Trade with Dime Boxes.

This month has been declared the one where I settle all draft folder business.  This week I am focusing upon the trade posts that I scanned and set up, but for some reason, did not complete. 

Last July, I had a card overload, full of show trips, dog sitting, and sorting through a lot of new product that I had ripped but not collated properly. I had a great time doing nothing and as I read through blogs, I could go through want lists and help out.  Enter Nick and his blog Dime Boxes - The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey (sort of the blog equivalent of How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb). I am a huge fan of this frugal and eclectic approach to collecting.  When I posted Topps series two, Nick let me know he was building the set and would like to swap to get my cards since I was not.  I checked out his wantlists and saw he needed a bunch of other 2014 stuff as well and I sent him an email and after the usual back and forth, I sent off a metric fuckton* of cards from his lists.

In return, a few weeks later, I found a fat and heavy jiffy pack full of Mets cards. 

That John Maine covers not only my love of Mets cards but one of my favorite collecting quirks. It is also impressive to find a Mike Piazza card I do not have.

This pack was loaded with oddballs and oddities.  I mean, when was the last time you got a package with two pitchers batting cards?  Not to mention a player taking photos card?

Plus there was two vague shiny Mets I didn't have, that 3D Bonilla and that dufex Murray.  The early 90s were a black hole for the Mets, but the cards were pretty sweet.

And the oddballs keep coming fast and furious here.  Food issues, box sets, Ted Williams faux-vintage and...

...SSPC cards.  How great is it when an Archives reprint is the least oddball of any card in a scan?

Speaking of faux-vintage, there was some Tom Terrific cards too.  And some Nolan Ryan on the Mets cards. I need to make a Nolan Ryan Mets page now that I finally have more cards of him in blue and orange than cowboy hats.

And low and behold, it's one of my all time favorite card sets from the 1990s, that hot pink Classic update set.  I have the whole set somewhere - I recall buying a bunch of those on clearance at Bradlees back in the day - I just didn't have a single of that Julio Machado card. Machado was a pretty terrible pitcher but he is famous for eating iguana and randomly killing a woman after a car accident.  Seriously, I couldn't make that up if I tried.

Not only were there great Mets cards in the package, there were some cards straight off my want lists too.  He sent cards for my Mike Trout collection and my Jim Bunning and Jim Kaat pages.  I am still torn if I should start a Trout collection but I am accumulating his cards anyway.

Also from my player collections were a couple of Jeff Bagwells and Reggie Jacksons, two of my faves.  That center Bagwell hologram is so beautiful yet so vague, I'd never even seen it before. 

There was so much in that package, I obviously ran out of patience for it and just did a Gilligan's Island "and the rest" on it.  Just from here, I see Diamond Kings, more food issues, more Classic, some 1985 All Star cards, 1990 Score Traded, a couple more Reggie Jacksons, and I wisely emphasized the 1966 Topps Dan Napoleon. That is a super card.

Nick put a friendly little note in with the trade pack and yes, I can assure you these cards found me well.  I am just sorry it took me so long to post this awesome trade.  Thanks, Nick!

*it's an industry term

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.

***

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?  

Double Trade Post*

*in which I am grateful for my trade partners' generosity and then a dick about their idiosyncrasies.

I am way behind in my trade posts so I am gonna try to tackle them all this week and I am going to start by taking care of two of them, both dealing with two first time traders and new Topps cards. 

First comes a wonderful swap with Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown.  During the flurry of 2014 Topps posts, I noticed he had posted a Red Target Zack Wheeler parallel and dropped him a line saying I would love to have it.  He immediately got back to me and we were off and running.  He sent that wonderful Wheeler and a few other goodies.

The first was a chrome card of the gone-but-never-forgotten RA Dickey - sure it's metallic, but not shiny.  Now if it is shiny you want, that Pacific John Franco can't be beat.  That is not only a spectacular card, but also a card I did not have, which is always a marvelous surprise when trading blind.  Then came a few recent cards of Mets players and then some junk wax.  Okay, I always appreciate the effort.  But wait!  This is Gav we are talking about and he does a special thing to junk wax:

This is the best I could do to capture the magic - Ansel Adams I am not.

He makes those mutherfuckers glow in the dark!!!! And he sent three of them for me, all of them numbered and signed buy the artist...

My only issue with Gavin's package?  He used header cards for protection (always smart) but he wrote his note on this graphic filled Ultra Pro card when he had a nice blank canvas to scribble on this Fleer checklist.  Boy, can I be a nitpicking dick or what?  Anyway, sincere thanks Gavin for the great surprises in the trade, I am certain this won't be our last.  I hope what I sent makes up for my being a bastard.

My other 2014 Topps swap was with Chris of The Raz Card Blog.  After I had listed my 2014 Topps  series 1 goodies, Raz asked me about my four Power Player inserts.  I told him if he had any Mets from this year that I didn't have that I would be glad to send them.  And boy did he send some Mets:

Two Zack Wheeler inserts and a Matt Harvey for my player collection, not to mention a sparkly red Daniel Murphy - that is a great picture on this year's card with the Home Run Apple in the background.  He also sent me three of the All Rookie Cup Team inserts, of which I had pulled exactly zero.  Along with an incomplete eBay lot, I was able to put together the whole set in easy frugal fashion and take it off my want list. 

And my lord, look at how neatly these cards were packed:

I have received hundred dollar cards from eBay sellers that weren't so well protected.  Not to mention the penmanship on the note...way to make the rest of us look bad Chris.

So this is what I have become?  The kind of person who find fault in the kindest of gestures?  What is wrong with me?  I am such an asshole.  Chris, on the other hand, is awesome.  Thanks for initiating this trade and I am sure we will do it again soon. 

World Series Rack Packs.

       Walking into K-Mart on a Friday afternoon before Halloween and the perfect killer Frankensnowideathicane 2012, in retrospect, was not the best idea.  First of all, I bought candy a good 4 days before I am going to need it, which means most of it will be eaten between today and the Hallows on Tuesday.  Secondly, I had to walk past the card aisle not once but twice and the siren song of new Topps and discounted product was just too much to ignore.  I noticed that the Update series was out, so I grabbed a couple of the jumbo rack packs, just to amuse myself.  I also saw there was some discounted OPC hockey from a couple years ago, so I snatched one of those too.

Quick aside: I noticed Topps puts their Twitter and Facebook right on the packages now.  Even just 2 years ago, Upper Deck did not have that information on their wrappers. I will have to look to see when they started to put this on the packs.  One thing I love about the old wax packs from the 70's and 80's are the clubs and freebies they advertise on the backs of the wrappers and how dated and odd they look now.  I wonder if kids will look back at these packs in a couple of decades with the same sort of wonderment.  "What the heck is a facebook?" they will ask and go back to playing their 3D imbedded sensory video games that are implanted at birth, or something like that.  Anyway, back to the matter at hand.


The World Series often brings out a longing for baseball cards, new and old alike, in my heart.  Granted, I haven't watched my team in one for a dozen years and haven't seen an actual winner in 26 (though 2004 and 2007 were fun), but there is still a rush that comes from the fall classic.  I like to watch the games, or at very least have them on in the background.  It is all the more enjoyable this year that the Yankees are not involved.  Anyway, let's take a look at what came out of these packs.  I don't like to list every card, so let's just go with the nine highlights:

Hey look, it's superman Mike Trout, I am touting him as MVP of the league.  Sure Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown, but Ted Williams won TWO triple crowns, do you know how many MVPs he won in those years?  Zero.  So I don't think the triple crown is an automatic MVP win.  Also here is the newly minted Giancarlo Stanton.  If I had such a lyrical name as Giancarlo, I would never let anyone call me anything but that.  I assume he went by Mike as a kid because other children couldn't say Giancarlo.  Kids are the worst.  We also have some rookie cards of Trevor Bauer and Will Middlebrooks (who is also on the Golden Giveaway card).  I also got the obligatory Bryce Harper card.  It is players like this that make me feel old.  I am technically old enough to be his father (if I was very popular/irresponsible in high school, that is).  Roy Oswalt tried to pull the Pedro Martinez/Roger Clemens trick of coming in halfway through the year and didn't fare so well.  I have liked Roy ever since I read that he got a bulldozer as a signing bonus (or maybe he bought one with his signing bonus) either way, he went on his ranch and played with it for days.  He didn't really have any heavy earth to move at the time, he just played with it...that sounds like a kid at heart if ever I heard one. On the bottom there are more 1987 minis, the shiny gold and, in a similar move to last year when they put the series 1 and 2 liquorfractors in update, they have the gold numbered parallels for the regular issue in the update.  Why Topps chose to do this and not just, you know, put them in with the proper series, proves that Topps sometimes just likes fucking with us.

Here is Rack Pack #2, and not that it is a contest, but this one was far better:

I didn't get a single Met in the first pack, in this one, I got four, including two Dickeys.  And I have proven time and again how much I love my Dickeys.  Also there are one of my new favorites on the team, Jordany Valdespin, adored for his awesome name, goofy attitude, and hard hitting.  Valdespin can't catch a cold, which means he will eventually find his way to the American League, but I will enjoy him for as long as he is on the Mets.  On the complete opposite end of the love spectrum is Manny Acosta.  The Mets bullpen in 2012 was made of kerosine, but Acosta was more water on magnesium.  I watched him give up 3 runs in 2 innings and his ERA went down.  He was awful.  I mean car crash involving a school bus and a liquid nitrogen tanker awful.  He was so bad, I heckled him in Citizen Bank Ballpark better than the Phillies fans could.  If Manny Acosta is on the team next year, I will know the current regime has no plan on winning anytime soon.  In that upper right corner is the very odd sight of Ichiro in a Yankees uniform. [UPDATE: Eagle eyed reader Nick of Baseball Dime Boxes tells me this cool card is the SP] I watched him the last couple of months of the season and all through the playoffs and I could not get used to this.  I can only imagine what Mariners fans thought of the whole thing.  That other base card is a great shot of the Reds catcher with a glove on his head.  I enjoy silly cards like this and this one is kinda subtle since it does not feature the player listed on the card.  This card will probably make it on to my 2012 Topps page.  The last row is the inserts, which are the same kind as the other rack.  I have no idea if that is the way they are supposed to be or if it is a coincidence.  That mini Mattingly reminds me of the 1987 league leader mini, which is one of my favorite Mattingly cards.  He had a very distinctive follow through on his swing and any card that captures it looks pretty damn good.  If you are building this set/series, drop me an email with your wantlist and I will be happy to send what I have to you.  Everything except the Mets, the Trout, the Ichiro, the Mattingly, and the Simon card are for trade.  I did not use the Golden Giveaway numbers, either, so those are up for grabs if you drop me a line as well.

Wait! There was also hockey cards in this purchase.  I am so mad at hockey right now, I cannot really express my feelings on the matter without swearing and screaming.  The usual cliche anger of millionaire vs. billionaires is tinged with the fact that they just did this 7 years ago.  How greedy/stupid/self-destructive do you have to be to have a lockout again?!?  Anyway, the World Series always reminds me that hockey is around the corner, but this year, it just reminds me that once it ends, I have to wait for all this NHL nonsense to be cleared up; nonsense that really could be settled in a couple hours if everyone involved wasn't dumber than a box of hammers.  I could rant and ramble about this for a long time, and I have done enough of that in this post...

/soapbox

OK, enough, let's look at the highlights of the 2009-2010 OPC pack:

I got one lonely Devil, Colin White, who isn't even on the team anymore.  I also got one rookie, a dude named Matt Hendricks whom I have never heard of before, but I went to school with a bunch of kids named Hendricks and I am pretty sure one of them was named Matt.  I am sure it is not the same one, though.  Also here are former Devil Bill Guerin, rare black dude Wayne Simmonds, a whole bunch of goalies, and one of my favorite hockey names - Martin St. Louis.  If you are a hockey fan/francophile, you know how to pronounce his name correctly.  Why he hasn't been traded to the Blues, I will never understand. 

Mancrush.

From the lovely folks at the urban dictionary:

Man·crush
noun   \manˈkrəsh\

1.  When a straight man has a "crush" on another man, not sexual but kind of idolizing him.

          Many straight men end up having man crushes on Johnny Depp (I don't blame them).

2.  A man having extreme admiration for another man, as though he wants to be him.

          "I've got one hell of a man crush on Hugh Hefner. He's made all the right moves."

       There are a dozen other definitions, but they all say about the same thing.  I am not ashamed to say that I officially have a mancrush on Matt Harvey.  I wrote about him in July during the occasion of his major league debut.  I wasn't 100% sure at the time if I was going to give over my heart to him.  Well, six gutty grand innings later, he had struck out 11 and looked like an absolute horse on the mound.  This wasn't Bill Pulsipher or Paul Wilson fools gold - no way - you could see right away that this kid is a stud: great mechanics, explosive fastball, bulldog attitude.  I lamented not having received a redemption autograph in that other post.  Well, I have since augmented my Matt Harvey collection:

Those bottom three Bowman platinum cards are refractors.  I wouldn't mind picking up a couple more of the 2010 Bowman rookie rainbow now before the cards get to be way too expensive.  Otherwise, I think this is a pretty nice beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.  If it weren't for my policy of not giving the Wilpons any of my money this year, I would have already headed over to Citifield to see him in person.  For now, I will be content to watch him from my living room, as I will be tonight against the Cardinals.

You should know, my first mancrush came to be on May, 22, 1998.  That was the day the Mets traded for Mike Piazza:

This is a page of his first 1998 cards as a Met, it is one of my favorite pages in all my collection.  I had always admired Piazza from afar.  His 1997 season was one for the ages: .362 40 HR 124 RBI as a catcher.  How could you not respect numbers like that from a man wearing the tools of ignorance?  Then early in 1998, the rumblings came that the Dodgers did not want to sign Piazza to a long term contract for the money he wanted.  Next thing you know, he was shipped off to the Marlins and the baseball world was abuzz.  The Mets (back when the Mets actually traded for good players) got him a week later.  I still remember where I was when I heard them announce the trade, it was that big a deal for me.  And let me tell you, it was mancrush at first sight.  He looked so good in that Mets uniform.  He brought credibility to a team that had been trying to find some, much the same way that Gary Carter had 13 years earlier.  Yes, I idolized Gary Carter, but that is because I was a kid when he was playing.  I was a week short of being 23 years old on that day in 1998, so officially a man, thus Mike Piazza will always be my first mancrush.  Oddly enough, on top of all that, today is his 44th birthday.  Happy Birthday Mike!
 
There have been others in between then and now (Prince Fielder, Nomar Garciaparra, Torii Hunter to name a few) but there is one other player to keep an eye on for my baseball admiration, Mike Trout:

My Trout collection is small, obviously, just as my infatuation for him is still growing.  But this kid is unbelievable.  I don't think I have ever sought out an Angel game in my life, but now, as long as this kid is playing, if they are on MLB network or ESPN, I won't miss one.  Plus, he is a Jersey Boy, so that might add to the allure.

***

While I was looking for that Matt Harvey jersey card I thought I had (and I did) I found this card:

This is a 2005 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Team Trios card.  It features bat pieces and uniform swatches of Tom Seaver, Nolan Ryan, and Dwight Gooden and is numbered to /100.   I had completely forgotten that I owned this awesome card.  Yet there it was, misfiled in my Mets box with some rookies and right next to Matt Harvey jersey card.  Is that an omen?  A coincidence?  I will not speculate.  I will say this card easily fits into my favorites category.  Hopefully, Matt Harvey will fit in nicely with these pitchers in Mets history.