RTP #14 - Special Guest Shane from Off the Wall

Welcome back to The Rockie Trading Post.  Today's special guest is Shane from Off the Wall.  If you haven't met Shane, he collects Jon Lester and Kevin Youkilis cards along with building several sets and a very interesting side collection of cycles and no-hitters.  I may have to do that one as well one day.  Here is Shane's recap of what I sent to him including a hard to part with Jon Lester jersey/auto.  In return however, Shane sent me a couple of boxes! of cards.  Is this a case of quality for quantity?  I don't think so, because I traded what I didn't need for a lot of set help, but you be the judge.  Here are the brief highlights of what Shane sent me.

Can't complain about the first card.  A 1999 Stadium Club Matt Holliday rookie card.  It was a little weird that they would give a draft pick card to a 7th rounder, but he worked out okay.  Next up is one of the Topps gold parallels that I love so much.  This one is a 2002 Jose Ortiz.  With it's regular orangeish-brown borders the 2002 set is more difficult than others to spot the gold ones.

Up next is two guys that I wish had never played for the Rockies for vastly different reasons.  Dale Murphy was one of my favorite players as a kid, but he was in his "Willie Mays as a Met" phase with Colorado.  Denny Neagle was with Mike Hampton possibly the worst free agent signing ever.  Even though Hampton wasted more money than Neagle, he at least did some positive things in Denver.  Neagle was just bad, luckily for the Rox his need for let's say oral gratification allowed to cancel the last year of his contract.

Our Todd Helton card of the day is this beauty from the 2002 Post set that Topps decided to turn into 2010 Topps.  I like this card much better than 2010 Topps for one simple reason, the logo.  Why Topps felt the need to write out the full Colorado Rockies name rather than using the simple logo is beyond me.  Next is a 2004 Bowman Heritage card of "easy to forget he was here" Rockie Jeromy Burnitz.  I love this set, and 1955 Bowman is my favorite design of all time.  I may buy a box or two of 2004 Bowman Heritage and put this set together.

The last of the Rockies Shane sent me are a 2010 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects and Bears, Oh My with company namesake Bo Bowman.  Maybe next year we can draft young Pete Topps and Native American prospect Chief Upper Deck to complete the set.  Finally we a have a 2008 A&G black mini of Matt Holliday.  I don't collect the A&G minis, so I can't tell you how rare it is but it does look fairly cool.  Definitely better than a surfer or a poker player or some crap.

The key to this trade with Shane was him knocking off a bunch of cards from my currently unpublished set wantlists.   He sent cards from around a dozen different sets, but I'll show the three sets I remembered to scan before putting them away.

Shane sent a nice stack of 2008 Topps Heritage including 7 short prints, such as the 4 above cards.  That is the only Heritage set that I have even started and after three hobby boxes and several trades, I am still 156 away from completion of all 720. I challenge any of you to buy 3 wax boxes (maybe 20 bucks or so for all) from any of the 792 card sets from the overproduction era and I guarantee you will closer than 156 away from completion.  Short prints suck.

2008 Topps is another that Shane knocked a chunk off of.  I bought hobby boxes of Series 1 and Updates, but only got blasters for Series 2.  Needless to say, Series 2 is where all of my needs now lie.  I was really surprised I didn't have the Tulo in the set, because had it in both mu Rockie binder and my Rookie Cup collection.  I really like the baseball bat missile that appears to be coming at Johjima.
 

1984 Topps is one of the "older" sets I am working on at the moment.  I quote older because I remember 1984 very well and I refuse to admit that I am getting older as well.  That is my first ever copy of any Don Mattingly rookie card.  When I first got into the hobby, THE two cards to have from the mid 80s were the 84 Donruss Mattingly and the 86 Donruss Canseco, but the 84 Topps Mattingly was close behind.


Thanks again Shane for the trade and you have first dibs on any Youkilis or Lester that happen my way.  Make sure you check out his blog here it's definitely a good read.  I probably could have sold the Lester on eBay when I first got it for the price of the box it came in, but who cares.  It went to a person that will appreciate it more than me or some prospector hoping to make a profit off of it and the icing on the cake is that a bunch of my sets now need fewer cards. Well that does it for this slightly delayed edition of The Rockie Trading Post, tune in next time for a deal that be be best described as ephemeral.  Until then, we are officially signed off.