Good News and Good Cards

Let me start with the good news: I was finally able to ship out packages to most people I have made trades with in the past month or so! There are a couple of bubble mailers that are going out tomorrow, but only because I ran out of tape to attach the labels to ship them. I need to apologize once again for taking so long on getting these trade packages out. I honestly forgot what I sent out to a few of you since the mailers have been sealed up for so long, but at least they are on the way.

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On an unrelated note, today is the last day to vote for the next member of the Chavez Ravining HOF. You can vote using the fancy new poll at the top right of this page. Check out the details of the HOF here and here. 

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The primary reason for this post is to thank reader John for a trade we recently completed. Like everybody else I've recently dealt with, your cards on on the way John.

John knows what I like to receive in trade packages: Matt Kemp cards! These cards hail from Topps Flagship, specifically 2009 and 2007. They mark card numbers 155 and 156 in my Matt Kemp PC. I am still a liiiiiitttle behind Greg in that department, but I am getting closer to my goal of 200 unique Kemp cards by the end of the year.

On to another primary collection of mine, John sent over a couple of fine Adrain Beltre cards. Somehow, my Beltre PC is up to 90 cards. This is primarily due to my fabulous trade partners such as John. 

However, John may have lost a little credibility by sending this card of one of my most hated Dodgers of all-time. Jones was complete bust in LA, so the less said about this card the better. *Just kidding John. Thanks for the card :)

To finish off this trade post, here are a couple of sick NOMAH cards John sent along. I've long been a fan of Nomar, so getting a few cards of him in Dodger blue is cool. Nomar happened to wear number five for the Dodgers, and it is currently worn by Juan Uribe. Five happens to be my favorite number, so if the Dodgers ever call me looking for some extra infield help I may have to trade a few of my autographs to Uribe for the number. 

John also included quite a few cards for my Topps Team Set Project and they are very much appreciated. 

Thanks again for the trade John! I look forward to doing it again soon. 

A Surprise From Foul Bunt

William of Foul Bunt and I have swapped cards so many times now that I have lost count of how many trades we've completed. We are in the game of dropping surprise packages on each other from time to time (I think I owe him some cards!), and another package hit me earlier this week.

In a package of nothing but Dodgers, this 1969 Willie Davis stood above the rest. The scan does no justice to this beauty (as usual), and the card looks a little less faded in person. I'm not too worried on the condition of these vintage cards, so feel free to send your jacked up vintage my way.

This actually marks my 4th Dodger card from '69, and it seems my stack of vintage is slowly growing. I am hesitant to stick these old cards in a binder along with my other team sets. Maybe top loaders for all of my vintage? 

How do you store your vintage team sets?

We now move to the more present day stuff with a couple of blood rain parallels of my favorite LA pitchers. Unfortunately, Chad Billingsley may have already thrown his last pitch as a member of the Dodgers. 

As I have mentioned in the past, I know very little about Topps Archives. However, I do know two things: Topps is very lazy with the product and there is some type of autograph or insert set for fan favorites. If that is correct, then we may be seeing A.J Ellis doing some signing for Topps in about 15 years. 

Finally, William sent over two awesome minis from S2. I am a HUGE fan of these minis, but they are hard to come by. I was tempted to add these to my player binders, but I am instead adding them to my stack of minis from 2014 Flagship. I still have a page long list of cards I need to complete the mini set, so feel free to throw any extras my way.

Thanks again for the cards William. I have a stack of O's getting ready to head your way.  

Rookies to Legends

A while back I decided to abandon ship on my goal to complete the 2012 Bowman Chrome set. I really do enjoy the set, but the cards are a bit too pricey for me and I am not the biggest prospect collector.

While going through all of the cards I do currently have for 2012 Bowman Chrome, I ran across a few that stood out.

This Bryce Harper RC was sitting inside the box, begging to be placed into my Harper binder. I obliged as this may be my favorite Harper card in my possession. Something about that RC symbol really makes cards pop.

The card got me thinking about the long, successful careers that many stars had. Nowadays, players garner insane amounts of hype when they are still in high school. Sports Illustrated, ESPN and numerous other media outlets are quick to place the "phenom" sticker on a player before they even are able to drive. I don't know if I could handle the attention these guys do when I was in high school. Hell, I was afraid to speak in front of class just in case my voice broke.

Current Hall of Famers probably turned some heads back in their day, but the hoopla surrounding them was far less than what we see today.

Of course, Major League Baseball is a huge league with hundreds of players, and it has been around for a very long time. We all know the greats (Ruth, Mantle, Williams, Mays), but there are some greats (Campanella, Sutton, Drysdale) that don't seem to gather as much attention these days. You may have noticed I singled out the Dodgers when referring to the players that don't seem to get as much attention, and for good reason.

History plays a huge role in baseball, and I wanted to learn more about the Dodgers history in a fun way. That's I decided a few weeks back to start my own Hall of Fame, solely for Dodgers.

In that post, I inducted two of the all-time greats in Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax to my little HOF. I also indicated that I would ask for help in deciding who gets inducted. Well the time has finally come to cast your first votes for the Chavez Ravining HOF.

I mentioned in that initial post that I would nominate 5 players every month and let you sort them out, but I am going to drop that number to 3. Leave a comment with the player you would like to vote for.

Voting ends at the end of June

Requirements:

• The players must have played at least 5 years for the Dodgers (Brooklyn or Los Angeles)
• No active players are allowed into the HOF
• Players must be at least 5 years removed from playing
• I must have at least 1 card of the player
• Announcers/Players/Coaches that are still apart of the organization, but no longer an active player are eligible. ex. Vin Scully, Tommy Lasorda are eligible. Don Mattingly is not. 

Steve Garvey 1B/3B (1969-1982)
Career Stats: .294/.329/.446, 2599 Hits, 272 Home Runs, 1308 RBI's, 37.8 WAR
Career Achievements:1974 NL MVP, 10x All-Star, 4 Golden Gloves

Vin Scully PA (1950-Present)
Career Achievements: Lifetime Achievement Sports Emmy Award, Southern California Sports Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 1997, American Sportscasters Association’s Hall of Fame in 1992

Tommy Lasorda M/P (1949-Present)

Career Achievements: 2x World Series Champion ('81 and '88), 2x Manager of the Year ('83 and '88), Olympic Gold Medalist Manager

I realize that only one of these guys was truly a player, but the Chavez Ravining HOF will include non-players as well. 

Simple cast your vote in the comments, and feel free to share any stories you have about that particular player/coach. You can vote until the end of the month, and I will announce the newest member of the HOF sometime in the first week of June. 

A PWE From PA

I completed my third trade with Nate of Big 44 Sports Card late last week. Like seemingly everybody I've made a deal with in the past month, I have yet to send out a return care package. The good news is that those packages will be sent out Friday. No really. I get paid and I feel horrible not getting them out sooner. There are going to be plenty of happy bloggers in about a week. 

Anyways, Nate and I decided to do a PWE swap (my first), so this won't be a super long post for you to trudge through.

This card started the whole deal. I was extremely excited when I saw Nate post it on his blog and I was sure to be the recipient of such a sweet mini. This one heads to my Kemp binder, so I will need another for my Mini Set.

Nate topped of the PWE with three base cards from 2014 Topps S2 that were welcomed with open arms. Topps continued their trend of creating great looking horizontal cards, and uninspiring vertical ones. I still need 9 more cards to complete the team set for S2, so check out my needs here (scroll to the bottom). 

Thanks again for the trade Nate!

Another Kemp Auto

Thanks to a tip from Greg over at PTSIA, I was able to add another auto of my boy Matt Kemp.

The scan did not come out like I had hoped, but you can see that this card is #'d 154/199. This now becomes my oldest Kemp auto, and my 7th overall. I'm getting close to that goal of 15 I set for myself at the beginning of the year. 

Fortunately for me, I took advantage of the sellers lackluster auction title (and pricing) and got this for cheap. There was no mention of an autograph in either the title or description, and the BIN prices was just $3.99. To make it even better, the seller even sent over these two cards as well. 

I don't have much interest in either card, so they will be added to my Trade Bait page soon. I am in the process of getting it updated, so you may want to hold off on sending me any trade offers. 

Post No-Hitter Kershaw

As soon as Kershaw finished out his no-hitter earlier this week I tried to grab a deal or two on his cardboard. His autos will probably be a little pricier for a short time so that will have to wait, but I was able to pick up a sweet #'d card of the great young lefty.

The card looks a bit better in hand, but most of you are probably familiar with Heritage already. The is the chrome version of the card, which means it is #'d 794/999. 

I was rocking my Kershaw shersey today, just as I did the day he threw his no-hitter, so let's hope Greinke can capture some of the magic against the Royals tonight. 

Received: Baseball Cards

I reached out to Howard at Wanted: Baseball Cards a while back. We exchanged addresses and I recently received a small flat rate box full of cards.

Honestly, I don't think I've ever received so many cards in a single trade before. Howard nearly knocked out my set needs (minus the high number SP's) for 2014 Heritage. Speaking of Heritage, I am still trying to complete the set from last year. Check out what I need here. 

Included were two awesome Dodgers that I need for my set.

Of course, Howard's trade package did not only include Topps Heritage. He went above and beyond and sent me numerous different team sets from various products from about the past 20 years. The fact that I am still not done sorting them after a few days of receiving them goes to show how great this trade package really was.

Howard went even further and included a few cards that I absolutely loved. 

First is this sweet Bowman Chrome card hailing from 2008 featuring Dodgers second baseman, Devaris Strange-Gordon. He is better known as Dee Gordon and he is the son of long-time pitcher,  Tom "Flash" Gordon. The back of this card however lists Tom Gordon as his uncle. 

Next up is this fantastic card of Shawn Green. Although the picture used in this card was used on other Topps products, this is a new addition to my Shawn Green PC.

As is this. In fact these two cards pushed my Shawn Green PC up to 95 cards. Let's see if I can pull off an awesome acquisition for number 100. 

Thanks again for the cards Howard. I hope to get cards out to not only you, but the rest of my fellow bloggers, real soon. 

A Superba Matt Kemp Auto

Last week I was fresh off a nice little paycheck with the expectation of more money coming in for a project I've been working on for awhile. As such, I decided to splurge a little bit and pick up some cards I've had my eyes on for a while. 

Greg of PTSIA, just so happened to send me the link to an eBay listing of a beautiful Matt Kemp auto. The stars must have aligned at that particular moment, because the card in the listing was the one I planned to go and spend on. 

And here it is. An awesome card, another one that a scan shows no justice.  There are some scratches on the case right in front of the signature, but that is not a big deal. 

I am more enthused about the card itself. Ever since I laid eyes on it, I knew I had to acquire it at some point in time. Tribute is an absolute beautiful brand that produces some high quality cards. The blue auto fits the card perfectly, especially with the large amount of blue featured. Semi-low numbering was also a selling point, with my copy #'d 64/99. 

However, the thing that drew me to this card was the fantabulous throwback Matty happens to be rocking. That's right, I love them so much that I made up a word to describe them. I love those old school Brooklyn baby blues, and you cannot go wrong with the Brooklyn 'B' on the helmet. Frankly, the Dodgers probably don't throw it back enough. Their jersey's have stayed relatively unchanged since they moved to Los Angeles; they also happen to be the best in the MLB, at least in my opinion. So while I would love to see more throwbacks like the one above, I can forgive them if they don't do it. 

Overall, this is probably the sweetest Matt Kemp card I've ever seen, with the exception of a few rookies. No seriously. Check out the card DodgerPenguin just displayed on his blog. One thing is for sure, this is the king of my collection and won't be easy to dethrone. 

* Bonus points if you actually understand my cheesy title

Fearless

Fearless does not really emulate my mindset heading into my Calculus final tomorrow. 

However, it does mimic the style of play Yasiel Puig plays with every night. 

Fearless could also describe my feelings when purchasing this card. For $6.00 shipped, I feel I got a pretty good deal. The only thing I was really fearful of was the USPS losing or damaging the card during the shipping process. 

You may be wondering, "Why did he pay $6.00" for that?" I believe that question is fair. I mean it is a cool and all, but six bucks for a single card? Well, this happens to be a purple refractor (looks more pink to me) that is limited to just 99 copies. My copy just so happens to be #'d 2/99. 

I mentioned this in a post a couple of days ago, but I have generally been priced out of Yasiel Puig cardboard. As soon as I saw this while browsing eBay in class (Yes, I'm that guy), I knew I had to win. I was feeling like purchasing some Puig cards anyways, so good timing.  I spaced out of the lecture for about 15 minutes while the auction was winding down to ensure I would win, and I did. Well worth it by the way. 

Anyways, back to studying for tomorrow's final. It is gonna be a doozy. 

#Kershaw

Unfortunately, I was unable to watch the Dodger game last night. Considering I bought MLB.tv, I figured I would have the time to watch some more of my boys in blue, but that hasn't happened yet. School ends tomorrow, so hopefully that will free up some time.

But that isn't what I am here to talk about. Clayton Edward Kershaw threw a freaking Perfe.....No-Hitter last night!

OMG! OMG! OMG!

Josh Beckett threw one just a few weeks ago, but Kershaw's just means so much more to me, and probably a good chunk of Dodger fans. I could talk about the game, but chances are you were either watching or have seen plenty of highlights last nights magical performance.

Instead, I will show off my Clayton Kershaw collection. I would have loved to feature a my first Kershaw auto, but I haven't had the money to buy an one yet. I may have been priced out of Kershaw autos for a little bit, but I am confident I will get my hands on one. But when, when I you get one?

Without further adieu, enjoy the some of my favorite cards of Kid K.