RTP #40 featuring Five New Bloggers (New to Me At Least)

One thing I have started feeling over the past couple of months is that I am no longer a "new" blogger.  I have wandered into becoming a "veteran" blogger.  I am not the future Hall of Fame shortstop on the team or the ace pitcher or even the young hotshot and I have no delusions of thinking that I am.  I do feel that I am probably the equivalent of a solid #3 starter or a #7 hitter in a strong lineup.  Those are the type of players that cannot carry the team, but can be looked on as a decent player and hopefully a good mentor to the newest players up from the minors.  All of this is actually leading somewhere.  I have not been as good a "mentor" to the newest bloggers and I think doing a rookie trade post might give them some new eyes on their blogs.  Let's take a trip around the blogosphere and introduce some of the newer members of the team.

Fantastic Catch

First up is Weston (aka superduperman) who is the man behind the blog Fantastic Catch.  He is a Cardinals collector and in general seems like a really good trader.  We made a deal a little while back that focused on the above DJ LeMahieu camo parallel.  The Garrett Atkins relic from 2006 Upper Deck/Artifacts was a nice surprise addition.

Baseball Card Breakdown

Up next is Gavin (aka defgav) from Baseball Card Breakdown.  Gavin is a Padres fan, but is more of a player collector than anything else.  Gavin has actually already found his niche in the blogosphere through his "glow-in-the-dark" cards like the 2007 Topps Jeff Francis above.  The Todd Helton is a Prizm parallel from the 2012 Panini/Prizm set.  The parallel has the same name as the set (which I hate) and the 2012 Prizm set came out in 2013 (which I hate more).  Kind of a bothersome set, which makes it that much better that the Pacheco finished off this base team set for me.

View from the Skybox

Next we have Chris (aka View from the Skybox) who runs the blog of the same name (VFTS not Chris).  He is a Royals collector and a easy person to trade with.  For a small stack of KC cards, I got something that had been avoiding me for 3 years, a non-Todd Helton '75 mini from 2011 Topps/Lineage.  I had about 10 copies of the Todd Helton '75 mini but 0 from the other 4 Rockies in the set.  This Tulo gets me almost halfway to the team set.

Cervin' Up Cards

Next on the block is Kenny (aka Zippy Zappy) from the new blog Cervin' Up Cards.  Kenny is a Yankees fan and collector, but we shouldn't hold that against him.  Kenny actually did something that most people haven't been able to do, send me Rockie cards from a set that is missing from my want lists.  He not only did that once, but twice, in the same trade package.  First was the 2010 Tristar Pursuit line which I was missing.  I got the Chris Balcom-Miller green parallel auto from that set and I now have the whole line on my checklists.  I also received three cards from the Topps produced Sega Card Gen line.  I didn't have any of the sets from 2010 to 2013 on my checklists and now I have three fewer of those to track down.

Bob Walk the Plank

Last but not least we have Matt from the awesomely named blog Bob Walk the Plank.  As the blog title gives away, Matt is a Pirates fan and collector.  When I was a rookie blogger, the hardest cards to get rid of in a trade were Pirates cards because no one wanted them.  Now Matt is part a parade of Pirates bloggers that appear to have surpassed the Braves as the #2 team in Blogoland behind the Dodgers.  Matt sent me a pair of autographs that highlighted a trade from this past offseason.  The Dexter Fowler auto is my 5th certified auto of his and only one that is not from his rookie year.  The Jordan Lyles is actually a Houston card, but was included because he was the main piece traded for Fowler this year.  I like the card, but if any Astro fans really like it, I could be persuaded to part with it.


I would like to thank each one of these new bloggers and welcome them to the Blogoland baseball card community.  You other veteran guys should contact these rookies and make some starter deals with them.  They seem like they may be in the show for a while.

Thanx for reading.

RTP #39 Featuring Special Guest Wes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk

Since I have re-entered the trading market, it only stands to reason that I should resurrect my Rockie Trading Post series.  The normal setting for these posts will be multiple traders, just because it's not really my forte writing trade posts.  Night Owl and Dimebox Nick can write a trade post and make it read like a George Orwell novel that you just can't put down.  I don't have that kind of talent, so I will be normally be combining them into supersized posts.  However, in this case, the amount of cards that Wes sent me are a supersized post in and of itself.  I didn't take a photo of the enormous stack of cards that Wes sent, but another blogger took a photo of his stack from Wes.  Basically, just picture Rockies instead of Giants (something we all should do anyway) and you know how much I received from Wes.  There were a lot of doubles for me, but I don't care one bit because Wes added a lot to my collection.  Let's take a look at some of the newest Rockies to enter the Quarry.

Let's start off with our "Todd Helton Card of the Post" which is a card that I was shocked that I did not have, the 2007 Fleer base card.  I have no telling how many doubles, triples, and quadruples from this disappointing final set with the Fleer name, but somehow the Todd Helton card avoided me completely.  This one finished the team set for me and that is always a good thing.

One thing that has been around for a long time is gold parallels.  The top three are from Score's Gold Rush parallel from the mid 90's which I have always preferred to any other 90's parallel.  The Brent Mayne is actually the first Rockie that I have from Topps' inaugural gold parallel in the 2001 set.  The Scutaro of course is one of the "cascading urine" parallels from 2012 Topps.

Here we have a pair of Blake Street Bombers in their late 90s glory.  The Vinny Castilla 1998 Invincible Gems of the Diamond was one the few Pacific base cards that I still needed.  I am down to needing only 10 more from completing that company's entire base run.  The Dante Bichette is one of the hard to track down early chrome refractors.  Somewhere there is someone with a large hoard of Topps Chrome refractors from the 90s just sitting in their attic.  I hope they hit the market soon.

Here are a couple of parallels featuring still active former Rockies.  The Dexter Fowler is a purple from last year's Chrome set.  I actually didn't know about these purple refractors and didn't have them on my checklists until I saw this one.  Thank you for that.  The Matt Holliday is a rare parallel from the old Bowman Heritage line.  It is a black parallel #'d to only 52. 

Let's turn our focus to current Rockies.  Of course that will inevitably lead us to Troy Tulowitzki.  There are two recent inserts that had both been really difficult to track down (for a reasonable price anyway).  The first is one of the die cuts from 2013 Topps Chrome.  I'm not sure which of the three sets it is from without looking at the card number.  To me that says you have too many die cut inserts in this set.  The 1982 Topps throwback "In Action" insert is from the original revival of Topps Archives in 2012.  That is a set line that I would happily trade for a revival of Topps Total.

Here we have the potential future stars of the Rockies.  Tyler Matzek's card is from 2011 Topps Pro Debut.  He is actually the only Rockies player in that set that has not made an impact in the majors as of yet.  Of course the Rockies only had 4 players (Brothers, Arenado, and Rosario are the others) in that entire set, so it's not that odd.  Speaking of Arenado, here is his 2013 Topps Update chrome parallel.  I love parallels, but I absolutely HATE partial set parallels.  There are 11 Rockies in 2013 Topps Update, but only 2 of them are chromed and they have different card numbers as well.  It is very annoying.

Let's finish up the non-hit section of this post with what I like to call "Good Justin/Bad Justin"  Good Justin who represents things like purple refractors, gold parallels, and the final card in a team set is from 2004 Upper Deck Vintage.  It is the only Upper Deck Vintage set that did not directly steal their design from Topps...this one seems to have been stolen from Fleer.  Bad Justin, who represents things like partial parallels, cards with urine waterfalls, and redundant die cut insert sets, is from the 2004 flagship Upper Deck set.  I think you may see these guys again, because I intend to incorporate these two cards into a new review system for sets.

These two relics and one auto added to my Mountain to Climb in 2014.  The 2005 Donruss Champions Juan Uribe is my first relic for him and brings me up to 28 unique Rockie player relics leaving me 22 short of my goal and the 2009 Upper Deck Garrett Atkins is my tenth relic of his and 141st overall Rockies relic leaving me 59 short of that goal.  The Kevin Ritz auto is from 1996 Leaf Signature which was one of the first certified autograph sets.  Ritz is my 44th unique Rockies player certified autograph leaving me only 6 short of completing that goal.  Finally, the 2004 Bowman Sterling Chris Nelson is both an autograph and a relic although I only count it as an autograph for my goal purpose.  Nellie brings my total number of Rockies autos up to 76 and leaves me 24 short of that goal.



I can't thank Wes enough for this package.  Even though I only needed about 5-10% of the cards that Wes sent me, it was so much fun going through them that it didn't matter how may I needed.  If there are any Rockies collectors out there that would also like to benefit from Wes's generosity.  I am more than happy to pay it forward.  Just give me a holler.





Thanx for reading.

RTP #38 - Featuring my New Favorite Rockies Card

Yet another busy week leads to another week of blog neglect.  I will try to make up for it this weekend.  One of the things that I intended to do when I relaunched the blog back in November was to try and make sure to give thanks for trades in group form.  I have done quite poorly at this so far with only one trade post.  Well here is my second.  I would love to thank everyone individually, but I tried that before and I won't do it for two reasons.  One, I am too busy and two, I don't want my blog to be nothing but trade posts either which is what it was turning into last spring.  But I am still thankful to each and every trade partner I have, so let's take a look at some of the stuff I have picked up via trade over the last month.

Pirates Treasure Room

A little while back I completed my first trade with Brian from Pirates Treasure Room.  The primary bait for the trade was the 2012 Topps Wal Mart Drew Pomeranz for an 87 mini Andrew McCutchen.  What started out as a simple 1-for-1 deal morphed into a larger trade involving several other cards.  The card in the middle is one of my 33 Todd Helton relics, it is from the 2002 Topps set.  The final card is from Panini's first card set involving real major league players in a long time.  I hope they get better.

Play at the Plate

One of my favorite trade partners is Brian from Play at the Plate.  Brian and I usually will just send cards in surprise packages to each other.  This is one of those cases.  The Tulo jersey is from 2011 Topps Update and is a dupe, so if anyone out there is interested let me know.  The other two cards are serial numbered rookies from the early 2000s when serial numbered rookies were all the rage.  I am glad this particular quirk of the hobby was phased out. 

It's Like Having My Own Card Shop

Daniel from It's Like Having My Own Card Shop is a collector that I admire.  He knows what he likes and what he wants and keep it within a relatively narrow focus.  In exchange for a Paul Molitor bat card to go into his bat cards of the 3000 hit club collection, he sent me the two beauties above.  The Larry Walker is a jersey from 2001 Fleer Game Time.  Thanks to Pujols and Ichiro the 2001 cards are just too expensive to try and get in breaks, so I appreciate getting them in trade.  The Todd Helton is a bronze parallel bat card from the nearly forgotten set 2004 Upper Deck Etchings.  Can you remember the last time you thought about that set?

Baseball Cards Come to Life

I do love trading with Bo from Baseball Cards Come to Life.  Every time we trade, it is usually around 200 cards on each side, so not only does my trade box get way thinner, but my keeper boxes get way fuller.  The three cards above are just a very small sampling of the cards Bo sent off of my set wantlists.  Jamie Moyer took another tough loss for the Rockies today, but he is pitching well enough to eventually get a win.

Juuust a Bit Outside

I also recently completed another trade with Kyle from JABOs.  Kyle got the above Ubaldo auto as a replacement for his redemption and put it up for grabs.  Of course I grabbed and we worked in the Alex White jersey as well.  I have since gotten a second copy of the Alex White jersey, so if anyone wants or needs it give me a holler.

The Daily Dimwit

Sam from the Daily Dimwit always comes up with more than than I do Astros so trading with him is both easy and hard.  The prize of this group is the first card.  It is a 1998 Larry Walker cut from the back of a box of Hamburger Helper.  I have been trying to track down this card since I missed out on drafting one last year and now I have it.  Astros will on their way down south shortly, Sam.

That 70's Card

Here is my first trade with Terry, the blog owner of That 70s Card.  Like me, Terry is a Rockies collector so I have a feeling we will be trading quite a bit in the future.  In this go around Terry hit my wantlists for 2005 Topps Rookie Cup and 2008 Topps Heritage.  All told I ended up with about 50 cards knocked off those two lists.  I do have to wonder if Tom Seaver ever learned to fix his collar, because that is just messed up.

The Topps Card Collector's Blog

Another first time trade partner for the Quarry is Edgar from the simple yet aptly named Topps Card Collector's Blog.  I sent him a chunk of 1988 Topps and in return I got a small handful of Rockies and the Ricky Romero above which helps with my 2011 Topps Opening Day master set.  My favorite Rockie is the Todd Helton which is from the 2007 Topps Wal Mart set and used the 1967 Topps design.  I wonder if he will still be with the team when Heritage uses 1967 in four years.  Probably not, but we can always hope.

Smed's Baseball Card Blog

Another frequent trade partner is Scott from Smed's Baseball Card Blog.  Scott also hit up some want lists for me.  When I think of Jose Oquendo (which doesn't happen often), I think of him with the Cardinals.  I always forget he started with the Mets.  I maintain that the baseball glove Brewers logo is the best sports logo of all time.  Any others come to mind?  I also maintain that 1992 Score is a very underrated set.  I know some people hated the gradient bar, but not me.  I think the photography is fantastic as well.

Night Owl Cards

Last but not least is our resident blog of the year caretaker, Greg the Night Owl.  I mentioned in the title of this post that I had a new favorite card.  Well here it is, a 1994 Score Daryl Boston.  Um yeah just kidding, even though that is a great photo and knocks one more card off that set's want list.  Of course I am talking about the DANTE BICHETTE BAT CARD!!!!!!!!!!!  It is the only Bichette relic that is on the market, or at least the only Rockies one.  It commemorates Dante hitting for the first cycle in Rockies history in 1998 against the Texas Rangers.  Your cards are on the way as I write this, Greg.  Thank you for making me find a new white whale.