#MyCardMonday

A really cool old school card for this week's #MyCardMonday.  The 1990s were a difficult times for Cardinals fans and it was hard to always remain interested in baseball cards when your favorite team had few star players showing up on cardboard.  In 1993 I did not even work on an Upper Deck set.  I just skipped right over it.  The only time in between 1989 and 2010 that I did not touch the Upper Deck set the year it was released.

Fast forward to college and I had to rely on the card scene around Cape Girardeau, Missouri during the school year.  Let's keep it real: There was no card scene.  The town did have a card shop for awhile, but the owner was not one of those friendly and honest card shop owners.  There was a Venture in the mall for a year or two and then there was a Target.

What the hell happened to the Target card aisle?  Now it is populated by boxes from recent releases, but fifteen years ago you could also find cool old boxes in the store.  I found boxes of 1995 Flair, old boxes of 1987 Topps, and one night I found a few boxes of 1993 Upper Deck cards.

I picked up a box of series one and series two and went back to my place to open up the box.  There were so many cool things about the set and so many cards that I loved in the set.  Besides asking what the hell happened to the Target card aisle, I should probably also be asking what happened to cards like the first few Upper Deck sets.

Onto the card.  I thought about doing a Now & Then card, but I like these team cards too.....

The Cardinals team card in 1993 featured Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith, but also young upcoming stars Geronimo Pena, Ray Lankford, and Bernard Gilkey.  There were a lot of young players with the Cardinals back in the early 90s.  I am not sure why they did not put Brian Jordan or Todd Zeile on this card, but these three are pretty cool choices.  Lankford turned out to be a pretty good player.  Gilkey was traded to the Mets after the team signed Ron Gant.  After one good year with the Mets Gilkey had some issues with injuries and alcohol.  Geronimo was injured all the time too.  

The back of these cards were pretty cool featuring fun little facts about the players on the card.  We have cool plays on words like "Wizard of Ahs" and great player facts like Bernard Gilkey being a St. Louis native.  The whole card is just incredible.  Upper Deck put a card for each of the teams in the set.  If you don't own anything from the 1993 Upper Deck set you should go and check out these cards.