Santa Found His Way Here..

I decided this year to throw my name into the Secret Santa exchange set up by Matt At Bob Walk The Plank. I figured it was something interesting and relatively inexpensive I could do.. 

Santa took a little longer to get to my neck of the woods, which is funny, since we have a Postal Code for him.. 

(North Pole, H0H 0H0)

I'll let you figure that one out.. 

Anyway.. Today after braving the mass of humanity that is the grocery store, I came home to a package.. 

It's from Stealing Home of All Trade Bait, All The Time. I've looked over his blog a couple times before but this is the first interaction really. 

So now that's out of the way.. Let's see the cards!

I smiled when I saw the Jacksonville Expos card. I don't know why, but I think I'm really beginning to love minor league cards.. Between the stadiums, the different uniforms (admittedly, the only difference between Jacksonville and Montreal is the removal of the "b" from the logo) they're just interesting. 

A couple late 80s and early 90s needs here as well. The Ducey is going into the Canadians binder now. 

I generally collect Molitor from when he was a Jay only, but I do like that 91 UD 

Some more mid 90s.. Peter Steinberg's favourite set is shown here with the 1995 Fleer Molitor. 

I got two copies of both Molitor Score card here. Both of the base ones are being kept since I'm trying to put the set together plus the Jays binder. 

Marty Janzen. One of those pitchers from the Era of Jays fandom we try to forget.. Janzen was part of a trade with the Yankees.. The Jays got Janzen and two minor leaguers who just took up space for David Cone. 

Expos! Justin Wayne autograph is the nice one here. Justin Wayne didn't actually play for the Expos. He was drafted by them in 2000, and in 2002 was traded to the Marlins in a large trade. 

Basically, when it comes to later year stuff, if it's not Flagship, I don't have access to it where I live.. These are great to see. 

It's funny.. A couple days ago, I got the Jose Bautista medallion.. Now I have the Donaldson one as well. 

Tulo Bat relic! Neat!

And the final three cards.. 

These are great! Thanks to my Secret Santa!

A Trade Came In

Well.. Another Christmas gone. As mentioned on Twitter, the cards I got for Christmas weren't ones with photos of humans playing sports or anything else, really.. 

That's a bunch of Tim Hortons cards and a WalMart card. 

The Tims cards came from the kids I drive to and from school.. The Walmart card actually came from a few coworkers.. 

Anyway... Today was the first day receiving mail after the holidays. I received a couple things today.

I received an email before Christmas from a trader I've dealt with before named John. He had come across a Jose Bautista medallion card and asked if I wanted it.. I said sure. 

He ended up sending a couple other cards with it as well.. 

No unicorns there, but Yamil Benitez shows up on a Metal Universe card. 

Roy Halladay also makes an appearance. 

Finally, the Bautista card. I find these cards interesting. Same with the manufactured patch cards they did before these. 

The other mail came from a TCDB trade I made with user halos17. 

Some early Expos needs here with Raines and Reardon. 

An 2001 reprint of a Raines 1981 card.

Harold Baines Diamond Kings

OPC David Purcey. This is from the UD reboot of OPC where French is non-existent. 

Russell Martin slides into the Canadians binder here. 

Al Oliver Super Vet! 

That Heritage League Leaders card is a Jays Sandwich with Oriole filling. 

Love the Fleer sticker backs with the stadiums.. I've mentioned it before, but I'm a bit of a stadium geek.. 

Speaking of stickers, some Topps stickers here.. 

I don't like how they don't name the Jays' mascot. That is Ace.. 

Finally, a 2003 Donruss Estrellas poster of Vladimir Guerrero. 

This is rather interesting. The back has everything in Spanish aside from the copyright information on the bottom. 

In any event, an interesting piece for the collection.. 

Thanks for the trades! 

A Trade and an Adventure

It's been a while since I've had an Adventure in Bus Driving.

Most of the time, I've been driving to the same places, so nothing really worth documenting. 

Earlier this week, I brought a group to Lang Pioneer Village. I've been there with groups in the Spring, so I know the general idea for dropping off and picking up. Well.. They do it differently in Winter... 

I took a couple pictures while waiting for the group earlier this week.. These are from the parking lot. 

The Village Map from my bus

The main entrance to the village. Yes.. That's a porta-potty in the foreground.. 

One of the buildings. 

A closer look at the map. 

Now the trade...

I made a trade with TCDB member rmpaq5. He's a fellow Canadian and wanted a few cards I had available. 

This is what I received. 

After we agreed on the trade, I received a message stating there was some residue on the 1970 cards. To make up for it, he was going to throw in a couple cards from my want list. 

The Grimsley was added to the trade. It's an OPC. 

The three above were also throw-ins. Freiselben is another OPC. The Gruber is a Jays Fire Safety card.

The Velez is a 1981 scratch off.. 

Finally, a 1982 OPC Poster of Bill Gullickson

All in all, a very nice trade. Thanks!

COMC Part 2

Yesterday I mentioned I had two purchases from COMC come in at the same time. 

I showed the first..

Here's the second one

At the very least, I'm working on the 1992 Score Impact Players insert set.. I picked up two of the Olerud, Bell, and Alomar because of the Jays binder as well.. I got three of the Walker.. One for the Expos binder, one for the Canadians binder. 

The other thing I picked up were a couple Aaron MacKenzie cards. I had the base MVP card. Now, I have the Gold Script card. This one is 25/100

The other one is from his time on the Peoria Rivermen. 

According to the TCDB, there's not many cards of him out there. I collect him since he's from my hometown. He's a couple years younger than me. 

Tomorrow, I'll be covering a trade package I received. 

I likely won't be mailing anything out until after Christmas, though. 

COMC Comes Through

I made a couple purchases during the Black Friday sale/free shipping thing they did.. The first one I want to show is actually one I had building for a while, but took advantage of the free shipping thing.. 

Now.. For us Canadians, ordering from COMC, when they say Free Shipping, it's still not entirely free. For me, it was Shipping taken care of, but still need to pay duties on the cards. 

Anyway... The first batch I ordered was this:

A bunch of early Fergie and Reggie Cleveland. 

I believe I've covered both of these guys before, but Jenkins is from Chatham, ON, while Cleveland is from Swift Current, Saskatchewan. 

I got two copies of the 1971 Strikeout leaders since it's got Jenkins and Bill Stoneman. 

I also got two copies of the 1977 Cleveland card, but that was by accident.. 

Tim Raines rookie finally gets into my collection. 

Some second copies of a few cards I needed to complete team sets.. 

The Frank Thomas is to complete the 1990 Score Rookie/Traded Set.

The Walker is a third copy for the Canadians collection. 

I finally got the wax box bottoms from 1987 Topps done.. 

I got two of the 100 Years of Wrigley Fergie since I want to complete that insert set and one for the Canadians binder. 

Finally... I picked up a couple cards I think are interesting...

The colour George Selkirk card is a reprint of a set from 1934-1936.

The two next to it are 1939 Play Ball cards. One is a base card and the other has a "Sample" overlay on the back.. 

I picked them up fairly cheaply, I thought.. $15 for the non-sample marked card and $22 for the Sample Marked card. 

I'm kind of excited about getting those 1939s.. I mean they're not something that was really on my radar for "being able to afford in my lifetime" but that's also due to my being completely reluctant to buy anything big for myself anymore. 

Tomorrow I'll likely cover the trade package and the other COMC purchase I made. Until then..

A Nice Mailday

I got home today after work to find a package in the doorway for me. I looked at it and it's from Wes, better known as JayBarkerFan. 

We've been talking on Twitter and he had some cards available. I found one card I wanted (there was another one, but it was claimed by someone else) 

I ended up getting a number of cards from him

Mark Eichhorn Canadian Greats Leaf card. Always nice to get these

I will admit, a few of these cards I've never seen before, or even really knew they existed. 

Part of it is the innumerable parallels available now. 

I believe that Rasmus is a Blue parallel.. That year there were Blue and Purple parallels.. 

The one card I was looking at is also here, in the Francisco Rios auto card..

This was also in there. 

I'm not sure if they came slabbed like this, or if this is something else entirely. This one is a Topps Pristine Refractor from 2003.

I can't quite read what's on the hologram sticker, since it's folded over the top of the slab. 

In any event, I was surprised to get them in the mail.. 

Just want to say thank you Wes!! 

Writing About Cards on a Cold Day

If you follow me on Twitter, or read this blog, you know I've been having a rough go of things lately.

It's been to the point where I have done nothing aside from watch a little tv when I'm not at work or asleep. Today I wanted to write something out, but I have no idea what to write about.. 

I'm sitting here looking at my stack of 1994 cards to sort through and realizing that I'm hitting the part where I lost access to product to collect, certain things lost interest, and a flood of product started hitting the market that really hasn't stopped since. Really, the only difference is the number of sources. 

In a way, I'm finding that there are products even from that time frame that I don't like.. 

Cards with computer graphics behind the player instead of field. 

For whatever reason, I want my sports cards to picture my sports figure on a sports field. 

Since then, we still have photos of players in space, on fire, riding a unicorn, whatever else aside from playing on a field. 

That said, I did find a fair bit to like about cards from 1994.. 

There were a number of sets that had either near full photos, or full photos.. I like the way the borderless Pinnacle and Donruss look here. 

Cards without borders have been around for a while now, but I still prefer the older versions of it like these over the current ones. I think it has to do with the photography itself, not to mention the lack of a multitude of parallels. 

The other thing I like but also am upset about is this:

O Pee Chee's final set. I really like this set, but I have four cards from it. Also, two Pre-Production samples. I looked on whatever JustCommons has changed their name to and they have the inserts but no base cards.. I see COMC has a bunch of them, but 40 cents up to $6.50 for a card may be a little rich for my blood.. 

1994 did have some nice cards.. Really only two sets that I've seen that I didn't like

I apologize for my rambling. I hope you enjoyed it anyway..