Blogger Trade: Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown

Next up is a trade with Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown.  I hope every one reading this is already following his blog, and if you are not the please do so.

Gavin posted some trade bait cards awhile back and I saw something I liked.  Apparently, there was another time even a little further back where he did this and I responded about being interested in something.  I did not remember the first time, but Gavin did and still had that card on hand.  Kudos to you, sir.

We were able to work out a larger trade as I had some cards for his set needs and his various player collections.

I was probably most intrigued by the Ron Swoboda card below.  It is from the 2004 Topps Retired Signature set.  I believe that this set was a high-end version of Topps Archives.  While Topps Archives uses old card designs for current and retired players, Topps Retired used that year's design for retired players.  I would not mind if Topps continued with this type of release.  Maybe leave retired players out of the Topps Archives release and put out a set just of retired players using the current Topps design? 

All said and done, this was a great trade and very much appreciated!  Thanks Gavin!

eBay - 2015 Topps Archives and more

I missed out on Brent's Mets team sets for 2015 Topps Archives.  I ended up finding a seller that had a decent price and was able to combine it with some other listings, too.  I ended up with some 2014 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and 2015 Bowman.

First card up is Michael Conforto.  He was drafted by the Mets in the first round of the 2014 MLB Draft being just the 10th overall pick.  He made his MLB debut over one year later.  He is also only the third player to play in the Little League, College, and Major League World Series.  He already has a 2 home run World Series game under his belt.  This is one of his first Mets cards.  It is badly photo shopped.

Next up are the 2015 Topps Archives cards.  Not a bad looking card in the bunch.  I like the first four cards with the 1957 Topps design.  I think it is cool to see Mets players on card designs from a time when they didn't exist as a team.  Overall, though, I think David Wright's card shown below is the best looking card.  It has such a great mixture of different shades of blue.

eBay - 2015 Topps Series 2 and more

2016 Topps is already out and I will get to that post, hopefully sooner than later.  But, for now, we catch up and finish the 2015 Topps flagship release.

With my happiness of dealing with Brent for the Gypsy Queen release, I decided to stick with him for Topps Series 2 instead of purchasing a hobby box. 

The Mets in series are pretty basic looking.  None of them really stand out.  Jon Niese's card show him in an old Mets black hat for some reason.  My favorite base card here would probably be either Jacob deGrom or Wilmer Flores shown above. 

In addition to Series 2, I also purchased some 2015 Topps Archives inserts and parallels.  The first few were from Brent to take advantage of some combined shipping.  He also had some really good pricing on a bunch of silver parallels that I could not pass up.

At the same time of the above purchases I was looking to fill a missing hole in my Mets collection.  By this point, I had cards that are base, parallels, numbered, autos, relics, mini, over-sized, etc.  One thing I was missing was a 1 of 1 card.  I found the above Curtis Granderson printing plate auction with a low number of bids and kept watch.  I am not one to really spend a lot of money on a single card, but the auction was not really getting a whole lot of attention and the price remained pretty low for a printing plate (at least for what I think).  Of course, I ended up winning the auction and getting a printing plate.  Below is the back of the printing plate, if you are into that kind of thing.

Zistle Trade #13

Lucky number 13!  This Zistle trade was with fellow blogger Laurie at LV's TTM autographs and Baseball Cards.

I initiated this trade offering a variety cards that fit her various collections.

Here is what I received in return:

Those 1990 Topps Traded complete my base set Mets needs for 1990 Topps!  I think that is my first Topps base set completed, so far. 

eBay Summer Purchases Continued: Catcher Edition

Here are more of my summer purchases off of eBay.  This is what we will call the "Catcher Edition" and focus on two of the Mets well known catchers plus a cameo from a rising star catcher.

First, Gary Carter.  Gary was traded to the Mets from the Montreal Expos after the 1984 season.  In his first season with the Mets, Gary hit a career high 32 home runs and helped lead the team to a 98 win season.  The following year the Mets went on to win 108 games and the World Series.

Next up is Mike Piazza.  Mike came to the team in 1998 via trade with the Florida Marlins.  He immediately made the Mets a better team and reached the World Series in 2000.

The Mets' current catcher does not want to be left out.  Here is Travis d'Arnaud, who arrived from the Toronto Blue Jays via the R.A. Dickey trade.  It looks like Topps used some of Travis' minor league jerseys for these cards.

Zistle Trade #4

Another "recent" Zistle trade.  This time with Raz over at The Raz Card Blog.

I recall starting this trade because he had a Hakeem Olajuwon card on his want list and I want to get rid of all of my non-baseball cards.  I found another dozen or so cards he wanted and a dozen or so cards I wanted and sent him the request.  This was probably the least back-and-forth trade I have done so far on Zistle (which is a good thing!).

Here are the Mets I received in the trade:

Look at those nicely scanned cards...

That is my first Jacob deGrom card.  Jacob has been pitching quite well his last few starts (really, overall since being called up).  He didn't get as much talk as Noah Syndergaard has gotten, but that has not seemed to matter to him.  His recent success can get any Mets fan excited about the team's future.