Mail Call: Weekend Wives and Dives.

      Some weekends lend themselves to heavy blogging and some don't.  This weekend's unbelievably beautiful weather obviously was not one of them.  I spent time outside and even spent enjoyable time with my family. *gasp!*  On Saturday, though, a pile of envelopes with some eclectic contents was sitting on the table:

Inside you have a bevy of football cards from all over the map, from commons to cards for my 527's to nifty manu-patch cards of Drew Brees.  Also there is a wonderful oddball, a 1971 Bazooka card, a set that has slipped through my fingers for some time.  Best part of that card?  I picked it up for nothing on Listia.  The last two cards are wonderful in their own personal way.  Penny Hardaway is one of the all time "what if" players in NBA history, sure, but why did I pick up this particular card?  Well, while surfing the aforementioned Listia, I ran into this card and it reminded me of a girl I dated from Memphis and her father's soul food restaurant.  Turns out, back when Penny was in college, after games they would all go to this joint.  Her father, who was quite a character, had all sorts of memorabilia on the walls and would ramble on and on about that team and how good Penny was. He'd also feed us just the most amazing food you have ever imagined: fried pork tenderloin, mac & cheese, collard greens.  Simply amazing.  Now, I hadn't thought of that particular little anecdote in years, decades even.  But that one card brought it all back...the smells, the stories, the hero worship, and the food (oh the food).  If that isn't why we collect these silly cards, what is?  The other card there is one from one of the terrible Batman movies featuring Drew Barrymore.  I have been in love with her since I was 6 years old and saw her in E.T.  Needless to say, I think of her all the time and don't need reminding, but it's nice to have her in cardboard form too. 

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If you kids get bored with the same old cards, head over to View From the Skybox and get your filthy mitts on some new ones via his latest contest which is pretty nifty if you ask me.

Mail Call: Little Letters from Listia.

       I have covered this phenomenon before, but it seems my mailbox is always jam packed on Mondays, as though the post office does everything on Sundays.  Either that, or Monday is the regular delivery guy's day off and he leaves the bulk of the heavy lifting to the fill in.  I would be easily persuaded to believe either theory.

Today's odd twist is that all of the letters in the box today were short ones - #8 to use the vernacular as opposed to #10 (business size).  Well, all except that one large manilla envelope.  One envelope to rule them all!

So enough postal jargon and minutiae, what goodies are inside these?  Let's take a look:

Two of those top three were straight impulse buys.  I like those 2008 Stadium Club base cards, even if the whole set and execution of that product was a disaster, and that Magglio called to me.  That Sidney Johnson is not only a nifty photo but a card #527 I did not have, so it is easy to see why I sniped that one up.  The top left card is a manu-patch silk card thingy from this year's Topps flagship of Matt Harvey's rookie card.  I wouldn't pay money for that thing, but I was happy to nab it for much less than the GIN credit price.  The Matt Moore is from this year's Heritage and since I am fond of the design, I thought maybe I would put together a page of these badboys.  The Heritage Chrome refractors always seem extra shiny to me for some reason.  Oooooo shiny....  The bottom row is a batch of Walmart parallels from this year that I got on Listia, yet another type of card I will never pay money for, at least not from the source that is.  I will put together a page from these.  I now have two of the three retail parallel pages covered with just Toys 'R' Us not represented.  I kinda like the odd symmetry that the colors are blue, red, and purple - it's a color wheel thing.  Okay, I am rambling now.  Last but not least is the little packet there.  While I am 99.99% certain my mother does not read my blog, inside that homemade little pouch is part of my mom's Mothers Day present, so I will err on the side of caution and not reveal what's in that until after the first Sunday of May.  And no, it is not a Saints football card; I have offered my mom those on countless occasions and she always says "that's nice, but what the hell am I supposed to do with this..." so I don't even try to give them to her anymore.  Moms?  Amirite?

Mail Call: Double Dutch.

       As of the beginning of March, I had never traded with continental Europe and now, just six weeks later, I have done so twice - both times have been with the appropriately named Dutch Card Guy.  When I posted my Topps Heritage box break, the big "hit" I got from that box was a CC Sabathia Mint card with a 1965 nickle embedded in it numbered to /15.  A neat card for certain, but not one exactly in my wheelhouse.  Enter DCG.  I knew he was a CC collector but I wasn't sure if he'd want the card so I put it on eBay.  I got a bid on it immediately, which wasn't too surprising, but low and behold, it was by the aforementioned DCG, which was.  He messaged me that he wanted the card and was willing to bid for it.  I told him, nonsense!  I am sure we can come up with a trade for it.  He told me he had this card he pulled last year:

A coin for coin swap?  Perfection!  I pulled the card's auction immediately and we hammered out some details and this wonderful trade was complete.  I don't know if I am ready to become a Mike Trout super collector but a card like this might get the ball rolling on such a thing.  If I can trade awesome hits for cards like this, it might be doable; his cards aint cheap, ya know...

The details included that wonderful 2005 Topps Steve Trachsel red x-fractor you see below.  Those red refractors really pop and I have found for some reason, the 2005 ones really work, not to mention that is a nifty picture of The Human Rain Delay.  I didn't have a Mets one of these and now I do. As good as the scan here shows it, believe me, it is ten times shinier than that, even.

He also threw in a couple awesome unexpected goodies, that 2014 Donruss Puig and that 2008 UD Masterpiece Ryne Sandberg, great cards both, ones I did not have and will definitely keep.  So thank you once again, Jeroen, for a unique trade. I also want to thank the Dutch Postal Service, which once again got a package across the Atlantic to me in less than 10 days. Sometimes the USPS can't get things across two states in less than 10 days.

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Also in the mail today were these two cards, both interesting in and of themselves even if on the surface they appear rather bland.

I picked up that Roy Campanella on the right from Listia and is just a glorious card.  It is a TCMA card from 1979 and it emulates the classic 1953 Bowman Color set.   It does two things for me: it completes my Campanella player page and it also shows him on a card with a full photo standing - something I neither had seen before nor owned.  Given his tragic accident, I think this was a necessity for his page. 

I picked up the other card on the left from eBay and it doesn't certainly look extraordinary at all, does it?  I mean, it is a player so obscure I had to look up since I have never heard the name - turns out Mike Leclerc had himself a decent couple of years in the NHL before retiring at the tender age of 30.  I will chalk up his anonymity in my world to the fact that he played on the west coast and the Devils don't play the Western Conference much.  I kinda like it because it shows the old garish purple and teal-green colors of the old Anaheim Mighty Ducks plus that so-awful-it's-kinda-neat logo of theirs.  It is a jersey card too, so I get to touch the fuzzy.  But the key to this card is the serial number; anyone who has dug deep into my wantlists knows I have an affinity for the number 527 and lo and behold, yes, this card is serial numbered number 527.  But there is something very special about this particular card, look at the back and see if you can spot it:

Here, I'll make it very obvious for you, in case you are missing it...

Enhance!!!

^^^^^^^ look here dummy.                               

Yes, you are seeing that correctly.  That is a card serial numbered higher than its supposed edition.  I gotta say, there is a lot of reasons that Pacific went out of business and I wanna say quality control might be one of them.  I have never seen such a thing on a trading card?  Have you?  

Mail Call: Ten! Ten Plain White Envelopes!

       Ahahahaha! Okay, well, to be all nit-picky and specific, it is nine plain white envelopes and one yellow one...

                                                                                                                                                                      ^^^ See? Yellow one.

I swear to god, my postman hoards my mail and delivers it all at once.  This represents almost two weeks of purchases on Listia and eBay all spread out on different days and yet somehow, magically, they all get delivered at once.  I mean, yeah, there was three snow storms and a holiday but still, it makes me imagine the Newman style of postal delivery.

Now sprung from their PWE prisons, what you see here is an odd mix - but really, if you read this blog with any sort of regularity, it all makers perfect sense...

In the first row, you'll see I picked off that Pujols and those two 1985 Topps hall of famers for literally nothing on Listia.  I grabbed that gold Jimenez parallel on eBay for a dollar for my pages.  In the second row is some very typical Max pickups, New Orleans Saints and New York Mets cards.  I got that Sid Fernandez for 100 credits on Listia and bought a whole lot of nine cards to secure that Hojo, which I am 98% sure I don't have.  Of course now I have 8 Mets doubles - that I will probably put on Listia.  Oh the circle of life.  The final row shows a couple of Oakland A's players who are both #527 in their respective sets.  Somehow, I still have not written my post about my 527 collection.  At least I - and by extension you - have something to look forward to.  Lastly is one of those Olivia II smutty art cards.  Shiny and boobies for free?  How could I resist?