Introduction week

I've noticed a lot of great new blogs popping up around the blogosphere lately.

It's always a treat to read posts from the more veteran bloggers, no doubt about it. Still, without a constant influx of new members, the blogosphere as we know it would probably collapse under itself.

That's why I try to discover and interact with as many new bloggers as I can. The encouragement I received during this blog's early days played a huge role in making me a long-term member of this wonderful place.

In honor of that, I propose an Introduction Week in honor of all the fresh faces around here. If you're a more tenured blogger and/or reader, reach out to one of the newer bloggers and offer to send something their way. PWE, package, flat-rate box, whatever.

Comments are great, but cards are a great way to introduce yourself.

Granted, it was Julie who reached out to me a couple weeks ago to propose a trade. She's runs the great (and awesomely named) new blog "A Cracked Bat: Baseball Cards and A Hot Dog" and mainly collects Tigers.

Before I knew it, a package from Julie was on my doorstep.

She did a ton of damage to my player collections, both new and old.

The clean-shaven Aubrey Huff at the top of this post is numbered to 1,500 copies. You can tell it comes from the early 2000's because of those God-awful Devil Rays jerseys.

Like Huff, Mark Grace is the subject of one of my longest-running player collections. I have over 300 cards of the guy, but that SP issue was new to me.

R.A. Dickey, on the other hand, is a newer inductee into my binder catalog.

It's hard not to like those red Canada Day uniforms.

As the title of her blog might imply, Julie is big on food-based oddballs.

While I own a good deal of Post issues, I needed the Strawberry. With a last name like that, it's only natural he'd pop up in a food-themed oddball set.

The Maddux comes from a Church's Chicken set. I don't know about you, but I never knew that place made baseball cards at one point.

I have yet to actually step foot in a Church's Chicken, but I've heard nothing but good things about the place.

I've seen Julie dropping Triple Threads on people left and right.

The package she sent me was no different. These are both abnormally thick hits (almost too thick to fit into a nine-pocket page) to a couple of my newer player collection quests, the Car-Go being some kind of numbered parallel.

I don't keep up with Triple Threads much these days, as you might guess.

From the looks of it, Julie is also a Jose Altuve fan.

I just decided to start collecting the little superstar over the course of the last month or two. Julie was nice enough to send (what I assume are) some of her dups my way.

The card on the left is my first rookie of Altuve, and the one on the right is proof that Prizm can actually look good if it tries.

Who knew?

If the Prizm Altuve didn't quench my shiny thirst, these two certainly did the trick.

The Kemp is an absolute jaw-dropper and my first refractor of any kind from this year's Topps Chrome.

I hope I'm wrong on this, but Panini might be responsible for producing Ichiro's sunset cards if the guy can't find a new home next year. As much as I like Panini, that doesn't seem right. Topps should have that honor. If Ichiro does latch on with a team next year, there's a simple fix to the problem.

SIGN HIM TO A CONTRACT ALREADY, TOPPS!!!!!

Ichiro cards that actually feature, you know, logos and everything are becoming a distant memory.

I still say the whole credit card concept is one of the more ingenious ideas for an insert set in history.

In the end, I guess a great way for someone to introduce themselves to me is by finding a Jim Abbott card I don't already have.

Julie did that with this card of the guy (on the White Sox, no less), and a whole lot more.

It's a fitting end to the first of what I hope will be many terrific trades with her. And the number of other great new bloggers around here, for that matter.

I'll be sending a few things out to some new bloggers this week. I hope you'll join me in Introduction Week.

Fresh faces are what keep the blogosphere going, after all.