Way Overdue Trade Post

I want to say a quick thank you to several traders that I've gotten packages from over the last month before I put the cards away that are sitting on my desk.

 These 2 new to me Cal Ripken cards were sent to me by Jeff from My Sports Obsession.  I love the orange Jersey on the 1992 Donruss/McDonalds MVP card and the redemption card from 1995.  I'm not sure if they were a hobby shop giveaway or a ballpark giveaway but it's a cool card nonetheless!

Jeff also paid close attention to my Player collections pages and sent me the Reimold from this years Heritage and a Finest from 2010 to fill 2 holes.  Thanks for the great cards Jeff!

The second package I'd like to say thank for comes from Paul from Carl Crawford Cards.  I won the contest he was running to celebrate the life of Virgil Trucks.  I never got around to writing Mr. Trucks and I missed out on getting his autograph.  Now I can mark that regret off of the list!  Paul gave away 3 of these autographs in his contest and I was lucky enough to get one.

These 2 relic cards also came from Paul.  I sent him a couple 1978 Topps cards he needed for his set and he reciprocated the trade by sending a HOF bat chip and a minor league jersey of former O's top prospect Zach Britton.  I still have hopes that Zach will become a good minor league pitcher he just needs more experience.  He's currently in the rotation but we'll see how long that lasts with the imminent return of Wei-Yin Chen.  Thanks for the autograph and the relic cards Paul!

The last trade I need to get to is from Andrew Q of Need More Cardboard.  I had to have this retail exclusive White Framed Paper parallel from this year's Gypsy Queen that he pulled from a value pack.  I mean come on, it's a Cal Ripken card I didn't have.  You don't think I'm going to let it slide by do you!  It's a great looking card!  While not a huge fan of retro/reprint sets, I do think that Gypsy Queen is a nice product because Topps actually has to create a new design each year and not rest on it's laurels from 50 years ago.  Plus it does have some decent insert sets like Glove Stories and Sliding Stars.  Nobody wants and insert card reporting the news from 50 years ago (News Flashbacks from Heritage)!

Thanks to these 3 wonderful traders and I'm sorry that it took awhile to get this posted!