Dollar Days

Trophies from the card show dollar bin. 

Even though Google Maps tells me I am more than two thousand miles (31 hours of travel time!) away from Busch Stadium, Cardinals cards seem to be in somewhat short supply around these parts. Recently, I took advantage of a $1 bin at the monthly card show that actually had some things of interest for me. I came away with 12 things (for $10 if you bought 12), some of which will end up in future trade packages. Here's what I kept for myself.

This Sweet Spot Update Chris Duncan card, circa 2006, boasts of "game-used swatches". There's absolutely no reason that's not just one big piece of cloth behind the scenes now, is there? This seems silly. All of the pieces are the same color and the threads are running in the same direction.

Josh Pearce is a local guy who got into a few games for a few seasons, but I don't really have any recollection of him. It's always fun to get bat relics of pitchers, though. (ABOLISH THE DH!) This one is numbered to 150.

I was about 80 to 90 percent sure I had one of these, and now that I've scanned it I am 100% sure.

I also have one of these Mulders, something I wasn't really prepared for. Both cards were acquired in 2010 according to my image date stamps, so I guess my excuse is going to be that it was eight years ago?

Here's a fun card of two guys who would be traded straight up for each other about five years later. This is an odd one, of course, in that only Troy Glaus (and not Scott Rolen) gets a jersey piece here.

There often aren't a lot of autograph cards of players who actually played Major League Baseball in these bins, so I was happy to get this 1996 Tom Urbani signature, even though it notes that he had moved on to the Angels at this point. Urbani is a guy who I first heard of when I started playing Triple Play 97 on my PC. I doubt I had any idea he had already been traded when I dragged him out of my bullpen when Mike Timlin inevitably ran out of ammo.

Like the weird Rolen/Glaus mash-up, Upper Deck's Ballpark Collection was notable for pitting a lot of different players together, sometimes with strange results. This is a strange pair indeed. Wood's 2008 would be the year he was reinvented as a reliever and made his second All-Star appearance, while Mulder was more than two years deep into his nightmare of not being able to figure out where he should put his arm to release a baseball. This isn't the first card to incidentally feature a Cubs player relic in my collection, and it almost certainly won't be my last. Thanks, baseball cards!

Tons o' Fun

Another massive pile of cards from... I bet you can guess.

Before I start, here's one more reminder that I'm holding my 6th annual March Radness contest. You have to join (evil) forces with ESPN to enter, but they've proven themselves to be less obnoxious than those fiends at Yahoo this year. Presently, I have 25 entrants that have signed up, but there's still a few days left before the games start and the contest closes.

Howard has struck again with another large package of goodies. I put the call out recently for Philadelphia Eagles cards, and he responded in kind with a bunch of players from somewhat recent years. I only briefly collected football cards before regaining my sanity back in the early '90s, mostly because they were extremely cheap, so the bulk of my Eagles collection is printed on thin Pro Set stock.

Brian Westbrook was a jack-of-all-trades, an under appreciated back in a very efficient Donovan McNabb-led offense. They're best known for making a Super Bowl appearance against the Patriots where McNabb sort of choked (it's debatable). They threw to their tight ends a lot, which reminded me of the pre-Chip Kelly era Ducks. I really became a fan, though, back in Tecmo Super Bowl's heyday when Randall Cunningham was running and gunning at will.

LeSean McCoy is the real star of the current team and arguably the best all around back in the game. Shady's rookie card can apparently be had for less than a buck on the open market, which is kind of sad. I don't understand football cards at all so I'm not going to try to figure this out.

I really liked McNabb, but he did seem stubborn and I can at least listen to his detractors to a point.

There were Cardinals cards a plenty in this package, and they included a bunch of cards from an early Topps Opening Day effort. How long has Topps Opening Day been around? I know that they skipped a year (2009) but don't know when it actually started.

Speaking of early, here's an early Matt Holliday card! Yes, he used to be a third baseman if you can believe that.

A bunch of cards in the package were from the 1975 SSPC set. I don't see too many of these and they were mostly in fantastic condition.

It's been awhile since I've posted a Darryl Kile card. I need to work on getting my Kile collection accounted for.

Lance Lynn has been having a great spring so far. Once again, he's proving himself to be a very key member of the Cardinals rotation despite some of his detractors.

This is a weird insert design that I haven't seen before. I really don't understand the capitalization.

This is from the inaugural SP set, which was home to history's greatest Derek Jeter rookie card, apparently. This stuff (and Flair) was way out of my price range when it came out, and I had already begun scaling back from collecting by 1993.

This scan is really funny.

Howard joined the halls of the immortals when he sent me this card from my 10 Most Wanted list. It's sad that I actually needed 3 of these, but I believe I am set now. If you have some free time, please consider checking out the want list. I tried to keep it affordable.

Cloyd Boyer has a better known relative in longtime Yankee Clete, but Topps was likely looking for someone available to sign that appeared in the '52 Topps set when they were putting together 2011 Topps Lineage. In any case, I am more than happy to have a certified autograph from a '50s Cardinal player. This is great!

Topps Lineage was the spiritual predecessor to the current Topps Archives reboot. I was lucky enough to receive another autograph, this time of the current Cardinals TV broadcaster who appeared in 2013 Archives.

And there was one more auto... Josh Pearce? Pearce seems to have been one of those players who merely existed to sign baseball cards as I am pretty sure I have a couple more of his autographs somewhere in my collection. I like the die cut idea, but I am not so keen on the metal sticker business.

Thanks again to Howard! I should mention that this package also contained a bunch of Blazers cards of a specific size and shape, but I am going to hold those out for another day.