Going Postal: This Week In Mail

Those manila envelopes, they just keep coming in! With all the card show loot this month, I've spent most of my writing efforts on showing off all those goodies I've come away with. It's certainly been a good month, with each show having plenty of great cards to choose from. Compare that to some of the sparse off-season shows, which saw me walking away with only a handful of cards. Add to that recent breaks and trade deals, and my mailbox has felt like the inbox at Beckett's review service (without the loaded boxes, of course).

I have received several packages in the past week or so (when was my last mailday post, anyway?), so here we go!

We'll start with my group break grabs from Nachos Grande. I went for the Cardinals and Blue Jays in this one. I pulled the cards I needed from the stack before I scanned them (oops!) so everything you see here is for trade.

 First, these 2000 Topps Gallery. This is a nice set, and you can see there are some interesting photos. Shannon Stewart looks to be falling on the base, Delgado is about to give a free bat to someone in the dugout at high speed, and Lankford is playing Parkour at what looks to be Dodger Stadium. Until Gallery went with an art set, though, it never stood out as something I'd like to collect.

 Topps Reserve? I think this was the only card from the set I didn't need. I need a couple Jose Cruz cards, but not Junior here.

 My lone insert in the break was this nice Lou Brock Club 3000. There is a memorabilia version that goes along with this, featuring varied memorabilia items for each player in the set. The complete set does not include all 3000-hit and 3000-strikeout members, apparently just the ones that Fleer could use in a memorabilia set.

 Topps 205, 2003 style. None of these are SPs, I wasn't that lucky. I need 20 SPs to finish my Topps 205 set. I may tackle this set in the next month or so via Sportlots and COMC. I ended up with two Pujols cards, though.

Shiny! Fleer Showcase 2000 is the set that brought me that Brock insert above. This is a nice set that Topps Tribute seems to emulate these days. 

BA Benny sent me some 2009 Upper Deck in a trade based on one of my card show bait posts earlier this month. He sent everything he promised:

 A bit more 2009 Upper Deck to get me a little closer to completing that set.

 Another 20th Anniversary card to get me... a tiny bit closer to that set too. And then there were these:

Some 2011 Topps singles I need from series 2! I've been seeing a lot of Matt Kemp lately. It might be because of Greg Z's infatuation with Kemp that I just notice his cards more often, or maybe it's because I'm in anti-Dodger territory so his stuff ends up in the quarter boxes more often.

Next: more set building, this time 2008 Stadium Club. I sent off a bunch of diamond parallels to Chris (Nachos Grande, again!) in exchange for the following singles.

 For Stadium Club, these particular photos aren't that exciting. You'll notice some First Day Issue parallels scattered in - I'm doing a bit of a FrankenSet since it's so difficult to find the short printed divisibly-by-three cards.

Horizontalness makes most cards look better. If Damon wasn't horizontal, it would just be another Johnny Damon batting card. With the First Day Issue cards mixed in, I'm trying to put together a master set of all 185 cards, plus the RC variations (another 50 cards). I haven't even begun the 35 autographed cards, which includes Evan Longoria.

P.S. I just mailed your package yesterday, Chris. I finally found a new store to buy bubble envelopes from. The store I used to buy them from stopped carrying #000s, and, well, I'm not paying $1.30 each for envelopes from Walgreens. In fact, I shipped four trade/prize packages yesterday, with two more ready to mail today!

Does the package excitement ever stop?

Not if you're me! This will be the last package of the day, but I have one more for you tomorrow. This one comes courtesy of The Dimwit. He sent me two Gypsy Queens:

 One of them is the Tarot back, while Kara is the regular descriptive back. Some of these gypsies are cute. I bet they could easily seduce and trick me into doing something stupid. Not giving them my money, though - I'm a tightwad.

Sam also included a nice jersey card here of Brian Roberts from 2009 UD A Piece of History. This will head off to the Cardboard Zoo for safekeeping and an eventual feature!

Thank you to everyone - Mike, Sam, Chris - for some wonderful cards!