Smarch Swaps

One good thing about being home every day is that I don't have to wait until the evening to open my mail. Three PWE trades and a box from COMC arrived at Collector HQ last week.

The first trade in was from TCDB user gatorsportscardart:

I sent 18 basketball dupes (17 from 1990-91 SkyBox) out to Gator and got 12 cards in return, including two Lance Parrish issues and Mark Belanger's sunset card. I knew he was a very light-hitting shortstop but I had no idea his all-time great fielding was enough for him to stick around into the '80s.

The Francona card was not in the initial trade; I'd asked for a 1982 Topps Al Oliver but Gator couldn't find it so I asked for Tito instead. No, I'm not building the 1983 Topps set. Even after this trade I've only got 29 of the 792 cards.

Got a couple basketball cards in return for the 18 basketball cards. Also an off-center Jim Zorn and a couple newer cards in Porzingis and Kershaw - which is from the National League All-Star team set, though it looks exactly like the base card. Whatever.. different card number, different card I guess.

Here's a minor trade I made with JDStinz, sort of a 'bottom-pair defenseman for future 4th rounder' deal:

I sent three Stranger Things base cards and two 2015-16 Donruss basketball dupes to JD for these four. Classic Images is not one of my favorite sets at all, but I can't pass up a Brodeur, a Pronger(listed as a Whalers card on TCDB) and an Arnott. Wasn't easy finding an active user who needed my Stranger Things dupes, so I took what I could get. Lucas definitely jumped to the forefront in the most recent ST season. I really enjoyed his character arc and relationship with Max.

Do any of you watch Quantum Leap? Did you watch the original? My wife and I have been watching the reboot, which is funny to me since she had Quantum Leap nights at her college dorm back in the day.
 

I mention this show because the spoils of my most recent Time Travel Trade arrived last Thursday. It had been a while since I swapped cards with Matt, and I'm already preparing for the next one.

Royals and Red Sox here. Tazawa and Hanrahan are extras for my Red Sox binder.

You probably can't read the names on most of these (except for Hubie Brooks) so I'll list them for you: Jim Abbott, Roberto Alomar, and Gary Sheffield are pretty recognizable by photo. Then we have Brooks, Will Clark(also a familiar face), and Marcell Ozuna. Then at the bottom we have Charles Johnson and Josh Bell.

Clark reminds me that there was a Quantum Leap episode where Ben leaps back to the Bay Area right before the 1989 Earthquake.

 

 

And we'll finish with some football Hall of Famers. I was a little too slow on claiming a Scott Rolen card, so I added Moon as a substitute. He's joined by a 2019 Donruss Dan Marino I had to grab quickly because anyone could have offered anything 2018 or older. Michael Strahan rounds out the swap. I'm sure Matt will cover what he received in a future post at Diamond Jesters.

On the same day these arrived, I received my latest COMC order. Here's a preview:

 

I'll show off the rest of my order after the 100 Greatest Non-Hall of Famers Countdown concludes later this week.



Thanks for reading!



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Stranger Stuff

I ordered more stuff from Blowout Cards around my birthday, mostly because I was out of penny sleeves. Of course I ordered some cards, too. 

Earlier this year I saw a blaster box of Stranger Things cards at Target. I didn't buy them because $20 seemed just a little steep and/or I was being cheap. In the meanwhile, my wife and I finished watching season 2 and watched all of season 3. Andso I added this blaster to my cart for just $12.

This summer she did something she hasn't done in fifteen years. She started a collection!

If these don't stick to our fridge I will freak

We stopped into a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins on our way home from the Silversun Pickups show. The Stranger Things promo was still up, which was a pleasant surprise. She had grabbed the last sheet of magnets in a previous visit but that BR didn't have the special edition Funko figure.

I was shocked that she paid $20 for this thing, though they apparently sell for twice that on eBay. I've also tried to entice her to visit the comic book shop I used to frequent because I know they have Funko there (and penny sleeves, and packs of Topps baseball..)

Back to the blaster..each box contains ten packs of seven cards plus a commemorative patch card.

My wife opened this last and declared this a Steve (hot) box. Looks like it broke the tie:

 The top two are Scenes Stickers, the bottom two are Character Cards...

...and these are Character Stickers. D was baffled by this - why are there two sets of stickers? I will never understand non-sports sets myself, but then I'm sure a non-sports collector would wonder why we stick-and-ball fans need fifteen versions of the same card.

As proof of my lack of experience in and understanding of non-sports sets.. I posted the hits first. I wouldn't do that for a sports card set. Anyway, here's a sampling of the base set:

Nearly all of the cards are horizontal. This is not ideal for nine-pocket storage. Or maybe I'm just not thinking like a non-sports collector.

Of the 58 base cards in the box, only seven were right-side up. 

Lots of Eleven in this set, natch. I hope the Duffer brothers reveal more about her origin story in season 4.

I thought there would be more cards of the boys. The lack of Dustin in this box is a bit of a bummer.

A surprising amount of Nancy/Steve/Jonathan. I'm bewildered by her.

Throwback to when Steve was a douche. He might be my favorite character now #dadSteve

Believe it or not, I have owned a Winona Ryder card before. However this Dracula character card (also made by Topps) is long gone from my collection.  

We stick together because we're stronger together.

Topps did an excellent job with this set.100 cards is a good size and the backs describe each scene with just the right amount of detail. I sure hope they keep this up for their Season 2 and 3 sets. While I've been very disappointed in the quality and inconsistency of non-sports sets by other companies (NECA especially) Topps knows what they're doing. 

I haven't seen blasters of ST2 yet (Blowout had hobby boxes for $50+) but I'm hoping there's some kind of continuity with the design. Also I have to find someone with the 42 ST1 singles we're missing...



Do you have a favorite Stranger Things character? Least favorite? 




Thanks for reading!


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Stranger Things

Sports are unpredictable*. That's why we love them.


*except the NFL

Three weeks ago we saw highly-favored Duke lose in the NCAA Tournament. Not the championship, or even the Final Four, but the Elite Eight--and they barely made it that far.

The NHL's top-seeded Tampa Bay Lightning were swept in the first round, as were the always-dangerous Pittsburgh Penguins. Two of the top three seeds out West, Calgary and San Jose, are one loss away from first-round elimination.

Even the NBA playoffs have seen some surprises so far; the Golden State Warriors actually lost a game to the L.A. Clippers - the biggest playoff underdog ever while the second-seeded Denver Nuggets are down 2-1 in their series. Oh, and Tiger Woods won a golf tournament. woo.

All of this is strange, but it still has an "any given Sunday" feel to it. The greatest teams in sports can have one bad game or one bad week. It happens. One bad month, for a defending World Series champion returning a near-identical roster, is truly bizarre.

I keep waiting for the Boston Red Sox to snap out of this slumber and start winning... but it hasn't happened yet. Roughly 20 games into the 2019 the Red Sox are the second-worst team in baseball, behind only the Marlins. Kansas City has a better record, so does Baltimore. Tampa Bay has the league's best record, and they're running away with the AL East.

Yes, my Sox are suck right now. But I still love collecting Boston-based baseball cards - and Kerry included a bunch of them in his Guilt Free Basketball Card mailer:

Classic Clark, Pink(?) Porcello, and some early Pacific issues. The 2004 Red Sox were certainly an Elite team...

..the 2019 version? Not so much. These were my first 2019 baseball cards; I bought two packs of Opening Day shortly after opening Kerry's mailer.

 Heritage and Ginter, including a David Price relic. Thanks again, Kerry!

Many of these have been added to my box of Sox hits, which is now overflowing! It's also the last box of baseball cards I've yet to catalog on TCDB. I'm going to try and finish all of my non-hockey this weekend.. which includes a smattering of non-sports cards.

My wife and I have been watching Stranger Things recently, and as of tonight we'll be all caught up on the first two seasons. I've seen blaster boxes of Stranger Things cards in Target (and a Jim Hopper relic on COMC) but I haven't been tempted to buy any yet. I like that Topps uses the old-school card stock - which makes sense since the show takes place in 1984 - and it shouldn't cost too much to put together a complete set.

That said, I'm weird about buying non-sports cards. As much as I loved The Hunger Games quad-rilogy, I only bought the cards because they were heavily discounted - and they were still a big disappointment.

Also I don't feel the need to have any specific Stranger Things scenes or characters represented in my collection. The only character that stands out to me is Eleven, and I'm not about to chase a piece of clothing worn by a pre-teen actor. (Wouldn't mind a Winona Ryder relic though.)

Have you watched Stranger Things? What strange sports story interests you the most?


Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend, and a Happy Easter! 


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