

219 Todd Hollandsworth

221 Steve Sparks

224 Bobby Abreu

225 Barry Larkin

228 Todd Zeile

230 Alex Ochoa

231 Orlando Cabrera

233 Tomo Ohka

234 Luis Castillo

235 Chris Holt

239 Hank Blalock

243 Steve Karsay

245 Jason Bere

246 Scott Rolen

249 Aramis Ramirez

250 Lance Berkman

256 Jay Payton

259 Eric Valent

260 Chad Durbin

263 Scott Dunn

265 Tom Gordon

266 Moises Alou

269 Mark Buehrle

273 Graeme Lloyd

274 Bret Prinz

286 Craig Paquette

289 Joe Borchard

290 Cristian Guzman

291 Craig Biggio

293 Ken Caminiti

297 LaTroy Hawkins

299 John Smoltz

301 Ryan Dempster

304 Dustin Hermanson

311 Todd Walker

318 Josh Fogg

320 Jace Brewer

321 Mike Redmond

328 Albie Lopez

329 Chris Gomez

331 Stubby Clapp

333 Brad Radke

334 Brent Mayne

335 Cory Lidle

338 Jay Witasick

342 A.J. Pierzynski

344 Brian Bohanon

348 Ruben Rivera

351 Joe Randa

353 Dante Bichette

357 Matt Morris

359 Mark Quinn

360 Marquis Grissom

361 Henry Blanco

362 Billy Koch

363 Mike Cameron

(SP)

1 Ichiro

37 Chipper Jones

53 Alex Rodriguez

69 John Olerud (Night)

82 Bernie Williams

92 Johnny Damon (Night)

100 Preston Wilson (Night)

104 Jorge Posada

204 Pokey Reese (Night)

220 Sammy Sosa

244 Barry Bonds

364 Albert Pujols

365 Paul Konerko

366 Eric Milton

367 Nick Bierbrodt

368 Rafael Palmeiro

369 Jorge Padilla

370 Jason Giambi

371 Mike Piazza

372 Alex Cora

373 Todd Helton

374 Juan Gonzalez

375 Mariano Rivera

376 Jason LaRue

377 Tony Gwynn

378 Wilson Betemit

379 J.J. Trujillo

380 Brad Ausmus

381 Chris George

382 Jose Canseco

383 Ramon Ortiz

384 John Rocker

385 Rey Ordonez

386 Ken Griffey, Jr.

387 Juan Pena

388 Michael Barrett

389 J.D. Drew

390 Corey Koskie

391 Vernon Wells

392 Juan Tolentino

393 Luis Gonzalez

394 Terrence Long

395 Travis Lee

396 Earl Snyder

397 Nomar Garciaparra

398 Jason Schmidt

399 David Espinosa

400 Steve Green

401 Jack Wilson

403 Angel Berroa

405 Andruw Jones

406 Brent Butler

407 Craig Kuzmic

408 Derek Bell

409 Eric Glaser

411 Alexis Gomez

412 Mike Rivera

413 Shawn Estes

414 Milton Bradley

415 Carl Everett

416 Kazuhiro Sasaki

417 Tony Fontana

418 Josh Pearce

419 Gary Matthews, Jr.

421 Joe Kennedy

422 Jason Maule

423 Casey Fossum

424 Christian Parker

425 Laynce Nix

426 Byung-Hyun Kim

427 Freddy Garcia

428 Herbert Perry

429 Jason Marquis

430 Sandy Alomar, Jr.

431 Roberto Alomar

432 Tsuyoshi Shinjo

433 Tim Wakefield

434 Robert Fick

435 Vladimir Guerrero

436 Jose Mesa

437 Scott Spiezio

438 Jose Hernandez

439 Jose Acevedo

441 Barry Zito

443 Marlon Byrd

444 A.J. Burnett

445 Dee Brown

446 Carlos Delgado

(Classic Renditions)

CR-3 Roger Cedeno

CR-5 Albert Pujols

CR-10 Shawn Green

(New Age Performers)

NA-2 Mark McGwire

NA-3 Barry Bonds

NA-4 Ken Griffey, Jr.

NA-5 Ichiro

NA-6 Sammy Sosa

NA-7 Andruw Jones

NA-8 Derek Jeter

NA-9 Todd Helton

NA-11 Jason Giambi

NA-12 Bret Boone

NA-13 Roberto Alomar

NA-14 Albert Pujols

NA-15 Vladimir Guerrero 

(Then and Now)

TN 3 Carl Furillo / Larry Walker

TN 7 Duke Snider / Sammy Sosa

TN 9 Robin Roberts / Randy Johnson

TN 10 Billy Pierce / Hideo Nomo 

[updated 6/13/26]