Baseball Card Breakdown: Catching up with incoming cards and things

Time for a big post featuring stuff I've gotten over the past month or two from my homies on the cardsphere, including two guys I've gotten a ton of cards from in recent years, plus two other guys I hadn't traded with in several years.

First up is a bunch of stuff from the esteemed Mr. Zippy Zappy. Similar to what Night Owl was saying the other week, I'm fortunate to still be sent stuff from Kenny and it always brightens my day to see what he graciously jettisons my way.

Pretty sweet lot of LEGO Star Wars minifigs! Not pictured are a bunch of accessories (I didn't get around to clipping on the lightsabers and blasters.)

Here's some 2010-2011 stuff featuring a few early Strasburgs and a Chris Sale RC. My 2011 Topps parallel frankenset has 731 cards in it so far (out of a daunting 1284 goal), yet that Huston Street there at the end is now the first silk parallel in the mix. Silky sweet Street!

Solid player-lots of Hunter Pence and Nolan Arenado, plus some other various baseball of note.

Lots of in-person or through-the-mail autographs from Zippy's impressive hoard (plus at least one pack-certified auto). Cool to get signatures of the Million Dollar Arm (2014) real guys.

Also a bunch of women's soccer making up the bulk of the non-baseball player autos.

Lots of Star Wars cards, including a couple partial rainbow runs.

More non-sport with a bunch of Stranger Things inserts direct from Topps, by the looks of the top-loaders. Looking forward to watching the final Stranger Things episodes soon and see how that story wraps up.

Cool little Star Wars set that's still sealed.

Wrapping up with a signed master photo and some 1/1 Topps Vault blank backs. There was also a big mousepad/ gaming mat included that I didn't get around to getting a picture of.

Big thanks, ZZ! A lot of cool stuff there.

Stop the presses.. just got another international envelope with a few more cards.

This time it's more signed baseball cards, highlighted by a gold refractor, plus a couple Tulowitzkis.

Thanks again, man. Keep 'em coming! :)

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From a bunch of stuff mailed across the sea to a bunch of stuff driven over across the neighborhood, next up are highlights from the lastest longboxes I've been fortunate to receive from my buddy Rod at Padrographs.

Getting top billing here are a signed Marie Osmond card, a new Gavin for my collection (in a funky 1989 Topps design remixed MiLB issue), and a Jake Cronenworth 2025 black parallel.

Some recent certified Padrographs, including some prospects and hometown hero Joe Musgrove.

Lots more overflow Padrographs I'm happy to work into my collection.

Big thanks as always, Rod!

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The Coffee Card Blogger over at Cards Over Coffee and I swapped a bunch of PWEs back when he was known as the Sport Card Collectors guy. But then I stopped going to the local card show and so my trade fodder for him dried up. But I had been sitting on a few NY Giants that I hadn't gotten around to sending him, so I finally did that earlier this summer, surprising him with a PWE for old time's sake.

It was a nice little hobby moment, though the vibe was soured a bit when his return to me fell victim to a ruthless assault.

Oof, the envelope had been aggressively folded longways, creasing all six cards included. Not sure if the mailpiece was just unlucky with a defective sorting machine or if the culprit was a disgruntled mail handler within the Postal Service being malicious in his disregard for the "Do Not Bend" plea as a way to get his own sick jollies.

So that was a bummer. Here's a closer look at the bent cards, with some creases not showing up much in the photo.

I hadn't had that happen before, but then a week or two later I received an eBay win PWE in rough shape that was one card in a top-loader. Even the top-loader was bent into 3 segments, which is pretty hard to do without putting in solid effort. So yeah, that's concerning. Hopefully it's not a trend that persists. The damaged card wasn't all that rare and the seller refunded me with no problem, so it could have been worse. Next time I might not be so lucky. :/

But back to this trade, when I informed him of the sad fate of his outgone mail, Coffee Guy was nice enough to find a few more Padres for me, and thankfully this batch arrived without incident.

Some fun parallels here, highlighted for me by the numbered Khalil Greene.

Who knows if/when we'll swap cards again, but it's been fun. Thanks, man!

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Here's another blast from the twenty-teens. The last time I did a Time-Traveling Trade with Matt at Diamond Jesters was 2019, so I was overdue. This time I grabbed needs for three 70s Topps sets I'm still slowly working on.

I'm not confident I'll ever complete 1970 Topps, but I'll try to chip away needs here and there.. and who knows, maybe someday.

Completing Topps sets from 1976 and 1977 is a much more feasible goal. I also grabbed a bunch from these two sets in a recent Sportlots order. I'm still just over halfway with '76, but '77 is up to three-quarters done and I'm at the point where I might raid my PCs looking for needs there.

Thanks, Matt!

That'll do it for this post. Hopefully the bottleneck with my blogging is broken now and I'll post more frequently here as the summer subsides. I ended my months-long COMC boycott and begrudgingly overpaid them for a shipment request, so that should show up one of these weeks, and I'll have several posts lined up with stuff from that lot.

Have a great holiday weekend, everybody.

P.S. Update to my previous post...