trade roundup (Johnny's Highly Subjective Trading Spot)

Got excellent trade packages in this week from Johnny's Trading Spot and Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary.

First up is John.

Leading off with a couple neat ones.. a Christmas Card of Omar Luis Rodriguez and an autograph of a pretty girl named Kathleen. Omar seems to be out of the game after not having had much success in the low minors for the Yankees. As for Kathleen, well, no last name is provided so I can't really find any more info on her. I hope she found a kind soul to tie her bikini top for her, though, the poor thing.

A bunch of Simpsons temporary tattoos! And there are a few dupes, so I might even put some of these into action. (um, probably won't try my luck with the "Yellow Power" tattoo, however.)

John is good at hooking me up with additions to my Brian Giles PC.

A bunch of Bowman Padres.. though only Wil Myers is still with the team. In fact, looks like Myers is about to sign a six-year deal to stay in San Diego, pending a physical. So that's cool. He's definitely one of their few bright spots these days.

A couple Gwynns, a Donaldson, and some Panini Rewards points. Pretty cool. Are they still doing that program? I wonder if I could get anything for 150 points.

Marquis Mania! A couple 1990 UD towards my goal of 1000 copies, plus a "mail in" card that collectors could have sent to Upper Deck and gotten back some update cards. Pretty neat.

A bunch of 2011 Topps diamond parallels for my frankenset! Some good names here, like Thome and Konerko.

While I'm not working on any other parallel frankensets (yet?), I don't complain about getting various shiny cards in trade packages.

Big thanks, John! And you were asking about that customs project you were wanting me to help you with? Well, coincidentally, just a couple hours before this package arrived, I finally finished the big custom project that had been taking my free time for customs-making for over 3 months. And now that that's out of the way, your customs are next on the docket. So I'll plan to get started cranking them out soon.

-  -  --- ----o

Next up is Brian returning the favor for some cards I sent his way recently.

Some exciting young Padres. Nice. I think that's my first card of Cal Quantrill, the Padres' 1st pick in the 2016 draft.

Padres/Dodgers greats on shiny cards. The blue A-Gone is numbered to 219 or thereabouts.

Vintage Padres oddballs. Always love getting Kellogg's cards, and own very few from this set.

We finish off with a nice '53 Mantle reprint, a Gavin for my Greatest Gavins minicollection (gotta love the Whalers logo), a canvas Greg Maddux Masterpiece, and a Billy Hamilton off my Desperate Double Dozen. I've got a decent little PC going for the speedy Hamilton, but was missing his Topps RC.

Thanks a lot, Brian! Hope to do it again soon.

Ha, ok, temporary tattoos from the early 90s don't work that great today, but maybe I'll be able to fool someone into thinking I have a really bad neck tattoo.

Snow Day

Portland doesn't get much snow, so when it does snow here, it's a good excuse to take the day off and not stress over the chaotic commute.

 That means a fun day at home with the pup.

She likes catching snowballs.

She even wrote her name in the snow. Of course, being an illiterate dog, she doesn't know letters, so she drew her face instead.

And a little something for the papa.

But you came here for baseball cards. And you're in luck because Matt over at Bob Walk The Plank just sent me a few good ones!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and this 12/25 auto of one of my top PC guys at the moment is a great addition! Despite the design looking stickerish, those squiggles are on-card, which is nice.

I just showed off a 2016 Topps Chrome Travis Jankowski auto I got the other day, and Matt was concerned he may have just dropped a dupe my way. But nope, the card I got previously was the base, unnumbered version.. this here is the purple /250 parallel.. very cool!

Some trade rumors around Jankowski.. Rangers asking about him? Hmm.. I hope he sticks around.

Oh, speaking of Padres moves.. did you hear they stole away Cardsphere Hero Luis Torrens from the Yankees (via the Reds) in the Rule 5 draft?!! I'm excited about that (while also wishing Zippy Zappy my somber condolences) and hope he sticks around and flourishes in San Diego.

And the last card is this Trout RC reprint. Funny story behind this is that Matt emailed me a while back saying he had a 2011 Update Trout for me. So I had kinda be expecting it, and made reference to it the other day when I ripped some 2011 Update, unsuccessfully hoping to pull one. Matt then gave me a heads-up that there was a switch and the reprint was sent instead, but would be getting me out a real one soon. Ha, that would be a good way to punk a fellow trader.. send them a reprint of the card they were expecting. But no, this one is fine too!

Great stuff! Big thanks for the cards, Matt! I'll be getting a return package out in the mail to you very soon.

A tale of two tradies

A couple nice trade packages came in this week. One from a first-time trading partner, and one from an old trader-bud of mine.

First was a trade with a guy on Twitter, @Jmack. It took us a while, but we eventually hammered out a deal.

Here are a couple shiny, /75 autos of A.J. Reed. The kid can mash in the minors, but fizzled in an extended opportunity in Houston last season. I'm hoping he can figure out major league pitching in 2017, because these are pretty sweet cards to highlight my li'l PC of the guy.

This trio of young Padres outfielders will be counted on heavily for San Diego to put up a respectable record next year. Great additions for my Padres collection.

Big thanks for the trade, Jmack!

-  - - --o

Next up is Sports Card Collectors. He's a good dude.

A couple pretty cards here doing their thing, with a cracked ice (or whatever) Mookie Betts and a rainbow foil (or whatever) Trevor Story.

A pair of Conforto additions for my PC. Last season he got off to a hot start, then cooled way down, got sent to AAA and hit .422 before getting called back up. Hoping he can put it all together in 2017.

These are the types of cards that are in SCC's wheelhouse.. funky 90s inserts. I think there are holograms in there somewhere, but they don't show up very well. Cool cards, regardless.

Very nice trio of Kershaws! The Studio picture is a bit odd (is he gonna do a baseball "mic drop"? Is he a baseball zombie? what?), but I'll take it.

And 3 sweet Chris Sale cards. Curious to see if he's gotta get dealt this winter.

And here's another guy not likely to be with the same team next year. That's kind of a bummer for the fans. But with me being a player collector, it's not a big deal to me and I'll keep on collecting him regardless wherever he ends up. Anyways, a couple nice PC additions here.

Love these Josh Donaldsons from Heritage.

Sport Lad snuck in a Yankee even though I explicitly state I only collect non-Yankee Bambinos. To the trash with this one! j/k

SSC is a big Junior collector, so he must've had a dupe of that Bunt. I'll take it!

And some more cool cards, too!

SCC gave me a heads up that a few dupes were included, as I pulled these 3 cards from a blaster last week just after his trade package was sealed up. But no harm done here, as I'm sure I can find takers to rehome them.

So yeah, very nice bunch of cards there! I'll round up a return package ASAP.

Well, thanks for reading. My big Black Friday COMC order is arriving today, so I'll have a bunch of stuff to post about this coming week!