Trade Me Anything XVII #9

If there's one thing I can count on with this annual TMA event, it's getting a trade package from Zpop in the springtime.  Hey, we had snow when this year's edition began (well, close to the opening, anyways, thanks to a Halloween snowstorm), and we've had snowfall since Zpop's package arrived, so in my book this all falls within the confines of winter.  The envelope, please.

 

Giving:

#US97 Kenta Maeda Gold Foil, #BG-11 Riley Greens ToppsBlackGold, #US145 Jeter Downs, #US257 Leody Taveras

Getting:

Odd Man Out by Matt McCarthy

I've already read one baseball book this year, I'm in the middle of another one, and there's a third on the to-read pile.  Not complaining, though, I do try to get to everything you guys send me.  I look forward to reading this as I love books about athletes who are also smart.  Allow me to recommend John Urschel's Mind and Matter, it's at the top of this genre.

Package of NL East Stickers ca. 1990

Price tag on the back is from 2018 and displays a retail price of a hefty $0.19.

Pack of 2021 Topps WWE Heritage Cards

I got heavy into a couple of WWE Heritage sets a few years before this one.  It will likely make an appearance on a future post.

Thanks for a nice trade, Zpop, I look forward to reading, opening, and sticking.

Packs That Just Showed Up #2

Since the first post in this series I was actually able to sell some of those 2007 U&H cards with no foil stamping.  The Glavine went for $5.00 and I got $3.00 for all of the commons.  Nice to have some free money in the ol' eBay account.  The next pack I'm choosing to share is one of the two 2019 Topps Series 1 packs.  Shall we?

132 Miguel Andujar

313 Robinson Cano

157 Buster Posey

104 Joe Musgrove

84 Matt Carpenter

280 Miles Mikolas

121 Joey Wendle

That first card continues the tradition of the Cardinals having a guy on the roster named Carpenter with an extremely punchable face that goes back to the sandlot days of 1832.

RA-15 Ronald Acuna Jr. "Taking a Bow"

This is part of a Wal-mart-exclusive insert set.  Pretty cool and I will listen to trade offers if anyone is interested.

SSB-93 Albert Pujols Stars of the Game

Is it just me, or do the Pujols Angels cards make you feel melancholy?  Yeah, he was a mortal enemy, but he didn't deserve to languish in the boonies of MLB.  He was hitting milestones and shit in Anaheim and they made his career look like a joke.  It gives everyone with a "yeah, but..." a legitimate argument because he just became irrelevant.

126 Oakland Atheltics Team

134 Sean Reid-Foley

339 Josh Harrison

The Harrison is a great shot, though he should take off that dagblasted mitten.

Oakland Coliseum always looked beautiful from aerial photos like this, it's a shame they never got an "economically viable" stadium built.  Actually, it's more a a shame that a revenue generating stadium is a requirement, not just a nice place to watch baseball.  This sport is slowly killing itself.

326 Heath Fillmyer

60 Kyle Tucker

85 Garrett Hampson

146 Jesse Winker

A nice end to the pack with the Tucker rookie and a future one-season Brewer.

Well, that's the end of the pack.  A pack with 16 cards in it feels like the right amount.  If I'm elected President this November, I'm signing an executive order declaring this to be the minimum number of cards contained within a single pack.  I approve this message.

Packs That Just Showed Up #1

Hello, friends.

 

Let me set the scene.

One night last weekend my wife got together with one of my cousins and a mutual friend for a girls' night out.  The next morning, I walked downstairs and saw a little stack of baseball card packs rubber banded together and sitting on one of the steps.  The first few hours of daylight were filled with taking kids to various activities, so we didn't see each other until the afternoon.  I was pretty sure these packs weren't mine, though I wouldn't put it past myself to leave some cards on the stairs and not remember doing so.  When I asked where the packs came from, I got a delightful answer.  

My wife explained that one of my cousin's other friends had these packs for some odd reason, didn't want them anymore, and didn't really want to throw them away.  Not sure how the topic even got brought up between this woman and my cousin, but she made a heads-up play by saying, "Oh, I have a cousin who is really into baseball cards, maybe he would want them."  And that's how they ended up with me.

If you look closely, you can see some evidence of tampering.  Yes, these packs are all open.  My plan here is to "rediscover" their contents and share them in this space.  I put it to a vote over on my BlueSky account as to which pack I should open first.  Three people voted, and all three picked a different pack, so I went with the quickest comment, which was a push to the the 2007 Topps Updates & Highlights pack.

Here we go.

 

UH269 Grady Sizemore

UH55 Mike Maroth

UH237 Justin Verlander

UH281 Classic Combo Cole Hamels / Russell Martin

So far, so good.  I completed this set back in the fall of 2007, so these are all doubles to me.  Quality players in this bunch.  Let's continue.

 

MHR471 Mickey Mantle Home Run History 417

This one is new to me.  I obviously got a bunch of these back in the day, but I must have traded them all away of sold them.  This will go into my 2006-2008 monster box.

UH176 Kurt Suzuki

Uhhhhhh, OK?

Yeah, there's no foil on the front of this card.  I might have something here.  Maybe there's a Suzuki collector out there who would pay for this production error RC.  I'd imagine he had/has a pretty nice following as a one-time All-Star and World Series champion.

UH206 Tom Glavine

UH130 Eric Gagne

UH195 Marcus McBeth

More missing foil.  Someone's got to be willing to slide me a couple of bucks for that Glavine, right?

UH142 Jeremy Guthrie

UH87 Jeff Karstens

UH304 D'Angelo Jimenez

Checklist 3

Well, that was weird.  All of the cards after the mid-pack insert missing the foil stamping.  The black voids above and below the photos make these cards feel eerie, like the text is being redacted.  Maybe these cards are in witness protection.  Check back here for more packs, perhaps we'll get some more egg noodles and ketchup.

Trade Me Anything XVII #8

Today we had a snow day here in Milwaukee, the second one this week, so I had a lot of time to get to do a lot of the things that often get set aside due to normal daily obligations.  One of those fun things was to take care of the last TMA trade that I have yet to post.  This one comes from David, a repeat trader who stays true to the spirit of the "Anything" in this longtime trading series.  Let's see what this year holds.

 

Giving:

#MLM-FT Fernando Tatis Jr. Major League Material

#T88CU-32 1988 Blake Snell Topps 35th Anniversary Refractor

#US204 Hunter Renfroe, #US199 Matt McLain, #US137 Garrett Stubbs, #US77 Anthony Volpe

 Getting:

Box of 2023 Topps Archives Signature Series containing...

...some cards!

A nice mix of Brewers, soccer, and randomness, plus a Roger Clemens from my 2003 Topps want list.

A pocket knife

I think I'm going to throw this into my camping bin.  I've been caught wanting a knife a few times over the years, but never did anything about it.  Now is the time.

Packet of Golden State Zinnia seeds from the 2022 Orange County Fair.

Am I going to be doing some cultivating this year?  Maybe.

Tin of Altoids

Packet of GE Aerospace sticky notes

Handy at school, for sure.

Out of My League by Dirk Hayhurst

This is probably the item I'm most excited about.  I did some Googling and saw that this was Hayhurst's second book.  As a purist (for entertainment, if not baseball), I would like to start from the beginning, so I put a hold on his first book, The Bullpen Gospels, at my local library.  It came in the other day, so with the day off today I decided to take a five-mile run through several inches of snow and pick up the book before it closed at noon.  The run home was pretty tough, as I was getting pelted with snow carried by an easterly wind off of Lake Michigan, but a simple plastic bag kept the book dry while my clothes gained about five pounds of wetness.  It's been a great day, due in no small part to David's generous trade.

 
I hope these cards find you well, David, and I'm looking forward to next year's (well, this year's) trade already.