Ready for the World Series

I had to splurge on a Juan Soto autograph. I'm pretty happy with this one. Big, on-card signature. Still had a few eBay Bucks left to help take the sting out of the price. He's a terrific young player who's a lot of fun to watch.

It's from 2019 Bowman Sterling. Numbered out of 25.

While I'm at it, I figured I'd show off a few of my best cards of other players I collect who are competing in the Fall Classic this year.

Stephen Strasburg is a guy I collect thanks to his status as a fellow SDSU alum. This is a custom overlay I made a couple years back.

Some of my other decent Stras cards. I hope he does well in the series.

I collect some dudes in the other dugout, too. This Carlos Correa atomic auto is a favorite of mine.

Other highlights in that PC include a prospect auto, a slabbed Pro Debut, and a Members Only parallel from Stadium Club.

A year or two back I kinda-sorta started collecting Max Scherzer. No auto yet, but I've accumulated a few solid cards of his.

I started collecting George Springer after his impressive performance in the 2017 postseason.

Dig these thicc Crystal Ball inserts from 2015 Stadium Club.

Some other Springer highlights.

Trea Turner is another Nat I collect. His success is bittersweet for me, since the Padres gave him up in an ill-advised trade.

Gotta love Jose Altuve (..unless you're a Yankees fan, I suppose). My PC of him is highlighted by an Archives auto, a Heritage action variation, and 3 rookies. Still need a parallel of his Topps rookie for my 2011 frankenset. If anybody has one, I'd love a chance to tempt you into a trade.

Shortly after his ALCS-winning jack, I whipped up this Altuve gif (at the brilliant suggestion of Dennis). The "hand cut" effect is kinda neat. I already had much of this card whipped up thanks to a custom I made a couple years ago...

Nice looking custom.

I think that's it as far as guys I collect who are in the WS. All the early Gerrit Cole cards that came my way ended up going to Matthew Scott. Pretty much any Verlander cards I've had over the years have gone to Dennis. I also collect Alex Bregman, but don't have anything really notable yet. I have an auto each from Adam Eaton and Ryan Zimmerman, though I don't really collect either player.

I think it's gonna be a fun series. Too bad the Astros had to poop in the pool with their continued poor handling of domestic violence issues. I was already lightly rooting for Washington, and now after recent stuff in the news, I'm really hoping they can pull off the upset. Though if I was a betting man, my money would be on Houston. But yeah, regardless, hope we get some exciting biggest-stage baseball.

The Nickening

Looks like I'll have a string of trade recap posts this week. Yesterday was Zippy, today is Dimebox Nick, and waiting in the wings are packages from Angus and Wes that just showed up. With all these great incoming cards, it's easy to ignore the release of 2019 Topps Series One today. I feel like my interest in current flagship couldn't be lower, though I don't hate the design this year and am glad to see the return of full stats on the back.

Here's a nice one to kick off with. McCovey is a big PC guy for me, plus I'm thinking I'd like to make a run for Kellogg's sets at some point in the coming years.

A little deja vu from yesterday's Japanese girlie cards, another one of those boxes with a bunch of swimsuit cards of one particular young lady. Jun Amaki here is quite lovely. Perhaps this was re-traded by way of Zippy? Hey, I'll happily take any unwanted girlie cards (and probably pass off any I don't want to Billy.)

Back to baseball, here are some minis. Always love adding a new Hoyt.

These old Baseball Card Magazine pseudo-customs are fun. I had been debating whether or not to cut the sheet I recently got featuring the Kevin Maas card, but thanks to this already-cut one from Nick, I can leave the other intact.

And more various cards of  guys I collect.

Solid selection of Padres from this decade. Looks like I needed all 3 of those 2011 Topps parallels for my frankenset, so that makes me happy.

Trea Turner is a guy I recently bumped off my wantlist and retired the PC into the Hundred Card Club. That didn't take me long.. feels like he was just recently a rookie, fleeced from San Diego's org. Hopefully Tatis Jr at shortstop takes the sting out of that transaction soon. Anyways, nice lot here.

Nick and I are both Rod Beck collectors, and he's good about throwing his dupes my way.

And of course Mr. Padre. Dig the cartoon fly with backwards hat.

Impressive lot of George Springer cards.

Bunch of Brian Giles.

And little bro, Marcus.

More Pads of the Past. Some nice ones here. Note the minor league Bochy with "C/CH" position. That was his last stand as a player.

The package wraps up with some vintage cards from Nick's dad, buttering me up for another batch of music customs on the horizon.

The '64 Topps needs are much appreciated. Inching toward ¾ complete with this set.

The highlights here are legendary manager Walt Alston and a combo card featuring Yaz. (Not sure how Chuck Schilling squeezed onto this "Sox Sockers" card; the guy hit a total of 23 homers in his entire career.)

Big thanks, Nick! (and Nick's dad!) I don't think I've got much left set aside for you right now, but I'll keep an eye out. And just let me know when your dad wants to get that custom project going.

Oh hai, trades

Sorry it's been a somewhat quiet Blue Tape And Pull Tab Awareness Week this year. Besides the cool "Babe Ruth TTM return" of my last post, I've hit a little patch of blogging malaise.

But let's check out some recently received cards from the cardsphere.

2018 A&G Tommy Wiseau auto! While I'm not one of those people who can quote The Room's screwy dialog much beyond the classic "Oh hai, Mark" and "You're tearing me apart!", I still got a kick out of the film and the film inspired by it, The Disaster Artist. So when I saw he was included in Ginter's auto checklist this year, I made a mental note to keep an eye out.

Then sure enough, Chris at Nachos Grande was lucky enough to pull the card from one of his boxes. We were able to work out a sale/trade where I sent him some money and a couple Barry Larkin cards I had set aside for him.

So yeah, neat pop culture addition to my non-sports collection.

Since it's Blue Tape And Pull Tab Awareness Week, let's look at how the card was shipped (and hope I don't piss anyone off by being critical).

You can see he went with a used bubble mailer. (A recent Twitter question going around recently is "are you ok with being sent cards in used bubble mailers?" My answer is, yes, absolutely. I've personally never bought new bubble mailers in my life.) The Wiseau card was in a top loader, and in a team bag sandwiched with a few Padres commons as buffer cards. (Funny enough, I also used unwanted Padres cards for buffer cards for the Barry Larkin cards I sent him in a PWE.) Everything is looking good so far, but then he runs into trouble.

It appears the team bag was previously used as it's not very sticky anymore, so Chris put on a piece of tape to keep the cards from falling out. The first misstep was using tan masking tape instead of blue painters tape. Add to that the fact no pull tabs were made, and I'm afraid I have to give a good-natured finger-wagging to Chris here. Even though I have fingernails now (this time last year I was a chronic nailbiter), it still took me a moment or two longer than it should have to peel up the tape. And when I did, the tape stuck to the team bag and stretched it out, ruining the team bag. I already have more used team bags than I'll ever need, so it's not a big deal, but still hate to throw one away.

Overall, the card arrived safe and wasn't too much of a pain to get to. So yeah, if I were to grade this packaging job, I'd give Chris a B+. If he would have used blue tape with pull tabs, it'd be an easy A. (Even one or the other would have likely gotten him to A-.)

Thanks for working out the deal with me, Chris! I hope dissecting your mailing methods for educational purposes doesn't bother you. (Hey, he's a teacher, he can handle it.)

-  -  - ---o

Next is a PWE from Jeremy at Topps Cards That Never Were.

He fit 3 cards into 2 top-loaders, taped together. Ok class, what has Jeremy done wrong here?
That's right, off the bat you can tell he didn't use blue tape or make pull tabs. Those top-loaders are going straight into the trash, as there's no way I'm gonna try to chip off all that scotch tape. But give him credit for putting paper over the top loader openings so the cards won't get stuck on the tape. (And don't fool yourself thinking that isn't a real possibility: JBF once sent me a vintage card that got damaged that way.)

I'm gonna have to give Jeremy a B here. The cards arrived safe, but the packaging could have been better.

(I'm sorry if I'm sounding like an asshole in this post! I'm just trying to keep it real in respect to Blue Tape And Pull Tab Awareness Week. I'm totally cool with these packaging jobs and would not hesitate to trade with Chris and Jeremy again. Just trying to point out that there's room for improvement out there with how people mail cards.)

Anyways, let's get to the cards he sent:

Nice! Three set needs for my 1982 Topps build, including a pair of HOFers.

I'm in the middle of collating my set, now that I'm down to just a few cards remaining. While it's down to just 6, unfortunately I think I might have to add to my wantlist because I'm finding a few cards in there that are beat-up enough to where I'd want to upgrade them.

Not these 3 from Jeremy, though, these are great. Thanks, man! I'll round up a return for you shortly!

------

Last for today is a PWE from Matt at Sport Card Collectors shooting me a little bonus to make up for the mixup in our last trade.

Matt didn't use tape on the cards, rather went the method of using a cut 3-pocket from a 9-pocket page. That seems to work fine, though I'd get nervous doing that for valuable cards, as it's not exactly the most secure way to ship. I at least like to wrap the pocket in a piece of paper or thin cardboard. (Writing "DO NOT BEND" on the envelope probably doesn't do much.) But I'll give it a B+.

A couple Treas and a green Renfroe.

And a couple Tim Duncan rookie cards I needed for the PC. Awesome.. thanks, Matt!

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Julie trade

Good stuff in the mail from Julie!

A Beltre blast!

Neat cards from new HOFers!

O's goes!

Bringer of Rain has been brought!

Keep on rocking!

Never too old for this Schmidt!

Pads and sods. Maybin black mini super scare, #'d 10/10!

2018 Heritage base team set!

A couple dudes basically traded for each other.

And some minicollection hits with a Pride PC addition, glowing Griffey, and parallel Gavin.

Big thanks, Julie! You're the best! (I was tempted to make this a post in my GNR series for "Your Crazy" [meant with all the love] but I didn't want to offend.. lol!) I'll get a return package out to you soon!

Catching up on trades

This post will cover three terrific trade packages I've gotten in the past couple weeks.

This first one is from Kerry at Cards on Cards. We work just a few blocks apart in downtown Portland, and have gotten into the groove of meeting up to exchange cards in person every so often. It's great cutting out the postal service to save a few bucks.

ROY mojo! I have no doubt that Judge will get the record for fastest guy into my Hundred Card Club (assuming I kept track of stuff like that). He just has a ton of cards from 2017 and I'm sure that'll continue in 2018, and I'm here for the Yankee haters looking for an appreciative dumping ground for them. Same applies to Bellinger.

Bryce and Stras. Always nice to see in trade packages.

Geez, Kerry seems to pull a lot of Nats! Impressive Trea Turner lot here.

Notable Red Sox.

More cool cards.

A Padre and a couple local San Diego guys.

The highlight of the baggy of cards (gotta wonder what people think when they see a couple middle-aged dudes meet up in front of a Subway and exchange mysterious little baggies) was this sweet Goldschmidt red refractor #'d 6/25 that Kerry was lucky enough to pull a little while ago.

Big thanks, Kerry! I don't think my side of this swap measured up to these cards, so I'll do my best to balance the scales next time.

-  - - ----o

Next up is a hefty holiday package from Dennis at Too Many Verlanders.

Here's a shiny trio of Padres.

And a shiny trio of Cecchinis.

Nice bump to the Michael Sam PC. Fun fact: he's a gay man who played football.

The real weight of the package was from a few magazines, such as this Sports Illustrated from 2003. Trepidatiously interested in reading the Kirby Puckett exposé.

More Kirby. I had this 1992 Beckett back in the day.

I remember having this Gary Sheffield Beckett then too.

But 1988 was before my collecting days, so this Benito Beckett is new to me. Funny how they edited the photo so the other guy (Gene Walter) in the rookie card is blocked.

Lastly, here's an SI from 1984 with a couple Padres on the cover. It was a good year for San Diego, but a better one for Dennis' Tigers. I made a custom using Goose from this pic a year or two ago. Cool to have the actual magazine now.

Thanks a lot, Dennis!

-  - - ---o

And here's a friendly Christmas surprise from All Trade Bait All the Time.

Big boost to my little Big Unit PC.

Some other dudes I collect.

And pairs from Bryant, Giancarlo, and Darvish.

Very cool.. thanks, man! I'll hit you back with some Dodgers soon.


Thanks for stopping by, everybody.