Tradin' With GCRL!

I am still trying to catch up on trades, it seems I am buried in them, but don't confust this with complaing, I love to trade! There are a few of them that are so old that the cards got mixed up and I can’t remember who they are from. I am really sorry about this, but I will move one. Since I didn’t post anything about Minnesota’s win last night, I will say a word here. I didn’t get to see the game, but watched many highlights. Seemed like Porcello looked good in the start and it also seemed like both team had every opportunity to win it, but in the end, the Twins prevailed. It was awesome to have a hard-fought battle to decide the Division and I am glad the Twins are in it. Facing the Yankees will be no picnic for them and New York is much more rested, but if it helps Twins, I am rooting for ya! The Twins winning did save me from giving away my Curtis Granderson relic, so thanks for that Minnesota!!! If any wants to trade for it, its out there. In honor of the Twins I figured that I would post a trade from GCRL. I think he is more of a Dodgers fan (judging by the blogs name anyway) but he lives in Minnesota and he is, at least a Joe Mauer fan. Plus, I think he sent these cards over a month (maybe two) ago and we’ve already done another trade since. This was a pretty awesome trade for me. GCRL was chasing the O-Pee-Chee set and I had ripped a blaster of it. Nearly every other card I had was on his list and I was glad to help him out. Getting anything in return was a big bonus, but the era of cards he sent was from a time that I wasn’t collecting and every single card in the pile was new to me. I think he sent around 30 cards and I needed each and every one of them!
I am gonna try and get through these quickly without the normal stats, hope that doesn’t disappoint anyone…
I’ll start with a 1999 Skybox Premium card of my favorite original Devil Ray, Quinton McCracken. I wish Q had a longer career because he was overflowing with potential and I also like the 3D effect that these cards have with the subject jumping off of the blurry background. I think that relics cards came about after McCracken's retirement, but if there are Q relics out there, I want one! I would pay big for this...
From old to new and worst to first, he sent along 4 different older Carlos Pena cards. A few months ago I sent Paul from Carl Crawford Cards nearly every Pena card I owned because his compa is a Pena fan. It worked out because I have gotten nearly all of them back since. I never had too many Pena cards from his days prior to the Devil Rays. Cards on Cards sent me some a while back, but here are 4 cards of a young Carlos Pena.
We skip right on past his days with the Rangers (although I just got a sweet card from back then, too!) and onto the Oakland As.
2002 Upper Deck MVP Card#19 2002 Fleer Box Score Card #177 (serial numbered 2688/2950) 2002 Donruss Studio card #190 (it took me a while to figure out the pic in the background, but it’s the Bay bridge) And onto the Tigers in 2003 with a 2003 Donruss card #132. Next up is a pair of Doug Waechter cards. I always liked Doug, I think he’s been on the DL all year with Kansas City and I really can’t remember the last time I saw him pitch.
I suppose he was a big disappointment, but he had a lot of hype to live up to. I still liked having Ben Grieve on the D-Rays, though. Here is a fresh new trio of BG.
Another trio, this one is of the Devil Rays first All Star, Rolando Arrojo. A lot of people hated Pacific Cards, but not me. I loved the crowns and I loved the multilingual card backs, I miss that. I like the intense portraits on the back of the Skybox cards, too. Here is another sweet trio of Devil Rays from 1999 Fleer Tradition. Dan Wheeler was an original draft pick of the Devil Rays in the late rounds of their first draft. He left for a while, back came back. This is the first Wheeler card I have got from his first tour with the team. Randy Winn is still hanging on with the Giants and I don’t know what happened to Bobby Smith. He was a Topps Cup Rookie for the D-Rays, but I lost track of him. I love Topps Heritage, but I didn’t start buying it until 2007. Here is an Aubrey Huff from the 2002 set. Who else was in this one?
Here are a couple of dual rookies from the 2006 Topps set. I didn’t realize they had D-Rays cards that early on. Alex Sanchez actually made it to the Majors, the other 3, I don’t know…
I will end this post with a 2003 Leaf card of Joe Kennedy. Joe had 5 complete games for the D-Rays back in 2002 and had a seven year Big League career going when he died at his home in Florida in 2007. RIP Joe!
Thank you to Jim at GCRL for all of the sweet (Devil) Rays cards! Another trade properly documented, posted and thanked. Many more to come, plus more TTMs and some posts of random new shiny Rays stuff. I love my readers! Go Twins! Go Rays! Troll out.