Mail from Madding does not make me mad

I recently got a semi-surprise package of cards from madding of Cards on Cards. I say Semi-Suprise because I claimed a team from him...and then totally forgot about it. Got a lot on my mind is the only excuse I have.

I had already been getting the Nets from him, but now the Warriors are added to the Nets package as well.
Cards like these:

 Jeremy Tyler's a pretty rare player- this is only my 5th card of him.

But of course that wasn't all...there were some much needed Nets, as well!

I especially appreciate the two Sean Kilpatrick cards. He was one of the few bright spots on the Nets last year, and now that they traded away Brook Lopez, he might just be my favorite player on the team. This is only my 2nd and third cards of him!

But that still wasn't all!

I love the oddball stuff in Allen & Ginter. Last year I even bought a pack hoping to get one of the non-sport cards (I did) but this year money has been too tight for that...I missed out two of the NASCAR sets and would have missed out on Excalibur if not for trading for some. This is my first card from the 2017 A&G set.

I will be sending you back some Blazers come October! Thanks again.

Fulfilling expired redemptions on COMC

There's nothing worse than pulling an expired redemption card, and in one case I even pulled one the day after the due date to ship it to Topps. (as an aside, redemptions that ever expire is one of my biggest pet peeves in the hobby- there's really no reason to ever expire, other than the card company being too lazy to put them in a box and wait for the cards to roll in...Panini does this better than anyone else in the hobby! They print expiration dates for some reason but will honor them anyway)

I had the idea, when I came across some expired redemptions in my regular scanning activity, to see if I could fill them on COMC. I wasn't able to fill all of them, but I did get a lot. I am including the expired redemption cards- which I do count as part of my collection- smaller, underneath the card they finally turned in to.

This was the first one I did on there, and that's only fitting, because I pulled the expired redemption all the way back in 1996!

It's the autographed parallel from 1994 Action Packed Hall of Fame.

 The 1994 Action Packed Hall of Fame set may be the first box of basketball cards I ever did...I don't remember, it was in the first three. My local K-mart had boxes of this set, 1990-91 and 1994-95 Hoops on the shelves when I first began collecting, and I got all of them early on...this may have been in the very first box of basketball cards I ever did.

From 1996 Maxx, this five card Sterling Marlin set was available with one redemption card. Sterling was Maxx Spokesman that year, and I never had the opportunity to send it in- Maxx went out of business in mid-1996 and I didn't get the redemption until circa 2000.

 

Leave it to Press Pass to be the least inspired. The card that was due to be redeemed looked EXACTLY the same as this card, only without the foil name and 2003.  

 2000-01 Fleer Tradition Glossy. This is an autograph.

One of the worst feelings I ever had in the hobby was pulling a redemption card from a pack the day after it expired. I can't remember which card it was anymore, but I remember that it was from Topps. It may have been this one. Topps rushed the set out too early and couldn't even get all the rookies into the base set without redemptions.

Like I said above, I was not able to fill all of them...but getting these filled...especially after having one of these expired redemptions for 21 years now...it's a great feeling. In fact, this may be my favorite project of all that I worked on with COMC...and that's why it's the first I'm showing this week.

August 2017 Trade Recap

Hopefully I will get this one up much sooner than I got July's up. August started out well, with more cards rolling in fast and frequently, many of which I didn't even expect.

The first official trade arrived to me on August 5th, and it turned out to be a huge one...and involved two other bloggers and a trade made on the Trading Card Database! Tyler of Rekindling the Cardboard Flame won a contest on Baseball Card Breakdown, and traded me the cards he didn't want. I sent him a box of SuperSonics and some other stuff he didn't know was coming. Luckily, he didn't mind my sending him less than he sent me, because he sent me exactly 333 cards! Also luckily, I can only mail on Saturdays, and I got in the trade you will see below this, which included a spare Sonic that I also got in the package for Tyler. The rare 4-person trade, essentially.

The cards from Tyler were mostly non-sports cards...

10 base cards from the Captain America movie, including this manufactured patch (which I actually like)

 A whole bunch of the 2014 Panini Country Music cards. Panini really missed the mark with this set. They marketed it as a super-high end hit based set, with the boxes going for more than $120 when they came out. Even though I listen to country music almost exclusively, I didn't do any of the set. It was also hobby only, no retail presence whatsoever. The boxes now go for about $20 and I will probably pick up one some day. I'm kind of hoping it will drop even further, but if they are $20 during this year's Black Friday sales at D&A I will probably get one.  (Knowing my luck, I will probably get autographs from Florida-Georgia Line, which besides having no singing talent, have no writing talent either as both were auto-penned) Another problem they had is that the checklist was...how shall I put this...weak. I have listened to country music almost exclusively since 2006, and about 1/3rd of the set are people I've never even heard of. Very little star power, even less of a presence for the long-time, well known people. Alabama, Neil McCoy, Joe Diffie and LeeAnn Rimes are about the only names active in the 90s or before. No Brooks & Dunn (my favorites), no Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, Tim McGraw, Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, etc. Not that there aren't some talented people and people who I enjoy listening to in the set...it's just something that could have been so much better. Which probably explains why they only did one of the sets.

Not only were there base cards, there were inserts and even green foil parallels of the inserts in the box.

There were a whole bunch of Beach Boys cards too, which I am really glad of. This set didn't have much presence here locally, but I've always been a Beach Boys fan, since I was in middle school and discovered them. The late 60s sound is why I don't say I listen to country exclusively, because I will still listen to the Beach Boys, Jan & Dean, the Grass Roots, etc, on a fairly regular basis. As it turned out, we discovered we are VERY distant cousins to the Wilsons and Mike Love in late 2016. Incredibly cool for me. This is actually a Surfer parallel, which I believe fell one per pack. It has a gold foil guy on a surfboard on the bottom of the card front...kind of a stealth parallel, which is pretty unusual for Panini. As far as I know these were the only two music themed sets they did, unfortunately. Unlike the Country Music set, they got the Beach Boys set right.

This counts as a basketball card, right?

This is the 2011 set, there is also a soccer themed set from 2006 that was included. I didn't have either set in my collection previously, and now I'm something like 7 cards away from the 100 card 2011 set and about 15 away from the 90 card 2006 set. (it had what I think were short prints). I did add the missing cards to my wantlist on the Trading Card Database if you think you can help me finish the sets. Surprisingly I've never really gotten a lot of Bench Warmer cards...I mean, I am a guy in my 30s who hasn't had a girlfriend in way too long a time, after all.

But it wasn't all non-sports...

There were also a bunch of cards from the 1992 Impel US Olympicards set! Unlike most of Impel's sets, I only had one card from this set before. This card is actually an insert, even though it uses literally the exact same design as the base cards. I now have nearly a half of the 110 card set! We got the Olympic Channel in July, and I've been watching it almost every day since we got it. I have enjoyed swimming, diving, volleyball, track and field, archery, triathlon and more. We REALLY need cards for the non-big 5 sports. I will watch and watch religiously almost all of the Olympic sports. I can't get into soccer or boxing and I will not be supporting the inclusion of skateboarding in 2020, but every other sport...I love them all.

The next trade I mentioned was with Trading Card Database member ntlwhlr and he sent me a bunch of great cards. While it started with 3 cards from 2004-05...

(not shown: 2004-05 Flair Dwyane Wade)
the majority of the package were 1972-73 Topps.

And that's not even all of them! Just the ones I could fit on my scanner tray at one time. Some bigger names too, including Hall of Famers...not all of them were new, and in fact there were even more than one copy of some of them. (One of those was one that I sent to Tyler, hopefully he will show it on his blog because I forgot who it was)
Even better...Jim Ligon might be a One Hit Wonder! The Database shows him having a card from a team issue of the Squires but I'm not sure if it's an actual card or just a photograph. I really need to learn more about team issues of the 60s and 70s. Either way, it's my first card of him! Most of the cards I actually needed were ABA cards, which is great. I love getting new ABA cards.
Not shown: #27 Charlie Davis, #157 NBA Finals Game 4, #179 Mack Calvin, #215 Billy Cunningham (and not counting the duplicates, either). He also sent along two cards from 1970-71 Topps...making what may be the first trade package to ever include them for me. Unfortunately I had both already. (no scans)

The third trade was with frequent trading partner Sahal694 of the Trading Card Database. A few months ago I was the first person he ever traded online with and now we've done 4 or 5 trades. It was an unusual trade in that he sent me a pack of the new 2016-17 Excalibur set, which I was unable to get any of for myself.

 First card from the set in my collection.

 Only real set of the year to include photos of players traded at the Trade Deadline. Prestige might have some, I don't remember. Think they just got a Traded tag though.

 A LeBron Refractor Prizm insert! Not a bad first pack.

He also sent me this Aaron Judge from Topps and a couple of cards from this year's Bunt set. I will accept any sports card in trade. While I don't actively purchase baseball or football too often, I will gladly accept them in trade...anything to make it happen!

I pulled off what was supposed to be a 1 for 1 card trade with Database member Littlegobbler36, but we both sent each other more than one card. The one I asked for was this Michael Waltrip card...

 and he also sent sent the final 4 cards I needed to finish the 1995 Maxx Standups insert!

 

That was a pretty busy month. one of the bigger trading months in a while. And, I'm getting it posted on September 1st, which is a lot better than I had been doing, so I'm happy about that. There may not be a trade recap for September, as I've turned off my tradelist on the Database for a while. There are some things coming up that are going to get all my money, and I honestly can't spare any to pay for the shipping in trades.  

For the next few posts you'll finally get to see all the projects I worked on with my latest COMC order, which I built for 10 months and teased a little while ago when it arrived.