Returns from the Purge - The Collector

When I posted about my big collection purchase and shared some of my finds I had a few collectors reach out and work out a trade for some of the cards.  Despite some really nice trades and purchase I worked out, this was perhaps my favorite.  Chris from The Collector  shared a pretty awesome card that he had and I didn't hesitate a bit when he offered it up for trade.  In typical blogger fashion, I will save the gem for the end but I also scored some other nice cards for my collection.

First up some Giants needs.  I can't believe I never picked up that Mays catch, it is a beautiful card.  The Panda card is a great one, the 2010 Finest design is one of my favorites with the team logo in the background.  I like that Sandoval is blowing a bubble in his fielding position, he is looking in pretty good shape as well.

Here are a couple of great looking 49er cards, those first few years of Ultra produced beautiful cards.  Merton Hanks is one of my favorite Niners of all time, I have even thought of building a collection of his cards but haven't pulled the trigger.

These are two parallels from last year's Heritage release, they are the bright yellow back variations.  I didn't have any of these yet so super nice additions to my collection.

However, here is the star of the show:

A 1934 Goudey!  This is the first Goudey card from 34 in my collection.  This is such a great looking card and a wonderful addition to my Giants collection.

Chris, I can't thank you enough, thanks for the awesome trade!

Returns from the Purge - Johnny's Trading Spot

John from Johnny's Trading Spot is the next generous return from the purge package to showcase.  John has sent tons of cards in numerous packages over the years, it amazes me he still has excess Giants to shoot my way.  Once again he didn't disappoint, check out the cards in this package:

This is a team set, or darn near a full team set of 1994 Fleer Excel cards.  This is a minor league release and my LCS has a box or two of this laying around that I have been tempted to pick up a couple times.  Now that I have these Giants, my eyes will probably seek out another oddball issue.

There was a nice mix of early 2000s Giants as well and these were all needs.  Merkin Valdez was to 2004 what Christian Arroyo was to 2016 and Fred Lewis was to 2007 - Giants rookies that didn't amount to much that were in just about every product released.  That may not be fair to Arroyo who still has a chance.  Its odd seeing a Bobby Thomson highlight that doesn't reference The Shot Heard Round the World.

I collected the heck out of the Bazooka sets and never pulled a Giants parallel so it is great to finally have a couple in my collection.  The bottom 3 are all stickers and Mr. Valdez shows up again.

The orange must have gotten a couple stacks mixed together as I got some Astros in the cards John sent my way.  There are some nice cards in here so I thought I would scan them up to see if anyone needed them.

Finally some recent Giants to help out with last years's holiday set and this years flagship team set.

Thanks John for the great package once again!

Returns from the Purge - It's like having my own Card Shop

These aren't necessarily trade posts, as the boxes I sent out in my purge were sent out no strings attached.  I can't say I am surprised with how many fellow bloggers did some some cards back in return with the generosity consistently displayed in this community.  Today's post is a return package from It's like having my own Card Shop. 

I got a nice variety of Giants cards with quite a few cards to knock off my want list.

The two UD Play Ball cards finished off a team set, very cool.  I didn't realized the Correia was a parallel until it was getting filed away in my binder, that was a nice surprise.  The Burkett silver signature parallel gets me one step closer to the team set.  I haven't officially gone on a quest to complete the silver sig parallel set but every time I get a new one I almost pull the trigger on a shopping spree to finish it off.

I haven't figured out a way to create a checklist of Giants minor leaguers, one of the few gaps in my pretty detailed checklists.  I am always glad to add more to my collection.  I still need to get a binder put together for them, maybe that can be a 2019 goal, lord knows I have enough goals for 2018.

This is a nice relic of a short time stay with the Giants, Andres Galarraga.  The Big Cat played for the Giants for part of 2001 and all of 2003 and played pretty well even being at the end of his career.  It seems his autographed cards have started to pop up in a few new Topps products lately.  I was able to purge my collection of most of my Chipz, except of course the Giants.  The black Panda Chipz is the first of that color I have seen.  Not sure if it is super rare but I bought quite a few packs and never got a black one.

The final cards to share are at first glace what appears to be typical 2004 Topps Giants base cards.  Upon closer inspection, I saw the 1st edition symbol on these.  I had 2 or 3 of these parallels in my collection but all 5 are new to me.  I don't recall how these were distributed but I am glad to have almost a binder page full now.

Thanks for the great cards Daniel, I really appreciate you returning the favor.

Returns From the Purge - Baseball Cards Come to Life!

I am getting caught up on sharing the cards that I received and starting to feel a little better (less guilty) and I believe this great group of cards from Bo at Baseball Cards Come to Life! gets me at or beyond the half way point in sharing!  I have some more great cards to share but will have to do some scanning before I can share.

Let's focus on the present!  Bo scoured my want lists and came up with an impressive and somewhat eclectic batch of cards that fit nicely into a few parts of my collection.

Got a few Giants here with my favorite being the Will Clark.  The Clark is actually a box bottom card from Fleer and has been on my want list for quite some time.  I was also glad to add the Dave Winfield card.  It is a very familiar card but was missing from my Winfield binder

Here are some Giants of the shiny variety.  The Sergio Romo is a favorite.  Romo was a big contributor to the Giants run of 3 titles and this was his first card.

Finally some rare additions from 3 different sets that have been on my want list for quite some time with little progress.  The 2 Topps cards are from 2011 Pro Debut, I opened a couple of boxes and put together a want list and I don't know if I have knocked one card off that want list until this package came.  I also bought a box of Swell Greats a few years back and curiously got several copies of the first half of the set but missed out on quite a few from the second half.  That list got 2 cards smaller.  Finally a couple Highlights inserts from the USA baseball set including an appearance of Rod Dedeaux, former manager of my USC Trojans baseball club.

Thanks Bo for the great cards and for going through my want lists.  Your return package was greatly appreciated!

Returns From the Purge - Too Many Verlanders

Another super cool return package for my purge a couple months back.  This is the second package where the cards took a back seat to the other items included in the package after the cool bat from Waiting 'til Next Year.  This time Dennis from Too Many Verlanders set me up nicely.

There were some cards and they were inserted into a Pinnacle can.  I also got a Juan Marichal Cooperstown figurine.  It was still in its packaging along with a card but I decided to free it from the cardboard and plastic.

Here are some of the card highlights, all new to my collection.  The Marichal card is the one that came with the figurine.

In addition to the Giants, Dennis also hooked me up with some great USC Trojan cards.

The final regular sized cards I will show in this post.  I almost passed right by these Charles Barkley cards and put them into my duplicate stack.  I was fairly certain I have all of Sir Charles Collector's Choice cards but I decided to flip them over and was surprised with some non-English writing.  Sweet - European parallels that are new to my collection!

So I hinted at the cards not being the star of the show and here is why.  Some great older baseball magazines featuring the best player of my lifetime - Barry Bonds!

Here are 6 Beckett magazines also featuring Barry with a Willie Mays cameo.

Finally a Matt Williams Beckett, a Patrick Ewing Georgetown SI and a 8X10 card of Barry Bonds from 1997 Studio - a need for my Giants collection.

I really enjoy looking through old Becketts and magazines.  I have a nice stack of ones I have kept through the years and I believe only one of these is a dup.  Thanks Dennis for this awesome package, you have gifted me hours of enjoyment with the magazines to thumb through!

Returns From the Purge - I Feel Like A Collector Again

Time for another post from my purge of team stacks.  This time I got some great looking 49er cards from Kin at I Feel Like A Collector Again.

Kin picked up some recent 49er Prizm cards from me to send back my way the recognized my primary Niner focus was on vintage cards. He shot the Prizm cards my way anyway and I am glad he did.  I am still a huge Niner fan, I only go after the vintage to try and limit my collection a bit.  With the creation of my 2018 binder, I now have 33 Giants baseball binders of cards and I didn't want to duplicate that with the Niners.

Here are the base Prizm cards of the Niners, these look really nice.  I didn't buy much, if any, Prizm football but did pick quite a bit of the baseball cards.  It is nice to see a Panini product with logos on it, makes me wish for a day when there is more than one company with a license on the baseball front.

Here is where it gets even better, check out these designs and the color.  These are beautiful cards!

Once Kin realized that my preference wasn't the more modern 49ers, Kin included some great Niners vintage cards from my want list.

Kin, thank you so much for the package! I will let you in on a little secret if you promise not to share.  I do have a couple of boxes of modern 49er cards that I keep as part of my collection and the Prizm cards have found themselves a nice home.

Returns From the Purge - Waiting 'til Next Year

A little while back I purged some stacks of cards from my collection in order to make room for sorting a large collection of cards I purchased.  I didn't ask for anything in return but in typical blogging community fashion, several people hit me back with some great cards.  I haven't posted in a little while as I have been sorting through the new collection to clear up some room in the basement for my mom's visit.  I finally decided that I need to get some posts out celebrating my return packages so I am going to try to get a few posts out this week.

Tonight's post showcases a killer package from P-Town Tom from Waiting 'til Next Year fame.  This package arrived in an odd sized package and had me puzzled before I cracked into it.

First up were two nice All-Star relics from 2016 Topps Update.  I recently put up a want list of a few relic, auto and parallel Giants sets I decided to focus on and chase and Tom knocked off two cards from that list.  These aren't as easy to come by as you might think so these are welcome additions.

Next up are some cards from the 1952 Bowman President release.  I was able to complete the 1956 President set that I believe was put out by Topps with some similar art work.  Tom knocked off 7 cards from this list including one of my favorites - US Grant.  I believe based on some genealogy work done by a relative that I am a direct decedent of our 17th US president - I have thought about starting a Grant collection but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Great cards you have to admit, but the final item was the reason for the odd shaped package and is super cool!  Check out this bat:

I was going to recap the history of the bat but thought I would let Tom's own words share the story.

I was very touched that he thought of me and sent it my way, my kids were pretty pumped as well.  I haven't put it up yet but they helped me select a spot on the wall for the bat

Here is an up close picture of the bat label...

And finally an up close picture of the player name.

Thanks Tom for such a generous and thoughtful package!!!

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.