Red Cardboard's Mostly Reds Cardboard Draft, Part 1

A long, long time ago, Red Cardboard held a draft, and I received my cards, looked through them, and put them in my "to post" pile. I'm going to have to implement a queue rather than a pile, I think, or else some stuff's just going to never get posted.

As a Reds fan, most of the prizes offered were Reds, but I managed to find the former/future Cardinals in disguise, along with cards from a few sets I just like. Here are the first few cards from the results.

1970 Topps Super #31 Vada Pinson
1975 Topps #623 Rookie Infielders (Phil Garner, Keith Hernandez, Bob Sheldon, Tom Veryzer)
1977 Topps #23 Dan Driessen
1993 Denny's #22 Joe Oliver
1996 Metal Universe #149 Barry Larkin
1997 Bowman - International #76 Brett Tomko
1999 Fleer Ultra - Gold Medallion #10G Brett Tomko
1999 Fleer Ultra - Gold Medallion #146G Dmitri Young
2003 Upper Deck Victory #29 Adam Dunn

I envisioned this looking a bit more like a collage and a bit less like a poorly played round of Tetris, but what can I say? That Vada Pinson really threw off everyone else. It's got some markings on it, but it's my first card from 1970 Topps Super. Since I keep the bulk of my cards in standard sized boxes, I now even more urgently need to implement some sort of plan for oversized items, much like a library does.

Two other nice vintage cards are Keith Hernandez in his pre-mustache days, and a rough looking Dan Driessen. All 3 of the oldest cards features guys who made at least a stop with the Cardinals, along with Dmitri Young and Brett Tomko. For some reason I always think Joe Oliver was a Cardinal too, but he wasn't, and I can't figure out who I must be confusing him with.

There are plenty more, but as usual, the blogger label limit tells me when I've had enough for one day.

A Trade With Mr. Haverkamp

Thanks to a post I made about Turkey Red a few weeks ago, a reader by the name of Mr. Haverkamp contacted me with some more Turkey Reds from my wantlist. You've probably seen his name a few times on other blogs, as he's a pretty active trader. 

2005 Topps Turkey Red
#54 Chris Carpenter
#94 Mark Buehrle
#129 Kip Wells
#156 Jake Westbrook
#229 Dmitri Young
#309 Wade Boggs

2005 isn't the main Turkey Red set I'm focused on right now, so my wantlist is only the Cardinals and retired players, hence why I've got 5 players who played for the Cardinals, and Wade Boggs.

2010 Topps - Turkey Red
#TR13 Yovani Gallardo
#TR20 CC Sabathia
#TR29 Gordon Beckham
#TR35 Stephen Drew
#TR38 Rick Porcello
#TR55 Aaron Hill

2010 Topps' Turkey Red insert set is my big target, and I knocked 6 more off that list. I still need 76 of the 150 total cards in flagship and update, so I'm almost at 50%.

2011 Topps Lineage
1975 Mini #9 Matt Holliday

This was a nice surprise thrown in with all the Turkey Red, also off my want list. Lineage is a set I really liked but didn't seem to be a big hit, only lasting a single year. I have the entire mini parallel set on my wantlist, but I'll likely never finish it. This Matt Holliday brings me up to just 15 out of the 200 cards.

Thanks for the trade, Mr. Haverkamp!

Zistle Trade #4

There are no small trades, only small traders, or something like that. However, I manged to snag these 5 cards for just a Bryce Harper base card in a PWE. This trade came in when Zistle.com first announced their free trial of their enhanced features, which seem to allow for easier matching of want and trade lists, and my trading partner found me.

1993 Upper Deck #428 Dmitri Young
1997 Collector's Choice #471 Matt Morris
2007 Upper Deck Future Stars #87 Scott Rolen

The cards above were nice, and on my want list, but the two below are of players I really collect.

1990 Leaf # Ozzie Smith
1997 Fleer #193 Mark McGwire

Even though these are two base cards of fairly common sets, I didn't have them yet. The McGwire is especially surprising to me given how much wax I was buying in 1997, and how much McGwire stuff I bought from my LCS in 1998-99.

182 Packs Giveaway, Part II

When I claimed the Cardinals - and Mark McGwire and Todd Stottlemyre - in the pack-per-day giveaway held at TribeCards, I had no idea just how many cards I'd wind up with, and how many different players. So that I can tag all of the sets and Cardinal players, I've broken this up into a series of who knows how many posts. Thanks for all the cards, David.
[Part I]

1994 Fleer Ultra
#565 Bernard Gilkey
#570 Allen Watson

1994 Fleer Ultra
#564 Clint Davis
#566 Ray Lankford
#569 Rick Sutcliffe

Fleer Ultra is one of the sets for which I'd like to complete the full run (1991-2007), someday, but man, is 1994 the ugliest of the bunch or what?

1997 New Pinnacle #103 Royce Clayton

Horizontal cards just mess up all my scanning plans.

1997 New Pinnacle
#67 Ray Lankford
#77 Andy Benes
#177 Dmitri Young
#188 Mark McGwire

Here's a good bunch from New Pinnacle, which is a weird name for a set when there was also a 1997 Pinnacle. Claiming Mark McGwire specifically also paid off here, since he's pictured on the A's. Card companies don't do many real subsets anymore, which made it take me awhile to track down that the "Aura" card was really just a base card.

2005 Topps #124 Mike Matheny

To finish off these sets, here's a nice action shot of current Cardinals manager Mike Matheny. It's hard to believe he'd be managing the team just 7 years later.

182 Packs Giveaway, Part I

When I claimed the Cardinals - and Mark McGwire and Todd Stottlemyre - in the pack-per-day giveaway held at TribeCards, I had no idea just how many cards I'd wind up with, and how many different players. So that I can tag all of the sets and Cardinal players, I've broken this up into a series of who knows how many posts. Thanks for all the cards, David.

1996 Leaf
#2 Dennis Eckersley
#70 David Bell
#98 Sandy Alomar, Jr.

I guess the Eckersley and Alomar were randomly assigned to me as duplicates, or no one claimed the A's and Indians. Even so, Eck is definitely a player I liked even before he got to the Cardinals, so that's a great card to me.

1996 Leaf
#142 Brian Jordan
#212 Alan Benes

Two more from 1996 Leaf, Brian Jordan, and the middle Benes brother, Alan. The Cardinals once had all 3 Benes brothers in their system, but Adam only made it up to AA Arkansas.

1997 Pinnacle
#41 Brian Jordan
#81 Ron Gant
#122 Ozzie Smith

1997 Pinnacle
#136 Gary Gaetti
#185 Dmitri Young

1997 cards bring me good memories of the Cardinals resurgence from mediocrity in the mid 90s, to make the playoffs in Tony LaRussa's first year in 1996.

1998 Stadium Club
#114 Alan Benes
#232 Gary Gaetti
Checklist 2 of 2

Here's another Alan Benes and Gary Gaetti from 1998, as well as...

1998 Stadium Club #74 Todd Stottlemyre

Todd Stottlemyre! Of course, I would have gotten this card even if I only claimed the Cardinals, but I wanted to be covered in case any of his Blue Jays or A's cards came up.

1998 Stadium Club - Royal Court #RC5 Mark McGwire

And here's another of my favorites, Mark McGwire, in an extra sparkly Stadium Club insert. Since he's a Cardinal, I double-claimed this one too.

That's it for now, look for this series to end sometime in mid-2015.

2006 Topps Value Pack

By now you've seen some other blogs about the old packs of 2006 Topps showing up at Target for $1.59 each. I went to all 3 of them near my home and work, and came away with a total of 1 pack. Nothing blogworthy, right? Wrong! There are 3 mystery Vintage cards within. I can tell the suspense is killing you.

No, I can't wait to open until after I scan

First up, a base card just to remind you what 2006 looked like:

2006 Topps #511 Dmitri Young

And now the obligatory Gold Parallel, which is actually somewhat rare at 1:6 packs.

2006 Topps - Gold Parallel #564 Yorvit Torrealba #0873/2006

Now, the mystery cards

1988 Topps #271 Ken Gerhart

Ooooh, 1988...

1989 Topps #695 Carlton Fisk

It's a 1989, but at least it's a Hall of Famer

1990 Topps #480 Sid Fernandez

And an uninspiring finish.

Those 3 cards actually showed up in that order. Seeing an '88 common on top I felt sure a '79 to '83 or so would be lurking somewhere beneath. Oh well, I bought the pack without expectations, and at least now I have a few 2006s, since those fell during my lull in collecting.

Here's the full list of 2006 base for completeness
338 Livan Hernandez
383 Russ Ortiz
391 Casey Blake
423 David Ortiz
468 Johan Santana
483 Jose Guillen
495 Adrian Beltre
506 Michael Cuddyer
511 Dmitri Young
527 Jose Vidro
580 Frank Thomas
582 Francisco Rodriguez
584 Jorge Sosa
604 Washington Nationals
630 Ronny Paulino
645 Paul Maholm
653 Prince Fielder/Rickie Weeks
Series Two Checklist 2 of 3

It's nice to get the advertised number in real cards, without cheaper filler couting against the pack total (ahem, 2010 Topps). In total there were 23 pieces of cardboard: the promised 18 2006 cards, 3 vintage cards, plus a checklist and a Topps of the Class ad.