Trade Ketchup! With Cliff, Nachos Grande, and the Million Cubs Project

I will be posting in more detail soon about the monster box I picked up at Goodwill a week or so ago. But in the meantime, I’ve got a few trades to catch up on…

First, we have a swap with Beau from the Million Cubs Project. Beau is a fellow Wisconsinite who is trying to build a collection of ONE MILLION Cubs cards. Per his twitter, he already had about 75,000. So, he has a long road ahead of him, but I certainly admire his gumption. Whomever donated that monster box to Goodwill must have been a Cubs fan as well, because I found an inordinate amount of North-Siders in the box… about 800 in total. I got put in touch with Beau on twitter and we quickly arranged for a swap.

He sent me this very neatly organized box of Topps base needs and Brewers, a great return (to me, anyway) for a load of stinking Cubs that I wanted nothing to do with.

I also recently got a nice package from Nachos Grande, part of his Season of Giving. He threw in some Topps base along with a nice smattering of Brewers.

My favorite part of the package was this pack of 2006 Topps… which yielded 15 (!!!) cards I needed for that set.

He also sent some Bowman Brewers I didn’t have… always nice to add a Nyjer Morgan Brewers card to the collection.

JUNK WAX! I maintain that there are numerous sets uglier than 1991 Fleer. I am in the minority in this opinion, I think. Anyway, here is a nice-looking Greg Vaughn, with the gold borders matching his uni trim.

A nice league-leaders card from the greatest season of Ben Sheets’ career. Ugh… leader cards with a unique design… I do hope to see these again some day.

Also, some Heritage Brewers I did not have.

And some 90s weird-o stuff. Here’s one of those cards where they pair a new logo with the old uniforms and caps. You can also see Miller Park in the background, and the chest patches commemorating the three ironworkers who died in the crane collapse that delayed the opening of the stadium by a year.

I also got a box recently from @oriolesrise, aka Cliff, on twitter. He is one of my favorite hobby follows for his near-constant stream of posts detailing his latest awesome finds. He started a pile for me a while back and it contained some pretty cool stuff.

Let’s start with this! A Rockin’ Robin RC Cola can. This is one of a few cans in my collection (I have a Graf’s Cola can commemorating the 1975 All Star Game in Milwaukee as well) but the first player-specific can I’ve ever owned. It’s a nice piece. I wish they’d still do cans like this.

And soon-to-be on my bookbag when I head back to school later this month… The Ignitor himself, Paul Molitor.

And the last of the non-card items are this pair of Brewers schedule matchbooks, billing the Brewers as “the team of the ’80s.” That… did not work out.

For the all-time Brewers collection, a dandy Andy Kosco autograph. Kosco appeared in 98 games with the Brewers in 1971, batting .227 with 10 homers.

Oh yeah! METAL cards (are they still cards if they’re metal?) of Gary Sheffield and Kenny Lofton. Cliff broke an entire box of this stuff over the summer. I remember it coming out when I was a kid, but I couldn’t afford it. It’s a decent product, certainly very unique.

BO! I never turn one of these down.

And a nice stack of these oddball “Superstar” cards. These are part of a 45-card set issued in 1980. I really dig the Mantle-Aaron card.

Coming up next: A several-part series detailing my recent Goodwill finds!