Twinkies touched these cards.

Jeff of My Sports Obsession (formerly My Sports and Sports Cards) found some older TCMA oddballs at a CD/DVD/game store, of all places, along with a bunch of other great stuff. You know me, I jumped on the oddballs, and a day or two later there they were, sitting on the floor of my garage with the rest of the mail. There were several packages, but let's see what Jeff sent my way:

 First, I want to show these four black and white beauties. They're all from era-specific team sets that TCMA issued back in the '70s. For instance, the Greenberg is from a set featuring 1934-35 Tigers to commemorate their championship seasons. And the Musial is from, you guessed it, a 1942-46 Cardinals set. As you can see in the scan, the Greenberg and Musial are not standard size (Feller and Speaker are). It looks like the Greenberg might have been cut at some point, I'm not sure. I'll research that at some point. Anyway, these team sets are quite difficult to find, as I don't believe they change hands too often and most of the unwanted ones are buried at the bottom of someone's closet. I'm quite glad Jeff picked those up! They are fantastic additions to the Cardboard Zoo!

I can't remember the last time I had Twinkies, but man I want one now.

 Next is this Hostess Joe Morgan. These were printed on the box, similar to the Post cereal trading cards, though they don't say Hostess anywhere on them. When Jeff posted the lot, I screamed "Send me all your oddballs!" and he did, but a couple days after we completed this trade I received my COMC order which included several Hostess cards. Luckily, Joe has a home in the Awards/Leaders collection. I like adding vintage to that stack when I can, because most of the cards end up being modern sets, inserts, or Topps reprint sets.

 Three great players with nowhere to go. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd say "I'm sick of seeing Mickey Mantle cards", but I'm sick of seeing Mickey Mantle cards. I hoped these would fit in to my collection, but it wasn't meant to be. I'm going to offer these up for re-trade, as much as I hate doing that. (It gets worse in a second.) Find me some oddballs and these guys are yours! Or something else I need... I hate to see stuff like this without a home. Oh, by the way, these are known as Galasso Glossy Greats, issued from 1977-1984 (these three were issued in '77 or '80, depending on the card).

Here's where it gets worse. Remember when I said I received a whole bunch of Hostess cards after finishing this trade? Well, that made both of these cards obsolete for my collection, so I have to offer them for trade as well. To be far to Adam E, if he comments within a day or so of this post, he can have first dibs on the Yaz, since he posted on Jeff's site that he was interested as well. Both of these are Hostess cards.

Thanks, Jeff, for a great lot of cards in trade! I hope you're happy with your end of the deal when they arrive. If they didn't get there today, it should be tomorrow!

Now, to avoid making 5 posts in one day, I'm going to post the rest of Friday's mailbox insanity.

Not quite the mailbox, these two jersey cards are card store pickups that are headed for the Zoo.

I don't know why I like these cards, because they're really just gimmicks (as are the ones in this year's Heritage set). The cards that contain subway tokens are more appealing, but this is my third card from the Currency Connection set. They're tough to find and get quite expensive. I picked this one up at the card store.

This is card number SP1, from 2009 Upper Deck, and I got it for what I consider to be a decent price off eBay. I started collecting the SP inserts when they began back in '91. Remember Michael Jordan swinging a bat? Tom Selleck's baseball movie? Both on SP inserts. In 2004 they brought the SP inserts back with "First Pitch" cards, of which I still need Tommy Franks and George W Bush. Then they made HOF plaque cards in series 2, and I need Tom Seaver from that set. They didn't make any more SPs until '09, with this one, an Obama/Pujols card, and Derek Jeter. I still need the Obama/Pujols. The white whales of the SP collection are the 2010s, which rarely show up and are always overpriced.

The Fans of the Game subset/insert set run started with baseball in 2004, moved to football in 2005, and has been resurrected in Panini products this year. I only need five of the 74 cards issued to be complete (Kerri Strug, James Gandolfini Hawaii, Michael Phelps, Ray Romano Giants, and Duff Goldman from the above set). These two came from Sportlots.

 The National Chicle set is beautiful. Some day I'm going to build a master set. This was a card store pickup, and goes towards the Markakis collection. Now I just need most of his Topps base cards to be finished with his collection (and an autograph too, at some point).

Kurt Suzuki has been the real star of the A's for a while now, and this autograph goes into my A's team autograph collection. Another cheap grab from eBay.

Now, a nice trade bait card for those of you who lasted until the end:

The Robinson bat is numbered to something like 350. Make an offer!