Trade with gcrl of cards as i see them

 its never too late to say thank you. i completed this trade with jim (gcrl) back last summer and somehow never posted the spoils.  i think i scanned the cards and got caught up in going on vacation, kids birthdays, back to school, etc... you're not here for excuses but for the cards.

i have never traded with jim before even though my blogging career stretches back to 2009 and him predating that.  ive been a follower of his various blogs over the years but never reached out to see if we could swap some cards.  i'm glad we were able to help each other out with our respective collections.

back when the conlon collection came out ('91-'95), i was between 8 and 13 years old and i was definitely not interested in collecting cards of "old guys". even vintage from the 50's, 60s, and 70s i shunned in favor of '91 donruss, '92 fleer, '93 upper deck....  obviously, my appreciation of players from the pre-war era had grown over the years.  what's old is new to me.  i decided to complete the entire run of conlon collection and binder-ize it. the whole 1430 card run fits snuggly into a 5 inch binder, even though i'm missing a few cards from the 92, 93, 94 sets and all of '95.  '95 is especially tough to find for a good price. i'm guessing they didn't print much of it. either way, jim was able to send a couple needs from the set including the zach wheat i scanned below.

another 2 sets i'm working on completing (again) are the '07 and '08 upper deck masterpieces.  i purged pretty much all of my complete sets probably about 7 or 8 years ago and both masterpieces sets were part of the liquidation.  i missed this classic set so i started working on them again as i found random singles in dime and quarter boxes. i don't think i'll find the '08 sp's in the dime boxes, but you never know, ive found some real gems value shopping. this koufax would look great signed and I think that lance berkman is a criminally underrated player.

gypsy queen had some great insert sets over the years and i think one of the most memorable is the 2 year run of dealing aces was probably my favorite.  can't complain with getting a insert of kid k.  i'm also working on several other gq inserts sets. check my lists.

the revival of the black gold inserts by topps really caught by my nostalgia bone.  since i was a child of the 90's seeing black gold cards really brings me back.  i'm working on that original run of black gold sets as well as the current run out of tipps update.  out of this current run of sets, i think that 2023 is my favorite design: 

jim also included a few random o's cards from various years that ended up in my team set binders.  i have separate pc binders of certain o's players including cal and mike so i end up doubling up on the hofers when it comes to my whole collection.

sorry jim, that it took so long to publicly say thanks for the great additions to my collection!

A Trade with Greg of Night Owl Cards

 I recently made a trade with the astonishingly consistent Night Owl.  Its probably been nearly 10 years since I made a trade with Greg.  He sent some great cards this time.

Not a baseball card, but I don't remember Night Owl having his own business card.  Nice touch!

I've been working on a full run of Diamond Kings from 1982 thru 1996.  Night Owl was able to knock these two off of the 1986 list.

He was able to hit my 2023 Orioles wantlist with these awesome cards.  I'm super excited with the Henderson mini!

I've added some vintage food issues to my Orioles team set wantlist including the Kellogg's 3-D cards. Any Eddie Murray card is an awesome one, but this has three dimensions of that stare.  I'm just getting started with the 3-D's, Post, and..... 

the Hostess food issues.  This Doug DeCinces Hostess from 1977 is just the beginning of my team sets of them.

Greg also sent a pile of UD Masterpieces from 2008 to fill some holes on my second set build.

Thanks Greg for the awesome cards.  Hopefully we wont wait a decade to trade again.

Trade with Tom of The Angels, in Order

We're mixing it up a little bit today with a trade package from Tom of The Angels, in Order blog.  Tom has been a great blogger for a long time and has always been a good trade partner of mine.  I was happy to have him reach out on one of my recent posts saying that he had some cards for me.  A trade was agreed upon and here are the highlights of my end of the bargain: 

The lone Orioles card of the package was this 2023 Topps Update of James McCann.  I think Mike Elias is a bit of genius because he was able to get the Mets to basically pay McCann to play for the Orioles this and next year.  He's a very good backup catcher that was sometimes miscast as a DH early in the season.  He'll likely move on after his contract is up next fall and give way to Maverick Handley, Silas Ardoin, or Samuel Basallo.

I can't imagine why Tom had these Nolan Ryan cards laying around. I love this Coke set for a variety of reasons.  Nolan is one of my favorite all time players.  The gold border does wonders to help with the divisive 1992 Donruss Design. Probably most of all, I remember when I was a little boy getting some of these out of packs of Coke with my Grandma and Grandpa.  My Grandma passed away last fall after a battle with dementia.  My Grandpa is still alive and well and just turned 90 on October 25th.  I love that he hangs out at the Walmart near his house on Friday mornings and helps the old folks shop for groceries.  You just can't hold an old farmer down.  He just gave up farming about 4 years ago to help care for my Grandma.  He still gets on the old John Deere and mows the ditches around the family farm.

Here's some of the highlights of the highlights of Nolan's career set from Pacific. I know there is a hub bub about Randy Johnson's 1989 Fleer having a Marlboro sign in the background.  I've never seen anything about this card.  I've also never felt more of an urge to smoke than I do now that I've seen this card.  

Its that time of year again.... Time to bring out the menorahs.... Is that OJ Simpson? Hall of Famer Rod Carew?  All Three Stooges?

Thanks Tom for your generosity and I look forward to our next trade!

Multi-Trade Post

Everybody knows that trade posts do not usually yield a high amount of views or comments but I feel that they are very necessary for my blogging.  I like to personally thank my trade partners with an email letting them know I got my package and I also like to shoot up a trade post so I can let everybody else know that there are incredibly generous collectors all over the world.  I didn't trade much during the baseball season this year but I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things.  I think from here on I will be featuring several different trades in one trade post.  So here is a quick recap of the last 5 deals that I've made:  

This blue sparkly Dylan Bundy came to me from Night Owl.  We've traded at least once a year over the the last few and he always comes up with quality cards I can add to my collection.  The only problem with this card is the picture itself.  I hope Dylan makes an appearance with the Orioles this season so that Topps has another picture to make cards out of.  I'm sick of seeing the same photo on all his cards.

Night Owl also sent along these 2 '89 diecut minis for my team set.  My scanner decides to trim the edges of these cards making them into regular rectangles.  I actually wish they were rectangles with the original white borders instead of diecuts but I'm not making the decisions at Topps on how to make cards. 

These 1993 Upper Deck cards came to me from a relatively new blogger by the name of Jimmy who runs the S.Mack Talk blog.  He's still finding his footing here in blogger land so go on over and check out his blog.  Yes I'm building the 1993 Upper Deck set.  In my opinion its Upper Deck's best base set and I'm using the cards for a future project.

If you read blogs you probably know where these minis came from.  Nachos Grande, the Allen & Ginter and Legos wizard made these awesome custom mini Ginters and included them in the package. I think these might be 1/1s since I'm not sure if he has sent a Manny or Crush out to anyone else.

Chris also included this Electric Diamond parallel from the 1994 Upper Deck set of Mike Devereaux.  1994 UD is such a let down from '93's effort but this card stands out for awesome photography.  I'm really thinking about sending this card out to Mike to see if I can get it autographed.

This Frank Robinson manu-relic comes to me from a guy named David Gao.  I don't think he has a blog but he was interested in some of my Cardinals tradebait.  I don't immediately recall what I sent him in return but I'm happy to have this card for my collection.  I'm not the biggest Frank collector around and I still hold a bit of a grudge since he kinda ruined my National experience a few years back by having everybody who bought tickets stand in line for half the damn day.  I coulda been roaming the show floor but instead was stuck in line because my ticket had already been scanned and I was told if I left the line, I wouldn't be allowed to return without buying another ticket.  I know its kind of a silly reason to hold a grudge but I'm an imperfect person.

Thi cards was send to me by a guy by the name of John.  I don't think that he has a blog either but he did have a Zistle page that I was able to pick out some 2014 Topps cards as well ans this Shawn Green Rookie card.  The last card I'm going to show off is a Blue Jays card?  Yeah, it's for my somewhat unnannounced-but-you-can-find-the-wantlist-here-on-my-blog project.  I'm going back through the years collecting rookie cards of all the "big name" players.  I guess you can call it my personal fan favorite rookie card collection.  I plan on making a full post about all of my PC's in the near future so stay tuned for that.

Thanks again to Night Owl, Nachos Grande, Jimmy, David and John for trading with me.

Trade with Patrick of Hot Corner Cards

A quicky trade post today.  I send Patrick of Hot Corner Cards some of my 2014 Topps Tigers that I pulled and he sent me some various Orioles cards that I needed.  Patrick has become a good trading buddy of mine and he didn't disappoint with this package.

There aren't a ton of Luis Aparicio Orioles cards out there.  I understand that he isn't normally associated with the Orioles since he only played a few seasons in Charm City.  Anyways, This manu-relic is actually from 2010 Topps.  I'm still not a huge fan of the manu-relics Topps shoves down our throats but this one is ok in my book.  I'm surprised at the amount of detail that is in this particular card.

Patrick also helped out with a few 2014 Topps Orioles needs.  He sent me a couple base cards as well as these 2 Wei-Yin Chen parallels.  The Robitussin-fractor will go in my Orioles Parallel-o-mania binder and the Gold bordered will go into my 2014 Orioles team sets binder.

I'm still in need of quite a few flagship, Heritage and Opening Day Orioles cards from this year and last year. My card collecting budget has been cut in half over the last year so I've almost stopped buying packs and hobby boxes just because new products are out.  I've had to become much more selective on what I buy and search for more deals.  I'm trying to get the most bang out of my buck if you will.  So if anybody has any Orioles cards from my lists that I need I'd love to trade with you especially if I've never traded with you before.  I love making new personal connections with people that read my blog!

Thanks Patrick for the great cards!

Trade with Marcus of All the Way to the Backstop

At the risk of sounding too cliche, there are not enough hours in the day to do everything.  I've been pretty busy lately (truly, who isn't these days?), being pulled every which way but loose.  When I have had "free" time, I've just been too exhausted to put finger to keyboard and come up with coherent material here on the blog.  I have been keeping up on reading as much as possible and I was lucky enough to catch a trade bait post put up by Marcus of the All the Way to the Backstop blog.  Here's a few of the awesome cards he sent my way:

It's a shame that the Tsuyoshi Wada era in Baltimore didn't work out.  He would have been the second Japanese player to play for them in an official game. He had the once-feared Tommy John surgery in 2012, pitched for Triple-A Norfolk in 2013 and signed with the Cubs for 2014.

I was able to add a few Ripkens that I didn't yet have in the collection.  Not much to say about these other than that early '90's unlicensed oddballs don't turn my stomach like that Panini garbage that comes out these days.

Last but not least, a card I've been half-heartedly chasing over the past year.  I hadn't been able to find a copy of this card for a reasonable price on Ebay, COMC, Sportlots, or card shows so I was happy to see Marcus offer one for trade.  I didn't buy any packs of the Heritage last year and I don't plan to this year either.  I'll just rely on my wonderful blogging buddies to trade me the cards I need for the Orioles team set.

Thanks for the great cards, Marcus!

Trade with Jimmy of S.Mack Talk

I haven't been as active here on my blog recently nor have I been trading as much.  Its getting harder for me to match up with traders here in the blogosphere since I'm no longer building sets and a lot of my Orioles wantlists are harder to crack.  That fact didn't seem to bother Jimmy from the brand new S.Mack Talk blog.  He found me some cards that fit right into my collection.

This Rodrigo Lopez card from 2003 Bowman has eluded me for quite some time.  It was also on my Top 10 Wanted list (which I have discontinued for the time being) for a good while.  Lopez was my favorite O's pitcher during the dark days of the early to mid 2000's.  He had fairly good results playing for some dreadful teams of retreads, never-has-beens, and never-will-be's.  I cautiously wonder what his spot on the Orioles would be today.

Talking about today's Orioles we have a 2013 Bowman Platinum base card of Adam Jones.  I'm slowly filling on my team set holes from '13.

Last but not least, Jimmy nearly completed my 2013 flagship set.  I consider the Update part of the regular set, sue me!  All 990 cards fit nicely into a 1000 ct box with a little room to spare.  I wish it would just be called series 3.  There's no need to call it an Update set because nothing is really updated.  The card design is the same!

Head on over to Jimmy's new blog and give him a follow.  I'm sure he'd appreciate the support.

Thanks Jimmy for the trade!

Trade with Matt of Red Cardboard

Trade is probably a loose approximation of what went on between Matt of Red Cardboard and myself.  A couple weeks back, Matt made a post on his blog about how he had lots of team lots(!) that he had no use for and they were available for trade. The obligation of claiming one of the lots is that you had to send him cards of only the Reds. I have plenty of Reds tradebait so I took a chance on the Orioles lot not knowing what the contents were going to be.  I usually don't agree to trades these days when I don't know exactly what is being sent.  I am glad I decided to go against my new thinking this time because I ended up with some pretty sweet cardboard!

First and Foremost, I got this Brooks Robinson from 1974 Topps.  While I already had one for my O's Team set, I didn't have one for my Brooksie binder.  I was totally not expecting a semi-vintage gem like this! 

The numbers of parallels in Topps sets these days has become maddening.  I had accumulated so many over the last few years that I started a new binder a couple months ago.  I call it "Orioles of a Different Color".  It's kind a of a play on words from the Wizard of Oz's Horse of a Different Color.  So now I can now proudly add these to the binder that is nearly full already.

It's hard to believe (or not so hard) that I'm still looking for base cards of 2013 releases.  I didn't buy any packs of 2013 Topps Re-Hash (2013 Heritage) or 2013 Topps Re-Hash Preview 2021, 2031, 2034, 2039 (2013 Topps Archives). There were several other cards not shown here that filled in some team set needs from 2013.

Thanks Matt for the Giveaway/Trade!

Trade with Brad of Red Sox Fan in Nebraska

I've been reading a lot of 2014 Topps box breaks and pack rips over the last week.  I can tell that 2014 Topps isn't going to go down in history as an all-time favorite design.  Anyways, while perusing my daily reading in the blogosphere, I noticed Brad from Red Sox Fan in Nebraska pulled a couple O's cards from his rips that I was interested in.  We came to a trade agreement so here's the cards he sent:

Even though I have stopped doing my daily searches on Ebay and COMC for Nick Markakis cards, I will still get his cards when they are available.  I've got quite a collection of Nick the Stick but I think my days of super-collecting him may be over unless I win the lottery.

This Manny Machado Power players parallel/game card also caught my eye.  Manny is the future of the O's franchise though I don't currently have the resources to start a huge collection of his cards.  Like Nick above, I'll pick up as many as I can and not fret when I don't get his urine yellow or booger green parallels.

Thanks Brad for hooking me up with these new release O's cards!

Trade with blog reader Shant

I was recently approached by a collector by the name of Shant who had some Orioles cards I needed and offered up a trade.  He sent me a pile of 2013 Topps Updates that I needed as well as a few other O's cards that were pretty cool.

I'm not the biggest Wei-Yin Chen fan out there but I couldn't resist this mini from last year's Gypsy Queen.  I actually look foward to Gypsy Queen each year since Topps has to get creative and come up with a new design.

Shant also sent this Manny Machado X-fractor from last year's Chrome offering.  It scanned a little weird but it's a pretty sweet addition to my Manny binder!

Last but not least, he included this gold bordered parallel from the Update set.  I've always liked the gold bordered parallels and the black bordered parallels, but the other colors are just too much. K.I.S.S. Topps!
 I hope Bud has found a way to get lefthanded hitters out over the winter.  Lefties had some lofty numbers against him in 2013!  Try a split-finger fastball Bud!

Thanks Shant for the nice cards that you sent!

Trade with Tom of Waiting 'til Next Year

As I'm slowly getting back into the swing of blogging, I'm remembering all of the good people/bloggers that I've met over the last couple of years.  Trading is something I miss the most about blogging as it's a great way to network with other collectors.

Tom from Waiting 'til Next Year is one of the aforementioned good people/bloggers that I've traded with a couple times over the last few years.  He sent out a cry for help to complete the 1987 Topps set over the blogosphere and I was happy to help out.  I was able to help him with a couple of his other set projects too.

He always seems to find some good cards for me.  He knocked off a few cards from my 2013 Topps set as well as a few Cubs extras that will fit nicely into my 1979 Topps set.  But that's not all he sent.

For my One Card of Every Oriole binder he sent me this 1956 Chuck Diering.  If you aren't familiar with my OCoEO binder, I'm working on getting a card of every Oriole to ever play a game for the Orioles.  I'm probably about 75% (rough estimate) of the way there but I still need (mostly vintage) help!

I do have a small Boog Powell PC.  This 1970 Topps All-star will fit nicely into that collection.  Boog doesn't get that many cards these days so most were from when he was an active player.

Finally, We have a Matt Wieters card from panini.  I'm going to let Tom off the hook here since he is correct that Matty Ice doesn't have a lot of cards.  Maybe panini will grow on me in time like the late 80's/early 90's oddball unlicensed food issues but I doubt it.  I just think overall panini is a waste of paper.  I was at Target the other day in the card aisle and there were several boxes of panini packs sitting there on the shelf.  Out of 5 boxes (Hometown Heroes, Pinnacle, USA Baseball Legends, Prism, and Cooperstown) not a single pack was missing.  I think that says something about how the general public feels about unlicensed product.

Thanks Tom for the trade!

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.

Trade with Dustin of Coot Veal and the Vealtones

Another awesome trade that I completed recently was with Dustin of Coot Veal and the Vealtones.  Dustin has become one of my favorite trade partners over the last few years.  I even traded with him before he made it to Major League Blogging (*not a real league).   He sent me so many cool cards I had a hard time whittling this post down to 5 cards for the sake of brevity.  Lets begin:

I really enjoy adding new autographs to my Orioles collection especially if they are on-card.  Here is my second Brandon Snyder autograph but my first on-card one. While Brandon didn't make a huge impact with the Orioles he was able to play with Texas and is now with Boston.

Speaking of Boston, it still pains me to see Koji wearing "red socks" now.  He really endeared himself to the Orioles fans while he was here even though he was hurt a lot.  I think the only thing that I take solace in him being gone is when I seen Chris Davis manning first base!

Speaking of big burly first baseman, Boog Powell did it first in Baltimore.  Now he makes a mean BBQ sandwich in right field at Camden Yards.  I'm thrilled that Dustin sent this vintage "Booger" for my PC.

Speaking of boogers, PC's, I also found this Brady Anderson MLB Showdown game card in the package.  I've slowed down on the Brady PC as of late since I have most of his early career stuff (think over-production era) and some of the late 90's "off the beaten path" stuff can be somewhat harder to find.  MLB Showdown was underrated in that there were some obscure players in there.  There are Orioles cards of Trenidad Hubbard and Mike Trombley in some of their sets!

I'll close with another PC addition of Jim Palmer.  I don't have many Topps Pristine cards in my collection mostly because I wasn't collecting much when they were released.  Plus, me being a poor college student at the time kept me from buying the high end products.!   

Thanks Dustin for the awesome trade package!

A Few More Smaller Scale Trades

With the Minis Group Break in the rear view mirror (all the packages have been sent out), I can get back to thanking the great traders I've swapped cards with over the last few weeks.

First up is this Dylan Bundy Chasing History card from Nate who runs the relatively new Big 44 Sports Cards blog.  He's a Pirates fan so go check him out!  It's amazing that the Orioles are even in contention for a wild card spot as crappy as the starting pitching has been this year (except for Chris Tillman, well mostly).  I can only imagine how much better the pitching staff would be if they hadn't rushed Bundy and caused him to blow out his elbow last September.  I'm wondering if they have ruined Bundy and Gausman by rushing them to the majors because of the crummy, faltering, starting rotation that has plagued them all year (or the last 15 or so years for that matter!).

Thanks Nate for the cards!

Onto a PWE that AJ from The Lost Collector sent me.  He included this Cap'n Crunch unlicensed card from 1989 of Cal Ripken.  Unlicensed cards from the 80's and 90's don't bother me but the Triple Play, Prism, and Cooperstown crap that Panini puts out these days is deplorable.  Buying Panini's "baseball cards" is like eating a veggie burger or drinking non-alcoholic beer.  You're missing the "meat" or the "alcohol" so what the hell is the point?  I don't watch baseball games on TV where the players have on street clothes or jerseys with blocked out logos so why would I want to buy cards that look just as drab?  Panini just makes me feel like something obviously missing that should be there.

Lastly is this card from Sam our beloved Daily Dimwit. He saw the Andrew Aplin refractor autograph from my Bowman hobby box break and had to have it.  While he didn't have any Orioles cards I was interested in trading for, I opted to trade for the Taijuan Walker autograph card from last year's Bowman Platinum to use as trade bait.  Walker is a pretty highly regarded prospect in the Mariner's farm system and I believe he is being recalled for a cup of coffee in September.

Thanks guys for the trades!