cards from WES

World Education Services (WES) is a nonprofit organization that provides credential evaluations for international students and immigrants planning to study or work in the U.S. and Canada.

But on the cardsphere, Wes is a nonprofit trader who provides incredible envelopes and packages for trading card collectors attempting to grow their collections.

Wes recently sought my help on a custom card project, and shipped me a nice Priority mailer of cards to say thanks.

Normally I'd save the best for last, but come on, having this lovely young lady in the preview photo for this post in blogrolls will be good for a few extra clicks, right? lol. I have a li'l Liv Morgan PC because I think she's pretty. Wes surprised me with a new "best card" for the PC with this beautiful 2017 auto.

And low numbered too!

A few more women on cardboard. Very nice!

There were plenty of men on cardboard, too. Some parallels and manurelics of guys I collect.

More top stars of today.

Hall of Famers. These are all serial-numbered besides the Lorde card.

Hey, how's about this? Some more numbered cards and an autographed '80 Topps Mad Hungarian. Neat!

Major League materials embedded as far as the eye can see!

Hell, I could've/should've done a whole separate post just on the incredible basketball cards in the package. The Dirk rookie in the middle was technically from a separate PWE, but I'm lumping them together. Awesome!

Winding down here with some odds and ends. Star Wars representing with an auto and an art card #'d 19/99.

The football guy Kendall Hunter saw some action with the 49ers but battled injury issues. It's a welcomed new addition to my collection of Christmas Cards.

And then a couple weird history relic cards. Ha, sure! One's got a couple pieces of old newspaper and a Susan B. Anthony stamp. Ooh, a 1/1! The other one says it has an actual relic from Barack Obama. I guess it's part of a letter he sent out or something? I was a little confused by these in the package at first, but I guess my wantlist does say I'm interested in out-of-the-ordinary relics, so give Wes props for diving deep into my ol' list o' wants.

And I was confused by the football cards at first too, but then I was like, oh yeah, black gold! Wes took note that I generally dig black cards with gold foil and hooked me up with these. Thick n' sharp!

And a sweet looking black gold auto plus a numbered Fridge to wrap things up.

Big thanks, Wes! Great bunch of cards.

cardboard from mr haverkamp and beyond

I was graced with a surprise package of cards from friendly cardsphere reader mr haverkamp the other day. Let's take a look!

Tim Flannery 1987 Bohemian Hearth Bread! Sweet! My needs for this regional oddball set are now down to just one: Dave Dravecky. And Flan here is in incredible shape, especially considering these cards originally came thrown in with a loaf of bread. Creases, dinged corners, and staining are par for the course, but amazingly this one looks suitable for grading.

And I figured this was a good card to feature on Mother's Day since one of the first baseball cards I ever got was a Steve Garvey from this set thanks to being included in a loaf of bread my mom bought, back before I was collecting cards at all. She was never super supportive of my hobby, but she never threw out my cards or forbid me from spending my allowance on them or anything. She was reluctantly onboard with me collecting cards if it made me happy.

But yeah, this is a neat set with strong sentimental attachment for me, so I'm looking forward to finally completing it one of these days. I still have that original Garvey from back in the day, so this is my longest-running setbuild by far-- 32 years and counting.

Also in the package were 3 needs from '75 Topps, serendipitously all in my favorite color combination: "green grass" on the bottom and "blue sky" on top. Beautiful.

And a half dozen '77 Topps needs, funny enough all Expos.

Some 1980 Topps for upgrades for my set, plus dupes for PCs of Sparky Anderson and Dick Williams.

And here's an '88 Topps George Brett that was on my Desperate Double Dozen. I consider '88 Topps among my least favorite Topps flagship sets*, and so despite billions of them out there in circulation, I don't have many in my collection. So I need to fill in some PC holes like this one.

*I mean, the design is fine. There are some nice looking cards like Brett here. The backs are drab. Could have been a pretty cool set if it wasn't so crazy over-produced.. and maybe throw a Griffey "1st Draft Pick" card to give it a special boost.. Then that would have been a pretty solid set.

Big thanks, mr haverkamp! Much appreciated. I'll try to hit you back soon.

- - ---o

And here are some bonus vintage additions for this post.

I found a couple PC dupes to put towards my '76 setbuild. Great to be able to check off this pair of fan favorites.

A couple '57 eBay pickups. The Colavito rookie has a dirty back, which kept the price down, but I'll likely upgrade it someday. The Bob Rush was snagged for next to nothing thanks to another recent $3-off coupon code. Now at an even 300 cards acquired.. the set is coming along, slowly but surely.

Thanks a lot for stopping by!

Kerry on my Cardboard Blog

Met up with Kerry downtown Friday afternoon for a quick swap of cards. He metaphorically dunked on me and the team bag of cards I handed off to him by giving me a very impressive box of cards.

The Vlad Jr. hype is intense! On mlb.com the other day, the top 7 or so news stories were about him and his debut. A bit over the top, but like most baseball fans, I'm interested to see how he turns out as a big leaguer.

The gold standard, Mike Trout!

More Trouty.

Reining NL MVP Christian Yelich. Good stuff here! The mini is /99.

Reigning AL MVP Mookie Betts. Sure, sometimes I feel like a "basic bitch" of a card collector, turning my head for any hot rookies and MVPs. But hey, I also collect guys like Travis Taijeron and Matt Ginter, so I feel I've got well-rounded wants.

Mookie's teammates Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi.

Rhys!

Alex Bregman!

More Astros. Love that Correa Heritage refractor.

I've lived in Portland for over a decade now, but have yet to really jump on the Blazers bandwagon. But after that epic playoff-advancing buzzerbeater the other night that had all of Portland bumping, I was like, "Damn! I need to collect Damian Lillard cards!" And Kerry, a big Blazers fan/collector, was kind enough to get that PC started with this lot of dupes he had.

As I add one new name to the short list of active b-ball guys I collect, I lose another, as Dirk retired after the regular season.

Most of the guys I collect in basketball are greats of the past, like Wilt and Dr. J.

...And Dikembe, Kareem, and Manute.

Back to baseball, with plenty of shine here.

And some old-timer favorites. Dave Henderson cards always make me smile. And I hope Bartolo gets an opportunity to pitch this year, but it's not looking likely at this point.

I just sorted out my George Brett PC the other day, seeing if I had hit the 100-card mark yet.. but fell short, around 90 cards. Keep creepin' up, though.

Current Padres representing. Almost May and we're still in contention!! LOL

JOY OF A COMPLETED SET!!!

I got a factory set of '90 Score for Xmas back when it was current-- that and a cheap '89 Topps from the Sears catalog were my first ever complete sets-- but never had a Rookie & Traded set to complement it. Some great cards in here!

Some nice Nats.

And a hit to take us home! Sweet!

Big thanks, Kerry! Great stuff. I'm in your debt and will try to balance the scales soon.

George Brett highlights a trio of 2003 Retired autos

I'm really happy with this 2003 Topps Retired refractor auto of George Brett I picked up with some leftover bonus money. Seems Brett doesn't sign much, and when he does, it's usually for Panini.

I noticed an error on the back right away since a favorite George Brett tidbit is that he won a batting title in 3 different decades. As you can see, only twice here is his batting average in italicized red text.. Topps forgot about his league-leading .329 in 1990, narrowly beating out Rickey Henderson (.325) for the crown.

I also snagged a Jerry Koosman from the same set. I prefer these cards to be in their original cases, but over the years I've softened on my stance. A few years ago, I would have busted this card out of the PSA case, but nowadays I'm ok with a slabbed gem mint 10.

I never realized before how much Topps botched the league leading stats on the backs of these cards. Only one red number here: 226.2 innings pitched in 1977. One problem, though.. that wasn't even in the top 10 that year! Phil Niekro lead the NL with a whopping 330.1 innings. In fact the only numbers that should be red here are his 20 losses in 1977 and 13 losses in 1981 (combined between two teams). But among stats not listed here, he led the NL in Strikeouts per 9 IP in 1977, the AL in WAR for Pitchers in 1979, AL in Fielding Independent Pitching in 1982.

I think Koosman is best remembered as a key member of the Miracle Mets of '69.

Speaking of guys Mets fans appreciate...

I also ended up winning a Bill Buckner auto from this set, though this one is a base auto, not refractor. I don't see this one pop up very often, so when it showed up with a low opening bid, I took a run at it. You gotta admire the mustache/eyebrow situation.

Wow, 2715 hits is a lot for a guy who only made the All-Star team once. Topps again slights a guy by neglecting to red italicize league-leading stats. Bill's .324 in 1980 led the NL. He also lead the league in doubles in both 1981 and 1983, and at-bats in '82.

I've now got 46 of the 120 autos in 2003 Topps Retired. I occasionally get emails from guys also working on this set. Seems like it's the most beloved of the three Topps Retired offerings (though my heart belongs to 2004), and so these cards can be tricky once you get past the couple most plentiful groups of autos.

That's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.

Heavy trades

I did a big trade with Chris the Collector a few days ago.

I was almost reluctant to trade for this pair because they'd be somewhat out of place in my low-grade 1957 Topps setbuild. But I couldn't say no, and they got worked into the deal. They are now the highest graded cards among my '57s, ahead of a PSA 5 Ernie Banks and a PSA 8(OC) Campanella. The Billy Pierce is an upgrade and the Wally Post is a need.. which happened to bump me over the 70% complete mark. So that's pretty cool.

Been wanting a green Mike Trout Big League box card, and Chris hooked me up with a flattened box.

I took the liberty of trimming it down to a more easily-stored card.

The Kris Bryant 1st Bowman purple parallel is a beauty.

George Brett with a chunk of a bat!

Robin Yount and another man.

A couple young sluggers slugging away.

Musial and Marquis, rocking the bat on the shoulder pose. I'm long overdue for an update post on my Marquis Mania project, but I actually started drafting one the other day, so maybe I'll finally figure out how many copies I have of this card soon.

Love this die-cut Gwynn! The diamond effect looks great in-hand.

A couple fine additions to my li'l Joey Votto PC.

The orange refractor is #'d 11/25 and the jersey swatch has an authentication sticker identifying it as "SWATCH OF JOEY VOTTO GAME USED JERSEY, ST. LOUIS CARDINALS v CINCINNATI REDS on 9/10/15, ORIGINAL HOLOGRAM #HZ952921" Looks like Joey had a good game while clothed in this particular uniform, going 2-4 with an RBI double as the Reds routed the Red Birds 11-0.

The last piece of the trade is this lovely triple relic with Corey Seager, Clayton Kershaw, and Julio Urias. Sweet card.

Thanks for the trade, Chris!

-  - - ---o

Next up is-- going by weight-- possibly the biggest trade package I've ever received. It comes courtesy of Matt Prigge and contained zero cards.

Hundreds upon hundreds of penny sleeves! Looks like Matt is becoming a binder guy and had a bunch of abandoned like-new sleeves looking for a good home. I can always use more of these little buggers, so I spoke up and sent him back some Brewers to make it worth his time/postage.

(Funny enough, last time I traded with a guy for a bunch of sleeve like this, it was Tony L, another prominent Brewers collector, back in 2015.)

Thanks, Matt!

-   - - - ----o

I just realized today that January 20th is the birthday of two (of the eight) Guys From Granite to make the major leagues.

Yep, both Brian Giles and Travis Taijeron are celebrating a birthday today. Happy Birthday, fellas!

It just so happens that I recently picked up printing plates from each of these guys, so here they are. The Taijeron was especially nice to see pop up at a reasonable price, as that's the card I ponied up for the superfractor of a couple months back, so I'm glad to add another 1/1 to that rainbow.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading.