My Best Binder Page X 3 (Blogger Trade Edition)

Last month Junior Junkie started a cool trend of showcasing your best binder page.  I thought it would be fun to see if I could do it with cards I received in trade this year.  Since I was fortunate enough to receive so many great cards throughout the year the number ballooned to 50.  Since 50 pics is a little much to show at one time I cut it down to around 27.

I actually should say 27 items instead of cards, as some crazy people (Wes, Zippy) found some non cardboard items that were just way too cool not to be showcased again.  I suck at following rules.

These are in no particular order.  In my book they are all awesome.

Cobra rookie! Believe this was Julie that sent this along. 

I love printing plates of Pirates who had short tenures. This is John Axford compliments of Jedi Jeff.

This was a card that avoided me for a long time, but Arpsmith came to the rescue.

Gavin has sent me a crap ton of cool stuff.  This was my favorite.

Club T206!

Former WVU player Jim Fridley who also happens to be from the small town I grew up, Philippi WV! Brian HSCA with the hook up.

Wes is insane.

Sketch art compliments of Wes!

Mark Hoyle is the vintage master.

I could make a whole post of oddballs that Tony L has sent my way, but this card was just awesome. Former WVU Mountaineer Bruce Bosley.

Doug always digs deep for great WVU cards. Kevin Jones was a great 4 year player for the Mountaineers.

whale card! Thanks Kevin!

Dennis hooked me up with another whale!

Dennis was just showing off by giving me this one.

The KBL superstar avoided me for the longest time.....P Town Tom to the rescue.

Dennis and I trade a lot. Sometimes it gets out of hand to the point where he sent me a cut auto of Max Carey. 

Jeff was one of my new trade partners this year and he immediately started hooking me up with Mountaineers.

Sometimes the best cards are the ones that have great backstories like Mr. Operation Shutdown. Thanks AJ!

Another whale find by It's Like Having My Own Card Shop!

Brad's Blog chipped in this great Marte auto!

I've been on a 90's kick lately and All Trade Bait All the Time was an enabler.

Jim from GCRL continue to have a great blind trade! It is hard to find a Bay that I don't have, but he managed to do it.

Zippy went the extra mile with this gift.  It is currently right beside the computer I'm working on right now. Blogging inspiration!

One of my favorite cards of the year compliments of the Dutch Card Guy.

Oddballs! Fuji sent this along early in 2015!

Underdog and I had a great high end trade earlier this year.  This Cutch was the main attraction.

Leaf Trinity is one of the more unique sets every year. My French buddy Kevin hooked me up with two great versions. 

Brian from HSCA found a white whale of the Candy Man. Nickname cards are the best.

It was a great year of trades! Looking forward to what 2016 will bring. 

Celebratory end of year trading beer.  Founders Harvest Ale! 

Thanks for reading. 

The Smell of Cardboard

Tim from "I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning" is a busy man these days as right before Christmas he brought home his third daughter. More power to you my friend. My little girl has been a handful so having three is hard for me to fathom. You are way outnumbered in your house. I should send you beer....

Right around this same time his daughter was born Tim sent me an awesome PWE.

A Victoria's Secret parallel of Gregory Polanco.  I don't hide the fact that I love adding cards of the Pirate right fielder so getting them for free via trade makes me very happy.

 I hadn't seen this card before.  Guess I didn't pay enough attention to Chrome. Pretty sharp looking card that honors Polanco's hit streak to open his career.

 I really should gather up my Walk's in one place.  I probably have a master collection. This card here is the best card in the history of cards.  Move over Honus Wagner.

 In reality this was probably my favorite card of the bunch. I have received so many great Ramirez cards in trades this past month. This Bowman's Best parallel is numbered to 200! Great card.

 Even non licensed Cutch cards look cool. I miss the dreads.

 The Van Slyke is cool for a lot of reason. You have a Tim Wallach cameo, Pete Rose slide and Gene Lamont giving the "get down and slide sign".

JR House is actually from West Virginia.  My high school played House's team for the state championship when I was in 9th grade. I think he broke just about every quarterback record that game. The crazy thing was that he was better at baseball. He would go on to be a pretty big prospect for the Pirates, but never got any traction at the MLB level.  He had a cup of coffee in 5 different seasons, but never got more than 40 at bats.

Thanks for the great cards Tim. Hope things are settling down at your house. By the way everyone should trade with Tim.  He actually collects a good bit of Rays players!!!!  His primary collection is Yanks, but he has a nice variety of players on his want list.

Thanks for reading.

Pending Organization and a Little Poison

I'm in dire need of getting my cardboard organized. While this part of collecting has never been a strong point, the boxes of unsorted cards have gotten out of control.  The silly thing is I have all the supplies needed, but having supplies and actually using them are two completely different things.

I actually like organizing my collection. Any time spent with cards is a good day, but for some reason I end up talking myself out of the task. Some of this stems from wanting to post something on the blog and reading all the other great blogs. Another key component is the length of time to complete the task. Knowing that this is more than a one day project I will likely leave cards and supplies out on my desk to continue at the next free moment.  This is a recipe for destruction when you have a two year old. While she has been trained that cards are to be treated like fine art, the will power of a two year old will always lead to mayhem and destruction.

To get around my mental blocks I've decided to take a manageable stack of cards from the unsorted boxes a few times a week. This will allow me to complete each stack and put everything away every night. In my head this sounds good, but we'll see what happens.

Now for more vintage!!!!!

1935 Diamond Stars Lloyd Waner

Always something exciting about adding a nice vintage card.  Lloyd "Little Poison" Waner (great nickname) is one of those guys you might not realize is in the Hall of Fame. His brother Paul aka "Big Poison" (even better nickname) was much more celebrated and had over 3000 hits in his career. Lloyd was voted in by the veterans committee in 1967 while Paul was voted in 1952.

In terms of cardboard both seem to be a little under valued. This Little Poison ran me about $16. A small price to pay for 80 year old cardboard featuring a hall member. Since prices are low I may try find some cards featuring Lloyd and Paul.

Thanks for reading! 

Jedi Jeff PWE

I still have a few packages to post to clear out cards I received in 2015.  My good pal Doug just sent me what will be my first post of 2016 cards.

This post will show off some goodies from Jedi Jeff. I love getting mail from Mr. Club PWE. The only issue is my wife sometimes puts pwe's in different spots from my normal blog mail. She has gotten much better, but every so often I have to check in stacks of newspapers and junk mail to make sure nothing slips by.

Josh Bell is the first baseman of the future for the Pirates, but with the acquisition of John Jaso it will mean Bell will continue to develop in AAA.  Makes sense since he had less than 200 at bats at that level. Probably a win/win for the Buccos as their commitment to Jaso is cheap so if Bell tears up Indianapolis he could still be utilized.

 This is one of those Topps 3D cards in which you could enter a code and make the card "come to life."

 Flair had some odd base cards back in the day. I've been on a nice run adding Ramirez cards featured as a Bucco.

 Polanco will probably be everybody's pick to have a huge breakout season this coming year. The good thing about Polanco is that he can be valuable even without the bat. The defense and baserunning are both well above average.

 Both Jameson Taillon and Nick Kingham would have debuted with the Pirates last year, but injuries derailed their seasons. Kingham's arm injury occurred during the summer so it is likely most of this year will be lost too.

 Glasnow is on most top 20 overall prospect lists. He should play a vital role at some point during the season.

I pulled a ton of the Sportdiscs, but I'm pretty sure I didn't get a Cutch. Jeff took care of that problem.

Some miscellaneous Buccos to round out the pwe. I feel like if Studio became a stand alone set again it would be huge within the blogging community. Triple Play was a nice set for the budget conscience collector back in the day. My parents would often buy me packs.

Thanks for the envelope Jeff. Sorry for the delay in posting.  Got backlogged around the holidays. Hopefully my return package arrived safely.

Thanks for reading!

It Was a Very Good Year

I'm not much of a goal setter when it comes to blogging. The one item I told myself to cut back on was retail spending in which for the most part I was pretty successful. A few loose packs here and there and blasters of Stadium Club and Update was the extent of Target purchases. I'm guessing it will be more of the same this year.

Another aspect of collecting that ceased in 2015 was set collecting. I enjoy set collecting but I just don't get the full satisfaction of a complete set because the money could have been better spent on something Pirate related. In 2015 the only sets that I've started to collect was Stadium Club and Diamond Kings. If something piques my interest in 2016 I may take a stab at it, but for now it could be a setless year.

The main litmus test for my blog will always be trading. I feel like I continued to momentum that I started in my first year of blogging. In my first year I received a shade over 100 packages, this year that number was about 125.   I checked my Stamps.com account and I sent out 130 packages. My hope is to stay around that number.  It was also fun to add a bunch of new trade partners this year!

My hope for 2016 is to possibly expand our box breaks.  Kevin, Brian and I have a good thing going and I think it has plenty of room to grow. As a whole we had a few nice hits and we were able to accumulate some trade bait. We also use it as an excuse to keep our trades going every couple of months.

I also have WAR Games to introduce. I scrapped introducing it in December because of people traveling and shipping issues. One of the main aspects of WAR Games is having a deadline and having so many non business days would hurt the game. I'm thinking a mid/late January introduction as their is not much going on that time of year.

Thanks for reading.

A Bombing During Peace Time

One of the more entertaining card related events for me last year was my battle with crazy man Wes aka Jaybarkerfan. We exchanged just about everything sports memorabilia related you could imagine. Game used jerseys, bats and autograph biography's were just a few of the items that went back and forth between Hazel Green and Morgantown. After about 6 weeks a treaty was signed and all has been quiet......until the week before Christmas. 

Wes always has a way to hit me when I least expect it. The last few months he has been going through a mass reorganization of his collection in which he is narrowing his focus. Well, little did I know he had been hoarding stuff to ship my way. Sneaky! 

While caught off guard I wasn't completely empty handed, so my crazy friend you'll have something coming sooner than later. 

Get ready for a crap ton of photos. I'll let them do most of the talking....

Hanson should see some big league time this year.

I've been trying to nab some autos of Hanson since his debut should be early this coming season. As usual Wes helps.

This is a cool memorabilia card of the former Mountaineer great.

Tavon has had a hot hand the last few weeks of the season.

I was excited to see a Tavon auto in the mix!

You may have heard about Stedman getting shot in the hand back around Thanksgiving. Miraculously he survived and has already been released from the hospital.  It seems like a full recovery is expected.

Strata diecuts are pretty cool!

Pat White and Steve Slaton are by far the most represented in my WVU collection. Slaton had a short career, but was featured in just about every set his first season.

Another beautiful Stedman rookie auto from Finest.

Now for some Steelers!

Could you imagine how dangerous the Steelers would be if Bell stayed healthy?

This was one of my favorite autos in the bunch.

It is amazing how good Brown is now. What a pick he turned out to be.

That was the ultimate hit parade Wes. You always seem to find some great stuff for me. I'm going to return fire very soon.....be afraid. 

Thanks for reading!