I'm going to apologize right off the bat for the very awkward post. I have two small packs here that I got for no reason other than that I'd never heard of these cards before. My purchase broke a fundamental rule of mine since I resumed collecting cards in the past couple of years in that neither of these two sets contain any Cardinals cards whatsoever. Sure, there are plenty of players on the checklists that have spent time in the Birds on the Bat at one time or another (Bonilla, Clark, Eckersley, McGwire, Pendleton, Van Slyke... even Juan Gonzalez in spring training this year...) but that still doesn't really count. The other awkward part is that each pack only contains five cards and neither really deserves their own entry, so I'm combining the two. I'm also not sure what these sets are supposed to be called, so I have an awkward Title to put up with as well. Atlantic (and/or Sunoco) are apparently gas station chains that exist in parts of the United States that aren't where I live, and at some point they may or may not have sold or given away baseball cards wrapped in some sort of plastic or mylar wrapper. Here are cards that you may have seen within those wrappers:

"Atlantic [Collector's Edition]: 1993 Baseball Card Series (presented by Fleer '93)"

15 - Fred McGriff (as you can see, the design of the set is modeled after the 1993 Fleer base set, but the borders are gold instead of silver. I am too lazy to check to see if they used the same photos... I really hope not. I hope this card will be featured as part of the Tao of Fred McGriff someday.)

25 - Checklist (yes, you apparently have a 1-in-5 chance of not getting a player at all)

14 - Don Mattingly (Yankee haters should stay away from Mattingly, who unfortunately never made the playoffs until his final season.)

9 - Tom Glavine (the card backs are also very similar to the Fleer base set design)

18 - Kirby Puckett (Puckett represented the pro-Twins side of my internal conflict about his team, who I hate for beating the Cardinals in the '87 Series but also followed closely as they were the parent club of my hometown Portland Beavers in the early 90's)

"Collector's Edition: Baseball Card Series '94 (presented by Sunoco, Fleer, Atlantic)"

Contains 5 "Limited Edition" trading cards - making sure to put "limited edition" in quotes to assure potential investors that there are no refunds should the marked for gas station-issued cards suddenly collapse.

10 - Cecil Fielder (this may have been based on the 1994 Fleer design, but I am fairly certain that I've never seen an honest to goodness '94 Fleer card. I guess that means that every Cardinal card is in my theoretical "want list" for that set.)

12 - Juan Gonzalez (I am a fan of minor league stats on the back)

25 - Checklist (well... bleh.)

24 - Andy Van Slyke (I'm not sure if the blurry Pirates guy behind Andy is warming up, making fun of him or is just really bored)

23 - Frank Thomas (one of the best cards you could get at the time. he played for so many non-contending White Sox teams that you have to wonder what kind of accolades he'd have now if his teams had more success.)

I saw these packs on eBay and hadn't heard of them that I could recall. I knew of some Sunoco cards in '97 or '98 that featured two hall-of-fame players from several teams, but I had not seen these ones. When I opened the pack, I knew I had not seen them. They look just like Fleer 1994 cards, but on the back, they have a Sunoco and Atlantic logo.


Bagwell looks like he is putting his mouth on some glass and blowing real hard. His mouthpiece is two sizes too big. You would think I would be pretty excited to get a Bagwell out of the pack, and I was... Until I saw there were TWO of them, followed by TWO Roberto Alomars:


The last card in the pack is a John Olerud (who looks like he is about to swat the logo with his bat):


So, two duplicates in a pack of five cards!? Man, talk about lousy collation!

I ended up with seven packs in the lot that I purchased, and based on the first pack I opened, I may save the others for a rainy day...or a hurricane...or a black hole into which to chuck these puppies. Then again, I will be playing "Tribe-or-no-Tribe" with one of them, just for the sake of doing it....