Contested Shots 17: Astros from Section 36

Not too long ago, the Boston Red Sox-centric Section 36 blog held a contest with rules so easy, even I could follow them. All you had to do was post a comment on one of the blog's posts requesting cards for your favorite team. I did just that, and I won! Not only did I win, my comment earned a mention in the post announcing the winners.

The prize was a big lot of Astros cards, several team bags full, mostly from the late 2000's. 

Lance Berkman was heavily-featured in the lot, which calls to mind this prize I won from P-Town Tom in a previous contest. By all accounts, I should have been a huge fan of Berkman and the rest of the Killer B's, but I was pretty busy elsewhere during the decade and didn't pay much attention to baseball outside of the occasional glance at the standings and fantasy sports teams. I can appreciate them in retrospect, though, thanks to cardboard infusions like this one.

There was almost one full team bag of pitcher Roy Oswalt. One good thing about missing a decade or so of sports cards is that all of the designs are relatively new and fresh to me, while those who kept collecting throughout the decade have probably seen their share of them. I didn't scan nearly all of them, but I got a pretty good sampling in here.

Here are a few more of the standouts from the rest of the package.I had to get the great Nolan Ryan in here, and I couldn't pass up the Bob Abreu Classic Best card. Then there are several other notable Astros in Craig Biggio, Junction Jack, Curt Schilling (his one year with the Astros was probably his worst), Joe Morgan, and Brad Ausmus. There were plenty more cards in the package, but if I had the endurance to scan that many cards I'd have to change my name to Billy Kingsley.

I'll close this post out with the hits that were included in my prize package. First up is a Panini Prizm autograph of Max Stassi. I remember hearing some hype about him in the past, but it seems like that has mostly blown over. I guess he's still young, but he's blocked at catcher by Brian McCann and Evan Gattis.

Mark McLemore is the second autograph in the bunch. He played in 28 games for the Astros in 2007, and that was about it for his major league career. He did play from 2002-2011 in the minor leagues and independent ball, though. He also has a pretty interesting signature.

The final autograph is Jiovanni Mier. He was drafted by the Astros in the first round of the 2009 draft and was rated as a Top 100 prospect for a while, but hasn't made much of an impact yet. He's currently in the Blue Jays' minor league system.

This was a fun package to sort through, and I enjoyed catching up on some of the Astros from my missing hobby decade. Thanks for the contest, Section 36!