Things Are Heating Up...

...with my pursuit of the 2003 Topps set! Thanks to Bert of blog Swing And A Pop-Up and Johnny of the eponymous Johnny's Trading Spot, I've gotten a bunch of cards closer to finishing the decade-old set. I've since freshened up my wantlist to reflect that. For real, this set is so old most of the players are retired, and the Oakland A's sported the above logo on their caps!

Art Howe, of Moneyball fame, was one such Athletic. If you zoom in very closely, you might make out the blazing elephant logo. Perhaps the only major league manager to be played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman in a movie, Howe did not manage the A's in '03, leaving instead to skipper the Mets for two years and work as a bench coach for the Phillies and Rangers until 2008.

Justice was also on the Moneyball team recounted in Michael Lewis' book. Incidentally, the guy who played him in the movie was in the Braves' system along with Justice back in the '90s.

 2003 would be the only year from 1990 to 2008 that Maddux did not win a Gold Glove.

Another example of fun headgear! The Padres have worn some sort of camo uniforms since 2000. The full 2003 camo uniform looks like this.

I would love to meet a self-described Taggert Bozied supercollector one day. A Xavier Nady SC would be fun to meet too.

 Loving this.

I'll be as happy as Vladdy when I finally finish off this set!

Thanks again to John and Bert! If you want to help me out with this set, check out my wantlist  (and perhaps my for-trade list) and shoot me an email about a trade!

Trade With Weston of Fantastic Catch, Part One!

I'm back. Undaunted by summer allergies and a weekend trip to Montgomery (post upcoming about that), I'm here to recount a fantastic series of trades with Weston of blog Fantastic Catch. Since he and I have swapped a lot of cards, I'm going to break this up into a few posts. I have to say it's been odd not blogging for a couple of weeks. Last night, I think I dreamed of trying to hold another contest. Anyway...

Included along with the following cards were some Sports Illustrated Braves baseball preview article clippings. A while back, SI famously did a baseball preview on Sidd Finch for April Fool's day. As I prepare to fly to Boston this weekend for the Harvard journalism camp, I thought it was cool that Sidd also reputedly attended Harvard.

What would improve Topps Opening Day? As has been chronicled by other blogs, it's basically a mimicry of the base set, only with different inserts and photos of Tim Hudson (hoping he gets well soon, by the way). If Opening Day is going to be released after S1, I'd agree that the two products need to be merged. What do you think?

Some goofy cards I found. Aside from the blank stares of Harper and Smith, something seems odd about Cliff Speck's photo. And apparently, Chris Seelbach lives on the baseball field.

These were some nice cards of Christian Bethancourt, now toiling in the minor leagues for the Mississippi Braves. If the Braves ever change their minor league team names to not reflect the parent club's, I vote for changing Mississippi's to the Queens. If you know what I mean...

Some long-lost 2010 set needs! Still looking for J-Hey's rookie card and the Dale Murphy SP...if you have these available for trade, let me know!

Last, some Eckstein PC needs! Eck recently surfaced as an assistant coach for the USA U18 team for the World Cup in late August. It'll be interesting to see whether Eckstein becomes a coach in the major leagues down the road. I wonder, Can he or anyone inculate hustle? What about grit?

Thanks to Weston for the cards, and look for another post sooner than in two weeks!

Harvard, Dale Murphy, and the City of Detroit (Trade with TMV)

In other news, I've been accepted to Harvard....'s summer journalism camp. I'm pretty pumped, and expect nothing less than to run into Jeremy Lin, Mark Zuckerberg, and Ryan Fitzpatrick. (Okay, maybe not Ryan Fitzpatrick.)

A bunch of Harvard MBA students hit up the Motor City last week to help local businesses as part of a nationwide tour. Despite their best efforts, and having a pretty darn good baseball team this year, the City of Detroit declared bankruptcy. And yet their good baseball team carries on, helped by triple king Prince Fielder and fellow Michiganders, like Dennis of blog Too Many Verlanders.

One of the cards Dennis sent to me in 2 successive trade packages was this Dale Murphy Panini jersey card. Behold it in all its unlicensed glory!

 It's numbered to 99, according to the back side:

Now, along with my other two Murphy cards I had (below), I've completed a Murph trifecta! 

Of course, if you have any other Dale Murphy autos, rookies, or jersey cards, feel free to ask me for something in a trade! I'd love anything not on my Have List to add to this collection!

Of course, that Dale jersey card wasn't all Dennis sent me. He also shot me a Matt Moore Bowman,

 Some bizarre Panini cards (which I really needed for my set),

And a fuzzy Chipper Jones card! Now, I'm not being weirdly sentimental when I say that. This card has a texture like velvet on the green part. Representing...grass? I've gotta say I've never touched grass that felt like that. I did a little digging, and fellow blogger PunkRockPaint made a funny parody of this Velvety Chipper:

Pilfered from Mr. PunkRockPaint

And so there you have it. Dennis sent a bunch of other stuff too...but time was against me. Go visit his blog and make a trade with him, he's super cool about making them. In the meantime, I'll be working on my Boston accent. Thanks to Dennis for the trade!

Trade With Brian of Base Set Calling!

***Don't forget the contest!*** (3 hours left!)

Brian of Base Set Calling and I completed a trade recently. In it, I hauled in this white whale:



2012 Topps Update Chipper Jones SP

 That's the first screw-down case I've gotten, ever! And that card is a great segue into mentioning that Chipper's jersey number is being retired  by the way. I'm sure that'll be an awesome game to go to, and I wish I could be there. Ah well.

Ignore the Scotch tape, ahem. This Matt Diaz, I do believe, completes my 2012 Update Braves set. Huzzah!

And a random Martinez, just because.

And that's it! Brian's an awesome trade partner, and he's chasing a bunch of those pink and camo parallels from 2013 Topps. If you have any, drop him a line. Thanks to him for this trade!

Contest here...Almost!

Hi guys,

I'm prepping for a contest here and wanted to bump blogrolls while showing off cards from a handful of recent trades.

A couple of 2013 Heritage cards from Card Anathema. The Bourn is one of the chrome parallels. Bourn has continued to be productive for the streaky Indians, and is hitting .302 at the time I write this. That's almost twice as high as current Braves CF B.J. Upton's, incidentally...sigh.

 These now are some cards from Crackin' Wax's "Take My Cards" promo. I really like this card of B-Mac.

 Banana-yellow backs. Hmm.

Spahn looks a bit zombie-esque in this shot, but I love the vintage uniform/glove. Also, borders? Wow!

Last, Uncle Doc sent me some cards from his closet. These were just a few of the cards that took a nice bite out of my 2003 Topps wantlist!

Thanks, in order, to Card Anathema, Crackin Wax, and Uncle Doc! Again, everyone keep an eye open for my contest soon! Adios!

Trade With William-Final Part!

Like Peter Jackson did with the Hobbit, I've managed to broadcast one event three separate times. Something tells me I won't be raking in millions for posting about cards, though considering the big gift William sent me, maybe I could. I'll save it for the end of this post.

Also, look for a contest involving prizes very soon. Like in the next few days kind of soon. You might want to bookmark this site. Really.

Dale Murphy as a Phillie? Conflicting. Jimmie Dean did a clever job of hiding that all-offensive logo, though. These are keepers.

Hometown Heroes inserts aren't something I get a lot of. I like the bunting on this one of Jason Heyward, who I'm rooting to get out of this .146 hitting slump.

Panini Cooperstown cards are kind of hard to come by, so I appreciated this one Will sent of Ed Mathews. 

Okay, so the majority of these cards didn't come in a bubble-wrapped package like many other bloggers and I are used to-they came is a large brown box of packing peanuts containing...

These boys. The ink, unfortunately, is about that fuzzy in real life. Will said in a note with the package he had acquired these from a co-worker of his and wanted to pass them along as a b-day gift. Along with two other clean Braves balls, these two auto balls will soon find some good holders! (No, I haven't gotten them out of the packing peanuts...yet.) Thanks to William for the balls, the cards, and the birthday thought! Now I need to do a little detective work to decode whose sigs are on them!

Trade With William, Part Dos

I'm back. Back to churning out images of baseball cards and comments on them. This is the second part of a chronicle of assorted trades with William of Foul Bunt, who will reap the rewards of a hyperlink each time I spit a phrase about this trade. Whoa-that went a little gangsta right there. Said the white rural red-state male. Maybe I should just stick to what I normally do around here... 

There are always a handful of card insert subsets that flash for a brief few days on blogs, then disappear as the next set shows up. I think Topps Gold Rush was one, but I might just have been reading the wrong blogs.

Darrell Evans. He just looks like a manager in this shot. Evans played his last game before this card was made, as he batted a rather miserable .207 in 1989. According to B-R.com, his nickname was "Howdy Doody," which I'm sure has been mentioned elsewhere before. I didn't know it though!

Going high end with Bowman Platinum of Brandon Drury, a name that I haven't heard before outside of cards. Reason probably being he went to Arizona in the Justin Upton deal last winter.

Another cropped card; this one depicting Jones swinging a bat, with bright white and a burst of sky in the background.

Some swell pick-ups, of two very different uniforms for the same team. Johnny Sain must not be on the Topps-licensed list, as I've seen a ton of Warren Spahn cards and virtually none of the Boston Braves Spahn-Sain duo.

My first rookie card of the now returned Braves catcher. Between McCann and Evan Gattis, there's a lot of chatter that Gerald Laird is the odd catcher out for the Braves. Former backup David Ross might be wishing he were benchwarming in Atlanta rather than recovering from a concussion playing for the Red Sox.

 And to top it off for this trade segment, a Jeff Francoeur mini. Nice. But hang on...

This isn't just any JF mini-it's a Bazooka red back Jeff Francoeur mini! William, you've done it again-thanks for these goodies as well!

Coming up: the last (and I think, best) installment of the trade!