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.

halfways to the holidays

It's my half-birthday today (assuming this shows up for you on Wednesday) and the celebratory packages have been rolling in over the past few weeks.

Welp, ok, maybe the senders weren't aware of the timing-- hell, I barely remembered myself-- but let's just pretend for the sake of spicing up a standard "incoming non-purchases roundup" post that these are all half-birthday presents.

First, here's a fun little envelope from overseas. No question as to who sent these cards, but in case there's a newbie reading: they came from Zippy Zappy. It's my understanding that the dude is Munetaka Murakami (Nick also got one of these. [update: Fuji, too!]). The new White Sock got off to a terrific start in MLB this year before an IL stint. Hope he's back at it soon. Akagi Kuro, the lady, is featured on a pretty neat signed photo out of Zippy's cosplayer collection. Love it! (Nick got the more tame ladies, but I don't have any kids in the house to worry about, so I get the naughty getup.)

 

A pair of Star Wars cards also made the journey from Japan. Always welcome in my collection. Thanks, Kenny!

-  - ---o

The spoils from a pair of Maddux Monday victories thanks to the generous Johnny Miller. Hopefully I'll add a couple more W's before he wraps up that extended giveaway series. Then maybe I'll sort out my Greg Maddux PC and figure out which of these I actually need, lol. I try to not enter the drawing if the cards look too familiar.

Thanks, John!

-  - --o 

This was a TCDb trade of Ginter minis going both ways with user mookdaruch back in mid April. I was stressing out when he still hadn't updated "received" after a week and a half, but he was cool and said he sometimes has long lags with his mail. Thankfully the pair of Ginter minis I sent him just finally arrived a month and half later. "Looks like it got ran over by a truck--but miracles do happen! The cards are both fine." Whew, glad that worked out or it would've surely cast a dark cloud over my half-birthday. 

Not to brag, but I've still got the biggest Dick Allen PC on the site. (Hey-oh!)

-   -  - - --o

Last "half birthday gift" for today are some cards from Bob at Best Bubble. 

Gavs representing.

Padres shiny or signed. Very nice.

Closing out with notable Portland Beaver Darren Daulton, a glow-in-the-dark card from inside a 1989 cereal box, and a couple lovely swimsuit models posing for the camera.

Thanks, Bob! Did you get the new "Bubble Gum Baseball" customs I sent you a bit ago? I know Johnny got the set I sent him, but haven't gotten confirmation that yours arrived. If not, I'll print you up a replacement so let me know.

Anyways, thanks for reading, all. Until next time.

plain white envel-NOPE

Heads up for users of the online card marketplace Sportlots that "Loot" (seller-specific store credit) now expires after 90 days, and in case you haven't noticed, it's been about 85 days since that policy went into effect. So if you've ever used Sportlots much, you might want to log in and check out your loot account. Click "My Loot" under the "My Account" menu option in the upper left, and you get a list of sellers with whom you've got loot.

I've got a bunch of sellers listed there where I've only got a few cents of credit with them.. not a big deal to lose out on those few cents, but I've also got a couple sellers with over a buck in credit where it might make sense to at least make a small order from them to apply a discount towards so the loot doesn't go to waste.

Oh wait. They don't want you making small orders anymore:

"...Sportlots has implemented a Minimum Value Fee. Orders under $5.00 will incur a $1.50 fee. The $5.00 minimum is calculated by adding the card values, shipping, sales tax (if applicable), and subtracting any applied loot." 

So after adjusting for the Min Value Fee, my loot discount that should have been $1.68 comes to just 18¢. If I added a 5th card, hoping to get out of "under five bucks" territory, the shipping rate from this seller jumps from $1.50 to $4. So yeah, I'm screwed in this scenario. THANKS, Sportlots. Guess I'll just let all that loot disappear. Lame.

Sure, I make big orders on the site sometimes, but I like to place a small Sportlots order every once in a while, in part because it's nice receiving cards in the mail on the regular, you know? A day without cards in the mail is a downer. PWEs trickling in helps keep the non-card-getting days from piling up. 

Sellers can adjust their minimum shipping rates to deal with their transaction fees, so I don't think a minimum value fee is necessary. Hell, some sellers let you know they don't like doing small orders by having their minimum shipping rate be like $6 or more, even for just 1 card. But other sellers like making sales, the more the better, and don't want to just hold out for the occasional large order.

So yeah, just another instance of greed making things worse than they used to be. I know I've been saying it here for a long time, but this year FOR REALS i'm gonna get my for-trade cards logged into TCDB and try to focus more on trading, especially now that COMC and Sportlots have gotten crappier. Let's hope TCDB remains usable for the foreseeable future. I know they've been adding more annoying ads lately as the site owner looks to generate additional revenue, causing some users to grimace, but fingers crossed the site will last a long time before things really go tits up there. (With my luck, the site will be sold to PSA/Fanatics and get gutted the day after I finish logging all the stuff I'm planning on logging, LOL.)

Anyways. on that general topic, my latest TCDB swap netted 3 needs for my Dick Allen PC.

User herkojerko is a prominent Phillies collector on the site who proposed a 3-for-3 card swap, all Phillies, with my return being the above trio of Dick Allen needs. I showed off the Blue Ice parallel of that 2025 Prizm a few posts back, and so now I've got the base card to go with it, plus the 2025 Ginter SP #350 with child. Must've been Phillies dupes for herkojerko. One of the cards I sent his way was one of my Dick Allen dupes, fittingly, and helps him keep place as the #2 (tie) ranked DA collector on the site.

There's your current top 10 leader board. Absolutely fascinating stuff, right? :P

Thanks for the trade, herkojerko.. Good luck with your collection, just don't overtake me on Dick Allen cards, please. ha 

Before wrapping up, I've got another small piece of mail to show, a 1-card (plus a sticker) envelope imported from Japan.

Fun Maggie Simpson sticker along with a signed Royce Lewis card, courtesy of blogger bud Zippy Zappy. Royce seems to be a pretty good ballplayer who'd likely blossom into a star if only he could stay healthy for a while. Cool to add an early autograph of his. And as I said a moment ago, always brightens my day to receive cards in the mail, no matter the quantity. Thanks, Kenny!

quick roundup

Gonna try to get a flurry of posts published here by the end of the year, with the hopes of catching 2024's post count of 36-- which narrowly bested 2023's 35 posts-- trying to keep the blog trending in a positive direction. I'm currently up to 27 for the year as I draft this, so that's a goal of, what, 10 posts in 20 days? Hmm. Might be tough, but I'll give it a shot and hopefully at least get into the 30s. But yeah, I might seem a little more rushed than usual for these next few posts.

For now, just catching up on some non-purchased incoming cards, as I like to document on here. First up's the page's worth of cards I got randomized from Johnny's giveaway last month: 

Fun lot of cards. Mike Trout's still a big PC guy for me, and the '75 Kellogg's is a set need. Love the Clyde Drexler, and all the baseball oddballs are appreciated too.

Thanks a lot for your generosity, John!

- - --o

I'll bet you can guess who sent me this pair. Yep, it was a micro-zapping from Japan. Great looking 2011 J.A. Happ atomic refractor and the cat is cute too.

Thanks as always, Zippy!

-  - ---o

I don't always bother to post about my sporadic TCDB trades on the blog, but it's been a quiet few weeks, so why not show off this quick return from user ILLRIMESAYA. Maybe I'm jumping the gun, because he has yet to update the transaction to received, and it'd be crap luck if my end got lost in the mail and I have to send these cards back or someshit. But yeah, fingers crossed the Ginter X mini he asked for in return arrives shortly.

I've been going nuts for refractor reprints lately. I've been snatching up a bunch and damn near flooding my TCDB wantlist with 'em, hence the Hank Bauer. And happy to score the xfractor of Gavin Sheet's first card as a Padre, having thrown all its parallels into my wantlist. I don't expect to do the same for every Gavin Sheets card with San Diego going forward, but that "first ever Padres card of a Gavin" is kinda special, I guess. But I've been doing some other modern rainbowing lately (post coming soon), and I prefer keeping my hobby focus pre-Fanatics as much as possible because everything was better before and it's only going to get worse, right?

Anyways, thanks for stopping by.

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?

Incomings and Outgoings

Got some incoming cards to round up into a post.

I did a quick swap of unofficial cards with reader David B. who fancied a copy of the Willie Stargell - Braves custom I made recently. In return, I got this pair of old school customs somebody made circa 1970. David didn't have a ton of background into on them, but he had bought a larger lot with several of them on eBay in 2021. The person who originally made them must've gotten pictures from a periodical or book, affixing them onto cardboard and turning them into cards, or close enough. They're just a hair too big to fit in a standard top-loader.

Looks they had been intended to have stats on the back, but the data entry must've ended up being too tedious-- you couldn't just copy & paste back then-- so that section got a purple overhaul instead. But yeah, happy to spice up my Wampum and Hoot PCs with these.

Thanks for the trade, David! Fun stuff.

- - --o

I fielded my first trade request on TCDB in quite a while, which is mostly my fault because I haven't added squat to my FT/FS cards there in a long time. But apparently I had a few '72 Topps on there (that I had forgotten about-- in fact I've got a couple different '72 "starter lots" from my dupes that I've been meaning to put on eBay), and a friendly guy with the username aint56cool needed one, offering this pair of 1970 Topps. I gotta admit I haven't been tracking my '70 setbuild on TCDB, I just blanketly added all the semi/high numbers to my wants a couple years back since I needed most of them. And I did in fact need these two. Now just 310 cards left to go. Maybe by the time my retirement benefits kick in, assuming I live that long, I can use that 401k to finance landing a Nolan Ryan and Johnny Bench. lol

- - --o

Next up is a surprise mailing I received from Japan.

Imported fresh! Love the early Darvish, and always down for an attractive lady on a trading card.

Zippy Zappy didn't include a note this time, but I'm assuming these were some leftover stragglers from the tail end of his through-the-mail autograph acquiring activity, with his budding Rockies fandom apparent with his lot of fellas. You may recall ZZ decided to tighten up his collection a while back before escaping America, jettisoning his non-personalized TTM returns, much of which has been entrusted to me. Happy to add these to the hoard.

Thanks as always, Zippy!

-  - --o

Ok, those were the "incomings", now for the "outgoings".

The Mark Fidrych Memorial Bird Feeder (a.k.a. The Bird Birdfeeder) has closed for the time being after about 2 years serving neighborhood feathered friends. Squirrels had occasionally been a nuisance in the feeder, but a recent late night rat sighting forced the closure, as I don't want to be supporting unwanted rodents on my property. I'm hoping to "reopen the restaurant" at some point, perhaps in a different spot. Anyways, the above card was the featured entertainment for the birds to enjoy while they ate. It's faded in the sun somewhat, but there's still some yellow hanging on.

- - --o

Sad to hear Val Kilmer passed away the other day, though I know his health had been in the toilet for the past several years. He did a lot of great work, from his early quirky films to the big-budget stuff. I watched his documentary a couple years back and he really was a fascinating dude. Anyways, this above Ginter auto is a cherished piece of my collection, scored in a blogger trade back in 2016. (Bubba, are you still out there?)

 - - --o

Now an update on my "latest art drop".. the silhouette cards from my previous post. Happy to report I sold out the Rickey Henderson cards within 48 hours! Interest was not nearly as robust with the other two featured athletes, however. So far I've moved just one Bo Jackson and zero Jordans.. kinda surprising to me, as I think they're super cool, but that's just how it goes sometimes. (Update: just sold 4 more Bo cards to one guy but don't feel like rewriting this paragraph.) Both Jordan listings had a weird thing where the listing didn't show up on the site until a day later, despite showing as active on my end. Not sure if that was a technical hiccup, or if perhaps listings mentioning 1986-87 Fleer Michael Jordan have a higher rate of getting flagged for moderation since counterfeits are so rampant with that card. But anyways, they're available now and we'll see if folks eventually start coming around to them. 

But my takeaway is that the market for Rickey cardart/custom stuff is strong, which is cool with me. I already had more Rickey stuff in the works anyways, so I'll continue that route, and spend less time on making new Bo and Jordan cards. (I also have plans for more subjects-- already made a Tim Flannery '88 Fleer silhouette card for Rod, plus a few Barry Bonds ideas for my guy who buys most Bonds cardart I whip up. [Though he passed on the pair of Christmas tree ornament cards. Maybe he doesn't celebrate? Fair enough!])

Also, the glowing cards did well-- they seemed to be among the quickest Rickeys to go, and the first Bo sale was a glower-- so I'll likely focus on more g.i.t.d. cards, which are my personal favorite anyway.

In fact, here's a sneak peek of my latest finished item with the lights out...

I'm still coming up with new ideas, as well as sitting on some good ideas that have been brewing on the backburner for years, so even if you don't dig the silhouette vibe, your boy Gav has more tricks up his sleeve, don't you fret. Thanks for following along!