Returns from the Purge - Baseball Card Breakdown

A little ways back I put flat rate boxes for each team up for grabs.  I was interested in clearing out some space and clearing off my sorting table.  Those efforts were a big success as I got rid of all but 2 team stacks.  I stated that I didn't want or need anything in return.  In some cases I figured I owed some of you cards anyway and in other cases I was just glad to clear some space.

However in typically blogger fashion, quite a few bloggers sent back some good stuff to thank me.  I have done a terrible job of scanning and posting past packages that have been sent my way - so bad that I have given up the pursuit of catching up (sorry!) however I am committed to sharing the returns from my card purge.

First up are cards from a great package from Gavin over at Baseball Card Breakdown.

I am going to start off with the best two cards and in a rare feat on this blog I will also show the front and back of both cards:

These are both customs and I had seem both before on Gavin's blog and lusted over them a bit.  I don't think I ever reached out to show an interest but boy was I happy when these popped out of the middle of a stack of cards in this package.  My Vida Blue collection is fairly extensive with most of my needs oddball regional cards or low print run recent releases.  I set a modest goal to add 3 Vida cards to my collection this year and I am off to a good start here.  The MadBum Puig confrontation was hilarious - Bumgarner yelling at Puig to not look at him is very typical of his character and the 1990 Fleer custom captures it perfectly.

I got a nice little stack of Topps Pro Debut cards.  Even though I bought a couple boxes of this stuff back during the first couple years it came out, I haven't gone to the trouble of making a want list of the Giants players in set.  I was happy to see all these in this package and add them to my collection.

Here are some more prospect cards, none of these ever hit it really big but all were needed for the Giants binder.  I have a big box of Giants logo cards, stickers and holograms that I keep saying I will put into a binder some day, these 2 logo cards go into that stack to patiently wait.

I don't have a want list or actively go after 49er cards but when I get them I keep them, they are my favorite team.  I am hoping for a bounce back season with Garapallo at QB for the entire year.  Kendall Hunter showed some promise as a rookie but never really panned out.  Navarro Bowman is one of my favorite recent Niners, he was a beast!  I was sad to see him go in their youth movement but will always remember his great career.  This CC card was off my 2013 Pinnacle want list.  I bought a couple boxes on Black Friday a couple years back and decided to go after all the insert sets.  I will most likely never get there but if you happen to have some inserts from the set laying around, check my want list.  By the way CC co hosts a podcast named R2C2 - I really enjoy it and it has made CC one of my favorites.  You should check it out, some great, funny conversations, good insight into baseball and some pop culture talk.

There were some great Giants HOF and legend cards in this pack.  My collection has a serious gap in those Topps Retired cards, so cool to add 4 in on package. I have a strong liking of cards featuring the HOF plaques and this Mathewson one is a great add.  The Mel Ott is a reprint but since I will never own the real one it is a great alternative.

Gavin also included a couple of relics produced about 15 years apart.  I remember the excitement when Shinjo was added to the Giants, he didn't produce like we hoped but was a solid player.  I really enjoy the nice big orange swatch on the Beede card - orange rules!

As you can see, this package included a ton of great cards.  The Ishikawa card is numbered to only 25!  It is such a great looking card.  The reserve negative cards are pretty cool looking and I didn't have any from last year's Topps release.  The Arroyo Heritage card is the action SP - he was in just about every card release last year and now he is gone.  I am curious to see how he does in Tampa.  He always passed the eye test to me, he looks like a ballplayer on the field, but his stats just didn't match how good he looked. 

I decided to end this post with my favorite, non-custom card of the package.  This awesome Roger Craig autograph card.  I have a pretty extensive checklist, although my want lists don't include autos and relics, my checklist I keep does.  One of my favorite things to uncover in trade packages are cards that don't appear on my checklist as I never would hunt them down as I wouldn't know they exist.  This Roger Craig fits that, he wasn't on my checklist.  My checklist is primarily built off the Beckett.com pricing database and once I got this I went to Beckett to see how this was missed.  For whatever reason (probably because much of his playing career was with them) Craig's card was listed as a Dodger so he didn't show on Giants search.  I am very happy that this card arrived and that Mr. Humm Baby rightfully resides on my checklist.

Gavin, thank you so much.  This was an amazing return package of cards.