I'm Back! Trying to Catch Up, Let's Start With a Great Trade With Drews Cards

Well, it seems like months since I have posted anything, I feel awful about that. I love posting here; it truly is therapy for me to get everything out there. I also love and live for the interaction with other bloggers, readers and collectors. I’ve been going though a lot of late and haven’t been able to post. I had a PayPal account that someone tapped into and made a bunch of purchases with, ever though the account had no money in it. Twenty small transactions at less than 10 dollars each were made. I apparently had the account linked to a checking account that I don’t use any more and all twenty transactions posted against this account (without my knowledge or authorization) which didn’t have any more in it. For whatever reason the bank paid them all and I am stuck with $700.00 in fees (based on 35 per overdraft). I’ve been on the phone with PayPal all day and have resolved nothing. I refuse to pay the fees, and the bank will let me file a fraudulent claim against them, which is cool, but PayPal has me very pissed off right now. They allowed someone to change the password on the account to use it for their thievery, but since I don’t know this password, they are leery of helping me. Fraud protection my ass.
That said my planned afternoon of posting is blown. I write posts in a notebook every night at work, but I haven’t had the time to type them up and turn them into actual posts. To give an update, I sent 4 packages out yesterday and 3 more today. Everyone that I have arranged a trade with or owe something to-your cards are in transit to you. I am going to try and stay composed long enough to post a trade, though. I have to be to work in 45 minutes, so it’s a race against time. I apologize to Drew for starting this post off with all of this garbage. Sorry Drew!
Drew gets the call to be first in line in my attempt to catch up trades. The reasons being many, but include: I think I got his cards first; he posted what I sent him a month ago, but also because he runs a cool blog and seems like a cool guy even though he is a Yankees fan. That list bit is important because I have been looking for a trader to ship my Yankees cards off to for a while. Drew answered the call, he is the man. Get in touch with him if you have unwanted Yankees cards (and who doesn’t?) and work out a trade. He also collects Nick Swisher and Robby Cano, so he has better taste than your average A-Rod fan (ha!). He sent me a TON of Rays cards in exchange for said Yankees and some cards I had from his Ginter list. With time being an issue, I am gonna fly through these. This first one is my favorite; I really like this insert from 2009 Upper Deck. I ripped a bunch of these packs and did pull a few of these inserts, but they were all of NL Central teams, I kinda figured that was it for the set. If there are any other Rays in this subset, I want ‘em! I do like the style of these, but it puzzles me why Upper Deck is recycling the design from 1975 Topps. Oh well, the card is of Carl Crawford and is number OPC-7 in the set. Next is a carryover from my magnificent 7 want list of Rays Heritage cards. Someone else sent me this one for my set, but I needed 2 more to fill the team set and player collection. The card is of Ben Zobrist, card #577 in the Topps Heritage 2008 High Numbers series. Trade bait trading has brought at least one copy in of all of those cards, but I still need player collection cards of Gabe Gross (#702 I think) and an extra copy of Jason Bartlett and the Coaches floating head card, too.
Next up is Topps Town Evan Longoria. It’s kinda funny because I got to within 2 cards of finishing the set and gave up and split it into team piles for trading. One of the two cards that I needed was this Longo!
Another new card to my collection is this shiny 2008 Bowman Chrome card #171 of Carlos Pena. This BJ Upton card made me do a double take. Its from the 2007 Topps Opening Day set, which I ripped a ton of, but something seemed different about it. I dug up the 10 or so copies I had and realized this one is different. It has the opening day date on the top and is serial numbered 0514/2007 on the back. Sweet! I am trying to rush here, so please forgive me. Here is a triple panel of Upper Deck cards of 3 of my favorites, Edwin Jackson, Carl Crawford and Jason Bartlett. I really miss having Edwin on the team. I hope he can make a statement in the playoffs-not that I am a Tigers fan or anything… That said, I am loving this race between the Tigers and the Twins and the Braves chasing the Rockies, I love it! Anyway, here is another strip of cool 2009 cards for the Rays binder. Then a very shiny spectrum card of BJ Upton (shown above with chrome Pena). I don’t know why, but I really have avoided buying Spectrum, I like chasing the Rays, but there’s something about the product I just can’t get into. The next card is an Upper Deck Documentary. I have gotten quite a few of these, I don’t know how close I am to finishing up all of the Rays cards in it, but I think this one is new to me. It has Carl Crawford running the bases on the front, which is weird because the game they detailed on the back mentions nothing about CC. Longo and Hinske homered and Kaz got the win, yet CC is on the card? Odd. Again, not a product I would buy, but Rays are always welcome here! I can’t show all 80 or so cards he sent, so I am gonna wrap it up with one more. This is the key to the trade, I guess, since it is the lone relic. I really appreciated this because I didn’t send Drew any relics, so this was a bonus. It is actually my first Greg Vaughn relic of any kind. I really like this card, the lumber-y look of it, and the giant hunk of bat in the center. It has a classy look. It is the first Vaughn card to find its way into my fancy Rays card display case. Now this doesn’t mean I want anymore, one is enough, but I do really like this one. I gotta motor and head to work. More stuff to come manana. JDs Wild, SOTCS, Beardy, Wicked, Joe, Jim, GCRL, you guys all have packages in transit. Sarah, I have some cards and stuff for you that I think you will really like-it will head out before the end of the week. There are a few trade bait cards left, not many, but I can still listen to offers. I think there are 7 cards left (out of 43!) and 3 are Braves cards which kinda surprised me. Whats up Braves fans? I missed the Twins and Tigers double header, but I caught the replay of the Braves vs. Fish game and the Rays handing the Orioles their 11th loss in a row. Josh Johnson hitting an RBI double, those fish don’t quit! Congrats to Brian Roberts on his 56th double of the year, too! I am babbling, so I will sign off. Thanks to everyone for their patience, I will be back to posting regularly again soon! Thanks Drew for this trade, I really appreciate it! Please excuse this post for being all over the place and rushed. My mind is on other things, but I really love this community we have here and I wanted to make my contribution daily. I do really hate trying to deal with paypal. That is one of the reasons I have sworn off ebay. I do promise to post as many trades as I can till I am caught up, then I have a few surprises for y'all. Thanks again to Drew, go check out his blog and send him some Yankees! Go Rays! Troll out.