It's Been a While

For whatever the reason may be, it's quite clear to me that I haven't been making as many trades with fellow bloggers as I used to say, last year at this time.

When I first started the blog back in August of 2017, I was trying to figure out a schedule as well as what type of posts or topics I wanted to write about each day. Therefore, in need of new material and someone to trade all sorts of cards to as well, I finalized multiple trades within the last week of August and first couple weeks of September. 

Flash forward one year; even with a busy schedule, there's not really any excuses for not making more than 5 trades since last year at this time. I'm not sure of the exact total, but I do know that I need to take some time in the upcoming couple weeks to go through some want lists and send some cards out to fellow bloggers.

Before I left for The National, I was able to send some cards out to Night Owl that consisted of mostly Dodgers cards with some 70's oddballs thrown in. In exchange, he sent me a package which came yesterday which you'll be seeing here, starting with some 2015 Topps set needs. 

Beginning and consisting of primarily 2015 Topps, Greg sent me a sizeable stack of cards to take off my want list. As mentioned, the majoirty of these cards, around 40 or so, will be going right to the 2015 Topps set, putting me in a very good place to complete the most interesting set of the decade sooner rather than later, with under 150 cards or so left to acquire.

Next, a few quick 2018 Topps Heritage base cards helps me close in on completing the 2018 Heritage set sooner than expected. By adding these base cards of Jonathan Lucroy, Jose Abreu, and Yoenis Cespedes, I'm only 23 base cards away from completing this years' Heritage set. After that, I'll turn more of my attention towards SPs and a few of the insert sets.

Greg always makes it a point to include at least a few Red Sox cards in every trade package he sends my way. This time around, the cards ended up being from the 1982 Donruss set, better known as the "bat and ball design" as opposed to the "bat and glove." Of the 4 players, the Dennis Eckersley and Carl Yastrzemski cards will go straight to their respective PCs which the cards of Bob Ojeda and Carney Lansford will go into my Red Sox albums.

I was also sent a few newer Red Sox cards for my player collections, including 3 cards from 2018. The Jacoby Ellsbury MLB Debut from 2016 Topps is the only card included not from this year. The 3 other cards shown above, including the Topps Big League Craig Kimbrel, are all from 2018. With the addition of this card to the list, the Kimbrel Collection currently sits at 113 with a couple more cards left to add to the total that I purchased at the show a couple weeks ago.

Still, even with all the different cards he sent me, the Babe Ruth mini at the top of this post says it all. The majority of cards that made up this trade were Allen & Ginter minis that I plan on using in my newly-created A&G mini frankenset binder.

For starters, the majoirty of the stack was made up of a lot of great base minis and A&G backs (Upton) of baseball players included in the image above. For the most part, that's what this mini frankenset is going to end up looking like. I'm no Allen & Ginter super-collector, so I don't have all that many non-base minis, hence why I traded for some. But, with interesting set designs, images, and other factors to boost, I don't think I'm going to have a single problem with how this set turns out.

In addition to an abundance of base minis, Greg also sent over some black and white parallel minis which, especially in the 2017 set shown on the far left and right, look pretty great, in my opinion. For the times when all the base minis start to get the least bit repetitive, I know I'll have some black and white minis included on each of the pages to help make the set a bit more interesting. If there are any minis currently ocupying the same number spots that these cards have, I'm afraid it would be quite challenging for me to choose all that many minis over these.

At the end of the day, out of all the new A&G minis that were sent my way, my favorite would have to be this gold border A&G back Bobby Abreu card, a type of mini that I have never seen before in my life. From taking a quick glance at COMC, these minis tend to go for at least a few dollars depending on the player. In the case of Abreu, a very underrated player, the prices start at $2.25, suggesting that these gold minis are actually somewhat rare.

It's minis like these that make me excited for the A&G mini frankenset. Even with the addition of 50 or so minis, I realize I still have quite a long ways to go, but cards like the gold A&G back Bobby Abreu mini as well as any interesting minis, baseball-related or not, makes me excited to see this final product a few months from now.