Another Trade With Robert of $30 A Week Habit.

       My collecting habits have been well chronicled on this blog, as have my buying habits.  Which is to say, my habits are consistently inconsistent.  I go to shows and dive into dime boxes.  I buy and sell on ebay.  I have a new love of the junk on listia.  I am the king of the impulse buy at K-Mart and Target. What happens to all these cards is they get neatly sorted into piles.  I think that is the zen part of this hobby for me.  I sit on my couch in front of a little card table in a yogi position with my legs folded under each other (no joke) and break all these cards that come into my collection into piles of what goes, what stays, what I need, what others need, etc. etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

       I read so many different card blogs and it is hard to say why some folks get piles and some don't.  Maybe it's because he has a hook or because he has so many interests, but Robert from $30 a Week Habit gets such a pile.  My excess Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, and Topps serial numbered cards all get thrown together and when the pile gets too big or I get tired of looking at them, I compare and contrast what he needs (or might need) and out the door they go.  It is an inelegant solution but it seems to make me seem altruistic.  Sometimes I even remember the actual cards we agreed to trade.  Lucky for me, Robert is always ready to reciprocate:

That Darryl Strawberry is from this years Archives and it is a beaut. The mini Ted Williams I asked for a long while ago and only remembered that I had when I saw it.  The Topps Gold Nieuwenhuis is a great picture of a player that has proven you can't steal first base enough that I don't think the Mets will call him back up no matter how well he fields.  The shiny Jose Bautista was on my wantlist - yay! someone reads my wantlists - because I want to make a player page of him (3 down 6 to go).  He also included a nice shiny numbered autographed Devils rookie card...because, hockey!

Finally, the Chrome Heritage David Wright (always appreciated) is a nice contrast to the 1964 Topps Joe Gibbon, the actual card we had agreed to trade.  He bought it for his set not realizing it had the added Heritage parallel stamp on it.  I wanted one of those because I have been integrating one into the Topps pages since they started inserting those things in 2008 with the 1959 set.  I sent him one, sans foil, from that '64 page he needed: the John Roseboro (a player whose most famous hit with a bat did not involve a ball).  And as always, Robert included a nice little note to remind me who sent the cards...as always the man is unflappably polite.  Thanks Robert!

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Want to get a pile too?  Really the best way is to be a team collector since I have boxes and boxes of cards all sorted into teams.  If you have stuff from my wantlists, send me an email and let's get cracking.