This Trade Had the Kitchen Sink Too

Buckle in folks this is going to be wild ride.  My pal Dennis went overboard with his most recent installment of our ongoing blind trade.  This trade has long ago taken a life of its own, but Dennis takes it to another level. 

Fan Favorites is one of my all time favorite auto subsets, but it has been a little rocky with checklists in recent memory.  Vern obviously is a great choice, Skip Bayless not so much. 

Just a Ralph Kiner printing plate!!!!!!!

Getting all parts of Gorzelanny would be quite a feat.

This Kiner cut auto is enough to be a centerpiece in any big trade, but Dennis saved the big one for last. I'm already spilled the beans on the main even, but I'll show it again at the bottom of the post.

What makes our trades fun is that Dennis hits all aspects of my collection. The Jerry West cards are extremely nice and a welcome addition. I don't buy much basketball so anytime I can accumulate via trade it is a good day.

Two really cool Hostetler's. He still lives in Morgantown.

It took a while for Marc Bulger to get his chance in the NFL, but when he did he took advantage and picked up right where Kurt Warner left off.

Lots of new to me Mountaineers. The Triple Threads Bulger is my favorite.

When I was actively adding Steelers to my collection, the Bus was one of my favorites to collect.

Stanley Cup Champions!!!! Nice SP of proud mullet owner Jaromir Jagr.  Fleury likely played his last game with the Pens as rumor has it the new Las Vegas franchise is interested in the soon to be free agent.

Now for the Pirate section.

New cards of an old legend.  I love Topps Gallery but Maz looks like he was scared in that picture. Greats of the Game is an all time great set.

Impossible to choose a favorite of this bunch, but gun to my head I would choose the vibrant looking Pops Greats of the Game.

A nice look back at all the cool Honus Wagner cards in recent memory. The Diamond Kings has a great look.  Easy to get around the licensing issue for the pre war players.

The Candyman and Teke are two cardboard legends.

Flying Buccos!

Leaf Certified holds a soft spot in my heart because that set had autos of Craig Wilson and Jose Castillo.  Big bummer for people who actually pulled those out of packs, but super fun for me to chase all these years.

Back when DK had a license. The canvas cards were a nice change of pace.

One of the 10000 different Fleer sets during the late 90's early 2000s.  I loved all of them!

JR House was from WV and a great two sport star.  When I was a sophomore in high school he destroyed by alma mater and broke just about every state record for quarterbacks. 

Main event time.....

What a cut auto!!!! It is a 1/1 and features two all time great Buccos.  You truly wowed me with this one Dennis.

I don't know how I'm going to top this trade, but I'm drawing up a plan of attack.....

Thanks for reading.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Josh Bell Topps Opening Day 1/1

I was hoping to show Dennis's of Too Many Verlanders trade package today, but the weather was way too nice to spend indoors.  I'll have to finish scanning tomorrow.  Sorry about that Dennis.  

Along with a couple great trade packages, I recently scored a couple high end Buccos that arrived over the weekend.  This Josh Bell kind fell into my lap via eBay auction.  I put a low bid on it and for whatever reason it ended up holding up.  The final tally was around $40 which seems pretty reasonable since this is an actual rookie card. Was I wanting to spend that much....no, but the price seemed more than fair so I'll just not buy as much the next month to justify to higher end grab. 

Bell has been super streaky this year and is showing all stages of rookie development. The biggest issue was his defense and that has been than average. His offense has shown more power than expected, but his plate discipline has faltered from last year.  If that improves over the second half of the season the Pirates will have to be thrilled with the overall development. 

Thanks for reading!

Sneak Peak

I wanted to give a quick sneak peak of one of the cards I received in a trade from my good pal Dennis from Too Many Verlanders.  This one will be hard to top when I send him a return package.

2004 Leaf Bill Mazeroski/Willie Stargell 1/1 Auto

Well done my friend.  I have my work cut out for me. Challenge accepted! 

Quickly Making Progress

My Black Bears Will Craig quest is going well..  The extra bonus was getting the blank back 1/1 as I was the only person to bid on it.  Here is what has arrived so far.

Base Auto

/99 Auto

/25 Auto

/10  Base Parallel

Blank Back 1/1

I haven't seen any of the printing plates or the true 1/1's hit the open market yet.  I will consider my quest complete once I get the /10 auto and the /25 /99 base parallels.  The parallels are all over eBay, but I'm waiting for someone to have free shipping as I don't want to pay $7 bucks in shipping for cards that will sell for .99.  The /10 auto may be a little tricky as only one is on eBay for a BIN price of $75.  He does have a best offer option, but I haven't attempted that yet.  Hoping one hits regular auction.

Thanks for reading

Defined Roles

It is not fun watching several of your favorite players struggle.  I've touched on McCutchen's struggles a ton, but another Pirate has been a shell of his former self.

Tony Watson was probably the best reliever in baseball you never head of because up until the trade deadline last year he had never closed games. If you ever watch those MLB Network shows where they rate the top 10 at each position, Watson would show up every year for relief pitchers.

Late last year he started to show some cracks in the armor. While he still never gave up a ton of hard contact, balls were still going into play a ton which lead to some rough outings.  This year has been more of the same, but with the added addition of becoming more susceptible to the long ball. He blew his 4th save tonight.

I'm one that hates defined roles for pitchers. Several people are calling for Watson to move out of the 9th inning role.  To me that thought process never makes any sense. Let's move a guy that is struggling to the 7th inning and he can give up homeruns there.  It is all about high leverage situations. Watson just needs to pitch in some games where the score is already out of hand. The inning doesn't matter. Just as the Pirates moved Cutch down in the order, Watson can pitch in mop up duty for a while.

It is fun to vent via showing off a baseball card.....

Unicorns

My local Target always has a well stocked card aisle. So whenever I have a hankering for some cardboard therapy I'm sure to find something.  What made this trip unique was the discounted baseball. While their is always discounted blasters, usually it consists of NBA and Nascar.  This time around they had two blasters of baseball and I bought them both.

Here is the contents of what turned out to be a really nice box of 2016 Archives.

 I don't pull many Harper's so this is a welcome addition of one of my favorite non Pirates.

 I pulled three Buccos with Kiner being my favorite.

 A few random cards that I really liked.  The Cargo has a nice shot of left field at PNC Park. The Lou Gehrig is super cool as well.

Socrates Brito is one of my favorite names in sports so I always show his cards.

Both Sano and Seager are having big years in their sophomore campaigns.  I want to see Sano, Judge and Stanton in the homerun derby this year.

This is the big hit from the box. 

I've pulled a few printing plates over the years, but this is probably the best one I've hit. This one has Zippy's name all over it since he loves Jennifer Lopez's boyfriend. 

So all in all it was a nice 12.99 investment.  I'll showoff the Stadium Club in the coming days. 

Thanks for reading. 

Cartes de Baseball Français

Yesterday I showcased my portion of two different box breaks from Kevin.  Let's get to all the fun extras he sent.

I was surprised how thick these relics were.  The picture doesn't really show, but I'm guessing it would take at least 100pt top loader to house one of these bad boys.

While I'm more of a Cole fan than Harrison, it is nice to add a relic of the versatile Bucco. It had been quite sometime since I've added one.

High end base parallels are hard to come by.  Not many in our community bust products like this so they are rarely shared. Pretty pumped to see this purple Cutch.

While the Cummings card is pretty cool that Kendall is on a whole different level.  For about a five year stretch I would put Kendall cards up against anyone in the late 90's early 2000's for shear coolness.

Some various numbered goodness. While Bay is my boy, the Kendall Prizm card is my favorite of this bunch.

Nice bright jersey swatch of the Cobra. Golden Age was a great set.

Canada's number 1 son.

This was a really nice surprise.  This is a numbered to /25 Bowman parallel of Pirate top prospect Austin Meadows. Good chance the Buccos will call up Meadows at some point in the summer.

Thanks so much for the cards Kevin. Your continued generosity ceases to amaze me.  Now I need to go find some cool Blue Jays....

Thanks for reading.