The Small Trade Parade, Vol. IX

I am in my final week of my two months of parental leave. I figured during that time that I’d get a bunch of things done, including around these parts. Let me just say that I (a) had forgotten how much work a little baby is, and (b) was severely off in my estimation of our schedule. Did we get out on a lot of walks? Heck no! Our wake windows are too short and it’s already too dang hot here. Did I unleash a torrent of TTM requests? Nope! Did I manage to get caught up – or even make regular posts here? Not a chance.

I have been fairly active in the cardboard universe, though. There have been some fun purchases, sweet trades, nice TTM returns – I was better about filling the hopper earlier in the year, ironically prior to starting leave. I told myself I was determined to get a post up today, and after looking around my scans I figured I’d start with another installment of The Small Trade Parade. These are all TCDB trades which have arrived during May.

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Bill (braveheart) is new to the site, and he needed a stack of 2022 Heritage. I sent a couple dozen base cards his way to score two of my remaining Astro needs, as well as this intriguing black border Wandy from 2011 Heritage. I’m a bit curious why they didn’t go full black and use all white text. I haven’t seen these around before, but there are two other Astros I need: Chris Johnson and Hunter Pence. I’m always happy to send a lopsided trade to score something like this.

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Mike (M_) had a pair of O-Pee-Chee scores for two of my small PCs: Casey Candaele (a personal favorite) and Dennis Rasmussen (a distant relative). Topping off the trade is a Dwight Gooden diamond king card from 1992 Donruss. I’m working (slowly) on the glossy DK and Gallery of Stars inserts from the early 90s.

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Thanks to the Recent Matches tool, I noticed that Dwayne (powelldu) needed some non-baseball stuff. That box happens to be at the house for a bit, so I was happy to thin its ranks. He had nothing from my want list, but I tracked down these two sweet cards of some of my favorite players outside of baseball in his trade list.

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Aaron (Shoremuad) offered up a few Astros in a little swap. This put to bed my 2017 Chrome Update base needs as well as my Salute inserts from 2018 Series 1. I still need another Bregman from the Series 2 inserts. The Correa leaves me with one remaining Superstar Sensations card before I can put that to rest as well, so if you have a spare Justin Verlander let me know. The Chris Salamida is from a 2007 set called Just Autographs – which surprised me as it is not autographed. Like, why not just call it 2007 Just and make the Autographs the inserts? Who knows – that brand had a weird little run, although I’m enamored with it.

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Rick (Ricky_Bobby) had some more sweet ‘Stros for me in an insert/parallel-laden swap. That’s a base McCullers mini from 2017 Ginter, as well as an A&G back. The 2021 Correa is an A&G back as well. I love it when I can add another Lima Time card (there aren’t too many left from his Astros tenure that I’m missing), and that’s surfer dude Brad Ausmus making a cameo on a 2006 Turkey Red card.

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These two parallels finished out the trade: our dearly departed Garret Stubbs and Carlos Correa. I think Stubbs fits that Tony Kemp mold: blocked in Houston and just needs the steady reps somewhere so that he can blossom into a full-time player. Correa had a rocky start to the season but has been playing pretty well for Minnesota (and my fantasy team) of late.

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Last, but certainly not least (yes, I know – I can be prone to cliches here) is a lovely little swap from fellow Astros collector Max (mfreeman), who lives out near Austin. He proposed a sweet four-for-four swap, including a few serially numbered cards on each side. In my instance, that’s the 2015 Archives Springer – this Silver parallel is numbered 17/199, the 2020 Donruss Career Statline parallel (211/426, his RBI total at that time), and the Castro gold parallel. When the Pink Refractors debuted in Chrome several years ago, I despised them. I can’t quite put my finger on why, either – it wasn’t some dumb “pink ain’t manly” nonsense either, they just felt weird. Now, I rather enjoy them. I have a few years where the pink parallels are pretty close to finished – I should probably put that list together!

Alright, here’s where I insert the usual proclamation that the blog is no longer dead, and that I have lots to blog about, so stay tuned. We’ll see if that actually turns out to be true this time around! I hope so.