Night Lite

So my De Lux post last week garnered a response from a long time trade partner, and even longer time blogger, the Night Owl.  Needed the Gavin Lux from Series 1 to finish my set, and his was the first response saying he had an extra one somewhere and would send it my way.

I'm quite positive that my envelope was part of his P.O.'d post on Tuesday (which I totally related to BTW).  Just a couple days later, my PWE had arrived, with a half dozen cards from a trio of sets.

Why wait until the end, let's start off with the main reason he sent me the envelope, the final card for my 2020 Series 1 flagship set, Gavin Lux.   Along with it he sent another card for the '85 insert set from this year, Chris Paddack.   I have no idea who Paddack is (sorry Padres fans), maybe someone will educate me a little ( or a lot ) in the comments.  Still haven't quite hit the 30 card mark on this, but with a trade or 2 on the way, that should change soon.

Next up is a pair of '69 Topps cards, most welcome here at my house!  Most of you will know Bob Rodgers by his more famous nickname Buck.  1969 would be Buck's last season as a player in the majors, all 9 seasons spent with the Angels.  I remembered him managing the Expos and the Angels, but did not remember that he was the skipper of the Brewers in the early 80's before being replaced in 1982 by Harvey Kuenn, which would spawn the "Harvey's Wallbangers" season for the Brew Crew.

Finishing off the envelope is a pair of cards from the 1970 Topps set, including Seattle Pilot John O'Donoghue.  John was actually part of a pretty decent bullpen in Seattle, appearing in 55 games in 1969 with an ERA just below 3, and 6 saves.  There were some names in the pen you may or may not remember, Jim Bouton and Diego Segui were also part of the pen, and one of the starters would become a rubber armed reliever just a few seasons later, Mike Marshall.  John's son would also pitch in the majors, albeit just 11 games for the Orioles in 1993.

Greg, thank you as always, the cards are really appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Want list Wednesday: 1978 Topps

A trio of Yankees start off this post, as this recent TCDB trade with John (ID: herkojerko) knocked 3 more cards off of my 1978 Topps want list.  With roughly a handful or two of these cards in my COMC cart, with ship date to be determined, I decided to show the want list to the masses on tonight's blog post.

3,4,5,7,10,19,20,34,40,45,60,72,96,99

120,131,143,170,175,179,189,196,200,203,205,206,212,216,259,270,282,293,

300,301,320,325,336,350,374,378,400,411,419,450,451,479,499,510,530,580,

606,670,689,700,705,707,708,709

Everything highlighted in bold is on the way via COMC, leaving me with roughly 50 cards to go.  Just looking at the list there's a trio of Blue Jays that I need, so I'll probably end up raiding my Jays collection to take care of those.  A couple of key RC's including the Dale Murphy, along with the Molitor/Trammell combo are needed.

Plenty of other big names like Ryan, Morgan, Carew, Bench, Rice and Seaver are also part of the remaining numbers on the list.  Not many commons left, so finishing this one will cost a few bucks to pick them up on various sites unless I can swing a couple of more trades for a few of these.

Hit me up if you have anything extra you're looking to trade, as I'm still doing PWE trades here for the most part.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Miscellaneous colors

Sitting and thinking for a minute or 2 while starting this post, I remember back to when parallels were just one color, gold.  Then as we got into the 10's the colors really started to explode.  Blue and red parallels based on what big box store you bought the cards from.  Purple from Toys R Us.  Black parallels limited to double digit serial numbering.  Some releases had fancy parallels such as amber, emerald and ruby.

Go back to 1991 Fleer and you even have a set completely in yellow!!  What made me think of this is a few cards that I picked up on twitter last week, one on purpose and the others just because of the colors.

This is the red and yellow parallel from 2018 Optic.  When looking at it in hand, I thought that it was more orange than anything, which would make sense as it features McCutchen in a Giants uniform.  But when scanned, the red really pops.

The next 4 cards are all from 2019 Prizm, and there was really no rhyme or reason to buying them.  This Carolina Blue parallel featuring Odubel Herrera is actually great as it matches the old school Phillies uniforms, which I wouldn't be upset if they came back full time.   Makes me wonder who thought of creating a Carolina blue parallel at Panini....

How about these against the old school teal of the Seattle Mariners (it was teal, right?).

This is just plain old blue, which certainly would look good against the Blue Jays dark blue tops but certainly not with the black(?) of the Cleveland Indians.  Maybe it's just the scan and the navy blue just didn't show up well.  Any other teams you can think of that would fit this blue?

OK, so now seeing the Shane Bieber card I'm more convinced that the tops are black.  But the red T-shirt does go with the red parallel here.  Maybe the old Indians red tops from the '70s would fit with this style?

One color combo that I think that Panini does well is the Red, White and Blue, such as you see on George Springer here.  Every time I see the basketball version of the RWB, I think of a barber pole.

I'd love to see somebody do a frankenset featuring a bunch of the different parallels.  Be great to see the pink, gold, green, navy blue kaleidoscope, neon orange donut circles, cosmic haze, power plaid and purple parallels along with the handful above.

No, it won't be me....

Enjoy the hobby and be safe!

Robert

A trio of trades

I decided to combine three trades into one quick post.   A grand total of 11 cards came my way courtesy of 3 repeat trade partners, which is becoming a common theme now that my trade numbers have grown over the past 16 months.

Mike (ID: 49ants) sent me just one card, but it adds to my Felix Potvin collection.

I will never tire of getting cards of Felix and his cat mask into my collection.  This is the hobby predictor gold winner card from the 94-95 Upper Deck Set.   Felix didn't get a Vezina vote that season, the Sabres Dominik Hasek won the 2nd of his 6 Vezina awards in the strike shortened 94-95 campaign.

Some more player collection cards arrived care of Jenny (ID:  JennyMiller521), and I especially like the '83 Topps look on the upper left hand corner card.  The inset photo looks as if it was taken when someone pissed off McCutchen, which seems so out of the norm as I'm used to seeing a smiling Cutch, similar to the '18 Topps Chrome card.

Not only is the McCutchen collection growing lately, so too is the Ichiro collection, partially thanks to the 3 cards in this envelope from Edward (ID: Detfan6897).  The first thing that came to mind when I received this trade offer was 6 cards from 6 different sets, and even more pleasing was the '74 Bert Campaneris card.  Still 84 cards to go on that want list, with 4 of them in my COMC cart currently.

What's been cool over the past 3 weeks is that virtually every trade offer that's come my way has been of the PWE variety.  I'm sure that people are doing that purposefully (at least I hope so) so that minimal contact with others is maintained.  I know that the bakers dozen trades that I've completed, and the 6 others in progress have all gone out in a PWE, which means a walk to the P.O. for me and drop into the snorkel box.  Keep 'em coming!

Thank you to all for the trades, they are appreciated!!

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe,

Robert

Breaking into The Stash

With the order down here in Broward and Miami-Dade counties requiring anyone entering an establishment that provides essential services to wear a face mask, it appears that more people are having no trouble speaking their mind with their face mostly covered.  Almost like the keyboard warriors on Twitter or Instagram who have no problem "speaking their mind".  So, until the insanity down here has died down somewhat, I've resolved to avoid the big box stores.  No more Target or Wal Mart until the mask order has been rescinded.

This is going to be tough for me, because that's where I get my pack fix.  This was the first weekend in quite a while that I didn't hit either of those stores to get anything to rip, and it's been a bit tough to be honest.  This morning I decided to do something about it, and broke into my stash of packs.  I have a plastic tub filled with about 75 packs of cards of various sizes, sports and years.  Something I've been adding to lately, as a just in case.   I figured that this is about as good a time as any to grab a pack to open.

2008-09 Upper Deck hockey jumbo pack, series 1.  32 cards, with a chance for Young Guns such as Stamkos, Giroux, Wheeler and T.J. Oshie.  I've not had any luck with these so far, but hopefully with the last 3 or 4 that I have I'll get lucky.

A few names on the first page that are still going over a decade later, such as Marc-Andre Fleury and Jonathan Cheechoo.  I'd totally forgotten that Mike Smith started way back when in Tampa Bay and was part of the trade that brought Brad Richards to Dallas (you'll see him here in a minute).  Another player on this page is Scott Gomez, who I remember almost strictly as a New Jersey Devil.  Then I look at his career stats and see stints in Ottawa, St. Louis, Florida, and San Jose, along with 3 years in Montreal.  It's time for me to start taking some memory pills it seems!

A lot of solid players on this page as well, such as Marian Gaborik, Patrik Elias and Bill Guerin.  Carey Price is the headliner, in an 2nd year card showing him shooting the puck around the boards.  I still remember the battle that he had with Jaroslav Halak when the both of them were in Montreal, which would stay and which would move on.  Halak's been a part of 5 organizations since he was traded in 2010, and Price 12 years later has 6 more years on what likely will be his final contract.  I'm sure when it ends he'll hold a majority of the Canadiens goaltending records.

Funny, when I look at this page the name Matt Niskanen jumps right at me.  I remember when he was traded by Dallas to Pittsburgh back in 2011.  That may be the worst deal Dallas ever made, as Niskanen and James Neal went to the Pens for Alex Goligoski.  Yes, Goligoski had some good years in Dallas, but Neal and Niskanen was probably a bit too much for Dallas to trade, in my opinion.

All of these cards went to my trade list on the TCDB website, as you never know what sets people are still trying to put together.   There were also a couple of inserts in the pack as well...

The Masked Men set has been popular, I've traded off quite a few of these over the past few months.  The All Star jersey you see on Vinny Lecavalier on the right is one that I have hanging in my closet, featuring that years Leafs representative, Tomas Kaberle.

I'd held off on breaking any of the packs I've had in the Stash for a long time, and I've been slowly adding to it over the past several months.  But while the mask edict is in place down here in S. Florida, I'll work on staying out of Target and Wal-Mart to keep some level of sanity in place, and just have fun breaking some old packs here and there.

Rest assured I'll post any stash pack broken here on the blog for all to see.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert