The King and the Colonel

I received my prize from The Diamond King's Big Fun Game earlier this week.

Woo-hoo! Aaron Rodgers Turkey Red RC! This is only my 2nd Rodgers RC and they're listed at about $25 on COMC - though I should say that using COMC as a price guide is less reliable than using Beckett at this point. This card was offered with five others, including a Brett Favre Ultra RC:

I do have this card already, but it's part of my PSA-graded Favre rookie card collection so this one will go in the Brett box. I'm at well over 800 different cards now. Thanks, DK!


I've been trying to make as many trades on TCDB as possible before the end of May. One such recently completed swap was with user colonel98801. This was another package that I found on my top step at 8am. (When the heck are they delivering mail these days?)

Pacific Legends and Conlon Collection. You know where these are going..

Set fillers, including the elusive Jose Vizcaino Ultra card to complete the 1993 set. I've now got more basketball cards than I can fit into one monster box - nearly 5,000 total cards.

Moar Farvez! Also, I love 1992 Upper Deck Gold. Reminds me of working at a card shop that had a bunch in a box of assorted singles on the counter.

The colonel included some extras. I'm not building the 1991-92 Upper Deck set but maybe I should. Look at that Shawn Kemp single! The "Reign Man" always had cool cards - just ask Jon.

I had originally included this Larry Bird sticker in my trade proposal but I removed it to make the offer equitable. I'm not sure how Duane could have known that, but he added it anyway.

I'm now one card away from completing the 1990-91 Fleer All-Stars set:

Who's missing? Let's see.. we've got Bird and Magic, Stockton and Malone, Olajuwon, Ewing and Robinson..


Aww, dammit. 





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A Bounty from RandyLaw

I wanted to wrap up the trade with RandyLaw before I move on to the dime deals I snatched up at baseballcardstore.ca. Here's the rest of my bounty.

It's a bit of a stretch, but I just re-watched Once Upon A Time In Hollywood this weekend.

Lots of new Red Sox cards including the fantastic Jack Clark single from 1992 Topps.

Flagship. The 2007 Topps cards in the middle row are Red Sox team set issues.

More flagship. 

Some non-flagship. The David Price holo was listed as a base card. 

Manny and Papi. The Upper Deck card makes me smile. Man-Ram is a complicated figure for sure.

Here's an Oakland issue of Ramirez, along with other greats of the diamond. 

Legends galore, including a Randy Johnson refractor. 

Some candidates for the All-Time Teams collection, especially Gossage and Doby. 

Conlon Collection. Ross Youngs retired at age 29 (and died at age 30) due to a kidney illness, and still made it to Cooperstown.

Some random-ish stuff including Fernando batting and Straw signing autographs.

Chromes. I've got a bunch of Blake Snell but very few Jacob deGrom cards. 

Current year cards - except the '72 Votto mini. While sorting this stack I dropped a few singles and this flimsy little thing got creased. I was pretty pissed but it could have been worse.

I didn't ask for a whole lot of football in this trade, and some of these early '90s singles were added by Randy as replacements for cards I had requested. The creamsicle Craig Erickson is my favorite here.

A six-pack of Packers. Apparently I already had the Aaron Rodgers Absolute single, a fact that escaped me until I added these to my Packers binder last night. 

Over the past few days I've received multiple offers/counter-offers from traders who want to send me cards like this in exchange for my Michael Jordan base cards and inserts. I wonder why?

I grabbed a half-dozen 2011 Finest singles for this deal. Gore, Tomlinson, and A.D. are guys I've semi-collected over the years. Peyton Hillis had one good year and made a Madden cover. I was never a Wes Welker fan but he won me over after watching an episode of Caught In The Draft. Rutgers alum Kenny Britt lives in the same neighborhood as my manager. She's told me a couple stories about him.

This photo happened to appear on the MSN home page as I was writing this post.

The rest of the notables from RandyLaw, including Tom Brady and Drew Brees. The league leader card at the top left had some pretty rough corner dings. I may have to scrap that one. 

Here's a closer look at the Matthew Stafford Blue Prizm parallel, one of my favorite cards in the box. Randy, thanks for the great big trade!

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Thank you to everyone who commented on my previous post. Every one of the five Ivan Rodriguez cards I scanned received at least one vote for the Frankenset.

The winner (with six votes) is this 2001 Leaf Rookies & Stars single. Excellent choice.

I think I'll post the Kansas City Royals this Sunday. But which player will it be? Stay tuned. 

Thanks for reading!





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The Second Wave

The second wave has arrived...

I made a large trade with TCDB user Randylaw. His wantlist contained over 400 cards on my tradelist and I was happy to offload a full box of my duplicates in one shot. I shipped his cards last week and received mine sometime overnight or very early this morning (the box was sitting on my porch when I left for work at 8:45 a.m.)

I picked up plenty of stars and Hall of Famers. 

 

Red Sox, Royals, and Redbirds. The Mike Greenwell glossy at the top left is creased :/

Relievers. I tried to balance out the list of cards I requested with some "junk wax" from sets such as 1989 Score.

The Tigers were well-represented.

About half the cards I received were baseball. I got a nice chunk of singles from the other major sports, too.

The 1978 Topps Greg Pruitt was part of a replacement lot as Randy no longer had 16 of the cards I requested.

 

Many of the cards Randy sent were pack-fresh, including these gems. One of my collecting goals as a kid was to own a Jim McMahon Starting Lineup figure with the Chargers. However Kenner faked me out; McMahon was listed on the 1989 checklist as a Charger but he was still a Bear when the figure was produced.

These basketball singles pair nicely with the Secret Santa gift I received from Mark Hoyle.

More Hall of Famers here, including a Charles Barkley Fleer sticker.

A new set build perhaps?

These are just some of the cards in The Second Wave. There's plenty more up ahead. Brace yourselves ;-)

Thanks for reading!



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Trading from a surplus

Earlier this month I purchased a flat rate box of baseball cards on eBay for just over a penny a card.

I got a bunch of set fillers for 2018 Topps and a starter set of 2017 and 2019 Topps. This appeared to be a surplus box of base commons from a dealer or high-volume ripper; only a handful of players depicted could be considered stars. There didn't appear to be any hits either. Aside from some Big League gold parallels I managed to find one decent card the seller missed:

When I sorted through the 3,000 cards in the box (discarding a couple dozen that were damaged and/or dirty) I didn't notice anything special about this Andrelton Simmons card.

Then I counted out the dupes, and found that I had a sabermetric Advanced Stat parallel.

Once I took what I wanted from the box I had over 2,500 surplus singles. I've spent the past week adding them to my TCDB trade list and making some deals. If I had the time I'd make a spreadsheet of every card I received in the flat rate box, so that I can track what I traded every card for. (I don't expect to offload all of the cards, but you never know.)

That seems unnecessary anyhow; my transaction page keeps a record of everything I send/receive, and my trades will inevitably include cards that didn't come from this box.

The first trade featuring cards from the surplus pile arrived yesterday. I traded 18 cards from 2017 Topps and 2018 Topps (plus three overproduction-era singles) to TCDB user Joe0786 for these 18 cards:

A six-pack for my 2018 Topps set build, including a Miguel Andujar RC. There were no RCs in the box I bought, and all of the cards I traded were base veterans.

To balance things out I asked for a bunch of older football cards, including a pair of Pro Set. The Bennie Blades is creased; I've added it to the discard pile.  

Picked a few Packers needs. I'm surprised I didn't have the Bennett and Freeman Ultra cards.

 

These were the last two cards I picked, Ahman Green and Adrian Peterson. 


A second trade arrived yesterday, a PWE swap with TCDB user mrdonnee. This did not include any surplus baseball singles, but all eight of the cards I traded were dupes. 

In return for five star quarterbacks from my Panini Classics blaster break, an Aaron Rodgers Prizm insert, and a pair of 2015-16 Donruss basketball stars, I received these 12 cards:

A pair of Kemba Walker cards for my Connecticut collection. The Teal Explosion parallel has a corner ding, but the Optic cards are sharp.

Some '90s basketball including John Stockton and Vin Baker. The Robert Horry has a corner ding. It's been a common theme lately. What the heck is the post office doing with these packages?

Finally a pair of 1992-93 Ultra set fillers and a Derek Carr that doesn't fit my collection but I grabbed it because it looks cool. Just an FYI, the tabs at the top of this blog have been updated, including the list of things I collect. All of my set builds can be found on the "The Collector Collects..." page.

Also, if you need any 2017, 2018, or 2019 Topps base cards please let me know. I've got hundreds of each and I'd be happy to help my blogger buddies finish these sets.


Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!


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Pre-owned Sox n' Stuff

Sports card bloggers have been writing some fantastic posts lately. Billy Kingsley has an informative series about errors and variations on his blog Cardboard History, Night Owl's Blog Bat Around has been fueling trades and giving us some new blogs to follow, and Matt K. has a fun series called Time Travel Trading on his blog Diamond Jesters. 

I've been holding a couple recently-acquired cards in reserve for Matt, so I can join in on the fun. And after his latest Time Travel Trading post I decided it was time to strike.  

Shameless plug: if you missed the latest post in my Sports Card Tour series I discussed Detroit teams. This Bill Freehan sunset card from 1977 Topps arrived in time for the Motown tour stop - but I set it aside for this 'thank you' post. It's one of two cards I claimed from Matt...

This shiny Joey Votto is the other. Like many Chrome cards it wont lay flat, so the scan is a little crooked. Or maybe it's me. I'm having a lot of trouble scanning cards straight today.

While I was making the blogger rounds last week I came across a post from Ryan on his blog Base Card Hero. (If you're not following his blog yet, go follow him now. I'll wait.)

Ryan offered up some team lots for trade/sale to thin out his collection, and even though I was late to the party I was surprised to see the Red Sox were still available. (He's still got some popular teams left, including the Cardinals, Mets, Reds, and Tigers.)

I wanted to claim a second team in order to add a little variety to my collection and I chose the Mariners - mostly for the Ken Griffey, Jr. and Ichiro cards Ryan offered. 

There were 42 Mariners cards in the lot - but I'm saving the rest for the Seattle stop on my Sports Card Tour. However, I can show you all 39 of the Red Sox cards Ryan sent me:

Red Sox stars of the 80s, featuring Wade Boggs. I've never owned a 1984 Donruss Diamond King, I didn't even recognize it at first. 1991 Fleer base cards give me seizures, but the Pro-vision inserts are awesome.

Some more Sawx greats, including an alliterated Manny Ramirez. The Jimmie Foxx might be my favorite here.

Boston legends of the future? The Bogaerts and (second) Devers will go in my dupes pile. Kind of fitting since I sent Matt my Packers dupes to acquire this lot. 

Always happy to add some new Nomars to my collection. I never warmed up to Adrian Gonzalez in his 1+ years in Beantown, but that is a cool die-cut.

A nice batch of (mostly) parallels, including red foils of Jackie Bradley and Allen Craig. The David Ross ring card is one of my favorites as well.

Matt, Ryan...thanks again for the trades! Your cards should be arriving soon. I've been delayed by my family taking all of my free time and, in an unrelated matter, taking all of my packing tape.


Thanks for reading!


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p.s. I had absolutely no idea what to call this post...until this Married... With Children line popped into my head.