Belated Thanks (Which Makes This a Double Fail for Me)

I was going through my photos to plan another post when I noticed a picture I had neglected.  Almost two months ago, Chris of Nachos Grande fame sent me a single card PWE.  In his note, he said this was a card I had claimed from his Trade Bait Blowout back in December/January, but we had never completed the trade.  This was completely my fault.  I claimed the card in a comment, thinking I had some cards from his wantlist.  However, his updated wantlist no longer included some cards I had set aside for him.  So, I never followed up on my claim or sent him anything.  About six months later, Chris sent me the card anyway.

That is fail #1 on my part.  Here is the card in question.

A shiny Stadium Club insert declaring ROY Wil Myers to be a future star.  It's a very nice-looking card.  However, I forgot to post about it.  It was there in my folder, between pictures of other trades, one card trying to fit in with the other transactions.  And I almost missed it. 

Fail #2 on my part.  I almost neglected to publicly thank Chris for his thoughtfulness. 

Luckily, when I was preparing other posts and going through photos, I recognized the card as the one from Nachos Grande.  I'm trying to rectify that second fail now.  And, yes, I will get something out in a return package.  I will avenge my own wrongdoings.  I apologize for being a flaky trader, Chris.  First by not following up on the Trade Bait Blowout claim, then by nearly missing a post showing off your end of the deal.  I shall make it up to you.

National Baseball Card Day Left Me With Some Decisions to Make

On Saturday, I took my oldest son to the card shop for some free cards.  We each got a pack of Topps National Baseball Card Day promos.  The two cellophane packs had Miguel Cabrera and Christian Yelich on top.  I offered them to my son and let him choose.  As I expected, he chose Miggy.  As a Cubs fan, I'm not a big Yelich guy, but I don't think I could have hand-selected a better pack than the one I got.

El Mago and King Fish are probably the two I cards I would have wanted most in the set.  Pete Alonso had a good chance of winning Rookie of the Year and becoming a PC player.  The reigning (and potential repeat) NL MVP and the Best Lefty Ever? are a strong supporting cast.

The LCS we visited was having a warehouse sale with a ton of (mostly) junk they were trying to get rid of.  There was even a bin of free stuff.  I thought about picking up some old Becketts for a buck apiece, but decided that I could find better ways to spend a very limited budget.  I did find some random oddballs in a bin marked "2/$5" that I thought would be worth the money.  They all left we with decisions to make about my collection, though.

First up is this Post Cereal set.  The envelope contains the entire oddball set.

They're postcard-sized cards.  One side is full-bleed action shot (no logos, of course).  The checklist is pretty great, as you might expect from a set that used only 16 of the top players of the year.  A sextet of Hall of Famers is shown here.

The other side looks more like a traditional card front and back.  There is a fold in the middle to make these cards into a little booklet.  So that leads me to the first decision: How should I store these?  I see three options.

1. I keep them in the envelope they came in.
2. I put them in a photo album to act as a binder.
3. I fold them in normal-sized cards and put them in my oddballs binder.

What are you thoughts?  What would you do?  I want to have them in my binder, but I'm hesitant to fold them.

The second item that I picked up was a trio of hologram cards in a hard display case.  These are all guys I collect, including David Robinson, though I don't actively collect basketball.  So I figured to get these three cards for $2.50 was probably a reasonable purchase.  These are 1991 Arena Holograms and each card has a print run of 250,000.  That's all I know.  Does anybody know anything else, like where they came from?  I have a decision to make about these cards.  They have all been removed from their encasement, but now I have to decide whether I want to complete the set.  With these 3 cards, I'm 60% there--only Joe Montana and Frank Thomas remain.  Should I finish it and keep it with my sets, or should I just let these join my player collections individually?

My last pickups were these two Score portfolio-type binders.  I glanced inside and saw that both contained 1998 Pinnacle Mint cards and coins.  I picked up both of them, thinking that I collected enough late-90s players to make the purchase worthwhile.

When I got the binders home and examined the contents more closely, I discovered a few things.  First, for each player included, there was a base card with the coin and a bronze parallel.  I also learned that this was nearly a complete set of cards, coins, and bronze parallels.  There are only 30 players in the entire set, and I have 22.  Now it's decision time.  Do I go ahead and complete the set(s), or do I keep what I want and use the rest as trade bait?  Normally, I would complete this set without hesitation, but the cost of the coins is a stumbling block for me.  I looked on COMC and found that each coin is $1-$8.  That's a steep price to complete a set that I just stumbled upon and never intended to chase.  And, of course, the missing cards are the big names: Bonds, Griffey, Jeter, Ripken, etc.  On the other hand, what a cool set and what an opportunity to have so much of this complete already!  What would you do?

So I didn't spend my money on Topps to get the extra Bryce Harper NBCD card, but I found some really interesting odds and ends.  But I'm left with some decisions to make about my new finds.

1. How should I store the Post postcards?  Fold them?  Keep them in the box?
2. Should I pick up the last two cards in the holograms set, or should I keep the 3 I have in my player collections?
3. Should I finish the Pinnacle Mint sets (coins, base, and bronze parallels) or break the partial set apart and use some for trade bait?

I really want to hear what you would do.  Leave me some advice in the comments!

The Phillies Won, So I Won

Over at the Trading Card Database, there is a member who goes by the name of herkojerko.  Old herko is a Phillies fan, so he gets all excited whenever the Phils win, as fans tend to do.  This summer, he stepped his excitement up a notch and tried to get all of us card collectors involved, too.  He is holding a season-long contest in which the first ten people to comment on his thread whenever the Phillies win a series get to choose 20 cards from his trade list for free.

via GIPHY

So when the Phils won a series, so I took advantage and commented on the thread.  Here are my spoils from the Philadelphia series triumph.

I got some set help.  There are some pretty big names here that I still needed for not-so-expensive sets.  The Thurman Thomas hologram was the final card needed to complete the 1991 Upper Deck Game Breakers set.

A couple of needs for my All-Decade and ASG MVP collection.

But, mostly, I was concerned with building my BYU collection.  Here we have three of former Cougar pitcher and World Series champion Jeremy Guthrie, and three football greats in Vai Sikahema, John Walsh, and Chad Lewis.

Ty Detmer cards are great.  Not only is he one of my most beloved sports heroes from my childhood, but because the pinnacle of his NFL career came from 1996-2000, when card companies were producing all kinds of shiny and unique designs.

For those of you who are counting, that is only 19 cards.  The 20th card was meant to be another Cougar, tight end Chris Smith, but herkojerko mistakenly sent the wrong card.  I wasn't about to complain to him, though, seeing that it was only through his generosity that I got these cards anyway.

The Phillies have won series since this time, but I unsubscribed from the thread.  I could have won multiple times, I suppose, but I don't want to be greedy.  I'll take advantage of free cards, sure.  But I don't want to overdo it.  A one-time shot is good enough for me.  So, thank you, herkojerko.  And good luck Phillies! *Anytime they're not playing the Cubs.