Cards from John, Kerry (though still nothing from John Kerry)

I was lucky enough to get a "Christmas in July" package from John Miller a few days ago.

I hadn't seen these before. Cool acetate Simpsons cards from Sykbox that you can apparently stack to create a completed image. Anybody got more of these to trade? Would love to add the missing piece(s) to this.

HOF relic!

John can always be counted on to send me a few Gileses.

Heck of a Josh Donaldson lot, with a couple shiny ones in the upper right.

End of Story; I just recently took Trevor Story off my wantlist and replaced him with teammate Nolan Arenado. Gavin Floyd is also fresh off the wantlist, though I did need that blue parallel. Nice Bird.

Here's some Padres cards, highlighted by a Wil Myers black parallel from '17 Stadium Club.

And a few miscellaneous odds and ends, including relics of Josh Hamilton, Juan Gonzalez, and Todd Helton.

Thanks, John! Always a pleasure.

-  - - - ----o

Next up is a surprise package from fellow Portland dweller, Kerry at Cards on Cards.

A Hawk sighting. The red parallel is #'d 3/25. Impressive!

It's the aforementioned Nolan Arenado, just added to my wantlist like 3 days days ago. Quick!

Bryce is having another solid year. Love that rookie cup xfractor!

Donaldson and Pedro representing Canada.

Manny Margot and Michael Conforto.

A couple legends.

Mookie!

Trout!

A few more cards, with Kerry even sneaking in a basketball card. I don't have many (any?) San Diego Clippers cards, so that World B. Free is pretty cool to get.

We close out with a couple nice relics; Adam Jones bat chip and a Chris Sale jersey swatch.

Awesome.. thanks, Kerry! I'm rounding up a return package for you and will get that out to you soon.

Ready, Set, Bo!

Bo (Baseball Cards Come To Life) recently had a tradeathon/Little Fun Game and I ended up with a big batch of cards graciously sent my way from his abode in the Big Apple.

Vlad! One more lot like this and I'll reach the 100-card mark with this future HOFer, whom, I should mention, was a beast in his prime.

Carlos Delgado! The greatest player to ever fall off the HOF ballot on his first try. I'm probably close to 100 cards of him, too.

Brian Giles! I'm pretty sure I've already passed 100 different cards of his, but still happy to add more of the all-time greatest baseball player from my high school. I really need to sort my B. Giles PC one of these days. But who has the time for that?

And Bo didn't forget Brian's lil bro Marcus, either.

Ron Gant! A fav of mine from back in the day. Gotta love those 30/30 guys. Forgot he was ever an Angel.

Another power/speed guy from the 90s, Reggie Sanders is represented on a nice mix of cards here.

Great lot of Adam Jones.

Marquis!

I've been pranked! Too Many Gavins!

Fan favorites Rod Beck, Pat Neshek, and Eric Owens.

Just one each of these guys, but good stuff. Vide Blue from the blurry '82 Fleer set. Great Dave Henderson card. Early Francisco Lindor card. A Brent Gretzky for my Black Sheep minicollection. And a Molitor. Very cool.

And the prize I came away with in Bo's contest game was a 100-card set of 2007 UD Future Stars. Lots of big names in here. I'll probably break up this set for my PCs.

Big thanks, Bo! I'll try to round up a respectable return for you soon!

the post with the most

I'm still getting caught up with everybody's blog posts I didn't have a chance to read many while I was on my recent trip to Louisville. I couldn't bare to just skip them, so I'm at least trying to skim.

I'm also trying to get through a backlog of things to post about, so this may be a big post as I try to make up some ground.

A few random bullet points:

• New glow-in-the-dark cards on the market?! Yes, it seems 2017 Allen & Ginter has a mini insert set called Constellations that glow in the dark. Neat idea! I'm definitely interested in those, so please let me know if you have any to trade!
• Looks like the National is going on right now in Chicago. I've never been, but maybe one of these years. Out of the 3 or 4 locations the convention cycles between, Chicago would probably be my best bet since I've got family around there. Maybe next time. Wish it'd come out further west.
• Though I lived most of my life in San Diego, I never attended Comic Con. That's kind of a regret of mine. Now it's too big and crazy that I wouldn't really even want to. So many people.
• Speaking of a lot of people, I attended the Oregon Brewers Festival yesterday evening on the Portland waterfront. That was pretty fun and I got to check out a lot of interesting beer. Among the more memorable was Coconut Curryiocity (Old Town Brewing Co.) that the group I was with didn't care for but I really liked; and another curry one, Dragon’s Milk (Thai Curry | Wood- and Barrel-Aged Strong Beer by New Holland Brewing Co.) was a boozy milk stout (11%); and Berry White (Fruit Wheat Beer by Vanguard Brewing Co.)
• I really don't like those Funko Pop toys with their creepy dead eyes.
• I made good progress reading Ball Four on the flight / in the airport. Got through the chapters covering month of March. Great book so far. I probably should have read it long ago, but I'm not much of a reader (short attention span).
• Have you guys been hearing about the big eclipse next month? It will pass through Oregon and we're expecting possibly the worst traffic day ever here in Portland thanks to an influx of a couple million people into the state hoping to check out the neat sky thing. Yeah, I think I'm gonna stay home from work that day. Personally I'm more excited about the glow-in-the-dark Constellation cards than the actual sky thing. Again, please send me those cards!

I'm still catching up on incoming trade packages. Let's check out one that arrived shortly before I left for my trip. It's from Hunter Hoffman at the new blog Brave Country Cards. It was my first time trading with him (and I gotta admit I hadn't read his blog), so I wasn't sure what to expect. It consisted of a few team bags with "junk" showing, so I worried for a moment that it was gonna be one of those packages where I'm lucky if I find a couple cards I actually need. But thankfully those commons were just there for protection, and there was some terrific stuff between them.

Like this awesome 6-card lot of Adrian Beltre cards. He got a bunch of attention just recently for his stunt moving the on-deck circle and getting tossed from the game because of it. Gotta love the guy!

Here we've got a couple cool fishfractors and numbered Thome cards.

Great cards of notable pitchers.

Incredible Jake Peavy lot here. He's taken the 2017 season off so far due to personal reasons, but intends to pitch again at some point.

Some Red Sox legends.

Kirby! My recently revived Puckett PC is coming along nicely thanks to lots like this.

Nice pairs of McCutchen and Josh Donaldson.

Some big names here, highlighted by a gold #'d Junior.

Some Bowman kids.

Inserts/parallels of big boppers.

¡Ay, muchacho! Machado in the house.

And we wrap up the package with a shiny trio of familiar faces to Padres fans.

Great stuff, Hunter! Blew me away. Now I've got the challenge of putting together a worthy return package. I'll get on that shortly! I'm also following Braves Country Cards now and will update my side blogroll soon.

- - ---o

Let's squeeze another trade package into this post. Remember The Turrdog, the mysterious reader in my Big Fun Game? He has quickly proven himself as a hell of a guy, first sending me a nice "thank you" package for his prize, now surprising me with a flat-rate box.

My pending 1980 Topps setbuild is looking good with this lot of probably ~75 cards featuring some solid names such as a Dave Stieb RC. Once I find some time one of these days, I need to collate what I've got and get a list figured out.

I'm also toying with the idea of working on 1982 Topps at some point in the future, and now I've at least got my foot in the door with this lot of about 50 cards.

Ah, the "birth year" set for me. Sort of feels like an obligation to complete it someday. Not a bad lot here to get me started. I should have positioned the Fidrych card front and center instead of obscured and fuzzy in the back; it's definitely a classic. (But I'm afraid to argue with the Mad Hungarian there.)

I was actually born in the tail end of '77, so as P-town Tom suggested in a comment a while back, 1978 Topps probably has more of a claim to being the representative baseball card set of my entrance into the world. So, fine, screw it, I added '78 to my list of sets to potentially work on someday, too. Turdog helped boost up their numbers in my collection with this lot of 15 or so cards.

And I've already completed 1973 and 1971, but I'm sure I'll be able to pluck many upgrades out of these stacks. Mike Hegan is a player who didn't mean anything to me a week ago, but now I'm like, "Hey, he's in Ball Four! Cool!" haha. And that Dave Concepcion RC looks pretty sweet.

And we close out with this beauty from 1957 Topps.

I've now fittingly got 57 cards from '57, good for 13.67% complete. Still a ways to go, but slow and steady...

Thanks so much, Jeff! Big help for my setbuilds.. Very appreciated! I'll have to round up some stuff for you to return the favor.


Thanks again to Hunter, and to the rest of you all for reading. See ya next time.

Mega Mailday

Nothing like coming home from a trip to find several mailings of cards waiting for you! And I missed the monthly card show while I was gone, so this windfall helps take the sting out of that.

I'll get to some cards in a minute, but first I'd like to recap my trip a little more (see also my previous handwritten post from the road [which I've had to update a couple times due to Blogger not uploading some of the images the first time. That's what I get for trying to do a blog post with just my phone, I guess.]).

I didn't get a chance to see Wrigley, but I definitely felt like I was in Cubs territory at O'Hare on my looong, delay-riddled layover. (FWIW, I did see a couple crew workers on the tarmac in White Sox hats). I flew through O'Hare on my way home, too, but thankfully it was much smoother the 2nd time 'round, and I was in and out in under an hour. (Didn't have time to find/bug Nick again.)

Rest in peace, Uncle Joe! While I was in town, I stayed at the house of Joe and Jinny (on an air-mattress in the exercise room) along with a few other family members. That's kind of a weird (in a mostly-good way) experience, to stay at the residence of deceased people while you're in town to memorialize them. I took a bunch of pictures to help me remember the place.

Joe was a talented woodworker. Here's a piece that is destined to go unfinished. I think this was his "warm up" piece of wood to mess around with. Check out the little man maxing in the upper right. I probably should have photographed some of his finished pieces that are featured around the house (and are in demand with the family as far as splitting up the estate), but when I stumbled upon this down in the basement, I thought it was really cool.

Thankfully it wasn't strictly a somber affair of sobbing over their passing, but rather mostly a celebration of their lives and coming together as a family and joyfully reminiscing, as I'm sure they would have wanted it.

Raise a glass.

Whenever I'd visit them, I always loved strumming Joe's acoustic guitar for a bit. Was happy to get to play it for one probable last time. He was a big fan of the likes of John Prine and Cat Stevens. We exchanged mix cdrs a few times. I should dig those out and give another listen in his honor.

My little 5-year-old cousin (actually my cousin's kid's kid.. "first cousin thrice removed"?) found me playing and then did some rocking out of her own. We had a nice little jam session. I hope she goes on to become a rock star. She's got the moves down, just needs to learn a couple chords.


But yeah, my incoming trade packages have been piling up a bit, so let's get to showing off some cards! I'm going to start small (quantity) because that's easier.

First up is a one-card blast from GCA.

This iconic '74 Hammer has been a card I'd like to find (CILF) for a long time. Love it! Big thanks, GCA! Much appreciated. I'll try to return the favor sometime, though I often have a tough time digging up much from your wantlist.

- - ---o

Here we have a 2-card (well, 2 copies of one card) PWE from jacobmrley at Starting Nine. Always appreciate any 90UD Marquis cards that come my way as I approach 1000 copies.

Thanks, Max!

- - - --o

Next is a PWE with 3 cards from 2017 Archives sent my way by the Tim Wallach Collector.

A couple Bazooka tallboy minis of guys I collect, plus a peach Stretch. (I feel I should make a Fruit by the Foot joke here or something.)

Thanks a lot, Stack22! I've got some 2017 Series 2 needs of yours packed up and ready to be mailed out within the next few minutes.

-  - - --o

This post is pretty long, so let's wrap things up for today with a stuffed PWE from P-town Tom.

Gavin Cecchini has mostly been playing in AAA, but has gotten into 5 games with the big league club this season.

A couple glorious follow-through shots from 2017 Stadium Club.

I definitely don't have much (any?) from this Topps Finest set. Happy to land this pair of hot young shortstops (both currently injured, unfortunately).

And 3 needs for my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset.

Thanks a lot, Tom! Great stuff. Glad I could help you break the 500 mark with your Kerry Wood PC.


So yeah, as I said, let's call the post good here for now with the PWEs, but I've got a few larger card packages I need to show off too, so expect those on the blog soon. (though it may be a couple days or more since I'm busy playing catch-up at work due to missing those few days.)
Thanks for reading.