Vlad to know you

I've talked about the greatness that was (were?) Rod's daily giveaways, on multiple occasions now (including just last week), and have already covered all of the obvious reasons as to why they were so awesome, or at least I thought I had -- my goldfish memory has let me down again, as I had already forgot about the whole "bringing people together" thing. That was a thing, right? I'm guessing that a few people are shaking their respective heads quizzically, but it had to be a thing, because without those daily freebies, I may have never connected with, Tom, from The Angels, In Order.

I had been following Tom's blog for what's felt like years (and there's good chance that it has been actual years now), and commented on a number of his posts, but had never had the pleasure of having any extracurricular contact with him, at least not until I commented on a thank you post that he had did to Rod for some stuff that had been acquired from those daily giveaways, which subsequently led to an email from Tom, and thus the extracurricular activity between Tom and I... was born!

Since part of his post, and all of my comment, had been about Vladimir Guerrero, Tom offered to send along some of his duplicates (he's one of the preeminent Vlad collectors among the bloggers in case you didn't know) for my very recently started collection, and after looking at his want lists and seeing that I'd be able to reciprocate, I decided to go along with his offer.

I've seen those 2008 UD Documentary cards on more than a few occasions, but don't really know what the deal with them is. Judging by the card numbers, I'm guessing that it's a very large set, and given that the three cards that Tom sent are within seven numbers of each other, I'm assuming that Vlad has a few more cards in the set, all of which might contain the exact same photo? If so, I'm kind of hoping that he doesn't have like 40 cards in the set, as that might start to get a little boring after about the tenth or eleventh card.

Topps sure has done a lot of throwback sets. Of the three that are represented here, I think the '34 Goudey would be my favorite, although it would've been better if someone other than Derek Jeter could've been doing the says-ing.

Another throwback design, and not one that was done very well, but the card is new to me, so I won't complain about it's look too much.

Uhh... he's got legs, and uhh... he knows how to use them? I can honestly say that I've never been sent a leg card before, but I guess there's a first for everything.

Thanks again for the cards, Tom! And thank you, Rod, for indirectly being responsible for Tom and I's finally connecting.

But wait, there's more!

I got another package last week that was sort of related to Rod as well, in that it came as direct result of my first post of claims from Rod's giveaways, where I mentioned that I had Vladimir Guerrero to list of player collections, which, Bo, of Baseball Cards Come to Life! fame, saw, and commented that he might have some extras to spare, and apparently did.

Bo and I are no strangers to sending things back and forth, but this was the first time that he had sent any Vlad's, all of which were greatly appreciated. I got a duplicate of the on-the-ground Vlad, but that's okay. More throwbacks too, Topps really must've been running low on ideas there for a few years, although from an aesthetic standpoint, the T206 is pretty nice.

I haven't looked into yet, but I'm thinking that Vlad has a lot of "rookie" cards, which I'm basing solely on the fact that I seem to have a quite few cards of his that say "rookie" on them.

Bo also sent along a few non-Vlad cards. The Edgar Fleer Focus is really nice, and the '91 UD Roby is greatly appreciated, especially since it was glaringly absent from the box that I opened a couple of months ago. I'll need to replace the Taylor at some point, but who know whens that'll be, as I don't see me hitting a show anytime soon, and to me, it's a bit overpriced on COMC, so it might be awhile before I can procure a better copy.

Thanks again for the Vlad's, as well as the non-Vlad's (especially the Roby), Bo! Between you and, Tom, and the inserts that I already had, this collection's really picking up. And thanks again to, Rod, as his giveaways did lead to this package as well, and had he not done them, this 2/3 of this group may have never made their way to me.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Staking claims

If you were to take a peek at my current list of scan folders, you'd probably notice one of two things right off of the bat, or maybe you'd notice both things, I don't know -- the point is that most of the blog related folders share one of two characteristics: Half of the titles start out with "COMC", and the other half are just listed under single names... blogger's names!

I've mentioned many times in recent months how fortunate I've been this year when it comes to receiving cards from fellow blogger's, but due to some very sporadic posting, and a serious lack of creativity, have been slow to give public thanks. Wanting to give everyone their own post hasn't helped either, but that's the way I've always done it, and the way that I will always do it. As such, I find myself looking at 15 folders with names on them, one of which even dates back to before Christmas! This really is quite unacceptable, so in an effort to try and resolve this "problem", I'm gonna see if I can will myself to do at least one thank you post per week until I get caught up.

Ideally I'd like to do these in the order that I received them, but that might end up creating too much pressure if I feel like I only have one option, so I'm just gonna go with whichever one feels right that week, which is sort of what I'm doing this week, by focusing on the most recent PWE(s) to arrive here in Sleevesville.

Rod, the apparently mad genius behind, Padrographs, has taken the "Free Stuff" concept to it's absolute extreme as of late, by offering up free cards on a daily basis, for what seems like at least a couple of weeks now... a number of which I have laid claim too!

Redemption cards were still a fairly new concept back in 1992, and I'm pretty certain that I didn't fully grasp this new concept (despite very clear instructions on the back), which is why when I pulled the now famous Shaq rookie redemption (minus the punched hole) from a jumbo pack of the then newly released 1992-93 Upper Deck, I put it in a binder... instead of sending it in to be redeemed!

Since I didn't send my redemption in, and don't recall ever hearing anyone talking about sending one in, I never realized that when you did, Upper Deck sent it back with a hole punched through it, and a big "TRADED" stamped on the back.

Of course too, if you weren't a dumbass (like me), and you did what you were supposed to do with the card, i.e. redeem it, Upper Deck sent you one of these...

[Note: It took seeing this scan for me to realize that it was time to clean the tray... so much dust!] By the late 90's, I had nearly completed this set, in fact I was only missing one card, this card! I don't know what the going rate for it is these days, but back then it was a bit pricey, and in that pre-internet as we know it era, I never did come across a cheap one, thus I never completed my set. Most of the cards from that nearly completed set are now long gone, but it's still really cool to finally own a copy of this card, and in a way, it sort of feels like I have completed that set after all of these years.

A number of Junior's have come up for grabs, and I've been able to grab most of them. By the by, how great is this Topps Laser?

I didn't realize until just recently how many Vlad Guerrero's I've been picking up at shows over the last couple of years, now that I have, it seems like the only logical thing to do is to go ahead and add him to my list of player collections. And for the record, both of these were new to me.

I don't think that I was necessarily ever in the market for a Joe Theismann autograph, but I love the '84 Instant Replay subset, and I love his signature, and it's placement on the card... so why not try and get it?

Many thanks to Rod for the cards, and for the incredible generosity that he's been spreading by doing these daily Free Stuff posts! If you haven't checked out these posts yet by chance, you might want to do so sooner than later, as I can't imagine that Rod will be able to keep this pace up forever, that is unless a few of us feel like donating some stamps and envelopes to the cause?


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.