Swing and a Pop Up Mails Mariners: a Trade Post

I am writing this on my laptop from a smoky bar full of screaming college football fans.  I knew that the game we are watching (LSU vs. Kent State) would be a boring one, so I decided to be that guy, the one that actually uses the free wi-fi the bar provides.  Bear with me as I attempt to avoid typos and not spill any beer or fried frog leg crumbs on the keyboard.

Anyway, Bert from Swing and a Pop Up is the man.  Have you met this dude?  He does these Trading Thursdays thingies where he offers up a bunch of cards from a single team, and you claim them in exchange for cards from his want list.  I ended up finding a lot of stuff he needed, and it's a good thing too because he sent quality.

Here is just some of what he sent me:

Nobody's perfect, guys.  I for one appreciate that the 'Rod was willing to put his health and reputation on the line just to entertain me with more home runs.  God bless him.

Sarcasm doesn't come across in the written word, but I do really love this card.

We can all agree on this guy, right?  He's got a lot of great cards, too, and that one-word-name thing gives him an air of legend.

Jamie "Methusela" Moyer, Dan "Underrated" Wilson, Ruben "He Was a Mariner??" Sierra, Jay "Griffey's Friend" Buhner, and a Kazuhiro "I'm Not Familiar Enough With Him to Come Up With a Cute Nickname" Sasaki relic card.

To someone who started collecting in 1994, this is vintage.  I love that old M's logo.

Now to the Griffeys:

Wow - brand new and sealed!  The "card" is upside-down on the little holder, so I can't tell if Griffey is the player on the CD-ROM inside or if it is a random player like a pack.  Does anyone know?  I wonder if this is still useable online or if it requires an AOL account or something.  The Internet was a much different place 13 years ago.

They should do this again but with flash drives.  They could be shaped like bats or baseballs or even little cards.  I would buy that.

Just a nice card.  Plus it has more gloss than a.....gloss factory?  Yeah, that's the ticket.

Lenticulicious and adorable, in that order.

Thanks a ton, Bert!  Bert is working on a lot of sets, so go help him out.

Every time LSU scores a touchdown, we do a Jaeger bomb.  They are currently winning 31-10,  I'm not trying to condone binge drinking, I just want you to know how hard it was to assemble this post.

The Lost Collector Sends Steel and My First Griffey 1/1

AJ aka The Lost Collector sent me a bunch of unique Griffey fodder this past week.  Wanna see?

This is a tin that holds a small handful of cards and a damn cool way of packaging them.  It's a good thing too as the cards from this set are especially sensitive to damage. I remember when these came out, but I think they were always out of my price range. 

Inside this were - you guessed it - Griffeys!

I love that Hitters Inc subset from Score.  It's a bright spot in an otherwise ho-hum set.


Poor AJ also had to find a way to package this:

Again, I remember when these came out.  I had one, but Lord knows what happened to it.  This one's going on the shelf.

My favorite item AJ a hand-made, one-of-a-kind work of art:

Dick Perez, eat your heart out.  AJ created this for my Ultimate Griffey Card Giveaway a few weeks ago, and the detail is amazing.  See the little old-school Mariners tridents in the corners?  Check out the shading and the back of his uniform.  This level of detail is tough to accomplish on that bumpy surface, but it turned out fantastic.

I've never even approached this level of skill.  If I ever tried to draw Junior, it would probably turn out like this:

 

And nobody wants that.

Thanks a lot, AJ!  This is my very first true 1/1, and as an avid art collector I appreciate great illustration.  It will get a place of honor in my Box of Griffeys That Are Too Good to Go in the Binders, which needs a new name.

A Stack From Stackhouse

I send Corey from his famous Tim Wallach blog any Wallachs I happen across in my collecting.  Poor Corey has already sent me all his Griffeys it seems, so he has begun sending mid-90's Mariners players and other guys from my short list of PC's.  Check 'em out:

This is the "silver signature" of that year - a team name instead of a signature.

A couple of early Dan Wilson Stadium Club cards

A flock of Finleys, sans 'stache.

A bushel of Buhners, most of which I didn't have

A cluster of Clarks

And a sunset of Senior.  Nice picture, too.

Thanks, Corey!  And you don't have to stress about sending back stuff every single time I send you a PWE.  Let's keep this hobby as stress-free as possible....

This Way to the Heroes: a Trade Post

Before we get to the PWE's I received recently, a very famous baseball card was featured recently on the new Looney Tunes Show.  I took a picture of the screen:

I know it's tacky to snap a picture of the television - maybe I just wanted it to be the top picture in this post.  I also used to tape songs off the radio.  Yeah, I'm way old.

I have been lax in my trading/mailing/blogging duties these past few weeks as I overhaul the way my collection is assembled.  It was getting complicated and kind of not fun, so changes were needed.  I'll go into those later - for now, here are the great cards I received from some awesome fellow bloggers:

First up, Mark from This Way to the Clubhouse sent me a PWE with these in it:

What a sweet design.  I was definitely missing this one.

The superman card

The hero shot - one of his best.

Man, do I ever love coming home to an envelope full of cards.  Thanks, Mark!  Your blog remains awesome.....


Jeff of 2 x 3 Heroes also sent me some Griffey goodness, including one I didn't even know I was missing:

I thought I had all these - two of my favorite players.  Great card....

Also these - that may be my favorite Senior card.  Sure beats the '89 Bowman television one.  Blech.

Jeff's blog is also among the best, so you should read it, consarnit.....

Thanks, Jeff!

Cards on Cards sends Yards and Yards of Cards, with Regards

Kerry aka madding of Cards on Cards and his special lady have a list of player collections I'm constantly pulling cards for.  I don't quite have it memorized, but being that I'm so keen on looking for excuses to shed cards, Kerry always seems to have some cardboard in the ol' trade stack. 

Kerry sent me a bunch of Griffeys in a used pack wrapper so it felt like opening a Griffey hot pack.  It was super fun, especially since I'd never seen some of the Griffeys he sent:

That is a 2003 Leaf Passing Through Time.  This subet has a reprint of the Leaf card from ten years prior on the back.  I would show you, but that would ruin the 2003 Leaf post that is sure to come later.  That Fleer throwback design is also a great card with a great picture.

The Lumber Company cards are one of the greatest inserts Fleer ever put out, but that Select Certified card was a real surprise.  It has a film on it that's just begging to be removed, and the back is printed upside down necessitating a vertical flip from the front.  I've only ever seen that on error cards.

It looks like the maddings have also been squirrelling away Chuck Finleys for me.  There are a couple here that I didn't even know existed:

I love preview cards.  They feel so naughty and forbidden.  That Sports Illustrated card is also completely new to me. 

Madding has a wealth of knowledge about the card industry and always has something constructive to add to my own posts.  His blog is a staple in the community and his strength of character is a beacon of hope in the otherwise bleak and unforgiving landscape of the Internet.  He also likes airbrushed cards.

Thanks, Kerry!

Proper Bipped: a Trade Post

One of my more frequent trading partners of late has been Matt from Red Cardboard.  I send him Reds and he sends me Griffeys.  They are especially appreciated as close to 100% of the pre-retirement card he sends me are Reds-era which is exactly when I wasn't collecting.  I always end up with a bunch of new-to-me specimens of Griffitude.

This week Matt sent me the cardboard equivalent of a steak dinner.  Check it out:





2013 cards!  These get me very excited as I don't open packs like I used to.  These are also the first Griffeys I've seen in person from 2013 Archives.



I spotted a bunch of base cards I was missing which is a big help.  I sometimes start posts for sets I don't have the base cards for then I go to scan the thing and find it's not there.  Very embarassing....



Have you ever gotten a card and it's parallel in the same stack?  It's like finding true love.







I'm going to have to sit down and see where I stand on the complete set of UD Griffey Gallery.  I bet I'm very close if not there by now.....



Matt has a great blog you should read, and he is obviously a generous trader.  Then again, you should also know that he bipped the living hell out of me.  I would show the savage bipping here, but there might be children reading this.  Plus I'd rather use the cardboard ordinance I received to bip someone else and let it be a surprise.

Now that "bip" is a verb I don't have to capitalize, right?

Thanks, Matt!

Brad's Blog Brings Blue, a Brave, and a Bevy of Beaucoup Baddassery to Boot

Brad from Brad's Blog recently posted a bunch of nice cards he has available for trade.  I looked over his list in search of possible Griffeys, and in doing so I spotted two cards I really liked.  Brad promised to send them on along with some spare Griffeys for good measure. 

Here are the two cards I claimed from his list:

The great Vida Blue, Louisiana native and three-time World Series champ.  One of the most dominant pitchers of his day, Mr. Blue has the rare feat of having started in the All-Star Game for both the National and American Leagues. 

Logoless it may be, but that is one baddass picture.

Speaking of great pitchers, Javy here caught one of the greatest staffs ever assembled.  The mid-90's Braves included guys like Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Steve Avery.  Mark Wohlers and Greg McMichael also come to mind.  Javy here caught for all of them, giving him a lot of screen time on TBS in the 90's.

His hitting was also amazingly solid for a catcher, a lifetime .287 with 260 HR and 864 RBI.  He is the single-season record holder for HR by a catcher at 43, two more than previous record holder Todd Hundley.  Spending the vast majority of his career in Atlanta, Javy landed a World Series ring in 1995. 

I have a pretty extensive Javy Lopez collection.  This card just barely edges out his '92 Bowman rookie as my new favorite card of his.....

Look - Griffeys!



Awesome....



That Topps Stars Supernovas is completely new to me, and what a picture.  It looks like he just put a ball into orbit, and he's about to do that audacious dropping-of-the-bat thing he does when he knows he's crushed one.  Also, while I can't recall whether I already have that UD Spectrum card, it deserves another look.  Reds uni with a White Sox logo - crazy to see on a Griffey card.

I'll be sending Brad as many decent Phillies and whatever Frank Thomas cards I can.  Do thou the same!

Nick Sends Quality Over Quantity: a Trade Post

If you read his blog (and if you read baseball card bloggery, it's more than likely you've read his) you probably know Dime Box Nick has a lot of collections.  It tends to be very easy to find cards for him.  I am always building stacks for various trading partners, and Nick's always tends to grow the fastest.  In that sense I tend to send Nick large quanities of cards that meet his collecting criteria.

In fact, everybody sends the guy so many cards I often think they are more of a hindrance, impeding his ability to collect efficiently.  Then I remember that this guy has more love for cardboard than pretty much anyone else I've ever come across and I'm like "Psh.  Whatever.  He loves it."

Anyway, Nick sent me a mix of cards recently that, while they wouldn't completely fill a Priority Mail box, are all quality additions to several of my own varying collections.  I'll start with my favorite card of the lot:





This was personal.

Nick called this a "cameo" card.  That is a much better word for it as I have been calling a "surprise" card.  Cameo makes a lot more sense. 

This card and I have a history.  When I was in high school I was in the baseball card club, and everyone seemed to know I was the Griffey guy (probably because I would trade at a loss to get Griffeys).  Kids would all bring their Juniors to me for trading, and one day a guy brought me this Jody Reed Stadium Club card featuring Griffey going down at second in the midst of a double-play.  He also had a few other Griffeys I ended up trading for (I remember one was a '94 Stadium Club Electric Parallel). 

I immediately dismissed the Jody Reed.  Little did I know that several times over the next many years (and more fequently over the past few months) I would think back to this card and wish I'd snagged it when I had the chance.  I could no longer remember the player or even the set it had come from.  That is, until Nick included it in this trade package.  When i saw it I knew immediately that this is the one I had passed on over 15 years ago.  Hence, this is definitely my favorite card in the bunch.

A close second is this guy:

No, I did not have a stroke.  This was in a penny sleeve that read "turn over" in Sharpie.  Lo and behold:

A totally amazing error card!  The error back is printed upside-down, so that's not a blogger error you're seeing.  It's like a double error and a parallel to boot.  Great surprise.

This one is from the Barry Colla Photography collection which you may have come across if you've collected modern-age cards for long enough.  From what I can tell this is a sports photographer who formed his own company and started making individual player sets.  This particular card is touted as a bookmark. 

I used to consider Colla cards oddballs, but over the last few months I've seen enough of them pop up that they could be more legit than I thought.

Nick hit every baseball player collection I have - even the oft-overlooked Rusty Staub.  That Staub, the Chuck Silver Sig.  That '88 Score Kittle is a great picture, but it also kinda looks like he's giving birth to the on-deck guy.

I've never officially designated The Big Unit as a player collection of mine.  Then again, I am always excited to pull his cards, I keep nearly every single one of of them I get, and I seem to have more of his cards than all but five or six other players; so I'm starting to think that maybe he is a player collection of mine.  That '94 Stadium Club is awesome.

This Biggio ellicited an audible "wow" when I saw it just because the subject matter is so bizarre - what a wacky record to hold and make a card to commemorate.  That Fernando card ellicited another "wow" because they tried to rhyme Schwarzenegger.  Skybox, I frickin' LOVE/HATE/LOVE you so much.

Buhner is definitely another unsung PC of mine, as well as Chipper Jones who makes a cameo in this great Brian Jordan card.

I've always held on to Vlad cards, too, though I still don't really consider him a PC as much as some of the other guys mentioned in this post.  This one here is a card I've seen on Nick's blog in the past that I've drooled over: colorful, perfectly balanced, fun and full of character, a well-put-together card in every way.  Maybe lose the gold border, but everything else is solid.

Here we have pitcher at the plate Jim Abbott who for some reason turns up on Griffey cards all the time - don't ask me why.  Tekulve's glasses are legendary among those of us who collect bad pictures, and Warren Spahn is apparently super flexible.

Players blowing bubbles, another small collection of mine.

And finally a nice bunch of Griffeys.  That Royal Rookies checklist is new to me, and I've always been a big fan of '93 Stadium Club.

Nick has one of the best blogs out there and a love for the hobby that borders the unhealthy.  Plus it's a great read - check it out......