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....
 

Night Owl Sends Classics, Favorites, Icons, and Sensations

Got some return fire from the Night Owl camp today.

 

Started small with a '23 insert and a 2008 Baseball Icon from Allen & Ginter sets.

Then the penultimate 2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Mattingly.  I'm down to just the Yastrzemski for the set now.

Always overjoyed to knock out another 2005 UD All-Star Classics insert.  These are elusive.  And there are a lot of them on my want list.

Greg sent the Dodger portion of the last few 2023 Stadium Club I'm still lacking.  Between this one and four more that I have coming in TCDB trades, I'm back down to the one I thought was last before I went back and checked and found the rest of them still missing.  (It's Alvarez from the Mets.)

One more chip off the SP list for the latest Heritage.  These haven't been nearly as hard to get as older years short prints.  Hope it lasts until I'm done.

And finishing out the batch, a second copy of the Palmer Sensations from the same Heritage.  Did this design actually show up in '75 somewhere?  I was just happy there was another group of retired players besides the box toppers.

Thanks to Greg for the list hits and the blog post material.

Carrying The Flag For My '65 Set Build

Got a shipment today from my man Marv in Michigan.  It was another round of fantastic 1965 Topps baseball stars.  I started this set with a bulk lot purchase at Chantilly back in October.  Since then, Marv has supplied the nicest specimens of the HOF'ers, and a lot of them.  I just was able to put names on every card in my want list.  I'm down to 70 out of 598!

Here's the latest batch that came today:

The '65 design is one of the quintessential Topps creations.  Solid colors and a simple pennant theme that doesn't need anything else.  And the color combos are spot on.  I'll give you a closer look at some of the more famous cards.

 

If you're into rookies, here's one of the more popular in the set, and his Detroit counterpart. 

Marv said this one was "Way off center".  It is, compared to most of what he finds for me.  But I'll take it - there's plenty of border all the way around.

This has got to be Casey's best card ever.  You can just see the personality from the photo.  

I kept seeing this card in dealer boxes, but never found one that was nice enough to take home.  Marv came through for me. 

You might recognize this guy if you follow vintage NBA.

On top of all those, there was another addition to the latest '65 lot:

Forgive the bad desk lighting.  This one is as sharp and bright as you hope it is.  (I'm paying for this one in later installments.)

The previous batch from November-ish starts with a Yankee as well.  Ford will be leaving this plastic prison at some point I believe.

Another great looking pink & yellow combo.  Ya gotta love those vest uniforms too.

Yaz seems to have lost one in the lights.  Oh wait, they probably didn't do that yet....

Another beautiful card from Eddie Mathews.  Does he have any cards that aren't textbook classic? 

Phil Niekro shows up on a two-headed RC for the second year in a row. 

And we'll end it on another HOF pitcher.  Again, the epitome of a vintage baseball card.

As a bonus for perusing this far, I present the penultimate card from my '62 set build that Marv practically did for me, and he lapped my '57 build in the process.  I'm down to one card to finish the original woodgrain set - Mantle/Mays #18.

This one was graded "Authentic".  It's been shaved a bit, but not enough to make it appear altered.  I'll take the discount!

I'll save the groveling about not posting in 3+ weeks for a future post.....maybe.

Extra Protection

Made a quick purchase the other week to reduce my want list of T205 New York Giants (how many of you have want lists like that?).  I had to laugh at the packaging.  It may have survived the recent hurricanes.  Kudos to seller Toppsaholic for protecting my investment.

Outer white paper wrapping.  Folded and sealed securely.

That was around a box section folder and wrapped in another box section sleeve.

Which contained another cardboard envelope layer...

With a bubble mailer inside of that...

Wrapped in two slab bags...

...was the final product.

This is the "W. A." variation of Latham's T205.  The more common version is "A. Latham" on the back. 

Now I'm down to four for the team set.  Of course, Mathewson is one of them.

Owl's, O's (and a Jay) On A Mailday

Got a couple trades in the other day that cosmically intersected, so I thought I'd share.  I really should put up more trade posts...but anyway....

These are from a TCDB trade with TSCastle.  Palmer Select and the two Kuhl parallels are for player collections.  While the Heritage base are for my 3rd, 4th and 5th sets.  (I have a 6th building, but probably won't finish it before it gets broken up.)  Though it may be true that everyone else is done with it by now.  The inserts are for my own set.

The same delivery brought these from Night Owl, who was hoping that I regularly go after my local teams.  I really don't, but I do keep their parallels with the base sets (esp. back when I still did flagship.)  So it's cool to have these.  The Sparky is for his PC - it appeared in NO's post back in April when Heritage came out.  You'll notice he's a bit larger than his other '75 looking counterparts.  They're the 2024 minis!

So the (extra copies of the) base cards and the minis showed up on the same day.  

I'll put 'em with the Heritage set and see if I find more of the mini O's later.

Thanks to TSCastle and Night Owl.  Happy trading!

Night Owl Skillfully Navigates My Lists

As I returned home from the annual Ephrata, PA card show Saturday (more on that in a later post), I was greeted with a package from Night Owl in my mailbox.

The banner item was this 4½" x 7" Claude Osteen Ticketron photo.  On the back in the 1971 Dodgers schedule.  This will go well with the other oversize things of him in my PC.

Man, if you could go back and be there for the Sunday autographs sessions...

 

Also included were these two Cal Ripkens.  The A&G is the shiny flavor, and the left one must be from Archives or something, it has the '69 design on the back.

The bulk of this package was current Stadium Club, however.  I really like these Triumvirates, even though they're really tough to put together.  I decided I wanted the first three from the Orioles at least.  One down, two to go.

 

The rest were hits from my base set that are what's left after my break of compact boxes a few weeks ago.  Still had a lot of them to find.

 

The majority of them were, of course, Dodgers.  Some big names too!

Even if I was unaware they are now Dodgers...

Or some that are iconic in blue...

Or just iconic....

The fascinating thing is, at my first stop at the show, I picked out 58 base singles from the same Stadium Club set.  When I saw NOwl had SC for me, I thought "Oh geez, I probably duplicated half of them."

But alas, there were NO duplicates.  We "dodged" that bullet. (ba dum bum)  Amazing!

So, to keep the exchange cycle going, I'll be sending this along to New York.  

I have another show in two weeks that's even bigger, so I'll try again to hit some more, and hopefully find some other blogger's wants as well.

Thanks for the read.  Next time - my show haul....