It's Like Having My Own Library...

I am knee deep in my final week of school for this semester. I have final exams to take and a thesis to write which is due this week. Naturally I am chosing to post cards instead... I can't help it, I just keep on getting great stuff in the mail! Here is an absolutely jaw-droppingly amazing trade that I should have posted weeks ago; it came from Dan, publisher of the blog It’s Like Having My Own Card Shop.
I wish my local card shop was a little bit more like Dan’s, maybe I don’t, if it was I would be spending even more money there. Anyway, Dan is a Diamond Backs fan and a fan of Randy Johnson. A few of you have written me looking for traders of certain teams-well Dan is the real deal if you have D-Backs cards that you want to trade. Dan and I worked out a trade over a month ago, I sent him some Randy Johnson stuff and this is what I received. I will admit I did the happy dance when I opened the package because not only did Dan send everything that we agreed on, the bonus stuff he included was even better than the initial trade. Without any further rambling I will get right into it. He sent no less than 4 Carl Crawford cards that I needed. This bumped my PC total to a whopping 195 cards. You can view my list of CC cards here
to see if you can help me in my goal of reaching 200 different cards by the year’s end which is 23 days away. The final Crawford he sent is a jersey relic from the 2007 Upper Deck Series 1 set. It is a Game Materials card, #UD-CC with a U shaped swatch of white material that was certified to have been used in a MLB game. This one was pretty neat because I already had the Scott Kazmir, Jonny Gomes and BJ Upton cards from this set. It is relief to now own the Crawford as well. Dan didn’t stop with the 4 new additions to my Carl Crawford collection. He went on to include 3 different foil cards of Hall of Fame Negro Leaguers from the 2001 Topps 50th Anniversary Edition. Included in the group are Martin Dihigo, Judy Johnson and Buck Leonard.This scanner doesn’t do any better with foil cards than mine did, but I assure you that they look far better in person.
The last item that came in the trade envelope was a complete and total surprise. It was a hardcover copy of Buck Leonard’s autobiography complete with a mint condition dust cover. I had this book many years ago-I had bought a copy of it when it first came out, but that copy is long gone. I started re-reading this copy as soon as it arrived and two days later was done with a renewed level of respect and admiration for the late, great Buck Leonard. Mr. Leonard wrote this book while he was in his 80’s so not all of his recollections were razor sharp and he losses his focus a little throughout, but it still an amazing read and it gives the reader a great window into the day to day life of a traveling Negro League player. Buck was without a doubt one of the greatest players to ever play the game and certainly one of the best first baseman ever. He spent the bulk of his career with one team, the Homestead Grays and with them he won 9 straight pennants and went to 12 All Star games. He was selected for the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 and there is a full copy of his acceptance speech and also a funny story of how Monte Irvin (then special assistant to the Commissioner) tricked him into going to Cooperstown without telling him he was going to the Hall himself. I am pretty thrilled to have a copy of this in my library again. With all of the trading I have done in the past 6 months, this is the first book I have received. I really hope this starts a trend! A huge and overdue thank you goes out to Dan from Its Like Having My Own Cardshop, thanks so much! I love this hobby. Troll out.