Barter trade with a former Topps employee

I recently swapped a pair of CDs for a box of various cards. I love those rare times when I can swing a barter trade, as they just seem more special or whatever than a purchase or straight cards-for-cards deal.

The story of this one is a guy on a FB group for an old band I like was looking to buy some bootleg live CDs he owned back in the day. His popup profile thing said he worked as a designer at Topps, which got my attention so I reached out about the possibility of a cards-for-CDs swap. Turns out he was no longer at Topps, and that they were "crazy stingy" during most of his tenure, but he had a small box of hits from pack rips a decade ago before things got too bad at the company. He shared blurry overview photos of the cards, and nothing jumped out at me in particular (sadly no Ohtani or Judge autos to choose from), but there were a few nice cards and a good variety of stuff I could have fun sorting through, with plenty of stuff that would slide nicely into my collection. Since he wasn't too attached to the cards and I wasn't too attached to the couple of rare CDs I had from his wantlist, we were able to work out a deal where I got the whole lot of cards.

Kicking off with these big three. There were a few baseball autos in the lot, but funny enough the best of them is a mascot. Clark's 2016 Opening Day auto is especially neato considering that was the year the Cubs finally broke the curse. The Abe Vigoda ginter relic is pretty great too, for those of us old enough to remember him (or at least his funny later appearances on Conan). But the Sting relic/auto #'d 26/50 might be the top card of the lot. I'm not even a big wrestling guy, but I know he's a good name to pull there.

Highlights from the several relics, including a couple pinstripes. The former Topps guy I traded with is a Mets fan, so that might explain why they have more representation in the lot than other teams. (Yankees and Dodgers were both conspicuously absent.)

I'll show the rest of the baseball stuff at the end, but now strap in for some Star Warin'.

A pair of sketch cards with cool original artwork of fan favorites from the classic trilogy: the rancor and Boba Fett. Love these.

 
Figured I should show the backs in case anyone is interested in the artists, though I'm not going to take a stab at deciphering the names. I thought it was funny to see a stickergraph on the back of a sketch card, but I suppose since it's a Chrome product, they wanted to throw a plasticy border on it so it could count as a Chrome card (because of course Chrome surface wouldn't work for most types of sketching.) Pretty sure it's my first embedded sketch like that.

Some parallel/insert SW stuff. The Luke Skywalker is /50 on the back.
 

A couple manurelics, including a numbered Han Solo, plus a pair of "authentic film cel relic" cards that you can hold up to the light...

..to peep a still from space. Neat!

This trio of Star Wars autos aren't big names but still cool to add. Ralph Brown had a minor role in The Phantom Menace (with Alien³ and Wayne's World 2 among his other credits), with Phil Eason also working on Episode I. Turns out Yaddle is a female of the same green species as Yoda and Baby Yoda. Eason (d. 2021) also did puppetry work on Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). Rajia Baroudi was a voice on a couple episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Yours if you want it, Zippy!) She's done lots of other voice acting over the years and appeared on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers back in the day. That card is a parallel numbered /10 on the back, so that's cool. Oh, and Lady Yoda is /25.

 

Walking Dead hits don't do much for me, never having watched the show, but still cool to beef up my non-sport collection or possibly use as trade bait (Specifically, I would love to get that creepy zombie sketch card out of my house! lol). Katelyn Nacon and Corey Brill (#'d 10/10) are the autos. The dual relic (#'d 10/50) confused me because those people look familiar but it's the characters' names, not giving the actors' real names anywhere on the card. But I looked them up and the guy is Steven Yeun (most familiar to me from season one of Beef) and the lady is Lauren Cohan (who I've seen pop up in various TV shows over the years). Sonequa Martin-Green is less familiar to me, but she played a main character on the show Star Trek: Discovery and was on a couple episodes of New Girl.
 

Some more solid pro wrestling cards.

UFC. I don't know any of these guys, but I looked up the Frank Mir 10/10 red parallel, and there's one on COMC for $50, for whatever that's worth (Less than $50, one would assume). Like with the Walking Dead cards, I'd be down to trade these burly dudes for cards that better suited my interests, and may eventually put them on my TCDB for-tradelist.

Michelle Waterson here will probably stick in my collection, however, because she's kinda cute and has a cool looking signature.
 

We're getting close to the end now, with this group of misc. cards, including a Candace Parker commemorative flag patch (numbered to 19/99), a layered Emmitt Smith card (075/194), and a James Taylor "First Pitch" orange refractor. My face lit up when I noticed the serial number...

Christmas Card! I've seen fire and I've seen rain, but I never thought I'd see a James Taylor card among my 12/25's. There were 2 or 3 other /25 cards in the lot.. and I've always got my fingers crossed for lucky #12 in the run, but rarely score them organically like this.

And the rest! A few PC guys in here. The Luke Weaver RC auto might be ok if it wasn't from that ugly-ass Topps Gallery set. Brandon Finnegan is the one non-blue ink auto (17/25). A couple Yadi's. Abe Vigoda base card to go along with the relic from before. Clive Walford is the Raiders auto at the bottom. 

So yeah, this was a pretty sweet lot that I got for not much effort on my part. Not like I've listened to those CDs in years (and have them ripped to a hard drive for when I do want to hear them), but I can appreciate the guy's quest and glad I could help him out.. especially since it resulted in a nice boost to my card collection. Also neat to do a trade with somebody who worked at Topps.

Oh, and the same day I got this package, I also received my haul from The Collector's anniversary celebration extravaganza, so that's another fun "rip" on deck. I'll try to post about that stuff on his blog's special day (8/21), per his request.

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! :)

- - --o

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!

- - --o

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!

-   -   - --o

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...

Tony's looking good enough to call done after less than 3 sunny weeks. Nice! Anybody try to make their own sun-bleached mods?

TV Autos Tonight

Buckle up for some nonsports autographs I've added to my collection over the past few months.

Took me a while, but I watched through all the old episodes on YouTube of Cheat Seats, a funny show that ran on ESPN Classic with the Sklar Brothers making sorta Mystery Science Theater 3000 style riffs over footage of old non-mainstream sporting events from ESPN's archives. For example, there's an episode with a ridiculous Steve Garvey Celebrity Skiing special.

Anyways, I wanted to mark the occasion by picking up their matching Ginter autos from 2016. Randy set me back $21.64, and then a few days later, Jason cost $22.05 from another seller. Factoring in for inflation, I'd call that a wash.

-  -  - -o

Sarah Langs is a good follow on social media, full of fun and interesting baseball stats and tidbits. Her life and career as a reporter have faced the unexpected challenge of dealing with ALS, or ol' Lou Gehrig's Disease as we used to call it. Her courage is inspiring and she's an amazing person, doing lots of good in her limited time. I realized she had a Ginter auto from 2023 and soon scored myself one.

- - --o

I'm still trying to add to my collection of Steven Universe autographs.

- - --o

I've been a big Amy Sedaris fan since Strangers With Candy, a hilarious show on Comedy Central back around the turn of the millenium. A while back I got myself a Star Wars autograph featuring her character who appeared in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, though I was compelled to make a custom overlay for it.

Whipped this up recently using a comely photo from a red carpet type of event and built a simple design around it.

Gotta say I'm excited to again have a home printer that does a decent job printing photos, effectively rebooting my custom card making activities that were somewhat dormant in recent years. After burning bridges with Epson (hate!), Cannon (hate!), and HP (hate so much!), I'm down to the last major printer company left: Brother. So far so good.

-  - --o

Closing out the post, here's another new custom overlay for an old purchase.

I showed the bare version of this Bob Newhart slabbed cut auto a few posts back in the wake of his passing. I'm glad I could finally spruce it up a little.

Other customs I've printed up recently are on the way to John Miller and Best Bubble Bob, and I've got other stuff in the works, so I'll likely have more customs to show off on the blog soon. Thanks for stopping by.

Lego-heavy Zapping

Hey, let's get a quick post out to pair with a similar Zapping recap at the njwv blog today, as I too received another fun mystery package from Zippy Zappy a few days ago.

The bulk of the mailer was a couple Lego Star Wars sets in various states of completion. I'll hope to build these back to their full glory one day.

I don't have much in the way of cool minifigs, so these are very welcomed in my Lego tub. (Skateboarding Yoda will be displayed out for a while.)

My Star Wars card collection consists basically of one modern completed set (Remember back when I went after the 40th Anniversary set to ring in my big birthday?), 2 or 3 decent autographs, and then like a potpourri of a few random cards from a bunch of different sets. Which feels perfect since I'm a big Star Wars fan but not like a full-on supernerd about it. Nice to get a look at what's out there. The autograph here is Hermione Corfield as Tallie Lintra (an A-Wing pilot in The Last Jedi).

Legos and Star Wars are cool, but baseball is the best. Can't forget 2011 Topps has a bunch of solid rookies besides the big one. Kenny also had plenty of empty top-loaders and card savers to pass on to me, not pictured.

And a few non-baseball cards. Love to see Alexa Bliss pop up in a trade package, though it turns out I already had these 3 cards in the PC. No worry, though, as it's a good excuse to sacrifice them for use in cardart.

I probably should have looked these up first, as it turns out the Wrestlemania card was like a $10 card before I cut it up. Whoops! lol, oh well; for art. I also accidentally cut myself during this project-- my first cardart injury to break the skin-- though just a tiny cut. Blood, sweat, and tears, am I right?!

I made a quick video of them, with bobbling action:

Thanks again, Kenny! Always appreciated.

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.