catching up with incoming cards

 Just some various cards that've been added to the collection over the past couple weeks or so.

Here's a 4-card Sportlots order. I really want to finally stick a fork in my 1984 Donruss set, and picking up the Rated Rookies of Sid Fernandez and Greg Gagne takes me down to only Cal Ripken left. So the 84D Iron Man is now attop my Desperate Dozen if someone wants to be a hero and trade me that card.

I maximized shipping by also picking up a pair of 1978 Topps needs from the same seller, finding a pair of familiar names among the cards priced as commons. They've gotten me up to 83% complete, with 123 cards remaining for this set.

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Speaking of 70s Topps needs...

Next is a quick trade with Jay at Cardboard Hemorrhage. I was able to help him out a little with his budding Tiant and Goldschmidt PCs. (I sorted my Paul Goldschmidts for probably the first time ever and found a ton of doubles and triples to redistribute.) Jay returned the favor with a few needs/upgrades for my '74 and '70 setbuilds, with Catfish Hunter being the marquee name of the bunch. My 1974 needs look to be down to just 2 commons, plus several HOFers, "Washington N.L." variations, a checklist, and the Ken Griffey rookie.

Some favorites from yesteryear.

Some active dudes. A little cracked ice always spices up a group of cards.

Thanks, Jay! Let's do it again soon. 

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And now a couple eBay pickups...

I still haven't thrown in the towel in my quest of a parallel set of 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors. Scored these big names for each under a Lincoln shipped; pretty good considering my "nice price" when buying commons is a buck a pop. I've got 202 cards left to go, so this won't be wrapped up any time soon, but I still try to keep an eye out for deals that pop up on big names I need. Yadier Molina, Pujols, and Ichiro are going to be expensive. Speaking of expensive 2004 Topps black refractors being a critical focus of mine, if you've read this far and still want to read (much) more from me on the subject, I typed up a thing recently that might be too "extra" for a blog post, but if you are a hardcore Baseball Card Breakdown enthusiast, you can click here to read it. Anyhoo, yeah, stoked to knock Sosa and Smoltz off my needs.

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Closing out the post with a pair of Archives autos. Blue Moon Odom was an impulse buy a while back. I love a good nickname auto and he seems pretty cool. The 1959 World Series highlight card is actually a Maury Wills auto I needed for my ARMS (Archives Reserve Master Set). Funny that for the purpose of this "rookie reprint" autograph, Topps used a card that really features Luis Aparicio as the subject. (Maury, as you likely know, didn't sign a Topps contract until he already had several Major League seasons under his belt, so he was a veteran by the time he got his first Topps card.)

Wills' in the box score on the back, at least. (Oh yeah, funny thing-- look at the total at-bats for Los Angeles! Dumb typo by the person recreating the back of the original card [which is correct]).

Thanks for stopping by!