Monday Mailday - A Time Warp From Where It All Began

The post office tends to "save up" trade mail and packages for Mondays.  The Monday after the second show weekend in a row was especially fruitful.  I had all this waiting in the box or by the door.

Most of it is trades from the Database, but one was an eBay purchase.

The late 80's are to finish a few sets I have for sale that ran short.  It's nice to be able to just trade extra stuff for them.  I'm probably going to end up with extras of the last few I need for '89 at least.  The '09 black Topps are for my Update set build.  Still annoyed that they didn't make whole blasters of these at the time.

This is the second half of that trade from BigOinPA.  Some Capitals and Sabres.  The latter are not the regular base set, but special team sets numbered out of 20.

TCDB trader RangerFreak94 contributed all this to set builds.  Anyone need a Pete Rose?  I'm ending up with four or five extras.  The basketball card was a nice try, but not going to make that set.  All the other football is for set builds, except Sam and Richie.  Anderson is a PC, and that one is the blue back retail flavor.

He also chimed in with hockey.  A couple Fedorovs and a Manon Rheaume for my PCs, more Finests for the Premier set, one OPC base hit, and more recent Caps.

The other large package contains two parts of an epic trade with SirNailhead.  The guy has been on quite a life journey, and has set me on one to gather another Heritage set.  We swapped almost 300 cards one-for-one.  My side was all 2023 Heritage - the '74 design.  I figured why not?  The first cards I ever owned were '74s.  So even though I only recognize about 20% of the fellows pictured, I went for it.  (I might do another post to see what the actual percentage is like I did before.)

 
Glad I don't have to find the Ohtani.  And there was at least one of the "other Aaron" Specials included too.

The flat rate box is the eBay purchase.  I'm going to save that reveal for the next post.  But I'll give you a hint ~ One of my other pages has been revived.  Go there and check out the last two entries.  (They're the only ones linked to full images.)  More on both of those in the next one.

Thanks to all three traders, and to you for tuning in....
 

A Century of Swaps

Just hit a landmark in my TCDB trades.  Completed my 100th trade in total on the site.  About 70 of which have happened coninuously since the first of May.

Most of them have been the typical PWE with somewhere from 6 to 15 cards each.  The extremes have been....

...as small as two for one.  (This burns up stamps a bit too fast.  I'd rather wait until we have at least a half dozen or so.  You know, fill the envelope to some degree)...

...to the massive exchange.  This one was very lopsided too.  That's how I like 'em.  I get a bunch of cool stuff, but still manage to move out a big pile.

I won't bore you with the large batches of base cards for sets like 2020 Prestige & 2019 Score football, or 2003 Upper Deck baseball that I've dwindled down from multiple deals.  But here are some other highlights to my recent exchanges.

The most fun ones are the diverse batches.  A little bit of everything.  Mulitple sports, inserts, sets that you don't see any more, and on and on.  These are from a dozen sent by GeoGeo.

Doing well on some of the serial numbered inserts in sets like Donruss Classics and Playoff Honors.  A pair here from 49ants, who is probably the leader in most trades so far with six.

Mike also contributed to the marble flavor of these 1996 Ultra Sensations...

...and even one of the last five 1971 Topps Game football I had left to find.  Mike is also in my original trading group from Yahoo!, Trading Bases.

These look like more old-school-ish football, but these two sets of Members Only Stadium Club are actually listed under Multi-Sport.  Took me a while to find them.  Thanks to 49ants, I don't have to worry about them any more.

Trader Midnight112x also pitched in to the Washington football effort with these two serial numbered beauties.  Gotta love acetate die-cuts especially.

Speaking of beauties, CH34 added this one in at the end of a line of 2020 Prestige football.  I had a couple parallels, but not the horizontal base card.

And finally, Oldschoolcards sent a trade that included this Hostess Hernandez, and a genuine '78 Andre Dawson, which I'm glad I bypassed paying a lot of cash for at a show earlier this year.  I was almost more excited about the nine 1980 Fleer logo stickers that I picked out...

...because they completed (until I found I was missing 1952) my World Series back set.  They run from 1940 until 1979 on the backs of these stickers.  They are reprints of the '71 cards.  I might have to go back to him to get the last one.

Thanks to all the traders on the Database, and to all my readers for checking in.

The Crown Jewels Of A Database Trade

It's about an hour and a half until the Super Bowl kicks off this evening and I'm avoiding the television but still sitting behind a screen as usual.  Been making some great trades on the Trading Card Database site, but this will be the first loot post for one of those.  

This batch was part of a trade with user CFoster11_23 that also included a lot of baseball list hits and Washington football singles from my wants.  I selected just under 250 cards, and sent 386.  That's the kind of trade I like, though I need to move out a lot of stuff, so if the ratio was higher, I don't mind a bit.

I shipped two major batches from the same sets off - 2015 Score football and 2019 Topps baseball.  I got this killer starter for 1998 Pacific Crown Royale baseball.

Nope that's just the beginning....

Ka-Blam!  I only need about 22 cards for the rest of the base set.  

While looking at these on the Database, I noticed the images were only at about 70%.  I figured I might as well try to fill them in, but I knew these wouldn't drop through my bulk scanner very well.  Boy, these are tough to scan even on a flatbed!  With only one straight edge, you have to align them with the edges of the glass plate.  And then the middle is open, so I put a regular card against the edge and lined up one CR card and then slid the other card away.  Not easy to keep them from moving.  Then you have to flip them over and do it again!  I got the first few dozen done and had to quit.  Will revisit that later.

Here's what the backs look like.  Those straight sections low on the sides aren't 90° angles either.

They do look cool all stacked up together.  Almost makes a 3-D crown.

Believe it or not, I got inserts too!  And two of them are complete sets!

These All-Stars are nice looking.  And how's THAT for fancy die-cutting? 

I'm sure these get beat to hell in the wild.  It'll probably be fun finding the other 17 with the points intact.

The whole set of Diamond Knights - which is only printed under the secondary photo on the back.

All of these cards are shiny like Pacifics generally were.

This was back in the late 90's when Roy Firestone was a prominent journalist.  There are 26 of these.

The other complete stack are the Pillars Of The Game.  Silver shiny in big doses.

Finally, there are these game-looking cards - Home Run Fever. 

Never seen this before, but if you press a thumb on the spots...

They reveal the numbers behind.  But it's not permanent like a scratch-off....

I opened the window and let the cool air flow across it, and they turned black again.  Cool!

My wants are up on the Baseball tab.  Will definitely be putting these in pages and a binder.  

How many of you like die-cut and ornate Pacific products?