My first pass through the box was to pick out some of my “PC guys”, some highlights of which I’ll show below, but there are plenty more other goalies for me, plus some good trading fodder, with some teams in high demand among my traders (I can never have enough Braves for Johnny, for example). I actually had a big project in the fall where I sorted my non-keepers, at least into groups of sets. Like bringing together all my available Ginter cards. I’ve officially retired my “sorted by team” trading slot, which served me well during the busy blog trading days, circa 2014-2019. I ended up filling a large box with cards for my designated “you can dump all the unwanted cards on me” friend Billy to help my numbers get to a more manageable level, and now I need to move on to sorting by set and eventually entering a decent “for trade/sell” collection at TCDb.
That big box I surprised Billy with was from before Kevin started his contests, so I can’t use that as one of my giveaway-inspired mailers, although that may have helped me karmically with the randomizer. But no, I’ve sent out a few surprise PWEs in the meantime, including one to a Twitter friend, but I wanted to say that I haven’t really been on Twitter/X and BlueSky since mid-October, so if you’re talking to me there, I might not understand for a while. My laptop got logged out when we were dealing with a WiFi problem at home, and it was so nice not to have to doomscroll, so I just resisted logging back in. I’m still logged into
Anyway, enough whining! Let’s take a look at some #’d cards!
I thought Mattingly made a fitting first card in this post, since he was the star of my previous post, but also because the gray wood on that parallel isn’t far removed from the bleached edge mods I make, and I happened to give Kevin one of those Mark McGwire ’87 mods as a little thank you gift when he stopped by.
I was happy to score another Gavin Lux car, even if his stock isn’t rising anymore. The addition of Tony Gwynn (shared with Garret Anderson) was another top card in the pack for me. And I got a kick out of the semi-interactive Scouting Report Card that opens to…
Hobby heavy hitters Jeter and Junior.
This was supposed to be a group of bad boys or troublemakers or whatever, but that’s a bit of an exaggeration, including for Pedro, because I think everyone has forgiven him for the Don Zimmer throw at this point.
I looked at the new one Alex vs. Arod doc on HBO and would recommend it to any baseball fan, even if you hate Alex Rodriguez, because I think you will understand him better, even if you still don’t forgive his mistakes.
As for Robbie Alomar, he could be forgiven for spitting on a referee that one time, but harder to overlook is his irresponsible penis behavior. But as a Toad in the Hall, I still begrudgingly collect his cards, and that one is a nice green refractor.
Additions for a couple of my largest active PCs, Trout and Soto.
Colorful full-page cards. I love some garish shine! A few more in the next photo.
When I first saw the Bench/Fisk card I was faced with Sophie’s choice of which PC to put it on, as I collect both backstops with equal enthusiasm. But be happy! Later in the box I came across another of the /500 cards, so the problem was solved.
We’re getting to the end of the post, but yeah, there’s a lot of great stuff in there. It feels a bit like I’ve been able to enjoy a card show vicariously through Kevin, without back pain and time to navigate the seas of records and Pokémon, as these are exactly the kind of cards I’d add to my deck if I were still a card show regular.
A few more big names to finish with. Oh yeah, Nolan and Kirby both wore number 34. I also collect Tom Glavine (and favored the Braves over the Twins in ’91), but he’s outdone here.
Thanks again to Kevin for the great cards! It was a box of 660 counts, and I estimate that at least half of them are a keeper for me. Like I said, the rest will probably be added to TCBb soon, but anyone reading who might want to trade PWEs based on team (that is, if OhioTim is still reading and interested in the available Cleveland cards, etc. or like any of my Dodgers or Mets friends who want to trade with me…), just shoot me an email or TCDb message or whatever (but then again, I’m not on X or BlueSky that much now, so don’t message me there), and hopefully we can keep the Christmas spirit and card mail flowing.
#Instant #profit