Please Mr. Postman (A trade post) -- Three for one

This is the 1,000th image I've scanned for this blog. I still can't believe it. One thousand pictures of cards. 


Wow.


This afternoon was the biggest mailday of my brief blogging career.

I guess that's fitting since I'm going to be off to the biggest card show of the year tomorrow.

A card show plus this afternoon's great mailday? That's one of the best collecting weekends of my life, to say the least.

I had three different trade packages come in today, all filled with baseball card goodness.

The first one comes from blog reader Adam, who is actually my first multiple trade partner. We did a small PWE swap about a month ago for a couple 2012 Topps Gold Sparkles.

This trade was much more expansive. I sent Adam a bunch of various Giants and 2012 Topps inserts in return for some great cards for a few of my budding player collections, notably my new Ryan Dempster collection.

I find myself missing the 2011 Topps Diamond Parallels more and more with each passing day.

Adam also sent me a few great cards of Brian Wilson, who coincidentally is celebrating his 30th birthday today.

We see "The Beard" in its newborn stages on Wilson's 2009 OPC card.

Adam also sent a few new additions to one of my oldest player collections with these couple Marlon Byrd cards.

It can get a little frustrating watching the Cubs sometimes, but it's always refreshing to see a guy who hustles all the time like Byrd does.

The next batch of cards comes from the man behind one of the better blogs out there, Ryan over at "Ryan's Pitch".

I helped Ryan close out his 2011 Topps Lineage set and sent him some 2012 Topps cards to help nail down some of those needs. In return, he sent me a great array of cards.

Some of the cards he sent me came from my set needs page, such as these awesome 2011 GQ "Sticky Fingers" inserts.

Yet some of the cards Ryan sent were totally random, such as these two past and present Giants greats.

Anything from the Ted Williams set is okay in my book.

The final of the three packages came from a different collector named Adam, this time being Adam, author of the great blog "Thoughts and Sox".

He sent me an absolute smorgasbord of great cards, filled with cards of just about anything and everything you can think of.

I'm not a Manny Ramirez fan by any means, but I have to admit that is is one epic card. Adam commented on one of my posts with his favorite "walk-off" card, this '08 Upper Deck Ramirez.

I'm glad that Adam dug through his Red Sox dups and found this one for me. It fits in perfectly with my new mini-collection of cards with cool pictures. (Hopefully I can find a few great cards like this one in some of the dime boxes tomorrow.)

We might have found a new champion in the "oddest-shaped baseball card" category.

Adam included a couple new prized additions to my Vladimir Guerrero collection, which now consists of over 500 cards.

I was also excited to sift through a fantastic array of 2010 Topps National Chicle cards that Adam included.

Quite possibly the most colorful set in history.

These two come from the 1981 Cramer Legends set.

I'd venture a guess that this was one of the first sets to feature "legends" after the ill-fated Fleer cards from the 1960's.

Plus, how cool is a "Wahoo" Sam Crawford card?

Finally, we have a few reprints from the 2003 UD Play Ball series.

I'd like to own an actual "Play Ball" card one day. (It doesn't have to be Ted Williams or Bobby Doerr or anything, though.)

But I'll definitely settle for these. These were probably my two favorites from Adam's trade package.

Phew! That's a lot of cards.

Thanks to Adam, Ryan, and Adam (sounds like the name of a corporation of some sort) for the great cards!

They are greatly appreciated!