Give a little, get a little

Jeff, from Wax Pack Wonders, recently let it be known that he was now working on the 1973 Topps baseball set. Having about a hundred cards left from my abandoned set build, and absolutely no use for them, I was eager to see if I could help. 

I wasn't able to knock off as many of his needs as I would've liked, but did find a few. 

Jeff, being the sort that he is, wanted to send something in return. Not having any public want lists for Jeff (or anybody else for that matter) to peruse, I just went and looked at his 'for trade' list on the TCDB, picked out 10 possible cards, and told him that I'd be fine with whatever combination of those he wanted to send. He sent all of them, plus an additional card. He's that sort, too.

It's probably been a few years now, but at some point I got, and showed off here on the blog, the gold version of this card. Ever since then, the base and silver versions have been pretty high up on my personal want list. I didn't think it would take so long to acquire the base version, but apparently the blue border is prone to chips and dings, and most of the copies online seem to be of that variety; which is what I didn't want, so I waited, and then waited some more. I saw this on Jeff's list, and figured that if anybody was gonna have a nice copy, it would be him. And I was right, it's very nice. I would've been quite content with just getting this one back for those 73's. 

Bo is one of the few players that I still actively look for cards of, and I feel fortunate to have gotten four needed cards in a single mailing. I didn't realize it until the cards got here, but the one on the right is an insert. I thought from the picture on the TCDB that it was from a subset. Nope, it's an insert, and a very subtle one at that.

I've thought to myself many times that I'd like to complete Danny's entire baseball run, but the idea never seems get much further than that. This is the one baseball card of his that I already owned, mine has a punky corner though; this copy is considerably nicer.

Cool card, terrible scan.

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been thinking about guys from my childhood that I should've been collecting (but don't), either from the beginning, or when I came back to cards a dozen or so years ago. Dave Winfield is one of those guys. It feels like it's too late to start such collections now, but that doesn't mean that I can't add the occasional interesting card of one of these guys to my "just because" binders.

I think I've mentioned it on here before, but after noticing that I had some pretty nifty Tim Salmon cards, I went ahead and decided to collect him, at least selectively. I don't want all 10,000 cards of his, but will try to add a "good" card to his pages from time to time. I thought this one was kind of interesting, or "good" if you will.

I remember seeing this card for the first time just a couple of years ago. I thought it was pretty neat, decided that I wanted a copy, and then promptly forgot all about it. I saw it again somewhere recently, and was even more enamored with it than I was a few years back. Finding it on Jeff's trade list just a few days later seems pretty coincidental, like it was just meant to be. Joe Carter is another guy that I should've been collecting. If it weren't for Bo's Gun show, this would've been my favorite card of the bunch; it is a very close second though.

Here's the extra one that Jeff threw in. I have 2 ½ pages of this card in refractor form, on e whole page in golden sparkle form, and maybe another pages worth of it's various parallels. I haven't put it away yet, but I think that this is only the second copy of the base version that I have. I should probably get at least one pages worth of this one too. This was a nice surprise, very unexpected it was.

Not being overly focused on acquiring cards right now, I'm more than happy to send things out and not get anything in return (I tried to do so in this instance). That being said, this was a cool bunch of cards to get in return for some others that I no longer wanted. If they could always be like this, I might actually try to get stuff in return more often. 

Thanks again, Jeff!

Picking up scraps

Having not bought anything since early January, and no longer doing any trading, mail of the fun variety has pretty much stopped showing up altogether.

I do have two packages coming, but aside from those, I fully expect things to remain status quo for the foreseeable future. I'm not complaining though, as my heart just isn't in cards right now (which is part of the reason I started the new blog). That being said, I still find some joy in certain things from time to time, especially when looking through the duplicates that, Bo, of the somehow daily Baseball Cards Come to Life! (how he is able to post so frequently I will never understand), makes available for trade after each of his vintage baseball card lot purchases. Not working on sets anymore, there isn't as much for me to claim as some others are able to, but occasionally something in my wheelhouse will pop up, and so far, I usually have pretty good luck in getting those particular cards.

Despite it now being 2-3 months since my last envelope of claims arrived, it's still my last piece of card related mail to arrive, so I guess I can technically still refer to this as my most recent mail day?

The Gerry Staley up top is probably my favorite of the bunch, it was the only combo card that Topps ever did for him. If I was more motivated right now, I'd make more of a push to complete my collection of his stuff, as he's one of those guys who, not surprisingly, hasn't received a bump from the boom crowd. But I'm not, so hopefully no one else will discover how awesome he was before I feel like actively collecting again.

This color shift didn't scan very well, but you can still kind of see what's going on along the border, and even more so up at the team name. I don't know what was going on with the printers back in 1970, but they produced quite a few of these that year.

Don's a little rough, but it's a black bordered '59 that I didn't already have. I can always upgrade later if need be.

The first four cards represented my claims, Tim here was a card that I inquired about via email (Bo has a lot of '93 Donruss duplicates). I guess I sort of have a Tim Salmon collection going now, although for the time being I'm only seeking out specific cards. The image on this one isn't anything to write home about, but I love these red, white, and blue Rated Rookies. I've got Bret Boone already (which also came from Bo), and I think this was only other guy in the set that I would want who got one.

And finally, two suprise '61 Billy Muffett's. They definitely fall into the well-loved category, but both were still a welcome sight. I've lost track again of how many I have, but I think these two were added to the fourth page. That's at least 29 then, which isn't bad... I still need more though!

Many thanks again to Bo for the cards. It's always fun to paw through someone else's unwanted stuff, even if it is being done virtually. Unexpected Billy Muffett's are pretty good, too.