At the Trade Deadline 50: Secret Santa Delivery from Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle

In a bit of a twist, Greg Zakwin of the blog Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle and I were assigned as each other's Secret Santas in the Bob Walk the Plank gift exchange organized by Matthew Scott. I received a big stack of cardboard in the mail from Greg, touching on many of my collecting interests.

As with most very large trade packages, I just scanned many of the highlights from the bunch. It's Christmas Eve as I write this, and there are family events to participate in. There are some big names here, but I think my favorite card of this bunch is actually the 1975 SSPC card of Roger Craig. He is pictured on the front as a coach for the Astros, but on the back he is listed in his new position as a coach with the Padres. As a player, he was on three World Series-winning teams and also lost the first game in Mets history. I've been meaning to pick up some more of those SSPC cards, but as with many of my hobby aspirations, I haven't really got around to it yet.

Other sports were well-represented in the package, as well as non-sports, like NASCAR (lol!). Von Miller is the cornerstone of the Denver Broncos right now, a team that is clinging to playoff hopes at the moment. I think that to get in, they have to win tough games against Kansas City and Oakland and hope that Miami loses to New England next week and that Pittsburgh beats Baltimore this week. Basically, the defending Super Bowl champions need to take care of business, and they need some help elsewhere to get into the postseason tournament.

It's always nice when I get some Yao Ming cardboard in my hands. He was a great player, but his career happened when I was out of collecting, so I have very little of his cardboard. There were plenty of Rockets from several eras in the package. How charmed was Robert Horry's career? He has seven NBA Championships with three teams, more rings than greats like Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, and Shaquille O'Neal.

Here's some horizontal cards, with some Broncos wearing college uniforms and a Max Scherzer/Bartolo Colon sighting. I still haven't been able to decide on a favorite card of 2016 for P-Town Tom's contest yet, but I think Colon's Topps NOW Home Run card is in the running.

These are cards for TV shows that are very popular, but that I have never watched. I pretty much checked out of watching television a decade or so ago. I will watch a movie from time to time, and I watch sports occasionally, but I can't remember the last TV series I watched for more than an episode or two. Ron Swanson, however, has been the subject of enough memes that I have a pretty good handle on the character. I think he is the official mascot of Greg's blog. Archer is something I'm only vaguely aware of, mostly due to reading about Greg's pursuit of the set and its sketch cards.

This is a terrible picture, but this is a 1967 Coke cap of Harmon Killebrew. It looks better in person. Killebrew was from a town not far from the town I spent my teen years in, and is probably one of the few positive things that have ever come out of that place.

This Rashad Evans card hails from 2010 Topps UFC, and is the Onyx parallel numbered # 067 / 188. Evans had a pretty good run to start his UFC career, but appears to be on the downside of things now, losing 4 of his last 6 fights.

Jay Cutler spent a couple of seasons as the Broncos' starter at quarterback. He had plenty of talent, but attitude questions and injuries (and interceptions) have made him a polarizing figure in Denver and then in Chicago. His trade to the Bears led to the Kyle Orton era in Denver, which eventually led to Tebowmania, which was a bright spot after many years of less-than-exciting football. I am pretty sure that this is my first Jay Cutler relic. It comes from 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces.

This card could cause a lot of contention in my household. For some reason my eldest son decided that he hates the Broncos and loves the Bengals. Seeing both teams together on one card could totally blow his mind. Terrell Davis helped the Broncos win a couple of Super Bowls and racked up plenty of awards in an injury-shortened career. His inclusion in this TD Threats relic set is somewhat questionable, as the main stat highlighted is the number of touchdowns each player scored in 2001. Corey Dillon scored 13 TD's, while T.D. scored 0 TD's in an injury-plagued year. But this is a cool card in spite of that, as it is pretty rare for me to make an addition to my Denver Broncos collection.

This is probably my favorite card of the package, as I don't think I had a Clyde Drexler relic in my collection yet, and he played a role in helping the Rockets win their 1995 Championship, reuniting with his college teammate Hakeem Olajuwon. The relic is contained in that basketball die-cut window, and this is just a good-looking Championship Material relic card from 2009-10 Topps Basketball.

This was a fun package to open, and I was very happy to add some cards to player collections that I often neglect, especially the relic cards for players I didn't have relics for. I'm glad that I decided to participate in the Secret Santa project. It was fun to shop for my person, and it was fun to receive a surprise package in the mail. Thank you to Greg Zakwin for the cards and Matthew Scott for organizing the exchange!

Pack of the Day 112: 2015 Topps Update Blaster Box

One of my sons saved up enough money to buy a toy he wanted, so I took him to Target to make the purchase. While we were there I grabbed a blaster box of 2015 Topps Update. I've been thinking about set building lately as the last set I built from packs and singles was 2014 Topps Stadium Club. Every 2015 set I have was purchased online from a case breaker. It is definitely cheaper in the long run to buy the sets outright, but you lose some of the sense of accomplishment that comes when you track down those last few cards that you needed. Instead you click a button and a few days later the whole thing shows up in a box. I don't think 2015 Topps Update will be the next set I build on my own, though.

I picked out a few base cards to scan. Evan Gattis was probably my favorite regular season Astro, but he sure seemed to struggle during the playoffs. His at-bats were painful to watch, and he just looked uncomfortable out there. I felt bad for him. I felt like Conger played pretty well this year, but it sucked when a speedster from the opposing team got on base because you knew Conger couldn't throw them out. It seemed like if I guy got to first on Conger you might as well let them go straight to third. I picked the Joey Gallo card because I thought his running face was kind of funny. Felix Hernandez is one of the guys I kind of collect, but I don't really specifically chase his singles down. I just hold on to his cards when I get them.

Correa and Altuve make up quite a duo in the Houston middle infield. The corners are where the Astros have problems. When I pulled that Francouer card I thought, "That guy is still around?" It seems like he's been around forever. Looking into it a little more, he was drafted in 2002, which is two years after I graduated from high school. So he has been hanging around the MLB for basically my whole adult life. I thought something was off about that Ike Davis photo, like maybe it was an airbrush job or something. The stadium looked right for an A's player, though, so I wasn't sure what the deal was. I went to Getty Images and searched out the photo. It is an actual A's photo from a game against the Angels on April 30th, but whoever adjusted the picture for this baseball card turned the green up to eleven. In the actual photo the jersey and helmet are very dark, to where they could almost pass for black in spots. On the card they are a ludicrous shade of bright green.

My other note on the base cards is that whoever does the font for the card numbers is a lunatic. Some numbers are in very little font and some numbers are printed in huge characters. I couldn't find any rhyme or reason in it. Maybe cards from certain sheets have different number sizes or something. I don't know. If I were a basic white girl, I literally couldn't even.

I think that Highlight of the Year set is a continuation of an insert from the other Topps sets this year. There are plenty of big names in the set, as big plays are how you become a big name. Tape Measure Blasts is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a set that records the estimated distance of some famous home runs.

This 1st Home Run set is a Retail-exclusive set that highlights a player's first big league home run, with the date on the front and a description of the hit on the back. I guess it's a cool idea for an insert set, and based on these pulls it looks like there are a few names on the checklist that don't often get a lot of hobby love. We'l revisit this 1st Home Run theme later on in the post.

My timing for posting about it is off a bit, but I pulled that Jackie Robinson card on the anniversary of his death. I kind of like the design for the Rookie Sensations insert of Jacob deGrom. He's having quite the start to his career. He was the Rookie of the Year last season, an All-Star this season, and he's starting Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday. Most guys don't even do all that in their careers, let alone pack it all in to the first couple seasons. The two cards on the bottom are throwback variations, which I believe are exclusive to cards purchased at specific retailers. They've got Gold borders and an old-school Topps logo to set them apart from regular base cards.

I also pulled a couple of Gold parallels, Justin Turner and Bobby Parnell. They are numbered # / 2015. That Valencia card is a Rainbow Foil parallel. They are a tougher pull (1:10 packs vs. 1:6 packs) than the Gold parallels, but they are not serially-numbered. The Michael Wacha card is a Sabermetric Stat Back variation. Those are pretty rare, with the odds telling me they are a 1:68 pack pull. Too bad it's Michael Wacha, who is pretty much the least interesting name on the Stat Back Variation checklist.

Rareties is an insert that celebrates rare achievements in baseball, like a walk-off steal of home and earning a save on 3 pitches. Pride & Perseverance is an insert about players who have overcome disabilities and hardships to have major league careers. Buddy Carlyle was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. This and the Whatever Works insert are the two from Update that I am thinking about collecting. Maybe that Rookie Sensations set too, although those are likely to be overpriced. Whatever Works talks about different superstitions and rituals that ball players have used to keep their luck up or stay consistent. The Biggio card talks about his crusty batting helmet. I believe the All-Star inserts, like that Manny Machado card, are also a Retail-exclusive set.

That Greinke card is also part of the All-Star Game Access set. Each blaster also comes with a special 1st Home Run medallion card, which is pretty much the same as the regular 1st Home Run set except that it has a big metal ingot in the middle of it. When I grabbed this Mark Teixeira card just now to look at the back of it I dropped it on my desk and the lower right corner is pretty gnarly-looking. So much for that card. It always sucks to drop a card and have it come away damaged. With the weight of that medallion even a three- or four-inch drop is enough to completely annihilate a corner. In light of that turn of events I don't really feel like writing any more about this blaster. I didn't pull anything too crazy, but it was nice to get a look at the set and see some of the inserts and base cards. I'll probably wind up buying a set online to close out my 2015 Topps set for the year.

At the Trade Deadline 32: Mystery Solved - The Case of the Unremembered PWE

The Astros couldn't withstand the Royals in Game 5 and they've been eliminated from the 2015 playoffs. They did pretty well for a team that wasn't really expected to arrive for another couple years, and they gained some valuable playoff experience to help them prepare for next time. They even led Game 5 for a couple of innings, but even the 2 runs they managed seemed like a lucky coincidence after Gattis got on base on a lucky single and Valbuena hit Cueto's one mistake over the fence. Especially after the Royals went ahead it seemed like the Houston batters lost their composure and came up hacking. Cueto was dealing, too, but Houston's bats weren't doing anything to help themselves. Hopefully Houston can keep most of the roster together this off-season and add a couple good pieces for next year's run.

Now I have to join fans of the other 25 currently-eliminated teams in either ignoring baseball until Spring or choosing a secondary rooting interest for the LCS round. I am currently leaning toward Toronto. I'd like to see R.A. Dickey win a championship, and I like a lot of the other players on the roster. I even liked Jose Bautista's bat flip. The MLB could use some WWE-style swagger in small doses, and if Sam Dyson doesn't like that kind of emotional display he ought not to throw pitches that get launched into orbit during an emotional elimination game.

I found this scan in my folder, and I couldn't for the life of me remember where it was from. I think I have solved the mystery, though, as digging through the piles on my desk unearthed an empty envelope from Sportscards from the Dollar Store. Putting 2 and 2 together, I believe these cards came from that envelope. The baseball cards are mostly from the Topps Archives set, which is one of my favorite products but has been priced out of my league by various celebrity autographs. I still like the idea of it, though. There were also several Houston Rockets cards, including these shiny Prestige cards of James Harden and Terrence Jones.

That Corey Brewer card is from the 2014-15 Panini Donruss set, which I posted about just a few days ago. I believe Jordie Benn was included in this mailing because of his deluxe-sized beard. Fernando Rodney and Robinson Cano close things out. Cano had kind of a rough year with 'only' 3.4 WAR, which he blamed on adjusting to a stomach ailment. Rodney kind of had a rough year because he's Fernando Rodney. He's on the Cubs' playoff roster, though, so that counts for something. He threw the ball pretty well for them after he wore out his welcome with the Mariners and got traded. I wonder if they'll actually let him pitch during their run? edit: It turns out they did let him pitch, and he even did some Fernando Rodney stuff!

Thanks for the cards, buckstorecards! Sorry your envelope and the related scans got buried for a while!

Pack of the Day 110: 2014 Topps Chrome Blaster Box

I picked up a blaster of 2014 Topps Chrome at some point in the last couple of months. I don't remember buying it, but it must have been the most appealing thing in the discount box at the time, because I doubt this is something I would have elected to purchase at full price.

The bonus item in this blaster is a pack of 4 blaster-exclusive Purple Refractors. That Yasiel Puig up there would have been a pretty good pull in 2014. This year hasn't been as kind to him. I haven't been tracking his card prices, but I would imagine they've dropped off significantly.

I got a couple of Refractors from the box, as well as an X-Fractor. Jon Singleton is a PC guy, but I think I already had this Refractor of him. Brandon Moss played for Cleveland and St. Louis this year and is in the playoffs, so I guess that's the good part about getting traded from the A's and the Indians. I respect Napoli's beard game, but I don't really like all those East Coast teams. I also got that Justin Verlander Chrome Connections Die-Cut insert that is designed to make the stack of cards it resides in very unstable and impossible to pick up.

More playoff guys, except that Marte's team made a quick exit and Donaldson wears a bluer uniform now. Kershaw just can't catch a break and Donaldson's Blue Jays are on the verge of elimination after being pretty much the postseason favorites going into this thing.

I've probably already posted that R.A. Dickey card several times, but I will probably post it again any time I pull it from a pack. The rest of these guys were included because they are also horizontal cards and I needed three more for the scan.

This was the big pull of the box, a Blue Refractor of Jurickson Profar, whose name sounds kind of like an investment firm or pharmaceuticals company. Maybe he needs the services of a pharmaceuticals company, as he has missed all of the last two seasons because of a shoulder injury. This one is numbered # 188 / 199, which is an aesthetically-pleasing number by all accounts.

Mysterious Packages, Trade E-Mails, and 2014 Stadium Club Members Only x4

I have recently received a couple of mystery packages from names I don't recognize. I hope that I have not been making trade arrangements in my sleep and then deleting the e-mails related to them. If you have sent me a package in the last month or so and not gotten any kind of response from me, it is because I don't know who you are and I can't find anything in my e-mail history that matches the name on the return label.

Others have reached out to me via e-mail or blog comment about potential trades. The card collecting part of my life is rather disorganized right now, and I am having some difficulty agreeing to trades because I don't have a good idea of what I have to trade and/or where exactly any trade bait might be found among my card stacks. I've also been buying collated sets and specific singles rather than wax lately, so I haven't really been adding much to my trade bait pile. Now that all of the excuses are out of the way, I will show off a few cards.

I picked up a few more of these 2014 Stadium Club Members Only parallels over the last few months. A couple of them actually fit into my player collections. I would really like to track down a copy of R.A. Dickey's card from this set, but it has proven elusive. There are estimated to be less than 10 copies of each of the cards in this parallel set, so it could be a while before I find one.

First up is the speedy Pirates outfielder, Starling Marte. He's put up some pretty good numbers the last two seasons, and he should be on track to do more of the same this season. I don't know exactly why I like the Pirates more than some other teams, but it probably has to do with their uniform colors and these:

Those pillbox caps are cool. I must have come into contact with some earlier baseball cards during my early 90's childhood, because I remember seeing these caps on Pirates players and thinking they were so different from anything anyone else was wearing. And being different was pretty darn neat.

I grabbed this Torii Hunter card, mostly because there wasn't much bidding activity on it. The auctions for these with low starting prices have pretty well dried up and been replaced by fixed-price listings, but every once in a while one will pop up and I'll have a chance at it. I haven't been as dedicated to it as I once was, so I can think of 9 or 10 recently that I missed by $0.25 or $1.00. I try not to get too broken up about losing auctions. There are so many cards out there that I will never get all of the ones I want, so I have adopted a policy of getting what I can and letting the rest go. Sometimes it is difficult to choose what to chase and what to ignore, but I am getting there.

I am hoping that Billy Butler can get back on track this year with the A's. He had a pretty good run from 2009-2013, but his 2014 was kind of a down year. He seems like a pretty personable dude, but he's got a big contract to live up to. I was pretty happy to snag this card for my 'Country Breakfast' player collection.

Finally, I added a copy of Jose Bautista's card. 'Joey Bats' had his power bat turn on in big way for the 2010 and 2011 seasons. He's done his share of mashing since then, too, but the numbers haven't been quite as gaudy. He'll be one of the key components as the Blue Jays try to end their 21-year absence from the playoffs. I don't think bats are going to be their downfall, but their pitching doesn't look strong enough to me to be a legitimate contender.

And those are four of my most recent Members Only pickups from 2014 Topps Stadium Club.

A Box of Munnatawket Mini Awesomeness

Around the time I got that Christmas card from the creator of the fabled Munnatawket mini card set, I won a couple of his auctions for cards in the set, Freddie Freeman and Torii Hunter. There was an e-mail exchange in which I apologized for being a cheapass and winning his cards with lowball bids while some of the other cards sold for a bit more and also telling him that I planned to buy more cards from him soon, so he could save on shipping and just hold Hunter and Freeman until that happened, and he asked me if I was serious about putting together the whole thing. I said something along the lines of, "Heck yeah!" and he told me that the package with the two cards in it might be a little bigger than expected. There was more to it, but those were the highlights.

It was definitely a little bit bigger than a two-card envelope. It was a whole box of these things, featuring various quantities of most of the cards in the set. I sorted them out by number and put them all into pages row by row, gaining an immense feeling of satisfaction as the little pockets filled up. The photo above shows the current state of the box, so you can see that there were plenty left over after I took the ones I needed.

He encouraged me to share them with other people, so I have been including a few in each trade package I send out, trying to match subjects in the set to the interests of other collectors. There are some good baseball photos in the set, but some of my favorites include the oddballs like Dirk Nowitzki dressed in a Rangers uniform and holding a basketball.

In true Ginter fashion, the checklist includes figures from outside the world of sports, like Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. I guess you could call her the founder of a sport, as there is an official U.S. Quidditch league with their own logo, World Cup tournament, and even a concussion policy. It looks like the Lone Star Quidditch Club currently is ranked #1, but their perfect record is held down by a weak Strength of Schedule. It could be argued that #5 Maryland Quidditch and #6 Ohio State Quidditch have the more impressive resumes. My preferred school's team, The Moscow Manticores at the University of Idaho, aren't ranked dead last, but they have a 1-2 record and they are rated last in Strength of Schedule. Interesting stuff.

I don't have a lot to say about this row of cards, but it was on one of the pages I scanned and I had to include it. Also, it's not very often that Justin Verlander gets outdone in a baseball card set, but in this case...

...his girlfriend Kate Upton outdoes him by about 6500%, with the highly sought-after #0 card in the set. I did not receive any duplicates of that one, so you'll have to track it down using your own wiles. I sent a copy of the Spider-Man card to the UK recently as a throw-in with a comic book sketch card I sold to someone there.

This row is full of big names, and also Wil Myers. The rest of these guys should be pretty familiar to baseball fans. It's a little jarring to see Morneau in a Pirates uniform, as he only spent 25 games with that organization. 

I'll close this up with Michael Morse, the current last card in the base set, one of the autographs, and a couple of the photo variations from the set. Actually, I am not sure which versions of Giancarlo Stanton and Manny Machado are the regular cards and which are the variations, but there are (at least) two different cards for them. Cespedes has an Athletics card and a Red Sox card, so the order those go in is more obvious. I have since discovered that there are even more interesting things in this set, but they were part of different transactions and they will get their own posts.

This was among the coolest packages I got last year, and I will be trying to pay this one forward for a long time. So if you get a package from me this year and you're like, "What? I don't remember setting up a trade with this guy," you can thank folks like roddster, Too Many Verlanders/Manninghams, Zippy Zappy, The Prowling Cat, Cards on Cards and Nachos Grande for being so generous and inspiring me to try to do the same. Sometimes I fail, but I have found myself picking things up with other collectors in mind a bit more often lately and looking for one more thing to add to an outbound package.

Thanks for the cards!