A Veritable Clusterbonk of Trade Fodder

I recently received trade packages from Marcus of All the Way to the Backstop, Matt of Red Cardboard, Zenus of The Prowling Cat, and Josh of Royals and Randoms.  Wanna see?

First up, Marcus from All the Way to the Backstop sent me a healthy Griffey stack, but who really came here to see Griffeys?  Probly nobody.  That's why we're gonna start things off with this.....thing:



Yikes.


It's the eyebrow curl and the off-putting smirk.  Was he going for sexy?  Did Austin Powers direct this photo shoot?  I love Jeff Bagwell and passively collect his cards, but dude.  This card is just.....dude.....

The addition of that Bagwell to the trade stack was both hilarious and topical.  Studio '13 is rebooting this very design - let's hope the same silliness ensues (come on, big white parrots!).

OK, enough fun.  Let's get down to Griffness:

That's one of the illustrious #855 cards from '08 Upper Deck.  It's not one of the short prints, but it is a good-looking card and features one of the last years of really great Upper Deck photography. 



A 1992 Topps Gold "Winner" and the first year of SP.  Great stuff!



I can't get enough '89 UD reprints.



Metal Universe and a Fleer throwback design.



Another early SP card and it's die-cut parallel, and an awesome SuperGriffey comic card. 
And as a child of the 90's, I still love David Justice and think he can do no wrong.



Phew!  That was a lot of Griffeys.



A bunch from "The Griffey Years" die-cut set.  Didn't these come from a restauarant or in a product of some kind?



And finally, some Chiz-uck.  This card features a great shot of the south Louisiana native stickin' it to some poor batter. 


Thanks a bunch, Marcus.  Marcus loves the Padres and Tony Gwynn.  Go read his blog - it's one of the good ones!  And when you're done, send him your autographed Tony Gwynn 1/1 patch cards.

Matt from Red Cardboard also sent me some excellent examples of Griffeytude.  This mention is coming super late as I had lost the scan I made of Matt's trade cards and had to e-mail him to get a reminder of what he sent me:



This has been a very SP-heavy trade day.  That Topps Highlights card showing the sweet post-swing moment of Junior's 600th dinger is a favorite of mine, and I'm very nearly finished assembling the massive Griffey Circuit Victory set.


Matt's a huge Reds fan and a swell fellow.  He informed me also that he has a much more substantial stack en route, so I'm preparing myself emotionally for that.  Go peep his blog!  It's fun and a little snarky, just how I like 'em.


Zenus, purveyor of The Prowling Cat, sent me a box containing some very unique Griffey items:



I love these old Starting Lineup figures.  This one is unique as it has a wall - Griffey is robbing somebody of a homerun.  I hope it's Barry Bonds.



Pocket schedules!  I never knew these were so awesome.  They kind of make more sense to collect than baseball cards if you think about it.  What an awesome surprise.


Zenus wants your pocket schedules!  You never know what you're going to see on his blog - he collect lots of different things: Nascar, Team business cards, Justin Smoak.  The guy is all over the place! 

I'll be sending him a stack of New Orleans Zephyrs pocket schedules I got from the dry cleaners near my house as well as whatever cards of players he collects I may have and pretty much anything Nascar-related I can find.  Thanks, Z!

Josh from Royals and Randoms posted recently about an amazing Craigslist find: uncut sheets of Mother's Cookies cards.  I saw them and immediately posted how much I wanted to own them, then proceeded to forget I did that.  Josh went out of his way to contact me and get my address to send me this amazing sheet:

What an amazing collector's item - and one that is not cheap to ship.  It measures a little bigger than 24x36, so I'll be getting a 27x40 movie poster frame and a nice mat for it sometime soon.  Pics to follow.... 

I'll be sending Josh a hairy man-stack of Royals and whatever else I can find that he collects.  Go check out Josh's blog, too.  It's where I learned that Juan Gonzalez played for the Royals at one point (still not buying it.....).  His blog is also a little snarky at times.  Thanks a ton, Josh! 

It's been an crazy couple of weeks for trades over at the Junior Junkie.  Just when I get back to square with all you fellow bloggers, you surprise me with more great stuff.  I'll be assembling packages and shipping them out this Saturday so we can all continue to be friends.

Where There's a Will, There's a Chuck: A Trade Post

I came home yesterday to a bubble mailer and a PWE which resulted in a great many "woo-hoos" around the Junior Junkie household.  Each contained cards of Louisiana natives Will Clark and Chuck Finley, both among my very few player collections.

First, Dustin over at Coot Veal and the Vealtones found time out of his busy new-daddy schedule (congrats, y'all!) to send me a sweet stack of down home loosiana goodness.



Triple exposure Chuck




Dustin sent lots of Chuck Finleys - this is just a few of my favorites.  That '88 Topps card single-handedly gave us the word "Chuckstachioed"



Also a few of the many Will Clarks he sent.  I make fun of Score caricatures, but these two aren't bad.  I think it's because we NOLA boys are so good-lookin'.



He also threw in some great silly names and goofy facial expressions.  This one took the goofiness cake.



Just a Jay Buhner card - just a regular old Jay Buhner card.  Nothing to see here.

This reminds me - I'm going to have to put together a post of Jay Buhner cards that have Griffey in them.  There are more than you might think....

And finally, a very personal card:

 

Panini's struggle to not show team logos has played right into my hands....and my heart.


Will is wearing the uniform of my high school baseball team, the Jesuit Blue Jays, our shared Alma Mater.  When I saw this card on Coot's blog I knew it had to be mine.  Super appreciative to him for trading this with me.  Cannot express how much I love it!


Next up, Marcus from All the Way to the Backstop single-stamped me some unexpected cardboard coolness:
 

I have to wonder if Chuck and Griffey ever faced each other (is there a way to look that up?).  Hopefully not on this day as Chuck looks hella-focused.

Holy crap, Google, are you kidding me?  I love the Internet!  From Chad over at The Hardball Times, here's this scary-appropriate chunk of information I didn't know existed when I typed the above caption:


#34. Ken Griffey Jr. vs. Chuck Finley (10.2 RC, 78 PAs, 1990-2002)   View match-up

Actual:    4.2 RC | 12-73 | .164/.218/.301 | 0.519 OPS | 18 K, 5 BB, 0 HBP
Expected: 14.3 RC | 20-67 | .298/.384/.565 | 0.949 OPS | 11 K 9 BB, 1 HBP

After an extremely slow start to this match-up, Ken Griffey Jr. went on a tear to nearly bring his actual RC in line with his expected in 1993. Ultimately, Finley got the better of Griffey, who closed out this match-up with a less-than-stellar 1-for-29.



Ken Griffey Jr. also struggled against Kevin Appier (6.9 RC) and Mike Mussina (6.6 RC).
Chuck Finley also dominated NONE.

Yikes.  Looks like Finley frickin' pwned the Kid.  They were division rivals, after all.  I don't understand most of the terminology or abbreviations used in the above segment, but I did understand "1-for-29."

And have I mentioned I love funny names?  How I have never seen Haverbush I'll never know, but he is going into my "porn names" binder tonight.

I'm not showing all the goofiness cards at once because I plan on doing another blog featuring only those cards that achieve optimal laughability.  Wheels are in motion....

Thanks a bunch, guys!  It's a pleasure to come home to new cardboard, especially on days when I get home in time to intercept the mail.

My First Trade!

I received a package today from Marcus over at Backstop Cards who is apparently far more organized and quick to ship than I am.

He put together quite a bunch of cards for yours truly, and I had to laugh out loud when I saw a lot of what he sent.

Here's just a small sampling as it is getting late and my wife and I are leaving for Vegas tomorrow (3rd wedding anniversary/her birthday).  Gotta finish packing and rest.

First, the meat and potatoes:

Six Griffeys, three of which I needed for the binders!  Beautiful.... That Career Day insert is amazing.

Zephyr Field is less than 5 minutes from my house (it is also next door to Saints Headquarters/training camp).  We go all the time - I'm certain I've seen Lance play.

It is amazing seeing the good ol' Zephyr logo on a refracting SP card.  And surreal.  Brings the hobby home which is something I enjoy a lot.  New Orleans is most decidedly not a baseball town.   Come down for Mardi Gras some time and I'll show you what kind of town we are....

And that guy playing basketball is Kenny Lofton.  I was like "whaaaaaa?"  Awesome.

Some great action shots.  Is that Ozzie getting tagged in the face?  Watch it, Kim.  Batiste (ba-teest) is a pretty common name down South.  I know a Kim Batiste.  She is an attractive blonde who works at a doctor's office.  Much cuter that this guy.

You may have noticed I love goofy pictures and funny names.  Marcus obliged me in fine style.  Checkit:

You've got a great BTS (blatant tongue shot), an excellent example of HLLH (Henke looking like Henke), Kinney with visible chawbutt,  Pete looking a little haggard, Troy and his Clutterbuckian stare, and Bo reminding me a lot of Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

And of course, like the average 3rd grader, I have a silly-name fetish.

Ray Liotta - this cracked me up.  We have a movie night with friends on Tuesdays, and this week we watched Cop Land.  That card would have been a hit.

The soccer player's name is Fred.  I thought "Hm, let me flip this baby over and see his full name."  Nope.  Just Fred.  Yikes.

And God forgive me, I giggled very hard at Mr. Stanky.

The bottom left card has a gentleman named Willie Mo Pena.  In my brain, I can't help singing that "Mary Moon" song by Deadeye Dick but with this guy's name instead.  This card designates his position as IF-OF, so I assume Stadium Club forgot to ask somebody and was just guessing there.

Anyhoo, thanks for the awesome cards, Marcus!  In the interest of not keeping you waiting, I may just fill up a Priority Mail box with the Padres I have now and shoot it to you.  If you don't mind waiting just a teensy bit longer, though, you will have a hairy man-stack of Padre cardboard to wile away the hours sorting.