February 2018 Trade Recap

It's been a while since I have been able to post one of these. It's not that I haven't been trading...it's just that I haven't been opening my trades. I have been saving everything for my 2018 Card of the Day project, but I think I've got enough of a stash that I don't need to hold on to every trade. I think I've got 4 or 5 I have not even opened going back a few months now. I'm going to open them all up soon, and I'll post a Trade Recap Catch-Up when I do, not sure when it will go live, depends on how quick I get them scanned.

This week I've decided to start opening them as they came in, and I had three come in. The only three I did in the month, actually.

The first to arrive was with TonyZ on the Trading Card Database, which saw 14 cards arrive from 2004-05 Fleer Genuine. This set came out in 2005, and I have not added a single card to the set since it was new, I think I did a blaster, but not totally sure. I know I don't have enough to have done a hobby box, and I know I don't have a single rookie card from the set, which would likely not be the case with a hobby box.
Here are just two examples, the only two I've scanned so far. Vince Carter was the only Net, and Damon Jones was the player I have the least number of cards of in my collection, so I prioritized them for scanning.

You really can't see it in scans, but these cards use clear blobs of goo in the design. There are three raised dots in 4 separate locations on the card front, and they feature a clear glossy border stripe, which is almost invisible in scans, except it shows up as a discoloration on the name bar. These cards were not damaged by the goo blobs but the ones I got originally were- they came out of the packs with indents on the backs of the cards and spots of missing printing on the backs where the goo rubbed off the color. I've never seen one without that damage until I opened this trade on 2/22.

The next trade was a quick trade. Matthew Keppel of the Trading Card Database and Diamond Jesters recently had a cool thing which he called Time Travel Trading, where he bought a pack of 2018 Topps baseball and is trying to see how far back he can get trading the cards he got and what he gets for them. I thought it was a neat idea so I decided to jump in, I sent him three low grade 1978 Topps that I am pretty sure came my way via one of Gavin's card dumps, but were duplicates. None of them were bad enough shape that I wouldn't have considered them part of my collection if they weren't duplicates, but they were. I told him to send me one card out of the pack, I didn't care which one. This is the one he chose:

 I'm a really big fan of team cards, and constantly bemoan the fact that they don't really do them in the NBA anymore, so this was a good choice.

The final trade, which is the largest, was with Shawn Norris. If you are on the Database you know his reputation, but I've never had a problem with him, and we've traded quite often- I don't know how many cards he's sent me over the years, but the number is certainly in the three digits. This one saw me get 33 cards, all Marvel Comics related. I may be a DC fan (formerly) but I will still take Marvel cards in trade...especially when the trade offered was for sending me more than double what I would be sending out.
They were from three sets:

 1994 Marvel Masterpieces, 22 cards. This is my favorite of the three sets. Good artwork. Strong continuity to the set, Marvel Masterpieces was a long running set, and is still going after a hiatus.

1994 Flair Marvel Annual, 9 cards including one insert, not shown. The artwork on the two Flair Marvel sets vary, but trend towards the mediocre to terrible.

1995 Flair Marvel Annual, 2 cards. See what I mean about the artwork being terrible? The perspective is cool on the Hawkeye card, but the execution is awful. I don't know who the artist was, but I'm not sure they ever actually looked at any humans to get an idea. And why is it cropped so oddly, that his head isn't even fully on the card? Just terrible. I've got more than 10 cards from this set in my collection, and they have all come from Shawn over the years. It may be the 1994 set that I took in in trade. I can never remember. I may be complaining about the card itself but the trade went off without a problem.