Instagram Trade With Max - Amazing Christian Walker Patch

It has become quite obvious who my favorite trading partner on Instagram is.  Not to take away from anyone else on there that I trade with, but Max has become one of my closest friends in the trading community.  When I picked up the Orval Overall T-205 card for him, I had every intention of just giving it to him for free but he offered me this awesome Christian Walker patch from 2014 Topps Pro Debut.

The card is just awesome.  I like Walker, not only because he is an Oriole but because I got to see him play for the University of South Carolina back when he was in college.  The card is numbered 2/5 and Max really could have asked for the moon on this one.  Luckily, he was so excited to get the Overall tobacco card, that he wanted to send this for it.  I have every intention of sending Max more good stuff with this trade in mind, but I already do that anyway.  He and I are now at the point where we just send each other stuff that we thing the other would like, which works out the best, I think.

I'm really happy that Max kept me in mind when he found this card.  It meant a lot to me that he made sure it ended up in my PC.  He also included an amazing letter to me in the deal, and a lot of other stuff.  He send so much other stuff, I'll have to show it in subsequent posts.  Stay tuned!

Ebay Pickup - 1911 T-205 Orval Overall

Very rarely do I post a card that I know will not be headed to my PC.  I purchased this 1911 T-205 Orval Overall card as a gift for my good friend and Cubs fan, Max.  I saw the card and price it had been set at, and picked it up for him.  He had told me that his oldest card was a 1933 Goudey and I wanted to see if I could do better.  I feel like I did.

As it turned out, Max wouldn't let me send him this card for free.  He offered up an awesome trade piece, which I should be receiving very soon.  I really enjoy sending random cards to my friends, and I had a lot of fun finding this one for him.  I know he will enjoy it.

Overall (b. 1881 - d. 1947) played in the majors from 1905 to 1910 and 1913 for the Reds and Cubs.  His overall (see what I did there?) career record was 108-71 with 935 strikeouts and a career ERA of 2.23.  He was a very good pitcher for his brief career, winning 20 or more games in a season twice and finishing with an ERA below 2.00 3 times.  His career was too short for him to be included in consideration for the Hall of Fame, however, an argument may be made for him.

Something else that I think Max will enjoy is that he will now own a baseball card that was printed during a player's career who actually won a World Series with the Cubs!  Overall won twice with the Cubs, in 1907 and 1908.  I thought that was really cool.  I hope he does as well.

By the way, the card is a Sweet Caporal back.

Slow Mail Day - 2014 Topps Update Pickup

Yeah, you know you don't have any good mail coming in when all you can post is a Topps Update card of the Tigers' backup catcher.  Yet, here I am.  Not a lot of mail coming in because I had several trades fall through, either by cards not being delivered or people not sending payment like they said they would.  What a shame.

Anyway, to try to combat this problem, I went on Sportlots and tried to nail down some set needs in order to kind of pump up my mail days.  My goal was to complete my 2013 Topps Chrome and 2014 Topps Update sets and also chip away at some other sets.

For some reason, this Bryan Holaday was not among the cards I could pick up off of Sportlots, so I had to get it off of Ebay instead (at $1.00, supply and demand, my friends).  I wonder why there was a shortage on this card?  Anyway, I have it and I will now await the other cards from my purchase to come in, hopefully tomorrow.

Instagram Trade With Sportscards10 - 1955 Bowman Orioles

I completed a trade with a guy named James on Instagram who's handle is @sportscards10.  I have completed a few trades with James already and this one was just as easy.  All I had to do was pick up an Andrew Luck 2-color patch for him off of Ebay (since his Ebay doesn't work) and send it to him.  He offered me a bunch of Orioles cards, but the highlights of the deal were these 1955 Bowman cards of Eddie Waitkus and Don Johnson.

I have always liked 1955 Bowman (and when James showed me these were in the deal, I jumped on Ebay and bought the card he wanted, no questions asked). This set is one of those sets that I want to give serious consideration to completing once I finish 1948 Bowman.  I like to have a few irons in the fire, so to speak.

Thanks for the deal, James.  I also want to thank you for your kind words in the letter that you sent, as well.  It means a lot to me and I enjoy getting the letters as much as I enjoy getting the cards!

Three Orioles Win 2014 Gold Glove Awards

They say pitching and defense wins ballgames, and the Orioles again showed that their defense is superior in the American League tonight when three of their players took home some hardware.  Nick Markakis (above) won his second Rawlings Gold Glove award when he was named the AL winner for Right field.  Markakis beat out Kole Calhoun of the Angels and Kevin Kiermeier of the Rays.

Adam Jones won his 4th Gold Glove when he beat out Jackie Bradley, Jr of the Red Sox and Adam Eaton of the White Sox.  I'm surprised that Mike Trout wasn't birthed with this award, since all of the baseball pundits feel that he is the greatest player alive.  Jones is now tied for third All-Time on the Orioles (with Mike Mussina, Jim Palmer and Bobby Grich) with 4 wins.  Brooks Robinson has the Orioles All-Time lead with 16, followed by a tie between Paul Blair and Mark Belanger with 8 each.

Finally, shortstop J. J. Hardy won his third straight Gold Glove tonight when he beat Alcides Escobar of the Royals and Alexei Ramirez of the White Sox.  Hardy and Jones have won three straight gold gloves as teammates.

Pickup From Anthony - 2014 Topps Stadium Club Jonathan Schoop Auto

I made a quick and easy deal on Kik with Anthony the other day when I bought this 2014 Topps Stadium Club Jonathan Schoop auto off of him for only $3 shipped.  He gave me such a deal on this card, I couldn't pass it up.

Schoop (pronounced - SCOPE) had a decent year this year and showed that as he develops, he will have a great deal of pop as well as a great glove at second base.

The auto is on card and the shot of him is pretty cool.  I was happy to hear that Topps was bringing back Stadium Club this year.  The last offering they did was in 2008, a set which I really enjoyed.  I haven't been able to pick up too many packs of Stadium Club, but when I have been able to, I have been really happy with what I've gotten.

Thanks for the deal, Anthony!

Today's Card Shop Hits

These are slow times over here, as far as cards are concerned.  I haven't bought anything for myself off of Ebay recently.  The only things I HAVE bought are cards for other people,  If I didn't want most of them to be surprises, I would probably start blogging those, but no, I want to stick to my stuff.

This kind of happens, though, you kind of get complacent and don't do a lot of deals all at once, or you do them, and it takes forever for folks to send.  This is my real problem at the moment.  People are slow to send.  I bought a few cards off of some people recently, and I'm still waiting with anticipation by my mailbox, yet nothing comes.  Might start asking for refunds soon.

Anyway, one thing that never fails me is my local card shop.  Although, today's trip to the shop had me buying loose cards for friends, and none for myself.  I also bought some packs for Chris.  I did, however, get myself a few packs, and they didn't disappoint.

I picked up two packs of 2014 Donruss Series 2 and pulled a nice relic card, the above Hanley Ramirez.  It isn't a patch like Chris's card, but it is still nice.

I also got a pack of 2014 Panini Prizm and pulled this nice Matt Wieters card.  What's with the powder stuff that they put in the packs of these?  Kind of odd.

Anyway, I probably will be hitting sportlots and Ebay soon, that should pull me out of this card slump pretty quickly.

In the meantime, if I bought something from you, SHIP IT!!!  (With tracking, please!)