something in the air

generosity has been prevalent in the blogosphere for a long time, and recently there were some giveaways and surprise envelopes from multiple sources. i figured it was time to highlight some of these instances that have furthered my collection.

first, the diamond king had a giveaway featuring shohei ohtani cards. i requested a 2018 panini diamond kings card

and true to form, kevin included a couple of extras. this is a 2017 panini black friday cody bellinger card

comc calls it rainbow spokes, tcdb calls it wedges. whatever it is, it's great!  and this is a 2022 topps chrome platinum anniversary max muncy card

platinum cream toile & rose gold refractor, and it's numbered on the back to 75.

kevin wasn't done there, as a while later, he offered up some paul skenes cards. i requested a 2024 bowman insert chrome prospect card

and once again, kevin included some bonus dodgers.

that's a 2020 panini chronicles phoenix ruby wave cody bellinger card numbered to 199, and this is a 2018 topps fire duke snider orange parallel card

numbered to 299.

thanks kevin - i hope the cards i sent your way made it there ok!

next up, rod from padrographs had posted that there were some mailings sent out from padrographs hq, and that one of them was a poster in a tube mailer. well, guess who got the poster?!

rod sent me the steve garvey "out of the blue" poster that looks like this:

mine isn't signed, but it was easier to find a photo online than to try to roll it out and take one myself. i have a couple other garvey posters that i need to get set up somewhere.

rod also sent some cards, including one of the garv

along with a 1982 fleer roger erickson signed card

there were also some unopened packs, including 2002 upper deck world series heroes. nice to see don drysdale on the wrapper!

i don't really believe in unopened product, so here we go. my pack included a duke snider card

plus some other folks who played in the world series at some point

other packs included two 1992 upper deck minors which yielded some fun content, including chad ogea in tailored shorts

these days a few players are wearing these "above the knees" pants for real. here's the immortal skeets thomas

with one of the better broken bat cards out there.

there was one dodger card in the packs - greg hansell

i already had this card in my collection, but i found someone who needed one for theirs...

that would be tom, from angels in order. the hansell came in handy because i was preparing a return envelope for tom thanks to him sending me some cards a couple of weeks earlier. he sent these three cards from 1992 classic update white travel edition

along with a 1993-94 fleer excel roger cedeno minor league card

and a 1995 upper deck minor league top prospects karim garcia future stock card

i don't typically seek out minor league cards so it's great to have someone sending them my way!

not to be outdone, tom later had a giveaway in which i was able to procure this card:

2013 bowman platinum yasiel puig prospects chrome green refractor /399. it's really shiny and a great lead-in to st. patrick's day.

thanks kevin, rod, tom, and everyone else out there for bringing the generosity to the blogs. i am feeling inspired to do another "almost free stuff friday" in the near future. stay tuned!

playing catch up

i've fallen behind in my trade posting, and still won't be caught up after this post. between giveaways, contests, and straight up trades, there hasn't been much of a slowdown in incoming cards during the pandemic.  here are some cards to prove it.

cards from diamond jesters

these 2019 topps holiday cards were a return for one of my "almost free stuff friday" trade bait posts, and are an appropriate trio of cards to kick off this early december post.

cards from gtt

these three cards are also part of a "almost free stuff friday" trade. the 2007 fleer ultra saito at the top reminded me that it is tough to tell the difference between hobby and retail versions of these cards. the hobby versions have rainbow foil, i believe.   a new-to-me ryne sandberg lurker card and the tatooine bobby bonilla parallel card fit right in with a couple of my mini-collections.

cards from it's like having my own card shop

daniel and i exchanged a few pwe's over the summer, and these were some of the highlights. the 2003 upper deck 40 man dave roberts card is a rainbow parallel, which is great. the rest are inserts or parallels that were new to me. i suppose i should have shown these cards in october, given the pinkness of the 2016 topps chrome trayce thompson card.  speaking of pink...

card from card hemmorrhage

i claimed this 2019 panini donruss max scherzer franchise features pink firework parallel from one of jay's giveaways.

card from cards that never were

i won this custom card from john in a giveaway. you can buy packs of customs through his blog - they look great!

card from the diamond king

i won this 1979 topps comic nolan ryan card for correctly guessing that kevin had a dupe of it.

cards from nachos grande

i claimed the 103rd trade stack. you can see all of the cards that i obtained by doing so here, but i was really in it for the 2020 topps allen & ginter gavin lux card. the 1996 leaf limited hideo nomo was the other dodger in the stack, and i thought that the 2000 pacific private stock tim hudson mini was neat enough to scan and show here.

cards from fuji

these cards are from the oldest trade that i had yet to post about - sorry about that mark! lots of great cards including the 2001 upper deck decade the 1970's willie davis relic. one of the nice things that resulted from waiting on posting these particular cards is that i can now say that all 8 of the players shown are world series champions. of course, a couple of them (rafael furcal and manny ramirez) won their rings with teams other than the dodgers, but they are champions nonetheless.

thanks to all that trade or offer cards on their blogs - it is appreciated! and, i still have a few trades to post about and will try to get caught up in the new year.  in the meantime, check out my wantlists and let's trade!

secret santa statis: pro

thanks to matt from bob walk the plank for organizing the secret santa program again this year. i had fun picking out cards to send to my recipient - the daily dimwit - even if that meant looking for astros cards a few weeks after they beat the dodgers in the world series.  my secret santa was rob, who runs a few blogs (which i can appreciate) - 1988 topps, collecting 1982 topps, and statis pro 1984.

rob tied our collecting habits together by sending me copies of the infield's statis pro cards from the 1984 season.

a quick look at these and the wikipedia site for statis pro tells me that steve garvey is not likely to miss many games (his consecutive game streak ended in 1983, otherwise i assume his "inj" rating would be 0), ron cey is the only one likely to be hit by a pitch, bill russell is the better bunter, and davey lopes is the better base stealer.  at closer inspection, i also see that the garv would never walk in this game.  this is very realistic, as garvey didn't walk much.  in fact, i think that his inability to take a walk (he took the free, non-intentional pass only 366 times in his career) is one of the things keeping him out of the hall of fame.  172 more walks instead of outs (lay off that slider down and away, please) would have netted him a .300 career average and boosted his obp to .348.  that's just 10 more walks per season, on average. in the end, as much as i want to see garvey in the hall (and i think he should be in), he just made too many outs for him to be a more obvious choice to the people who matter. we'll see if anything changes in three years when he is eligible for consideration by the modern committee again.

rob included some real cards in the package - there were these two relic cards from 2002 upper deck world series heroes featuring davey lopes and bill russell

plus a 2005 upper deck classics ron cey relic card

thanks rob!