Trade: Off Hiatus Baseball Cards

Tony has been a busy with his career lately, but he still found time to bomb my mailbox with three team bags full of Pirates. I always enjoy going through the cards Tony picks because he is one of those lucky souls that gets to frequent card shows. This time the trade package had a nice oddball feel to it. Here are a sample of my favorites.

Right off the bat we have the legend. 

Here comes a boat load of Pops...

You can't go wrong with Pops. I like the 82 Donruss with the flip glasses and sweet hat.

The Manny on the left sums him up perfectly. That smile is something that you will see to this day if you see him in person. He is genuinely happy all the time. The card on the right is about as serious as you will see the former Pirate catcher.

 I've been thinking about growing my hair out like Baumgarten.

I was most excited for these old Cramer Baseball Legends. I've seen these before, but did not have any in my collection.

These are the Renata Galasso cards that feature a nice write up on the back of each players most identifying feat, like Maz's walk off and Haddix's "best game ever pitched."

 The first Cumpton is a refractor /500!

 I was a big fan of Sweet Spot Classics and have several autos from the set. I miss Upper Deck.

 M&M oddball.

 Panini stickers!

 Dog food and KMART

As always Tony thanks for the great assortment. You always seem to find some neat stuff. I'll keep my eye out for some new Brewers for you. Hope work is not kicking your butt too much.

Thanks for reading!

Surprise PWE: Hot Corner Cards

Tonight I was asked to participate in a team trivia night for charity at the WVU Alumni Center. I really enjoy these events as local businesses get together and donate food and drinks to raise money money for local charities. While no baseball questions were asked, my team gave a good showing and fell one question short of the semi finals. 

I feel like we won either way as we got to spend more time with the donated keg!

New cards courtesy of Pat from Hot Corner Cards!

Oliver Perez is a bit of an enigma. He was part of the Brian Giles trade that sent both he and Jason Bay to the Buccos. He burst on the scene immediately, but had trouble duplicating his early success. The Mets picked him up and gave him a sizable contract after some moderate success. This proved to be a disaster and the Mets would end up eating a big portion of the contract.

A sweet Black Diamond Kendall. You have to wonder how good Kendall could have been had he not destroyed his ankle. If you want to punish yourself Google Jason Kendall gruesome injury.

This is a rainbow parallel of Pirate All Star Tony Watson. My hope is to find either the silver plate /20 or the acetate /10 of this card at some point as Watson is a personal favorite. A starter in the minor leagues, the Pirates decided to convert Watson to a reliever. The decision proved wise as he as been one of the most reliable left handed relievers in baseball the last two seasons. 

Thanks for the surprise cards Pat. I'll try and hook you up with some new Tigers soon!

Thanks for reading. 

Hidden Treasures

My organization skills are lacking sometimes when it comes to my cards. Ever since I started the blog I've been adding cards at a vigorous pace. The normal protocol is get cards, scan cards, blog about cards and store cards. While this seems simple enough life can get in the way and cause a backlog of cardboard. That is when piles upon piles accumulate on my desk. 

Last night while searching through these piles I came across two really cool cards.

I believe the top one came from crazy man Jaybarker and the bottom was an eBay pickup. I don't have many Flying Dutchmen cards, but the ones I do have are among my favorites. It is easy to hide logos when dealing with the prewar players. I think that why all the Panini throwback sets are received much better than sets like Prizm and Donruss. 

Here is my best Wagner that I showcased last Spring.

Now back to more organizing. Maybe my desk will throw up something else fun!

Extreme Trading: Too Many Verlanders Edition

Dennis from Too Many Verlanders and I have been playing a game of extreme trading. We have been swapping Miguel Cabrera autos, vintage cut autos and Dave Parker rookies just to name a few all with the aim of trying to outdo the other. It has been fun to say the least.

Last month I hit Dennis with a second Cabrera auto. The return shot from Dennis definitely had the wow factor.

Dennis wasn't messing around. He got things started off with a bang by sending me this Maz rookie that is in fair shape. I told you this was extreme trading.

Dennis and I have a common bond in that we both heavily collect a baseball team and a college. Charles Sims only played one year at WVU, but it was a really good year. He was drafted in the 3rd last year by the Bucs and saw significant playing time after recovering from a major ankle injury.

I have a really large Slaton collection so it is getting harder and harder to find cards I don't have. Extra cool that Dennis found this /99 jersey.

 I really liked these Artifacts autos. Beautiful on card auto of one of my all time favoirtes.

The Pirates got the best year of Xavier Nady's career and sold high to the Yankees. Nady didn't have many Pirate relics so it is always nice to add one.

I've talked about Craig Wilson before as he was one of those unsung heroes. The Pirates just never played him enough during his tenure. In today's game he would have been sought after because he was a high obp guy that could play multiple positions. He was also a great pinch hitter.

 The other McCutchen.

I love the simplicity of the Leaf Signature autos. 

 Parallel of Slaton from Leaf Rookies and Stars /500

I was a huge fan of Bulger when he played at WVU. Destroyed a lot of the passing records while he was in school. Geno Smith would pass all of them under Dana Holgorson's spread offense.

I'm still pissed the Jets picked Geno. Probably the worst case scenario as the Jets had no supporting cast to help Geno. I have this dream that Geno would get traded to the Rams and be reunited with Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey.

 Minis!

More WVU including some cool Gyorko's. Expecting a nice rebound from Jedd as he lost a good part of last year to injuries. He won't have as much pressure this year to be a run producer since the Padres decided to go all in by adding Upton, Kemp and Myers.

A huge mix of Pirate inserts and parallels to close things out. I think the Jose Guillen was my favorite. It was numbered to 10,000!

Our trades were getting so big that Dennis and I have decided to scale them back down to more manageable sizes. Our battles will continue but you can only trade high end vintage and superstar autos so often. Maybe we'll just do every other time :)

Thanks a bunch Dennis. You really outdid yourself.

Silver Framed

Late post as I was watching the Mountaineers beat Texas. Looks like we are getting hot at the right time of year.

I'm not one to chase the Topps parallels. In my mind I keep thinking it would be cool to try and complete a rainbow, but to date I've been able to talk myself out of it. I'll leave that to crazy people like Zippy.

With that being said a couple of the parallels have caught my attention in Topps. I'm really digging the /10 acetate cards and /20 silver frame cards. I made one big acetate purchase last month by picking up the Gregory Polanco. Since I spent a good bit of money on that card I figured I would go for a more complimentary player rather than a star with the silver frame

2015 Topps Silver Frame Parallel Jordy Mercer /20

First off these cards are thick and more solid than I expected. When Chris pulled the Hamels in the group break it didn't look that thick to me. Either way I was intrigued and wanted to get one for my collection. This Mercer was a nice compromise at less than $10 shipped. Overall I still like the acetate cards a little better, but these are a nice change of pace. For better or worse at least these have a unique characteristic. 

If I were to chase another silver or acetate card I would probably go for that Pirates team card. 

This was my favorite Pirates card in Series 1.

Thanks for reading.

Trade: The Chronicles of Fuji

Fuji was nice enough to include me in has latest round of mailings. This hit oriented trade package was full of some big names. 

Off to a fast start with this Mad Dog auto. This will make a nice edition to my growing Madlock collection.

 Boom! A Cobra autograph to compliment the Mad Dog. Always fun to accumulate cards of the late 70's Pirates.

Here is a set you don't see pop up much in the blogosphere. Museum Collection is one of Topps premium lines and a set that I've never messed with too much.  From the looks of it the sets are fairly small and have a handful of different parallels. The Blue Marte is /99 and the emerald Lambo is /199. What a great surprise!

 Womack was one of my favorites in the late 90's. I was so pissed when the Pirates let him go.

Justin Wilson was traded to the Yankees this offseason for Francisco Cervelli. Wilson is a lefty reliever who throws hard so he should see a good bit of late inning action with the Yankees. While it always stings to lose a homegrown guy, anytime you can turn relievers into everyday players you make the trade.

Did you know Evan Meek was an All Star. Yeah, the Pirates were really bad that year. 

A nice Chrome auto of Jason Jaramillo. When I won Jaybarker's World Cup of Trading this year my grand prize was a Jaramillo game used bat!

It was really hard to keep track of the parallels in this set.  All I know is that I have a ton of them and always seem to have one pop up that I've never seen before. Always happy to add more Freddy's to the collection.

Pirate fans had a tendency to over value our own farm system. When Bixler was shooting through the Pirates system I thought for sure he was going to be our next big thing. Obviously since most of you have never heard of Brian Bixler you know how this story ends.

 Some cool Bobby Bo's. I like how the Mets are paying him for the next 20 years.

More Womack!

This is a really neat oddball of Jim Bunning. It would be fun to find all the cards associated with this set. Today KDKA is the Pittsburgh CBS affiliate. 

Adam Hyzdu was another top tier Pirate prospect that never quite panned out. This was a constant theme in the 90's and early 2000's.

Clean shaven Walk!

Thanks for the great cards Fuji. I know work has been stressful for you lately, so I really appreciate you thinking of me. I'll start working on another package to send your way soon! 

Thanks for reading.