More Goodies From Roll out the Barrel and Democratic Roadkill aka Aki and Goodwin's Mania!!!!!

The last two posts I have made have been Brian Roberts cards courtesy of Roll out the Barrel and a plethora of Ginter minis from Democratic Roadkill. I am gonna kill two birds with one stone and post up a few of the other cards they sent my way… First off a fun-sized Goodwin’s Champions card of former Rays Ace, Scott Kazmir. The blog-o-sphere has been very, very kind in sharing their Goodwin’s Rays cards with me. Beardy, Cobb and Halladay, Democratic Roadkill, My Past Time, JDs Wild Cardz, Padrographs and Roll out the Barrel have all hooked me up with Goodwin’s a plenty… In fact, other than funky variations that I don’t really know about, I think I have every card except Evan Longoria and Carl Crawford. I have every regular mini except for CC, Pena and James Shields, but, thanks to CaH, I have sweet foil cards of them. Not too bad considering that I haven’t ripped ANY Goodwin’s at all… Anyway, here is the cloudy Kazmir and if anyone has Carl Crawford or Evan Longoria to spare, send em my way! These two Aki minis came from Democratic Roadkill. He knows how much I love the Rays speedy second baseman. I think I have shown these minis before, so how about a shot of the back of the card? He didn’t stop with the minis though, he added along a Goodwin’s full sized card for good measure. I do like the look of these cards. It is weird to me because that is a really old picture of Aki used in the rendering and the background, although cool and old timey, just doesn’t make sense for a player who plays in a dome. Anyway, Aki Rules and these are fancy and cool looking cards. Speaking of fancy-Duane added in a 4th Goodwin’s Aki card in the package! This one is from the memorabilia series and has a sweet gray swatch in the shape of an M on the front. I guess that the M stands for memorabilia? It obviously doesn’t stand for Aki or Rays, maybe TaMpa Bay? I don’t know, but I like it! I am terribly nervous that the Rays are not going to resign Iwamura, which would be tragic. He was a huge part of their rebuilding effort and their success in 2008. He is unmatched defensively at both 2nd and 3rd base, he’s just too valuable an asset to let slip away and I know the Dodgers, Marlins and Mariners are all seriously interested and so are their fans. I can’t go a whole post without including a Carl Crawford card and I do LOVE these Carolina blue Bowman’s! This is a 2009, card #149 and is serial numbered 437/500. Okay, I am going to show one last card from Duane for now. I still haven’t unveiled the surprise he sent in the last package and no one has guessed what it was, here is the hint again. With all these awesome cards I am showing, you would think these are it, but it actually gets even better! I had horrible luck with 2009 Allen Ginter. I had fun putting together the set, but I bought way too many blasters and didn’t pull many relics at all. I didn’t even realize that BJ had a relic in there, but here it is! I really liked his base card this year with the yellow background, but it is very cool that they had a totally new pose for this relic. Thanks so much Duane, your kindness is mind-blowing!
Now, back to Ed… This last trade we did he sent me stuff that I was just getting to pass along to someone else. I asked him for Grady Sizemore cards to use as trade bait and he delivered! Having so many cool and different Grady cards I almost thought of keeping them and starting a new collection, but I did the right thing and moved them on to a proper fan… He did include something awesome for me, though, so this greedy card hoarding Troll was happy. It was actually my first ever Matt Garza relic, from Upper Deck X. It is one of those cards where it says he is on the Tampa Bay Rays, but shows him in a Twins uniform. I really don’t care much for those, but I was still excited to add a Garza relic to the old collection. I know have relics of three of their current starting five (Shields, Niemann and now Garza) which means I will be on the lookout for David Price, Wade Davis and/or Andy Sonnanstine. Anyway, Garza isn’t my favorite Ray on the team. I think it’s because of all of the spitting. I don’t care for that. He had a rough year this season in the win loss department, but actually pitched really well. His ERA was 3.95 (16th in AL) and his 189 strikeouts were good for 9th in the League, but his 8-12 just didn’t look too good. He did much better on turf this year (7-5) than he did on grass (1-7) and after the All Star break he didn’t have too many decisions, but was 2-5 when he did. He’s like BJ Upton though, you know he’s capable, you just wait for it. Last year Garza was the ALCS MVP and was untouchable against Boston. He was 2-0 with a 1.38 ERA in that Series and he Ked 25 Sox in 25 innings. I hope come Opening Day that the 2008 version of Matt Garza shows up to play. If that Garza is out there, I could almost excuse the spitting… Okay, that is all for now. I still have a number of things from DR that I still need to post and I probably have more from RotB, too. As often as I trade with both of these guys, I could conceivably have something in my mailbox tomorrow from either one of them. I will end this post with a little begging… If anyone has Aki cards from this year’s Goodwin’s Champions that I didn’t list here, I want them! I want to be an Aki completist for that set cuz I am so close. Also, my Carl Crawford list is up and is up to date. I seriously thought I was at 200 different cards of him, but unless I have card gnomes stealing them while I sleep, I only ever actually had 129. Much of what I am missing is base cards, so help a Troll out! The list is here: http://collectivetroll.webs.com/crawford.htm Speaking of links... I have started posting regularly on my ’78 Topps blog so please check that out and add it to your blog rolls if you would - http://1978topps.blogspot.com/ I promise to catch up on new acquisitions one of these days. I still have some really awesome stuff to post from JDs Wild, My Past Time and Cobb and Halladay, plus more from Democratic Roadkill, plus my take on the World Series and a profile of young Wade Davis, so stay tuned! Thanks again ED and DUANE, you guys ROCK!!! Oh, and if you wondering about the card on the top of the post, that falls into the category of a wishlist card...Go Rays! Troll out.