Trade with Judson of My Cardboard Habit

I've been away from regular blogging for nearly 6 months now and I can't say that I'm back to continue regular posting.  There's a variety of reasons that I haven't been more visible but you can read my previous post and pretty much figure it out.  Unless anybody begs me to elaborate on those reasons, I'm not really inclined to write about them.  But I am here right now while I have a few minutes to give thanks for a trade that I recently completed with Judson of My Cardboard Habit.

I will say that 2013 wasn't a banner year for my collection.  I didn't buy as much new product as I had over the past 3 years or so.  That's probably the reason I missed out on adding simple base cards of Orioles like the above Manny Machado card from Bowman Platinum.

Can you believe I actually didn't have this card yet?  I only purchased a couple of packs of Ginter when it was released in August.

Topps Archives is a set that I've never bought a pack of so there's no way I could have obtained this card on my own.  Archives makes me sick to my stomach because it's a lazy product by Topps.  Just mailing it in and resting on their past laurels.  What's going to happen 5 20 years down the road when they need to reprint cards from 2013?  About half of the cards they produced are reprints and the other half only rich people saw (Five Star, Museum Collection, etc.)!

We can't really say that the modern iteration of Allen & Ginter is reprinted.  I guess it is just "reimagined" with all of the modern gimmicks innovations like rip cards and seeds embedded inside.

Judson also made a full frontal assault on my set wantlists.  He knocked quite a few cards off my 2013 Bowman, Topps, and Topps Update lists.  After I finish these 3 sets, I won't build any more modern sets from scratch.  From here on out (or until I change my mind), I'm just going to buy the sets from ebay.  It's cheaper that way anyways.  Busting hobby boxes to build sets is for suckers especially when you are guaranteed a jock strap "relic" card in each box.  No thanks.  

I hate to sound like such a cynical asshole in this post (or maybe not).  I fully realize that I might lose readers by sounding like a Debbie Downer but the state of the hobby and baseball right now is just depressing to me.  If it weren't for blogging, I would have mothballed or even trashed my collection long ago!

So lost in all of my ranting was Judson who I apologize to for hijacking our trade post to spread libel about Topps.  I sincerely thank Judson for trading with me.