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!

Trip to Mint Urawa

While I was on my trip in Japan I was hopeful that I would be able to check out a baseball card shop.  I had read about Ryan G.'s experiences with some of the card shops in the Land of the Rising Sun so I did a Google search and luckily there was one right near my cousin's condo.  The shop's name was Mint Opa! Urawa. Ryan had visited this store before so I figured I'd be the second blogging Ryan to visit!  I had my wife and cousin in tow when I went so I didn't get as much time as I had liked to browse the boxes and boxes of cards but I did pick up some interesting items while I was there.  I probably could have stayed in there for a half and day and spent a ton more money but the wifey and cousin probably would have been bored to tears.

First off I was able to pick up this pretty cool Ichiro card.  If the design looks somewhat familiar to you, your eyes are not deceiving you.  Around the turn of the century Upper Deck made some Japanese cards out of some of the designs they issued for MLB.

Speaking of those designs, Here's a few Koji's that utilize a few of the American designs too.

Not all of the cards I picked up were Upper Deck.  I think both of these Koji's are from BBM (Baseball Magazine).  It would be really cool to be able to get all of Koji's regular BBM releases since I have a nice collection of his stateside cards.

I also looked for some other cards of the Orioles Japanese import Tsuyoshi Wada.  While he hasn't thrown a pitch in the big leagues yet he'll probably be there by the time the season is done.  While this looks like 1 card, it is actually 3!  I think these came from the Softbank Hawks team set from 2010 and seems to be an insert.  I'm glad I could get all 3 from the singles box!

I also found a couple of cards of Dennis Sarfate!  Pictured here is his regular BBM issue from this year and his premium Genesis card from last year when he pitched for the Hiroshima Carp.

Like I said earlier, I would have loved to have more time to browse the store but there was much more to do  in Japan than look thru cards all day.  I have tons and tons of cards that I don't look at home!  I don't have much to compare it to but it took a trip to the other side of the world to find a decent card shop.

I have one more Japan related post coming up so stay tuned for that!

Thanks for looking!

Trade with Brad of Brad's Blog

Here's another one of my hauls from the tradebait blowout that I had going on last week.  This one comes from Brad of Brad's Blog.  We swapped a few autograph and relic cards.  You can see the cards that I send him in his trade post.  Here's the awesome cards he sent:

 I have an Earl Weaver autographed 8x10 but this is my first autographed card of him.  I'm not sure how many different ones there out there but I can now say that I have one!

 I'm also very proud to have my first Tsuyoshi Wada autograph card too.  I believe Brad pulled this one from his case break of this year's Topps Chrome.  I was somewhat surprised to see Wada have a rookie card in this year's products because I thought that you actually had to make your MLB debut before there would be a card made.

 I also snagged this Adam Jones Black Refractor and

a Mark Reynolds Sepia Refractor for my player collections. Brad had some really good luck pulling Orioles from Topps Chrome this year.  I've opened 4 or 5 retail packs and came up empty!

Thanks Brad for the trade!