Attacking the All-Time Teams list

How do you use Trading Card Database? Do you aggressively propose trades to users that have the cards you need? Do you offer up duplicate cards on someone's wantlist and browse for a decent return? Do you sit back and wait for offers, focusing on cataloging your own cards more than trading?

This is pretty much the order I follow. If I've exhausted all of my options for priority projects I'll see who needs all of my surplus 2017-2019 Topps baseball cards and see what I can get for them.

 
This Willie Stargell 2017 Topps Heritage insert arrived yesterday in a trade I proposed a month ago today. I've tried every which way to acquire the remaining inserts I need for my master set and some users just won't budge. Wayne (aka T206) accepted the trade and marked it as shipped a day later. 

A week after I offered him two Pete Alonso rookie cards and a couple Braves legends from my duplicates box I received a package.. full of Buffalo Bills cards. There had been a mixup and it took a lot of back-and-forth to get the cards to the traders that had requested them. I sent the Bills cards to their rightful owner and eventually received the cards I had been eagerly anticipating for four weeks.

Okay, I was mostly anxious about the Stargell and Derrick Gibson Ravens card. Yoan Moncada's RC isn't really a RC - but then again the Polar Bear RCs weren't really RCs, either. The bottom three guys are relievers for my All-Time Teams project - but by the time they arrived I only needed J. P. Howell. 

Wayne did make it right, by adding extra cards and including a $5 bill to cover my shipping of the Bills cards to the third trader. Four of them are all-time favorite quarterbacks that I'm saving for future football card posts. Here are the other three freebies:

I already have the Red Sox celebration card, the Rick Porcello mini is numbered to 100 (but it's bent) and I have no idea why Wayne included a CC Sabathia card but I'm not going to complain. 6 of the 7 cards he sent were PC teams/players so that's a good ratio - even if three were dupes.  

Also, he basically covered the Nationals/Expos slot I paid for in Nachos Grande's 2020 Heritage break.

The second type of TCDB deal was my second with Sheepboy. I was a little leery of this because I remebered receiving at least one damaged card from him in our first swap. Would it happen again?

This card of Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium was the reason I made the offer. A bunch of cards on my trade list matched Ben's want list so it was just a matter of seeing what else I could get for 15 Tigers and Michigan-adjacent players.

No new set fillers here but I tried upgrading and went 1-for-2. The Stump Mitchell is sharp. Ken Norman is creased. Joe Ingles was kind of an impulse add because the Status brand reminds me of old Skybox sets. Also I didn't have an Ingles card or, should I say, no tenia Ingles.

If I can't find set fillers I need or All-Time Team needs, my next priority is team favorites. Ben had a bunch of 1995-96 SP hockey and I was happy to find a few Whalers. The Chris Sale is my first card from the 2002 portion of Archives. I don't like it. The cardstock feels like a bad fit for anything 21st century.

This got me all caught up on old TCDB trades so I tossed a couple more offers out there. Then when I got home from work today I found an envelope from Julie which contained my Pick Pockets picks:

Ha, did not even notice all three of these greats played for the Dodgers at some point. I'm neutral on Chase Utley but I love the '93-style Platinum Power die-cut. I'm nearing 25% of the 2018 Topps Chrome set. Should I go for it? The Pee Wee Reese Vintage Legends insert will probably go in my All-Time Teams binder as an upgrade.

Another Dodgers-adjacent card and another Ohio-based stadium for my All-Time Teams project.

Finally a trio of recent hockey cards including an SP Limited red parallel of Stanley Cup Champion Steven Stamkos. I'm getting really excited for the All-Time Teams hockey edition. Hope you are, too.

Julie, thanks again for offering up so many great cards!

***Thursday Thought***

 

Apropos of absolutely nothing: have any of you ever known or met or seen someone who is your complete opposite in every meaningful way, but something about their physical appearance appeals to you. Like, your practical mind shouts at you that said person is just horrible for you but your eyes say...

 

Just wondering ;-)

 

 

Thanks for reading!



 

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Sox and set singles

I haven't felt like saying much lately. The news has been depressing and exhausting. I'm hardly even aware of the Super Bowl - though I'm sure I will hate-watch it, and I'm sure the 49ers will win because I absolutely don't want them to. 

There are plenty of posts percolating in my mind. I'm hoping to publish a couple of them before rebooting the All-Time Teams series. All of this will require energy and enthusiasm, which I am very low on at the moment.

I'm nearly finished cataloging my card collection. I had hoped to be done by the end of January, but I didn't quite make it. I thought that when every card was hand-checked (again) the final count would eclipse 98,000. It looks like I'll fall just short.

A couple trades came in this week, along with an unofficial trade. Julie of A Cracked Bat is back, and she offered up some fresh new cards for pocket pickin'. 

I asked for five singles. She sent nine, generous soul that she is:

This was a pleasant surprise! I'm impressed that Julie was able to ship a relic in a PWE without incident. I tried that once and it did not go well.

The rest of the PWE. Snider, Seager, Scherzer, Varitek and Lowell were my picks. Julie threw in the Devers and Pedro cards. Thanks again Julie! 

I'm not one to simply take cards without giving something in return, and I was able to scrape together a return PWE. However I feel terrible because my Tigers traders were depleted on a "gift" that was not even acknowledged. From now on, if I get any decent Tigers cards they're going to Julie or Dennis. Period, full stop.


Anyway... I added some more Red Sox to my collection this week, thanks to a pair of TCDB trades. The first is a PWE trade with CardsInTheBasement:

Six Sox from 2019 Topps Heritage, including some highlights from their 2018 title. Ah, the good old days. Honestly, none of these players evoke good feelings right now - except maybe JBJ. I love Mookie and all, but there's no point in blowing up the payroll and paying penalties just to hand him $400 million. Is he worth it? Compared to Mike Trout's contract, sure. But how many World Series has Trout won? Or Bryce Harper? Or Giancarlo Stanton?

Here are some more cards you're probably sick of seeing. 2020 Topps Series 1 is about to hit shelves and I haven't finished the 2019 set yet. I'm surprised at myself for even wanting to collect this set give how much I disliked it initially. I would say that the new flagship issue doesn't interest me - which it doesn't (it looks too much like a Bowman design) but I'll probably give in eventually.

My 95th completed trade on TCDB was with jmsisco. This was a bigger swap - I unloaded 74 flagship dupes in exchange for 51 cards I needed. Why did I offer to take 23 fewer cards?

So that I could snag the Eloy Jimenez RC! I'm now just a handful of singles away from completing the 2019 Topps set. I had hoped to complete it by the end of January, but I didn't quite make it.

 

Similar to the previous trade, this one also included a handful of Sox singles from 2019 sets.

My main goal was to send surplus Topps singles to someone who needed them. I wasn't too picky about what I could get in return, whether it's Bowman Platinum singles of guys I collect...

..or an assortment of singles from Update. I now have about 1/3 of this set, but I'm not sure I'll attempt to complete it. Side note: the Festa card was of particular interest to me since that was also the last name of my 8th grade crush.

 
I'll be in Connecticut visiting family this weekend. No card show this time; those are at the end of each month and I probably wouldn't go even if it were this weekend. The dime boxes were kind of picked clean last time I was there. Besides, as I'm re-cataloging my collection I've found that I have very little room for any new cards - except football.

 Go Chefs!!


Thanks for reading, and enjoy the SuperbOwl!


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First Day Mailday from Wes and Julie

I started my new job yesterday. There was someone using my desk and I don't have a computer set up yet, so the whole day was spent observing the other collector as she talked me through what she does/what I will be doing. I just hope I don't forget it all in the next six days, since I wont be going back for good until Friday.

In terms of actual work, it was the easiest day ever. The boss even buys his staff lunch on Fridays, so I got free pizza and a salad in exchange for doing nothing. However, the lighting in the office and/or the lack of sleep messed with my senses at times. And the day dragged on hardcore after about 2pm. I felt like a pitcher who's been coming out of the bullpen for six years and now the team is stretching him out to be a starter. Am I done yet? Why am I still here? I'm f*cking tired!

Anyway..when I finally got home I had stories to tell my family (they have cereal for everyone! The radio at my supervisor's desk played your favorite song!) I also had exactly as many comments on my First Day post as I had packages in the mail (three.) I'll show off two of them here. 

Julie sent me a surprise mailer just a couple weeks ago, and since I'm a greedy s.o.b. I requested more cards from her. She kindly obliged with this hand-picked PWE:

Moar Sox pls. There were a couple non-Sox in the PWE, including Brooks Robinson...

Jose Altuve and Chipper Jones. As indicated by Julie's sticky note, the Playoff Portraits Pedro is a parallel! Say that three times fast. (Playoff Portrait Pedro parallel. Playoff Portrait Pedro parallel. Playoff Portrait Pedro parallel.)


Also, my goodies from Wes's Area 40 Megabreak arrived. By the time I got in on the action all of my favorite teams were taken - except one. So I had to think outside the box a little.

• I chose the Rockies in case Wes pulled some former New Haven Ravens. 
• I chose the Tigers because they were my father in law's favorite team and I have at least three trading partners who are Tigers fans.
• I chose the Dolphins in case Wes pulled any Dan Marino hits.
• I chose the Devils because they were still available!
• And then I chose a random NBA slot but then changed my choice when the NBA teams were getting picked off. Bad idea. Not only was "Random NBA" a good choice, I switched to the Nashville Predators for the chance to pull a P.K. Subban card..and I'm not sure Wes opened any post-lockout hockey cards. 

Wes showed off some of the hits ahead of time, so I knew I had at least four cards coming my way. These were the surprises:

No Marino in the Dolphins pile, but I got a Ricky Williams parallel #d to 56 and a Chris Chambers parallel #d to 275. There's some kind of lava effect that isn't showing up in the scan. As I mentioned in my birthday post Chris and I are both 8/12 babies. More on this in the next day or two...

Two Devils here, including a Petr Sykora parallel and a Patrik Sundstom auto. I've seen these on the blogs before but I know nothing about them. Are they packed out in blasters? At least Sundstrom is correctly identified on this Pro Set card; the year before he was mistaken for Peter Stastny. 

Also this is the only (surprise) auto I received and I'm thrilled that it's a Devils player who had a solid career and not some scrub from the Dolphins' practice squad.

Here are the Rockies Wes pulled:

Boom, baby! Todd Helton orange parallel #d to 25! (4 of 25 to be exact) Helton is the most notable of all former Ravens, and is also a player I recently wrote about. 

Wes also included some SI for Kids cards, possibly as filler (unless he had stacks of the magazines in his break?) These were the best of the bunch (i.e. athletes I've heard of):

A new Ohtani for my star player box, and lots of new additions to my Women on Cards binder. Two UConn greats, two gymnastic stars, and an all-time tennis legend. Very cool!

Here are the cards I knew about already. Wes pulled four Tigers hits - two relics and two autos:

Wes, thank you so much for allowing me to participate in the mother of all box breaks. The stories of your unrivaled generosity will be told for as long as people blog about baseball cards.

Julie, if you're reading this, please choose any two of these Tigers and I'll pack 'em in a PWE along with a few other cards you collect. Thanks for all the great cards you've sent me this month. I promise I wont request any more...for a while ;)


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Sox In My (Mail)Box

Lately I have had a hard time relaxing and writing blog posts or comments. The stress of dealing with my current job while also trying to get another job has been difficult to overcome. My go-to stress relief is blasting some music (usually Fall Out Boy's "Champion" does the trick) and cracking open some cards.

Last Friday I came home from an interview with a staffing agency to find two packages on my front porch - one big box from COMC and a surprise mailer from Julie, author of A Cracked Bat. Julie was returning fire from a package I sent her a few months back.

Nothing but Red Sox inside. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the original 1959 Topps and the Archives version.

Eight cards from 1998 Leaf Rookies & Stars, including a Jason Varitek "rookie". Seven of these are new to my collection; only the Nomar Garciaparra is a dupe.

A bunch of Bryce Brentz (and one Rusney Castillo) including my first mini from 2015 Topps. Julie is a Tigers collector, so it's no surprise that Steven Moya snuck in here.

Another nice group of Red Sox here. I like the DK originals Boggs and the Turkey Red Youkilis in particular.

World Series closer Chris Sale and ALCS MVP Jackie Bradley close out this group, along with a Manny Ramirez relic and a minor league Nomar. Great stuff Julie, Thanks very much!


There were also some Sox in my COMC box:

I always search for graded vintage singles on COMC, especially during their sale days. This time very few cards caught my attention; it took me nearly the entire week to pull the trigger on this 1970 Topps Yaz. It looks undergraded to me, and I'm happy I bought it, but I could have picked up a dozen decent cards for the $16.75 I paid. 

In fact I did pick up a dozen decent cards for slightly more than half that price, as I mentioned in my previous post. There were about 22 cards in my cart at one point, but a few of them sold while I was looking and I "put back" a couple on my own. In the end, I walked away with these:

This Dustin Pedroia Beam Team gold was something I would have bought anyway. I was thrilled to scoop it up on sale, along with a few impulse buys such as this Ty Cobb Artist Proof parallel (#d/99.) 

Pedroia, Cobb, and Elway were $1.25 each. This Ed McCaffrey card (also #d/99) was $0.65. I'm no Broncos fan, but at these prices you take what you can get.

This Kevin Durant Ascension parallel ($0.65) has a corner ding, which explains why it was cheaper than the Russell Westbrook Scope Prizm ($0.85).  

I picked up four Rediscover Topps buybacks for a total of $2.60 - and promptly shipped them off to Shoebox Shane. The cheapest cards in this group were Clayton and Clinton:

This copper parallel of Clayton Kershaw cost $0.45..

...and so did this 1963 Topps Lou Clinton card. As soon as I got it in-hand I was amazed at how clean it was. The back isn't bad, either. I'd scan it but I just sorted my entire Red Sox collection and I'm too lazy to pull it back out. 

That's a dozen decent cards for just $9.40! Who knows what gems I could have snatched up had I not bought the Yaz..but I'd say I got the best of both worlds. 


I'm planning a Todd Helton-themed post for Friday but I don't know how often I'll be able to blog beyond that. I have two interviews scheduled that day, which is amazing but also stressful because I might end up having to cancel one and what if I don't get the one job I interview for?

This morning I wasted a whole hour fiddling with my Women on Cards tab, just so that I can insert my two newest additions (stupid blogger html..) The Mrs. and I watched a Kristen Bell movie on Netflix this past weekend. Like Father was just what I was looking for - something light that I could sort my cards and half-watch without missing anything crucial. It wasn't anything special, but there was one laugh-out-loud scene.

This was my eBay bucks purchase - an Under The Dome character card die-cut. I actually had to pay $2 out of pocket, but that's a fair price to bring another Britt Robertson card home. 


I have a few more Red Sox cards coming soon, but I'll try to mix in some other teams (and maybe a non-sports single or two) since I'm sure some of you are sick of seeing Boston-area teams. Someone shoot down the Patriots...please!

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The State of the Sawx

It has been a rough year to be a Red Sox fan.

First there was the beanball war with Baltimore.

Then there was the David Price-Dennis Eckersley feud.

Then some moron(s?) shouted racial slurs at the Orioles' Adam Jones.

Then there was the sign stealing scandal. 

And now this:

Is this pro or con? And why would anyone bother to display such an ambiguous sign? I don't even know. All I know is that there are great stories all over baseball: the Indians, the D-backs, the Twins, the Mighty Giancarlo Stanton, the Judge, the Dodgers (until about a month ago)... but aside from a hot start by Chris Sale and a red-hot debut by Rafael Devers, every story about the Sox this year has been negative news. And we're in first place!

Not all of this bad karma has to do with the players. The Red Sox roster is deep and talented enough to win the division and maybe even a playoff series. But the bad mojo will negate that. Even if our lefty aces Sale and Price don't turn into pumpkins at the first sign of fall, the talent on other teams is better - and the mojo is much better.

Let's say the season ended today. The Red Sox would have to go to Houston for an ALDS series. The Astros are already the better team on paper, but the flood-ravaged city will rally around the team, and vice versa. It happened in Boston after those Russian asshats bombed the Boston Marathon. 

And even if the Sox somehow beat the 'Stros, they'd have to win a best-of-7 against the Cleveland Indians, who might never lose a game again. 

This... is not our year. And that's okay. I don't expect my team to win championships every year; I'm not a Yankees fan. Honestly, as long as we hold them off for the AL East crown and they don't advance any further than we do (which seems like a safe bet considering the Yanks would play Cleveland in the DS) I'm good. Just as long as the news from now on concerns the players and their performance on the field. 

 
Since this is supposed to be a sports card blog I thought I'd show off a few cards from a new PC project - Cleveland skipper Terry Francona (I wish that guy was managing my team)

I haven't been actively collecting Francona cards, but he nearly won a third World Series ring last year and the Indians appear to be even better this year. Three titles as a manager is basically a ticket to Cooperstown, so I figure now's the time to build my collection. It's pretty basic so far:

I just tossed a few more Titos into my latest Just Commons order, which should be here in the next week or two. And I've got a box break post on deck from today's visit to my LCS (aka Target.) But before I get to that, here are some Red Sox cards from my most recent 50/50 trade, with Julie of the blog A Cracked Bat.
 

 and a Hot Dog

Julie claimed two lots - Tigers and Astros - and sent me about 110 cards in return. (I'm still debating whether that earns her an extra entry in the contest.)

Unfortunately I was a bit hasty in sorting/seeding them into my binders and I forgot to scan them all. But here are some highlights:

 My apologies if any of these did not come from Julie.

I should have scanned them right away. But it was 110 cards!

 That time when Brock Holt was our only All-Star:

 Obscure player alert!

And we'll end with a celebration:

I hope we'll see more of this down the stretch. 

Thanks for reading, everyone. Have a great weekend!

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