Trades-A-Poppin'!

I’ve been a card-mailing fiend these past few weeks. I guess the holiday season has me in a giving mood. It certainly has me in a thankful mood. Take a look at this…

When I started this blog, I had a partial set of 2010 Topps and a stack of rando base cards in an old air filter box. Now, I’ve got 23 (!!!) sets each within a few dozen cards of completion. And a stack of Update sets in binders. Some of these cards I bought in bulk, or in full sets, but a crazy amount of these cards were mailed to me by the good folks of the card blogosphere. I can say without question that the past year has been the most fun – and the most productive – that I’ve ever had collecting.

It seems I am not the only one in a giving mood. I’ve had a few nice trades returns come in this past week. Let’s take a look.

First up is Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown. This is in return for a Warren Spahn autograph that eventually found its way to his collection. It was a big ol’ stack of Brewers cards with a few customs tossed in for good measure.

I’ve gotten a few of these Fire cards in trades. They look… ok. I can’t really get into anything that cuts the background out of the photos, but I’ll admit that this is among the better-looking sets of that type.

But, holy Hell, this Villar foil-shiny thing is pretty cool looking. Hopefully, he can regain this stroke in 2018.

More shiny! Gavin included a number of, well, numbered cards. This is from Topps Tribute, numbered out of 99. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten a new Prince Fielder card.

This one was numbered out of 25… perhaps the lowest-population Brewers card in my collection. This one looks very nice in person.

Burnitz! This guy was my favorite when he was in his Brewers prime. He had a ferocious uppercut swing and was – for a year or two – one of the best power hitting OFs in the league. You don’t see that distressed image gimmick on too many cards anymore, thank God.

Another Braunie, this one a Heritage refractor. These were, if I remember right, a numbered parallel at one time. This one isn’t. Ah well.

Now you really gotta dig deep to find a card of a Brewers I’ve never heard of, but Gavin did it. Derek Miller pitched four pro seasons in the Brewers org, never rising above AA. According the back of the card, he was 23-0 with a 0.39 ERA in high school.

As a general rule, I don’t go after relic cards. I don’t put much faith in the little scraps of fabric they include. But, as cards, I’ll still collect them, regardless of whatever laundry bits are attached. These two are both pretty nice-looking to boot.

My favorites might be these customs, however. Here we see Ken Griffey Jr. in his classic Moeller High uni.

And here we have not just A dude, but THE Dude. So that’s what you call him. That, or his Dudeness, Duder... or El Duderino, if you’re not into that whole brevity thing. The Big Lebowski is one of my favorite movies of all-time and I swear it gets funnier every time I see it. I remember seeing it at the movie theatre in the UW-Milwaukee student union when I was an undergrad… probably about 2002. It was a midnight showing and the perfect type of audience for that picture. The entire house applauded when Donnie first appeared on screen… not cheered or whooped or anything like that… they applauded respectfully. It was beautiful.

I also got a nice package from EP at Old Red Sox Cards. EP knocked a few entries off my Topps set needs.

The fun stuff were the ’80 and ’81 Topps cards. Here are a quad of ’81 Hall of Famers. I especially like that Yaz card.

I also got a nice package from a new trader, Wesley Moore, who goes by @realwesmoore on twitter. He was doing an annual holiday trade offering and I snagged a pair of signed cards.

First was D-Back (currently Dodger) backstop Peter O’Brien. He’s shown a good deal of power in the minors, but hasn’t put it together at the Big League level just yet.

Then, I picked up this Sweet Spot sig of Chris Denorfia, who had some decent years with the Reds. This… was actually a mistake. I confused him with former Brewer Chris Demaria. Still, it’s a nice looking card. But if anyone really into Denorfia wanted it, I’d probably make a deal.

But probably the coolest stuff from the entire haul was the TCMA Hank Aaron story cards Wes included. These are very cool. I’d really like to get a TCMA collection going, even though it seems like they’ve became a little more sought-after in recent years.

My very favorite is this one…

That is Henry and Eddie Mathews walking up the tunnel after the last-ever Milwaukee Braves game in 1965. It’s long been an iconic image for me… Milwaukee would be without baseball for five years after this… and I had no idea it was used on a card.

And last, but not least, just today I got a nice stack of 2002 needs from Bo at Baseball Cards Come to Life. Bo has been responsible for a HUGE part of my Topps base sets thanks to the mega-trade we completed this summer with a signed Aaron Judge card as the centerpiece.

I’ll share just one of these, but it’s by far the coolest of the bunch. A second-year Ichiro with the rookie cup. A great card in a vastly underrated set.

Thanks again to all my trade pals! Take it easy.