Rookie of the Year on Baseball Card Day

This is a somewhat timely post. Sure, National Baseball Card Day (or, "International Trading Card Day") was all the way back in August. I picked up my free pack of cards way back then and never posted anything about it. But it's still timely today because one of my pulls was a guy who was recently honored with an MLB "Major Award."

A Major Award: the soft glow of electric hardball in the window

That major award was American League Rookie of the Year. The player is Julio Rodriguez.

This is my only J-Rod so far. I'm using it in this post to welcome him and NL ROY Michael Harris to my Rookie of the Year collection. I don't have any cardboard of Harris, yet. I'll be interested to see how their careers go from here. Documenting the career trajectory of these players is my reason for this little collection. For example, what will become of Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge, who both won the Rookie of the Year award in 2017, subsequently took home MVP awards, and are now currently free agents? Their careers seem to be going in opposite directions of late. I'm rooting for them, as I am for Rodriguez and Harris.

As for International Card Day, here was an interesting incident. I picked up the thin, clear cellophane pack and saw the Topps promo card had a weird scalloped edge on it. I thought it was kind of odd, but didn't think too hard about it. Then I opened up the pack and saw this.

Notice the top of each card. It appears that the machine that crimped and sealed the packages caught the entire stack of cards in this pack. (Which also includes former ROYs Carlos Correa and Mike Trout). 

This photo courtesy of TCDB

The owner of the LCS also saw this and provided me with another pack, which contained the Julio Rodriguez card. I didn't scan the rest of it, though. The highlight of that pack was my first card of Corey Seager as a Ranger, adding that piece to my collection as I continue to document the career path of yet another former Rookie of the Year.

I may be a few months late in celebrating our little hobby's holiday but as the major holidays approach, I'm right on time recognizing the latest player to be added to my PC. Now I just need to get on track with my Rookie of the Year spotlight posts.

Sale on Cards!

There are many places to buy cards online. Some of them I use often. Some of them I use occasionally. Some I have used once but never again. Recently, I found a new place that I tried. A TCDB member named baseballcardstoreca posted that his website was offering a sale. So I went and checked it out. The site is the same as the TCDB username, baseballcardstore.ca, and every card on the site is $.25. Except for right now. Using the promo code 2020 at checkout will make every card $.10! So I went virtual dime box digging and came away with some good stuff.

Dime box 1973s? I'll take some. I was able to score some old Cubs, and some pretty good names, too. I believe this is my first Randy Hundley card.

My mini-collections, like my Rookie of the Year collection, got a boost. I like the bright blue foil Opening Day Dontrelle Willis, but the steal of this lot is the National Baseball Card Day Aaron Judge. This is the incentive card given for purchasing $10 in packs at the store. It's a nice find for a dime, I think.

I didn't forget about my All-Star MVPs. I picked up a bunch of SP Legendary Cuts from various years for this purpose.

My All-Decade teams got some help. Here we have the 80s.

The 1990s. Well, except for Ty Law, who is a member of the All-2000s team, but his rookie cards here are from 1995, so I mistakenly put them in this photo. The Steve Wisniewski that is so washed-out is a 1995 Ultra Gold Medallion, so the entire background is gold foil.

And here, the 2000s. I like the Derrick Brooks cards I got. There were some really cool ones, like the Skybox NFLPD subset, which is embossed. The two bookend Polamalus are minis.

I also found some college uniform cards of Heisman Winners. I usually prefer college unis in this collection. The Charlie Ward is an interesting addition to my Heisman collection, as he is playing basketball on it. Despite his stellar college football career, Ward passed on the NFL in favor of a 12-year career in the NBA. Jim Plunkett may not be in a college uniform here, but I wasn't to pass on a vintage Plunkett for ten cents.

I also was able to pick up a card here and there for various set builds.

Most of my order, though, was focused on refractors. I picked up some for my refractor frankenset and some of guys I collect.

All of these go in the frankenset. I love the look of the infield dirt as a refractor on Alcides Escobar.

Here are some different types of refractors, like refractor versions and different color variations.

I've never bought any Prizm baseball, but there was a good selection of Prizm refractors on the site, so I picked a lot of them for my frankenset.

My order was mostly refractors, and all for $.10 apiece! I don't know how long the sale will be going, but I know it is still. The site doesn't have a great filtering system to find what you want, but with a little bit of searching, you can probably find a few things you want. It's worth checking out.

Back on the TCDB Trading Horse

I took about 6 months off from trading on my favorite trading site.  Part of my reason was the rising cost of postage made me less willing to send out trade packages.  One other, bigger, reason was that I needed to get my tradelists in order.  I was finding far too many trade proposals were coming in and I was missing a card or two that the computer said I had, but I did not.  So I went through the grueling process of going through my traders and touching each card, and removing the cards I did not touch from the list.  I'm not sure that I'm done and that my tradelist is perfect, but I feel much better about it.  In June, I resumed trading--and I completed a record number of trades this summer.  At least for me.  There were a couple of blockbusters involving hundreds of cards each, but most were PWE trades.  I've decided to compile all of those PWEs together and share them in a couple of posts.

First, let me thank these trading partners: nwcardsupplies, mtc32226, MoPack626, budler, itsjustoldcardboard, bravefan1, dsorek, joe0786, nozzlemaster, Breck19D, corozco, alh, Lyrical Kees, and T-Rex 70.

Today let's look at some baseball goodies from these various trading partners.

Most of the 2019 Cubs I own have come via trade, and you see a good bundle of them here. I love the Javy Baez inserts to lead things off.  The Cubs season fizzled out in a monumental collapse, but I can at least feel the fun and excitement of the game in some of these cards.  I'm only now realizing that I acquired two copies of the Windy City Warriors team card.  Whoops.  I can't say that's the first time it's happened, though.

Two more inserts featuring my current favorite player.  You know, four years ago--when they broke into the Big Leagues--I would have put more stock in Jorge Soler than Baez.  Soler is having a great season in his own right, but in the wrong shade of blue, while Javy is just a nightly firework display.  Of course, both were less of a sure thing than fellow rookie Kris Bryant.  That was really a pretty good rookie class for the Cubbies.  I hope the window hasn't slammed shut on all that promising youth.

It wasn't all current-year Cubs, though.  Here is another Baez insert, from last year's iteration, and a Chrome former ROY backstop, Geovany Soto.

I got my first card of reigning All-Star MVP Shane "Justin" Bieber through TCDB trades.

As well as some other All-Star MVPs.  I like the Leather and Lumber of Garret Anderson and Frank Robinson, and the 2013 Gold parallel of Michael Young especially.

Once I put Tony Oliva on my want list as a former ROY, it seemed like everyone had a card they wanted to trade me.  I don't often manage to pull off a trade for real vintage, but that's a nice 1976 there.

Same with Pat Listach.  Man, everybody had Listach crowding their tradelists it seemed.  I went from one or two cards to filling my Listach page in no time at all.

More vintage!  All of these players were Rookie of the Year stars.  Some had better careers than others, but I love these cards.  1973 Luis Aparicio may be in rough shape, but it may be the oldest card I own of a bona fide Hall of Famer.

The mid to late 90s, as always, were well-represented.  Finest and Certified in all their protective glory.

Finally, my BYU collection isn't limited to football.  I picked up some cards of former Cougs Wally Joyner, of whom I already have a decent collection, and Jeremy Guthrie, who was sorely lacking in my collection.

Thanks again to a cadre of traders on the database.  I have football PWEs and a couple of monster trades still to post.

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.

One Thing Led to Another, and I Made an Ebay Purchase

Have you ever tried to trace your thought process, how your brain wandered from one thought to a completely different thought?  Perhaps I'm alone in my quirky head, but I sometimes find it bizarre to see how one thought led to another, which led to another, which led me to pause and think, How did I get here?  And then I committed an ebay purchase that when it arrived, I thought, How did I get this?  All the cards came from the same seller, but there were six separate lots I bought, with a bit of a range between the contents.  Yet somehow, I jumped from one lot to another and ended up with a big purchase from one person.

Where this started was one of my periodic searches for players whose names might have been misspelled, which could eliminate some competition for auctions.  This time, I searched for "Aaron Rogers" and came across these cards.

I needed all of these.  They're all inserts, which is cool, and there are even some parallels of inserts, like the green Score Franchise above.  I'm not a huge fan of shared cards, but the Team Leaders with two of my favorite players to collect--Jordy Nelson and Eddie Lacy--is really nice to me. 

These cards were for sale by auction, but they also had a best offer option.  So, just to throw something against the wall and try to get a good value per card, I  made an offer for a little under the starting bid.  When he accepted it, I did what everybody else does: I started looking for other items from the seller to combine shipping and justify the postage.

I decided to stay on the Green Bay track.  First, I found a single Jim Taylor.  It's from 2018 Classics, but it's shiny and chromey.  I had no idea what it was.  It turns out that it's called "Optichrome Premium" and I found it cheaper on ebay than I would have found it on COMC, which is usually my barometer.  I count that as a win.  Then I found my current favorite player, the guy who once made my son dance with him for an autograph, former BYU Cougar Jamaal Williams.  It's a nice Red & Yellow Prizm from Optic.  It was actually part of a lot of four Red & Yellow Prizms.  The other three
are sitting in trade stacks that I will send someday.  Like the "Rogers" lot, I made an offer on both of these just below starting bid, and received an acceptance almost immediately.

Having exhausted the seller's offerings of football cards, I switched my search to baseball. 

The first thing I wanted was a lot of Corey Seager for my Rookie of the Year collection.  I needed seven of these eight cards, with only the Award Winners in the bottom right already in my collection.  A couple of these cards I had no idea what I was seeing.  In the top right, in the 1994 Topps design, is a Wal-Mart Exclusive rookie SP from 2016 Update.  The cracked ice effect in the bottom left is from 2018 Donruss.  It's the All-Stars set, but a "Crystal" parallel.  Here's what I don't understand: the All-Star inserts are serial-numbered, but this parallel is not.  I have no idea if the print run is higher or lower for the Crystals.  It's a nice-looking card, even if it is Panini.

From ROY, I made jump to All-Star MVPs.  I found these four A&G SPs, and 3 of the 4 fit nicely in my collection.  The odd man out here is Justin Turner, who is possibly my current least favorite player. (I've seen him deal too much damage to the Cubs for me to enjoy watching him play.)  It's available for trade, if anyone wants/needs it.

The final lot was another set I had no idea what it was, but it looked kind of cool.  This is 2015 Donruss Preferred.  I bought the lot for these five players.  This was the only purchase that the seller did not accept my offer.  He countered with the price of the starting bid, and I thought it was fair.  Already he had given me all the other lots at less than starting bid.  This one he obviously just felt the value was enough to at least get what he was asking.

 These players also came in the lot, but I they're all trade bait.  If you want any of these, let me know.

So here I am, starting with a misspelled name search of Aaron Rodgers.  One thing led another, I got combined shipping and kept looking for another fit for my collection.  Moving step by step, I ended up at shiny, logoless Donruss inserts of guys like Rymer Liriano and Yasmany Tomas.  Like tracing my thought process, I can see how this eclectic ebay purchase came about.

The seller also threw in a couple of bonus relics.  The first is Jason Bay, my first relic of this ROY and a great fit for my collection.  The other is Joe Williams, a former Utah Ute (booooooooo!), but a card that could bring me a trade at a card show, since he is local. Both are nice random bonuses for me. 

If you're interested, the seller was eghigh01, and he was very pleasant to work with.  It was a bigger ebay purchase than I usually make, but I felt like I got good cards for a good price.  If any of the trade bait interests you, let me know and we can work on a trade.

Card Show Blaster

A couple of weekends ago, I attended our semi-annual local card show.  It was a smaller show this time around, with only about a dozen or vendors, but I still managed to find some cardboard to take home with me. Some of these cards are the result of trades with some friends that I saw there, but in all, I spent just around $20 to add these cards to my collection.

My ice-breaker table for the day had a lot of brand new cards, and was really the only table selling any semblance of modern common base cards.  All of these cards were either 2/$1 or 3/$1.  Cal, Pujols, deGrom and the Panini Harper are all serial-numbered.  Bellinger is a refractor, and the 2019 Donruss Kris Bryant is the nickname parallel.  Not bad for 50 cents or less apiece.

Sticking with the baseball, here is my favorite purchase of the day.  One guy had a ton of vintage cards on display with typical retail prices, but I noticed a binder behind him that said, "1975--Quarter Each."  So I rummaged through the binder and picked out 20 cards for a five spot.  The Foster and Fisk are obviously well-loved, but the rest are in pretty good shape.  Madlock and the Home Run Leaders card are minis.

Besides the stars seen above, I also picked up some great Cubs from the '75 set.  Kessinger and Hooton are my favorites, but I can't stop looking at that eye-blistering airbrush job on Billy Grabarkewitz's hat.  It's like when you lost a tooth and your tongue just wanted to hang out in the hole--my eyes just keep going there.

Moving on to the NFL, here are some All-Decade players in both base cards and inserts, original playing days and post-retirement cards.

I picked up some cards for my Heisman mini-collection.  My favorite thing about these cards are that most of them show the college uniform.  I didn't know until after I got home that the Mayfield is a photo variation SP, so that's an extra score.

Here are some cards just to help fill out a set or two.

And a couple that don't really have a place in  my collection, other than I like the players and I thought cards looked pretty slick.

Of course, I gotta come away with some Packers.  These are all current year cards, and include my first J'Mon Moore cards.  There's plenty of shine to go around here, that's for sure.

Legendary quarterbacks: leading the Packers since 1992.  The Brett Favre is from 1998, when they produced a mere 5000 cards for this serial-numbered set.  It also represents my 100th Favre.

No, I did not purposefully purchase a slabbed Clay Matthews rookie, even if it is Gem Mint.  Most of the Packers above came from trading with a friend of mine.  He really only collects graded vintage and Al Kaline cards, but he opens a ton just for fun.  Most card shows, you can find him sitting at his table and handing out cards for free, because he just likes to break boxes without needing the cards.  So I traded some Tigers to him, and he handed me a stack of Packers, including not one, but two, graded Clay Matthews rookies.  I'm still debating whether or not to set them free.

I picked up two autos.  One is of fellow SUU T-bird Miles Killebrew, a gorgeous cracked ice numbered to 24.  Garrett Gilbert is currently quarterbacking the Orlando Apollos of the AAF and is having an MVP caliber season.  I really hope the league sticks around.  I've been trying to support it.  I've even gone to games in weather that looks like this:

In fact, this particular game featured Gilbert and his Apollos defeating the Salt Lake Stallions.  This picture was taken during halftime, after the snow had slowed down.  It was hard to even see the field before this.  But I'm all-in with the AAF, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to pick up a Gilbert auto.

It wasn't a huge haul, but it wasn't huge show either, as it turns out.  For the price of a blaster, I'm happy to be come home with some cards that can stick around in my collection.