Trade Me Anything XVII: #4

So this next trade comes from a newcomer.  Apparently Daniel heard about this promotion through another hobby outlet and wanted to join in.  He sent a very nice note with his trade, one that ended with the sentiment, "Thanks for keeping cards fun!"  Dude, that's all I aim to do.  Back in the Thorzul Will Rule days, I have to admit that this blog was a lot more fun.  Buying packs of cards from Target is fun.  Ripping boxes is fun.  $5 group breaks were fun.  But I don't really do any of those things anymore.  Times have changed.  Five bucks wouldn't even begin to cover the shipping costs these days.  At least we still have this.  I'm trying.

 

Giving:

#88US-46 Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 1988 Topps 35th Anniversary, #US208 Ji-Man Choi, #US326 Dustin May

Getting:

1997 Collector's Edge #126 Desmond Howard

The amount of joy this man brought me by doing one thing for 12 seconds on a cold January night in 1997 cannot be overstated.

1980 Topps #330 Al Cowens

Slowly but surely making progress on this set.

1985 Donruss #7 Don Mattingly DK

Just a great set design here that I probably didn't knowingly witness in person until I was in my 20s.  1985D is a black expanse of nothingness interrupted only by a synth score of increasingly thick red lines.  If cards made a sound, these would drone.

 

1991 Fleer Ultra #180 Gary Sheffield

He once committed the crime of hating Milwaukee, and for that, he can never be forgiven.

Thanks for the help in building some sets, Daniel.  Please come back next year!

Want Some Aces?

Last night Mrs. Thorzul did her usual Friday night thing, which is get together with other women, exercise, then drink wine and eat sushi immediately thereafter.  I was home with the kids, so it was pizza night.  The pizza place wasn't far from a thrift store, so I ordered, killed the wait time by shopping, then picked up my carryout order.  (Side note: Gosh, isn't it nice when your children get old enough that you can leave them home for a few hours and not have to worry?  I think we're officially out of the suck.)

 

At the thrift store, I picked up a few nice items to resell, including a Coleman Lil' Oscar cooler for $2.99.  It's identical to the one I acquired in a similar fashion several years ago and have used countless times.  Just a dependable, quality item for keeping booze cold when you're on the go.

 

There was one item I picked up just before leaving that was a nice find: A set of 1994 Major League Baseball Aces Playing Cards.  The box was sort of beat up, and I had trouble getting the packaging tape that was wrapped around it off, but everything inside is in immaculate condition.

The makers of this set ("Those SOB's down at Bicycle," as some would say) were kind enough to include a checklist card of sorts, letting buyers know who is included in the set.  A quick scan lets us know that there are no Milwaukee Brewers to be found here.  Makes sense.  Yount retired at the end of the 1993 season, and Molitor left for Toronto before that.  From that strike year until about 2007 the Brewers franchise was completely irrelevant to baseball.

Since there are no Brewers, what I'd like to do is offer you a chance at picking up one or more of these cards for your collection at a price that beats the current market rate.  For $1.00 each, you may select any card(s) of your choice, first come, first served, by leaving a comment as to the player(s) you want.  After making the claim, please sent $1.00 for each card to the following PayPal address (Friends and Family, please): bill13boehm at yahooDOTcom 

The payment includes the cost of shipping.  Please include a note with your mailing address on it, as well as a reminder of who you picked.  Screen names and real names often don't match up so well, and I'd rather not have to do any detective work to get cards to the right buyer.

I'll be adding to the list below of already claimed players once payments start being made.  I'm also hanging on to one card for myself.  Happy collecting, folks!

PLAYERS CLAIMED:

Ken Griffey, Jr.

Trade Me Anything XVII: #3

This is the seventeenth edition of Trade Me Anything.  How many of these has gcrl participated in?  Those figures are lost to time, but I'd bet it's the vast majority.  Let's what Jim sent, and how many Dodgers he managed to snag.

 

Giving:

#BG-28 Mookie Betts ToppsBlackGold, #T88CU-41 Michael Busch 1988 Topps 35th Anniversary Refractor, #US191 J.P. Feyereisen Gold (1577/2023), #AA-64 Bobby Miller All Aces, #US70 Gavin Stone Gold Foil

Getting:

2023 Topps Update Series #SMLB-11 Christian Yelich, #US319 Jesse Winker Rainbow Foil, #US197 William Contreras Gold Foil

That Contreras really is the star of the show here.  He's a guy we Brewers fans are super happy with.  Hopefully he can keep up the pace he's established early in a young career.  The man just won a Silver Slugger Award the other day, too.

A big bunch of want list cards

I can't write about all of these cards, so I'll pick five that stood out to me.

 

1982 Fleer #12 Davey Lopes

Gotta go with the guy who's a quarter of gcrl's namesake.  Davey's cards are always interesting.  The first one I was of him was the 1987 Topps Record Breaker.  I marveled at this guy who looked like a grandfather among the Rob Deers and B.J. Surhoffs I was after.  His stint as Brewers manager wasn't that successful, something I attribute to his lack of the signature extra-thick mustache from his Dodger days.  His meager .425 winning percentage at the helm matched his moderate facial growth of the early aughts.

1983 Topps #177 Harold Baines

Early Harold cards don't get as much play as they should, so if you're missing one, it's a distinct possibility that you haven't seen it before.  The dual photo design is well utilized here, as we get one shot with a batting helmet and the inset with his field cap.  The business/party hybrid, depicted on a few square inches of cardboard.

1987 Fleer #167 Alan Trammell

A fun photo takes at an odd angle with limbs swinging in unexpected places.

1994 Topps #297 Spike Owen

Major air.

1980 Topps #82 Astros Team Card

The alignment of those stripes plays tricks on the eyes.  Stare at it long enough and you'll convince yourself that the photographer asked these men to put their hands on each others' knees.  I'm giving it a better than 50/50 shot that this did indeed happen.

Thanks yet again, Jim!  I'll wave when I drive past your town in a couple of weeks.

Trade Me Anything XVII: #2

Just like clockwork, a package arrives from the Pacific Northwest, and all I have to do is give up some Cardinals.  (What a sweet gig.)  That's right, it's Kerry from Cards on Cards.  Let's see what he sent.

 

Giving:

#US7 What a Rutsch! Rainbow Foil, #AS-12 Jordan Walker Action Stars, #US99 Alec Burleson

Getting:

A Giannis base card and a shiny Khris Middleton Select

I was out last night playing trivia at a bar while the Bucks/Pistons game was on.  Not a single patron could identify what Giannis did to get ejected.  It was a sweet win, though.

Some want list cards from recent Update sets

Very happy to see these.  Getting really close on 2021 and 2022.

Some more set needs, presumably culled from a Redbirds doubles box

1988 Fleer #249 Jeff Treadway

This is actually my favorite part of this trade.  I've never actively collected '88 Fleer.  I certainly didn't buy any packs of it in 1988, but I do remember my friends at the time have some in their collections.  I think came down to what neighborhood you lived in.  Different pharmacies and variety stores less than a mile apart could carry vastly different merchandise.  I could get my hands on Topps, Donruss, and the occasional stray pack of Score that year, but Fleer was not on the menu.  Even in the first half of 2023, I probably had only 100-200 cards from the set that have shown up in random lots over the years.

Everything changed this summer.  Out of the blue I was asked by a fellow collector if I'd be interested in purchasing his entire collection.  Well, I jumped at the chance, and soon massive boxes of cards started showing up at my house.  There was one box that looked to be a complete set of 1988 Fleer.  As it turned out, there was one card missing.  And now, the hole in the set has been filled.

Thanks, Kerry!  Always good to hear from you!

The Search Is Over

Soon after getting back into the sports card hobby in 2007, I discovered a card set that hooked me once I laid eyes on it.  A then-recently released product, 2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes just had the right mix of elements to get a prodigal collector like me interested.  It had a clean design, one reminiscent of the inserts in early UD sets.  It came in a cool tin that could still be found and was somewhat affordable.  It was a one-pack-per-box product, something that was novel to me and totally different from the card landscape I left behind in 1994.  It came in all sorts of cool colors and variations.  And most importantly, there were five cards of the guy I had my heart set on collecting: Robin Yount.

I remember writing a similar post back in the Thorzul Will Rule days once I acquired all of the blue, green, red, and bronze Yount cards in this set.  They still look really pretty in binders, especially since the first three colors come in a regular, relic, and autograph variation, fitting nicely in rows of three on a nine-card page.  Back when I completed that portion of the rainbow, I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn't really done.  There was still a set of five silver variations, jersey relics-only, that had to be found.  I had some of those at the time, but was short of a true quintet.  Because I can't go back and find the post (Thorzul Will Rule has been wiped from the internet aside from glimpses here and there via the Wayback Machine), I'm not sure what year I "completed" the Yount rainbow.  I'm reasonably sure that it's somewhere between 12 and 15 years ago.  That's how long I've had an eBay saved search ready to tip me off in the event that the final silver parallel I needed went up for sale.  Every couple of years, I would get an alert that there was one available, but it always turned out to be one of the four I already owned.  The same saved search would also hit upon some other pieces of Panini crap that were also limited to 15 copies.  I came to the realization that I would never find that last card.  The Baseball Heroes just came out too long ago, the unopened product has dried up, and all of the copies were in the hands of other collectors unwilling to let them go.  The (admittedly passive) search would go on, day after day, completely fruitlessly.

Until last month.

It came in the mail a couple of weeks ago, but life happened, and I'm only getting the chance to share it now.

2005 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes #61 Robin Yount Game-Used Jersey Silver Parallel (10/15)

"It's a beaut, Clark!"

What a great card.  Nice pinstripe on the jersey, a perfect photo, and beautiful color.

The only thing now is to find a place in the binder for it.  As you can see below, the other four silvers already fill up a page with the bronzes (#/50), so there's no more room in the inn.  What to do, what to do?

Well, this set is at the very front of a binder holding my Yount collection from 2005-present.  The very first page only contains the five Yount base cards.  I've just kind of left it that way since putting the binder together, not sure why, but now the extra space is coming in handy.  The OCD half of my brain still wishes for a way to fit ten cards into a nine-space page, but the other half rationalizes the reality of the situation.  We will just have to settle for less than perfection.

It's been a pursuit both good and worthwhile.

$20 Scumbucket Grab Bag 3.20

1980 Topps Burger King Pete Rose

The neverending debate on talk radio has always been, and will always be, should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?  There's no debate here, though, that all Burger King baseball cards are HOF material.

This pile is getting pretty thick, like the flame broiled patty of a Whopper.  Have it your way for $20.

THE PILE

2002 Fleer Tradition Magglio Ordonez Plays of the Week

1989 Topps Nolan Ryan Box Bottom

14 Topps Premier League Soccer Cards

2020 Topps Joey Gallo Patch Card

Bonds, LaRussa, and Frank

2015 Bowman's Best Nick Gordon Hi-Def Heritage

1989 Action Superstars Jerome Walton

1993 Topps Chipper Jones Top Prospects

Pre-Big League Stars

Charlie Blackmon Obak AUTO

2001 Pacific Anthony Thomas (#1376/1500)

1994 Collector's Choice Kevin Gross Silver Signature

1985 Fleer Kirby Puckett

Fleer Inserts

Bunch of 1989 Panini Stickers

Charles Barkley McDonald's Open Checklist

Ken Griffey, Jr. Oddball Rookie

Fleer Inserts

Bunch of 1989 Panini Stickers

Charles Barkley McDonald's Open Checklist

Ken Griffey, Jr. Oddball Rookie

Favre/Jeter/Chipper Lot

Lot of 8 1970s Cards

1993 Fleer Steve Young Insert