They're Gr-r-reat!

At the monthly card show I seem to frequent there's one dealer that is always there, and without fail there's always large bin of $1 packs sitting on the floor. Many of the packs seem to be rather mishandled and few are all that tempting to me, but every once in awhile something catches my eye. I took a shot on a pack of 2002 Fleer Greats one time and enjoyed it so much that I went back for 2 more packs last weekend. My comments will be brief. I'm just going to try and let the pictures tell the story.

Pack 1:

97 - Bobby Bonds

88 - Stan Musial (This will look good in my Cardinals binder.)

48 - Joe Morgan

35 - Satchel Paige (His brief MLB career stats on the back obviously don't do him justice.)

38 - Roger Maris

Pack 2:

41 - Christy Mathewson

11 - Orlando Cepeda

98 - Bill Terry (The backs and plain and simple. Just the stats, that's all. I like it.)

64 - Frank Howard

33 - Ty Cobb

Pack 3:

42 - Tony Lazzeri

12 of 29 DD - Duke Snider / Bob Gibson Dueling Duos (Nice looking insert card.)

13 - Walter Johnson

74 - Don Mattingly (Some might complain about Mattingly's inclusion here, but not me.)

71 - Sparky Anderson

I might have to look for more of this stuff. It sure beats some of the retail junk that they try to get you for at $1.99 or $2.99 a pop these days.

Airbrushed Fridays: 1975 Topps #349

First off, I just wanted to remind everyone about my contest. The deadline is tomorrow before the first bowl game of the season.

Ray Sadecki was a 20-game winner and key component of the 1964 Cardinals title-winning team. If you haven't read David Halberstam's amazing book October 1964, you should go out and buy yourself a Christmas present this weekend and pick it up. It's great, even if you don't like the Cardinals or the Yankees.

Why did Topps airbrush Ray's photo? Sadecki had spent the last 9 seasons with the Giants and Mets and was traded shortly after the 1974 season ended back to the Cardinals. He only lasted for 8 appearances before being sent to the Braves and later the Royals that season.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? What the heck did they do to Ray Sadecki? Nevermind. Ray Sadecki wants you to enter my contest!

Contest Details!

As you probably have already gathered, I'm running a college bowl pick 'em contest, which I unfortunately just got off the ground at the last minute. The deadline to enter is sometime before the first bowl game on Saturday, December 19th. Here are the all-important details.

• First off, there are two ways to win. The grand prize will go to the person who enters my group via Yahoo (entry deadline has now passed) and wins the group. This will consist of an array of baseball junk wax that I have accumulated, plus a couple of team bags of cards from your favorite team (more along the lines of stuff I would normally trade people) and more.
• You do not have to deal with Yahoo, however, if you want to win. If you don't have a Yahoo account and don't feel like signing up, or if you just don't care all that much about college football but want a chance to win free junk, there is an alternate contest here. Second prize goes to the person who correctly predicts who gets the most picks correct, myself or Erin. As a tiebreaker, you will also need to pick the score (i.e. how many games Erin picks correctly vs. how many games Kerry picks correctly.) This prize will consist of many of the above things I mentioned, but your overall prize pack will be slightly less substantial.
• You can enter both contests if you'd like, but you will only be eligible for one (the better) prize in case you win both.
• There will also be a "prize" for whoever does the worst in the Yahoo group. (No tanking it, AJ.)
• Things to keep in mind: Yahoo has their own scoring system, which not only takes into account what teams you pick but also how much "confidence" you have in your picks. You can rank each game according to how confident you are. You also need to submit a prediction for the final score of the title game. It doesn't appear that there are any settings available for me to customize, unlike Yahoo's fantasy leagues, so we are going to abide by Yahoo's scoring system for the grand prize.
• Finally, if your e-mail address is not in your Yahoo profile and you would not necessarily expect me to recognize your Yahoo ID or pick set name, please e-mail me as soon as possible with your Yahoo ID and/or pick set name so that I know who to award the prizes to should you win.

Consider this the official contest game form for submitting your predictions for the second prize.

Once again, the deadline to enter is prior to the first bowl game on Saturday 12/19. I believe Yahoo lets you change your picks anytime as long as a game has not started, so that is perfectly acceptable, but to be eligible for any of the prizes you must join the group or leave your Kerry v. Erin predictions here before any of the games have kicked off.

Also, a big thanks to Tim of the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame for providing the Jairus Byrd card. It's a great shot of Jairus from last year's Holiday Bowl. Byrd is setting the NFL on fire with his skills this year and I've been enjoying every minute of it. Well, that is, every minute of the highlights, since we don't exactly get Buffalo games on TV on the west coast.

Contest!

Impromptu contest!

Go here:

http://football.fantasysports.yahoo.com/bowl/register/joinprivategroup

(entry deadline has now passed.)

Free junk wax, baseball cards and "other". More details later.

(It helps if you have a Yahoo ID, of course, but if you don't there will be other ways to win. Leave a comment or send an e-mail if you're interested.)

Card Show Finds: Cardinals Edition

I've been making a point of trying to make it to the monthly card show around here, which I almost failed to do this past weekend because of weather concerns. I was never really concerned about my ability to go out and do some shopping, but I figured that there would be a lot of no-shows with the dealers. I've actually started devoting most of my card buying budget to these monthly ventures, which probably makes it more fun but also more challenging since you never know what to expect.

This time around I hit the 5 cent boxes hard, and fortunately there were a lot of them. I've decided to break up some of the stuff I got into several posts, and I thought I'd start off strong with the best of the best - the Cardinals cards, of course.

This 1998 Bowman set has an interesting concept, where the map of the player's home area is in the background of his card. At least, I presume that's what they're going for here.

5 cents for a 1993 Fleer Lee Smith insert card that I've never even seen. Not bad. 1993 was the year that inserts became all the rage if you ask me.

I'm thinking that I'm going to have to start hiding my Yadi cards from Erin.

There are some fairly arbitrary squares in the middle of this card, also an insert, of Rick Ankiel the Pitcher from the 2000 Upper Deck set. I probably would have paid top dollar for this if I collected cards in 2000, assuming I had a job.

I feel like I unearthed a treasure with this card here. This is from the rarely seen 1984 Donruss set.

I picked up no less than 3 Pujols cards in the 5 cent box. They were all multi-player cards like this one, but that seems pretty impressive to me anyway.

And nickel Big Macs? I'll take those, too.

Not everything I bought ended up being 5 cents, although I wish it had. I made some 25 cent purchases at another table before I found the mother lode. Here's one of my first Topps 206 cards (more on this set at another time) and it's a thick bronze parallel. This isn't the best portrait of Ankiel. In fact, though he did have a ridiculous 'stache for a bit, I don't think he ever had facial hair this bad.

I needed this card badly. I actually bought several Turkey Red inserts, but this was the only Cardinal. I still need a second copy of this card for the set (pathetic, I know) in case anyone is wondering.

And here's Johnny Mize again on his base Topps 206 card.

All in all, I think I ended up with at least a couple of dollars worth of 5 cent Cards cards (including at least my 3rd copy of the 2009 Ryan Ludwick A&G short print) and a handful of 25 cent cards.

Surprise Package from Noah from NY

Word down at Cardinals Central is that talks are "heating up" with Matt Holliday. I wanted to do a Cardinals post tonight but I didn't want to think about what an 8 year deal with anyone might mean for the future of this team. Luckily, I'm still catching up on trade posts. Here's some stuff from a surprise package I got from Noah over in NY. He's a Mets fan who I have traded with in the past, but this came to me out of the blue. There was tons of great stuff in the box and I'm still working on sending him a return/thank you package.

From the cards I've seen lately, it seems like Fleer tried something different every year for their gold parallel cards, and I'm not sure if any of them ever really worked.

This Edmonds 2005 Finest card has quite a bullseye look to it.

There were quite a few Ozzie Smith cards in the box that I did not own previously, including some oddball stuff like this. That's no small feat, because I have a ton of his cards, though there are some leaner years where things are pretty lacking.

No pressure. Except, you know, that whole Game 7 of the NLCS thing.

This looks like a Willie McGee rookie, but is actually a reprint found in the 2005 Rookie Cup set. I also received my second ever copy of the real thing, but now I really need to track down Fleer and Donruss McGee rookies.

There were a few more Cardinals cards from the 2006 Fleer Greats set that augmented what I already previously owned from a group break awhile back.

It's a Yadi short printed variation from a set I'm collecting! I have to check to see if this is my first copy of this. I'd like to have two total because I'm picky.

I'm liking these classics/greats/legends sets more and more by the day. I wish they could still make stuff like this and not have it be like 85% "prospects". I wonder if there was any provision for this sort of set in the new Topps contract.

Another serial numbered Classics card, this one of Jack Clark. I'm such a sucker for serial numbers, but you probably already know this.

Speaking of which, this is probably the snazziest card of the lot. Plus, I really wanted to use the word "snazziest."

Here is Mark McGwire, trapped in some sort of weird Y2K-freakout dimension.

And finally, here's this. There was a Starting Lineup 2? Were the figures twice as big? Twice as realistic? Or just twice as expensive?

Thanks again to Noah! I really appreciate it.

5 on the 5: 2009 Topps Heritage High Number Series Presented by The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl

I picked up 5 packs of the stuff I prefer to call Heritage High Series, my first 5 packs and probably my last for quite awhile as I need to devote more money to Christmas shopping and less to myself. This pack wrapper is particularly jarring. It's like a Civil War (Ducks and Beavers) broke out in the Topps design department. (Speaking of Ducks football, there was a Ducks-themed skit on SNL last night, featuring one of those movie vampire kids as Nate Costa AKA "Phil Pomeroy".)

Pack 1:

And the very first Heritage High Series card of 2009 for me is...

566 - Eric Byrnes

597 - Jason Vargas

578 - Gerardo Parra

UH188 - Jeff Francoeur

UH312 - Ryan Hanigan

CHR161 - Kendry Morales Chrome 1409/1960 (Morales is a good player. It's nice to see him break away from the Pacific Coast League, which many have dominated over the years, but few seem to be able to translate it to Major League success.)

619 - Justin Masterson

538 - Chris Jakubauskas (I love saying this guy's name. He's a great story, too, as Seattle picked him up out of independent leagues a couple of years ago and he suddenly cracks the big leagues at age 30.)

Pack 2 (aka the Dallas Braden pack):

576 - Garrett Olson

549 - Dallas Braden

522 - Brad Bergesen

UH205 - Dallas Braden (Ehh... him again. I think Topps could have used a more flattering photo of him.)

UH91 - Anderson Hernandez (has two last names is the end of that sentence.)

715 - Nolan Reimold SP (I do have to say that I like the fact that the short printed cards in this set are extremely easy to identify, since they use different card stock on the back.)

618 - Jarrod Washburn (I've heard that the Mariners might bring this guy back. You could do worse, I suppose.)

634 - Mark Loretta (Loretta has been annoyingly successful against the Cards lately.)

Pack 3 (aka the Rays pack):

624 - Koji Uehara

526 - Brandon Lyon (I can't believe the Astros gave this guy three years. THREE YEARS!)

562 - Diory Hernandez (Lots of rookies in this set it seems.)

UH298 - Jason Bartlett All-Stars (I love this year's All-Star logo for... some reason. It makes these cards look nicer, in my opinion.)

UH242 - Randy Wells

CHR117 - J.P. Howell Chrome 1415/1960

598 - Jeff Baker

574 - Gabe Kapler (Yep. Rays-a-plenty.)

Pack 4:

506 - Adam Kennedy (I don't know what was more confusing to me - Kennedy's success this season after having a really negative couple of seasons with the Cardinals combined with his failure to make an impact with the Rays or the fact that he played mostly third base with Oakland... and was fairly successful.)

565 - Endy Chavez (Chavez was on his way to becoming a cult hero in Seattle when injury struct. It was a microcosm of their season, I think.)

589 - Jamey Carroll

UH95 - Ryan Freel (Three teams in one season gets you a cropped, fuzzy photo of the guy in a Royals uniform.)

UH322 - Sean Marshall

CHR155 - Huston Street Chrome 1413/1960 (Any Rockies fans in the house? I'd love to trade with you.)

658 - Pat Burrell

630 - LaTroy Hawkins

Pack 5:

604 - Joe Crede

669 - Rocco Baldelli

660 - Ramiro Pena

UH303 - Luke French (The back of the card tells a charming little tale about how French always dreamed of becoming a Mariner - which he did after being sent over from Detroit in the Washburn trade. What's strange is that he was born in Kansas.)

UH14 - Yadier Molina All-Stars (Hey, it's Yadi!)

RP-07 - Gordon Beckham Rookie Performers

548 - Cristian Guzman

521 - Nick Evans

- David Wright thing with a security sticker on it

I need some more of this stuff. Feel free to stick some packs in my stocking.