Back Packs: 1993 Topps Series 2 Jumbo Packs!

I picked these up on my flea market trip back in January for 25 cents a piece. While I could split these up amongst four posts, that would require effort. So, I'll look at these as a collective. While I'm not going to show every card, I'll show the highlights.

Doc Gooden, Jeff Kent, and Rickey Henderson. Two Mets and one future Met.

Here's a Bret Boone RC, Nolan Ryan, and Jim Abbott. I'm not a huge Nolan Ryan collector, especially from this era as he seems to be everywhere. That being said, since this is a card from the last days of his career, I'll hang on to it.  Also, Bret Boone was one of my favorite Reds players from the mid to late-90s.

Another batch of some 90s stars. I really like the posed shots on the Marlins and Rockies cards from this set. I've also officially added Charlie Hough as a PC guy. The Brett, Grace, and Belle cards are pretty nice too.

Here are a few horizontal cards that came in the batch. The Glavin/Fleming card I remember having in my original childhood collection. Big Unit cards are always fun to pull as well.

Each pack guaranteed five Topps Gold cards. I'm not showing all of them but these are the best of the batch. I thought Girardi didn't officially suit up for the Rockies, but I stand corrected as noted in the comments below!

The obligatory Reds cards and another card to add to my Hal Morris collection. The guy was a great hitter and solid player for the Reds through the 90s.

I pulled both the regular version and the gold version of these cards. Not sure which one I like better though. Interesting that I got both the Dan Wilson and Bret Boone RCs in these packs as they were part of the November 93 trade that sent Wilson and Bobby Ayala to Seattle for Boone and Erik Hanson. Talk about a small world!

Finally, there's this card. I was pretty excited when I pulled this card out of one of the packs. While it's nothing special, it's a nice time capsule of when the Angels signed three Russian players and had them in the minor leagues. There's a great MLB.com story on it here which is why I popped when I pulled this because I had just read the story a while back.

Opening these up was a lot of fun. Hope you enjoyed reading!

1993 Team Stadium Club Team Sets

A quick post tonight as it's late and I feel like crap after fighting with my allergies all day.

This was among the interesting things I found while sorting a box full of commons the other day. These appear to be some sort of Stadium Club special issue from 1993 called Team Stadium Club. I'd forgotten about these until I opened the box and saw the box of these sitting there. Then I remembered, I had picked these up as part of a massive haul at a yard sale this past spring. The giant yellow dots are old price tags that were put on these ages ago. You can barely see the price ($3.50) and for the record, I did not pay $3.50 a piece for these packs. I think the whole box of these team sets turned out to be 75 cents total.

I picked out the Marlins and the Rockies to go through. There were other teams included (White Sox and Braves were two of the others) and each team had two packs. Breaking into the plastic, I felt like I was unearthing some national treasure as these things were sealed up tighter than Fort Knox. I had to bust out some scissors to open the blasted things but here's what was inside once I finally broke in.

First, the Marlins ...

A few interesting guys here in Hoffman, Conine, and Everett. Pretty cool that there is a Trevor Hoffman card included. I'd honestly forgotten that he had played for the Marlins. 

Two veterans here in Charlie Hough and Dave Magadan. I was at a Reds game one time as kid with a childhood friend of mine and his dad when Magadan was playing for the Astros. He lined a foul ball right in our direction, we both ducked and my friend's dad barehanded this scorching liner as a keepsake. Unfortunately, I don't have any cool Charlie Hough stories but cards of him are always nice as the dude seemed to pitch forever.

Two more solid players here in Benito Santiago and Walt Weiss.

For the record, here's what the backs of the cards look like ...

Pretty simple but the text with the players name is a tad to cartoonish for me.

On to the Rockies ...

A nice solid triple threat with Bichette, Galarraga, and Castilla. I definitely think the Rockies win here with much more pop in their lineup

Eric squared! I barely remember these two playing for the Rockies.

Girardi I remember as a Rockies player but Brad Ausmus? Had no clue he ever played for Colorado. Guess you learn something new everyday!

I think to close this out, let's do a quick poll .... who had the better roster starting off with, Florida or Colorado? This will be based on the players included in these packs so here's the full rundown:

Colorado Rockies:
David Nied
Quinton McCracken
Charlie Hayes
Byrn Smith
Dante Bichette
Scott Aldred
Alex Cole
Roberto Mejia
Jeff Parrett
Joe Girardi
Andres Galarraga
Daryl Boston
Jerald Clark
Gerald Young
Bruce Ruffin
Rudy Seanez
Darren Holmes
Andy Ashby
Chris Jones
Mark Thompson
Freddie Benavides
Eric Wedge
Vino Castilla
Butch Henry
Jim Tatum
Steve Reed
Eric Young
Danny Sheaffer
Roger Bailey
Brad Ausmus

Florida Marlins:
Nigel Wilson
Bryan Harvey
Bob McClure
Alex Arias
Walt Weiss
Charlie Hough
Scott Chiamparino
Junior Felix
Jack Armstrong
Dave Magadan
Cris Carpenter
Benito Santiago
Jeff Conine
Jerry Don Gleaton
Steve Decker
Ryan Bowen
Ramon Martinez
Bret Barberie
Monty Fariss
Trevor Hoffman
Scott Pose
Mike Myers
Geronimo Berroa
Darrell Whitmore
Chuck Carr
David Weathers
Matt Turner
Jose Martinez
Orestes Destrade
Carl Everett

So, who do you think had the better roster? Leave your thoughts in the comments.