Another Stack

Last week I claimed my second trade stack from Chris of Nachos Grande. The stack included a few cards for player collections as well as a couple of nice Expos cards. So after waiting a bit to see if anyone else could claim it, I dived right in and received a stack of 15 cards to show off today.

The Bud Day card above is from a special 2009 Topps Heritage set called American Heroes edition. This was the last card added to the stack before I decided to claim it. I know it's a non-sports card, but the 1960 Topps design along with some excellent image choices by Topps makes me like this card and set a lot.

A couple of USA Baseball Champions cards were also included in the stack. Neither Torrez or Mooneyham have played since 2014 or so, but I'm sure I can find some frankenset or misc. binder to add these 2 cards.

For those of you who don't know, Chris opened a box of 2000 Fleer Tradition in hopes of completing the set. He acquired a few doubles that he added to the trade stack. I've never seen too much of this set before, and I have to say that I really like all the bright colors and how the fake signatures don't distract from the pictures. I like all 4 of the cards a lot, but the Beltre is by far my favorite because it's from the early days of his career in LA.

Just in case I haven't mentioned this yet, I also enjoy collecting Montreal Expos cards. The colorful uniforms, talented players, and overall fun of collecting Montreal Expos cards are what has made them one of my favorite teams ever despite no longer existing. I also really like the simple yet innovative design of 1998 Upper Deck Retro. Combining 2 great things yielded with the result of having 2 1998 Upper Deck Retro cards in the trade stack. The unique sunset lighting makes these cards a lot different from any other card in the stack. I'm very pleased to add these 2 to my Montreal Expos binder.

Another late addition was this Fielding Award insert of Andrelton Simmons from this years' Topps Series 1. I was actually very happy to see that this card had been added, because of how much I enjoy collecting Topps insert sets. I've already acquired a Jose Altuve AL MVP and a Mookie Betts fielding card, so this one became my 3rd card from the insert set.

2 cards that made me interested in the trade stack in the first place were these 2014 Allen & Ginter cards of Joey Votto and Aroldis Chapman. Votto has become one of my largest current players' collections, with a total just north of 50 cards or so. Chapman is a player I've been debating about collecting for years, but I haven't seen too many of his cards. Hopefully, this one will inspire me to add him to my player collection list. 

Another card that I instantly loved as soon as I saw it was this clean and modern 2003 Fleer Box Score of another player I collect, Ichiro. Each base card in the set highlights a special game that a player had in the last couple of seasons, and for Ichiro, that occurred on April 6th, 2001. On that day, Ichiro had 6 at-bats, scored 2 runs, and had 4 hits to help lead the Mariners to a 9 to 7 victory over the Texas Rangers.

And despite not being very well-liked at the moment, there is no denying how cool this Derek Jeter poster is. In fact, I must say it was the #1 factor in me claiming the trade stack in the first place. This 1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated Then & Now poster shows a very young Derek Jeter at the time when his career was just taking off. The action-shot photo and cool font are just a few things that I like about the poster. I also like how it's relatively small. The poster is just a little bit bigger than 4 baseball cards put directly next to each other. Its small size will allow me more options for placing the poster, so long as it's nowhere near the Red Sox cards.

Thanks so much for the trade stack Chris. The Gallery cards I sent you in return should come later this week.