Trade Post Trio: sparkles, grissoms, and a sea of sleeves

We're coming off of three days of big posts here on the blog, with kooky custom Griffey magnets, wrapping up my Gint-a-Cuffs entry, and the story of my autograph-seeking adventure from over the weekend. But now let's catch our breath with a trade post. Unless there's some high-value cards in the mix, these types of posts generally aren't all that interesting to anyone besides the sender and the recipient.. and of course you fellow hardcore cardblog readers out there who click on a post even when it's not all that sexy. This post is dedicated to you blessed few!

Heck of a mailday this past Monday, with P-Town Tom, Jedi Jeff, and Tony L. all making an appearance in my mailbox.

Tom was returning the favor for me helping him pass the 400-card milestone in his Kerry Wood collection. His PWE was heavy on 2011 Topps parallels.

As I've mentioned here recently, I have dreams of one day putting together a frankenset of 2011 Topps via only parallels. Wouldn't that be neat? It's a nice design, and it's got several cool-looking parallels. I remember reading another blog where the guy was trying for just a liquorfractor set, and that's a cool idea, but I'm not limiting myself to just one parallel. I'm mainly after the sparkly parallels (that blue "hope diamond" Victor Martinez is #'d 57/60), but I won't turn away non-sparkly parallels (such as that gold Carlos Silva #'d /2011).

These diamond parallels make me think more of shattered glass, but still cool looking. I really should try putting together a wantlist soon so I can track my progress on this project.

Tom also helped out with my other large-quantity undertaking: my Marquis Mania project. Tom mentioned a while back that this card seems to have gotten tougher to find on Sportlots since my quest began. While it's not my intention to try to create any artificial scarcity to drive up demand on this card-- For an overproduction card such as this, I would need to fill a warehouse with it before prices ticked up at all-- it is interesting to note. Yeah, when I make an order on Sportlots, I always check to see if the seller has any copies of this card that I can throw in my cart.

Next up is a PWE from Jefi Jeff. This was a pleasant surprise, as we didn't have a trade in the works or anything. Jeff is just one of those cool cats who likes to sneak PWEs onto his collector brethren. And we love him for it!

As a White Sox team collector, Jeff winds up with several Chris Sale dupes, I'm sure, and I'm very happy to take them. Highlights here are an Opening Day RC and a snazzy Finest card.

Another guy who spent several years with the Pale Hose, Gavin Floyd. Always appreciated!

And would you look at that?! Jeff also provided me with a single 1990 UD Marquis Grissom. I believe this marks the first time I've had a mailday with this card arriving from 2 different sources. I've got a stack running which is just about ready to get added to the binder. The Marquis Mania collection is my only "active" binder right now. I've also got a one or two older binders from my earlier collecting days. And I've got 3 or 4 empty binders salvaged from work just in case I decide I want to page a set oneday. But by and large, I'm definitely a box guy, not a binder guy.

That last part was some foreshadowing for the padded mailer Tony L. dropped on me:

A buttload of penny sleeves! Turns out Tony toyed with the idea of being a sleeves man back when he was first coming off hiatus, but ended up gravitating to binders, rendering these thousand or so sleeves useless to him. I'll definitely put them to good use!

Big thanks to Tom, Jeff, and Tony!
Tom, as always I'll keep an eye out for more Kerry Woods cards you might need.
Jeff and Tony, I'll round up some cards to send your way shortly.

And thanks to the few others of you out there for reading!