Trade with Tony of Off Hiatus Baseball Cards.

       Oh, how could I have waited so long to post this trade?  Last month I ran into a new blog (to me at least) in Off Hiatus Baseball Cards.  The proprietor Tony is a huge Brewers fan, as you can tell from his blog's wonderfully dramatic nameplate and background (makes my blue and orange motif seem understated by comparison). He also is very eager to trade and posts trade bait on a weekly basis.  I just happened upon one of these posts when this beauty appeared...

I immediately commented and emailed him that this card must be mine.  Must. Must. Must.  Turns out I was just ahead of someone else that had to have it too - timing in life is everything.  Tony promised I could have the card and we worked out the details.  I put together what I thought, and luckily what Tony also thought, was a wonderful Brewers-and-Gary-Carter laden package.  The low numbered Black Refractor Matt Harvey Heritage card was mine.  His smiley-smirking visage will see me through until he recovers from his surgery.  

Tony also threw in some random Mets cards, my favorite kind of Mets cards:

That first "card" with the logo is actually a tattoo.  I might put it on my face Mike Tyson style next time I go to a Mets game in person.  Those Heritage cards on the bottom were from my wantlist and completed my (base) team set for the year.  Someone reads my want lists...yay!

Tony also included a little note, like I needed to identify who sent me that awesome shiny Harvey card.

Oh, believe me, I will enjoy these cards.  And since you are a Gary Carter fan, I have a feeling we will be doing it again.

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?  

Dispatch From My Bed While I Recover.

       Last Wednesday, I left on a five day excursion for a little well earned R&R.  Most people (wisely) go south for such Spring Break-esque getaways, but me?  I went north to Boston - this breathtaking picture was taken the day after I got there.  But there was a method to my madness, it being the week before St. Patrick's Day and me being 12.5% Irish, I saw some great old friends, took in some local culture and followed the perfect vacation pattern of eat, drink, sleep, eat, drink, sleep, eat drink, sleep.  Not being 23 anymore, this has left me exhausted.

I did get to snap this photo Saturday afternoon after I dropped off a friend at the airport:

I have driven by this sign a million times but only on a traffic free March afternoon did I get to finally capture it on my camera phone.  This has always been a dream of mine.  I think I need to dream bigger. 

I did not stay for the actual amateur night of St. Patrick's Day because, much like Mardi Gras or New Year's Eve, it only brings out the idiots, the tourists, and the people who cannot hold their liquor and then get behind the wheel of their car.  No thanks.  I got home Sunday night to a pile of mail stuffed in the box, the most exciting of which was a cardboard flat from Topps:

I assume this is from their new fulfillment center since I have never gotten one like this.

Inside was a nice treat:

I had gone on a little eBay Triple Thread shopping spree back in January and one of the things I picked up was a redemption for this card.  Nice that it only took them two months and not over a year like last time.  With the season fast approaching, it looks like Zack Wheeler here is going to be a key piece that needs to fall into place if the Mets can even hope to contend.  When I am feeling up to it, I will expand on my whole array of feelings regarding the Mets up coming season.  I will also show you all the goodies I picked up in Boston.  For now, I just need to lay here very still and rest.  My goodness, I am old.

Thick.

Help!

I am reaching out to the Card Blogosphere for some advice and perspective.  As most of you who read this blog with any regularity know, one of the areas where I am stubbornly completist is Topps All Star Rookies.  As luck would have it, this year's flagship set has a few inserts sets devoted to this corner of the Topps Universe.  One of them is a Relic collection with manufactured rookie cups embedded in them numbered to /99.  I got a look at these cards and decided they are quite handsome and while it is cost prohibitive for me to complete an entire set of these, I made the decision to at least make a nine pocket page of them.  This weekend, I got bored and went on a little eBay spending spree and bought a good six of them at, on average, about $15 a pop.  The first of those cards arrived today and, well, there is a problem.  They are thick.  Really thick.  I am talking Kim Kardashian twerking at an ice cream social thick. Here, take a look:

The left is obviously NOMAH! but the card on the right providing thickness perspective is Rod Carew.  Yeah, like I said, thick.

There is no way they will fit in a standard nine pocket page.  I tried and tried and no dice.  I even tried a few different kinds of nine pocket pages with absolutely no luck.  I did have a little brain storm; since the issue is size, I tried to slide the cards into a standard 8-card page and while it is certainly not ideal, as you can see, they did fit.





































Here is what I would like some input on...what should I do here? 

a) go with the eight pocket page set up.

b) hold out hope that there is a nine pocket page out there that will fit these.  In fact, if any of you own or know of anything like this that will fit these gargantuanly thick beasts, I will gladly compensate you with cards, cash, or love to obtain one.

c) suck it up and just collect the whole set and give in to my completist instincts.

d) give it up and sell off the ones I bought - keeping the Gary Carter, of course.

e) something else I haven't thought of, but one of you brilliant homo sapiens has.

So there it all is.  Any and all opinions are greatly appreciated.  I mean, this isn't binding arbitration or anything, but my brain is broken from the initial disappointment and I would like to hear what you have to say.  Thanks in advance.

Triple Trouble.

       I miss breaking high end product.  Oh, I am well aware of my reasons for not doing it anymore (money, sanity, etc.) but that doesn't mean that every once in a while I don't crave the rush of dropping a few hundred dollars on a small shiny box of cards and the heart pounding anticipation of opening the thing.  For all its dangerous fun it is, in the end, merely dangerous.  The end game usually winds up being disappointment and despair and you can't keep chasing the card dragon without it stealing your soul.  But I digress.  My Bukowski-esque romanticizing aside, the one product I can't seem to leave behind is Topps Triple Threads.  I had great luck with the first two incarnations of this stuff and I guess it has never left me.  Even after some very lean pickings in the next couple attempts, it has its hooks in me and has not let go.

After an aborted attempt to join a case break of this year's Triple Threads, I decided to apply that money to some eBay purchases instead.  Not only did I succeed in getting the cards I wanted, I used my new found frugality to do it right (prepare for some humblebragging):

I bought a small lot of game used jerseys for the price of one Matt Harvey by waiting out a couple people on a late night auction.  Selling off the other two cards ended up paying for that Matt Harvey.  The ones numbered to 27 are the gold or sepia tone...it is hard to tell sometimes.  The nice big swatch and the fact that it is much shinier than my scan would indicate make that a tremendous card.  The real star and the card I really had to hold out to get was that Amazin' Triple.  The Triple relics can be real hit or miss as they have gotten very corny and odd in what the pieces spell out.  Here though, you see a classic that can't go wrong. The Mets have been "Amazin'" since 1962 and since this card features David Wright and the two great hopes for the future - Zack Wheeler and the aforementioned Matt Harvey - this was an absolute must have for me.  I really really wanted one that was numbered to /9 and very very shiny but the bidding got out of hand, so I had to settle for the slightly more muted version numbered to /36.

I truly don't care about the numbering as much as I care for the look of the card.  Case in point is that the parallel of the base I loved the most this year was also the highest numbered, the "amethyst" version, or as the laymen would call it, purple.  I am a sucker for purple, so I nailed down a nice lot that not only had three of my favorite players ever (see above) but also allowed me to make a page of current players:

All that blue and purple is jarringly contrasted with the orange of the Kung-Fu Panda in that first spot on the page (and to a lesser extent by Buster Posey in the middle).  Sometimes I just can't help myself. 

I also picked up a lot of base cards so I could make a page of retired players:

Yankees?  Braves??  Tom Glavine?!?!?  At times you are simply at the mercy of the lot you buy.  Aesthetically here, you get a nice George Brett powder blue uni breaking up a ton of old school flannel.  I think this page works well, even with Tom Glavine involved (never forgive, never forget).

Could I have blown a couple of C-notes and gotten my fix?  Sure.  But for a fraction of the cost, I got the cards I really wanted and some piece of mind that maybe as I grow older, I might even grow up.

We Rip What We Sow.

       When I was a kid my mother always used to say to me "go ask, all they can do is say no..."  I have kept that little aphorism in my head most of my adult life.  Really, it's a very positive little piece of advice.  It has rarely gotten me into trouble and it often helps me and opens doors I never would expect to be open.

Here is a nice little example of that advice in action:

Last week I was up late with my usual insomnia and I decided to kill some time surfing eBay.  I went through my saved searches and while I was checking out Gary Carter cards, I saw he was featured on Allen and Ginter rip cards this year.  The couple that I saw were pretty cool, so I started narrowing my searches down.  One thing I do like to do with my favorite players is see if their uniform numbers are available.  After plugging in "08" I didn't find anything, so I checked the completed items.  I saw that about a month ago, indeed a number 08/25 was posted with an outrageous buy it now price.  I clicked on it and also saw that it hadn't sold.  So I dropped the seller a line and asked him about the card and asked if it was still available.  He got back to me right away (he must be an insomniac too) and told me he decided to rip it.  I told him, oh, that's cool, and asked him what he got inside.  He gushed proudly that he got a redemption for a game used piece.  We pleasantly emailed back and forth a few more times and I got around to asking what he would want for the ripped card.  He told me, well, I guess $20 would do the trick.  Now, I had seen other ripped Carter cards going for $25-$30-plus that a) weren't serial numbered 08 b) had him on the Expos and not the Mets and c) had the usual exorbitant shipping costs.  I very politely told him yes and silently squealed with glee as I sent him the money via paypal.  I think my friendly demeanor and interest in what he had pulled from it softened him up.  That or he was just a very polite dude.  Either way, he securely mailed it right away and now this tremendous card is mine. 

tl;dr - I scored this awesome Gary Carter card for $20 by asking about it and being polite.