P-town Tom of the Waiting 'til Next Year blog recently held a contest with the Grand Prize being the above graded Lance Berkman card and a lot of cards from your favorite team. To enter the contest you had to guess the total number of runs scored in the 6th grade intrasquad softball game for the team he coaches, with the tiebreaker being the time the game would take in minutes. After the dust cleared and the tiebreaker was invoked, my guess of 43 runs and 135 minutes was closest to the actual result of 45 runs and 156 minutes. I was really happy to win this contest, as that card featuring Lance Berkman in a sumo suit is just ridiculous and amazing, especially since it is graded and encased. That would have been prize enough, but P-town Tom also included a whole bunch of cards featuring Astros players. I didn't scan all of them because I am lazy and lack the scanning stamina of Billy, but I scanned a good number of them.
A number of the cards were from a time period when I was out of collecting entirely, so the sets are largely new or at least a little unfamiliar to me. I'm not a huge fan of the logo the Astros were sporting from 1994-1999, but at least Derek Bell's mustache game is on point.
Here are some shiny new cards as well as a shiny old Stadium Club Members Only card and a grizzled Butch Henry. Foltynewicz went over to the Braves in the Evan Gattis trade, which I think is a pretty good deal so far. He's been struggling for the Braves this season, while Gattis has been a key part of the Astros lineup.
Here's another mix of old and new cards. Jim Deshaies is taking some time out to shake what his momma gave him. Every time I post the phrase man-butt on my blog I see a spike in page views, so I am doing it again here in reference to Jim. I was happy to see Jon Singleton make an appearance in this prize package. I still haven't gotten around to grabbing a Stadium Club set from this year. The 2000's are a black hole for me as far as sports cards go. I'm sure there are a lot of you who can tell those designs right off the bat, but I have to look at the details to identify even flagship Topps sets.
There are a whole bunch of B-nmaes on the Astros, so some folks called them the Killer B's. I was aware of the Astros during this time period, but during their 2005 run to the World Series I had other things on my mind (I was newly-married and living in a makeshift barracks in an old bakery in Iraq) and at best kept up with the standings when I could. I missed out on some of the greatest baseball the Astros have played in their team history.
Closing this post up are a cool logo sticker, a couple of small cards, and a shiny Bowman Chrome card showing one of the Astros' arms of the future. I logged in to MLB.tv just in time today to see Jed Lowrie hit a Grand Slam to put the Astros up for good over the Twins, so it's been a good day to be an Astros fan, Now if the Angels can just hang on to beat the Rangers it will be an even better day.
Thank you for the prize package, P-town Tom! I had a lot of fun going through the cards and discovering some sets I haven't seen a lot of before.
Interesting that the Biggio card from 2000 Topps has the updated logo and color scheme, while the Bell and the Bagwell do not. You don't see that kind of inconsistency very often.
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me like it might be a Series 1 / Series 2 thing, as the Bell and Bagwell appear relatively early in the checklist and Biggio appears later. It's like Topps forgot how to airbrush new logos onto players that year!
DeleteI'm glad you liked the cards. Every time I see that Berkman card it makes me smile!
ReplyDelete