The Small Trade Parade, Vol. V
Well, I guess it was pretty foolish of me to think that I could begin a posting streak this week. Let’s start anew, shall we? And heck, today is a victorious day, so let’s have a parade – a small trade parade, of course! Here’s Volume V, which is full of things that just arrived in the past couple weeks.
First on the docket are these tiny cards from Ben (OCHawkeye). Tiny cards to lead off a post of tiny trades felt, well, appropriate. I’ve crossed the halfway mark on these 1993 Cracker Jack prizes, with 10 of the 24 still outstanding. Getting these in a trade is just as much fun as pulling them out of the box, in my opinion.
There were some cards for my 1993 Upper Deck build as well, and a few other strays inside. The Jimmie Foxx was a replacement for a missing card I requested. He’s from the 1986 Big League Chew set, which of course I now need to complete. You may be wondering why in the world I’m collecting Dennis Rasmussen cards, and you’d be perfectly fine to wonder that. Dennis is part of a baseball family – a very specific baseball family, that is. His grandfather was Wilbur “Bill” Brubaker, which means that Dennis and I are also distant relatives. I figured he’s only got about 120 cards out there, and after scouring my junk wax I came up with almost three dozen. That seemed like a good enough start, so I went ahead and threw the rest on my want list.
Gregory’s (Ggo64) cards arrived just today. See! I can try to keep up, on occasion! He had 9 cards for me, mostly toward my Pacific and Swell mega-set builds. I’m assembling the three-year runs of both of those. These three did not go to the sets, though. The Walker has eluded me for some time, and will slip into the Astros binder. Haddix and this 1990 Pacific Senior League card of Bill Lee both went to my small PCs of the two. Fun fact: that Haddix is a reversed negative, which was never corrected.
Next up, we have some cards from Daniel (ddunn0707). He’s a Padres collector, and in our match list I found a handful of Gwynn’s for oddball and insert sets I’m working on. These pop art Diamond Kings are awesome.
Daniel had another Rasmussen I needed. Here he is, having just fanned Josh Reddick. Not even a Rainbow foil beauty could save Josh. I think it’s safe to say that Reddick’s time in Houston is finished. Of the three big free-agent outfielders, he’s certainly the expendable one. I’d love to see the club bring Brantley back, and more than anything I want them to give Springer a king’s ransom to stay.
Daniel had one more Astros card I needed, and it was a beauty! Check out this 1998 Pacific Invincible card of Darryl Kile, complete with a little acetate portrait. Peak 90’s right there, you love to see it.
Vern (gormanvj) and I reconnected recently, and this little swap sees him get added to the multiple trade partner list. Not that I really keep a list, but hey – we’ve thrown cards in an envelope and sent them to each other more than once now. These 1990 Topps Big cards were nice pickups. I think I’m getting close to having all the Astros from the Big sets now, I should do a check. I’m a bit curious why Biggio’s window gets the flag effect. It’s always fun to see catcher cards of him.
There was another trio of cards in the envelope, including a delightful OPC second-year card of RTA favorite Casey Candaele. The Expos uniform just feels appropriate there. A couple recent Astros cards rounded out the bunch, with the Decade’s Best card from flagship and a gold parallel Altuve from last year’s Big League.
Alright, any good parade saves the heavy hitters for the finale, right? So let’s do just that. Jason (ravenfaith77) needed a couple of hot rookies, so I threw a few in an envelope in exchange for these two beauties: a 2012 Heritage Minors card of King Gerorge (#neverforget) and a Rookie Debut card of Carlos Correa from 2015 Update which has slipped my grasp until now. I, uh, think they could have probably made the Jethawks logo a bit bigger on George’s card, if you ask me.
Alright, that’ll wrap it up for today. I’ll try to keep this streak going. Unfortunately the cards won’t post themselves, no matter how much I try.
Seeing posts like this make me want to get more involved with the TCDB, but it just seems like so much darn work to get started.
I get it can be a hurdle just putting stuff in, for sure. But, I’ll say this: I just completed my 525th trade over there. It’s worth it.