An Award Winning Trade...

About two weeks before Christmas I told my wife I would clean up the cards that were living all over the house. Well that was a pretty big undertaking. It was an undertaking that I didn’t really take seriously and I am paying for it now. To “clean” up the house I went to the hobby shop and bought a couple of used shoeboxes and just stuffed every card into them with absolutely no rhyme or reason. There are ’57 Topps mixed with 2007 Topps mixed with CC cards from my PC which are mixed with White Sox cards that I thought I mailed out a month ago. In fact I have found a few packages stuffed into boxes that I thought went out, they will go out today, I am really sorry… I have also found cards that should have been included in packages. It is really a mess over here. I blame working over 100 hours a week last week, plus volunteering and trying to see my wife every now and then. Being a blogger is awesome, but on occasion it can be a lot of work. Speaking of work (keeping the segues smooth…) here are a few cards that I just found that came courtesy of the hardest working trader in the blog-o-sphere, the 2009 Blogger Award Winning Trader of the Year Alfredo Ortega from My Past Time…I Love It! I have piles of cards from Alfredo left over from the past months that I need to scan and post, but here are a few that came right before Christmas and went directly to Mom and Dad’s casa for scanning. This is just a piece of a very large package, but I am gonna stick with the cards that pertain to lists that I just updated… First off, I am one step closer to finishing the 2009 O-Pee-Chee team set with this BJ Upton card… This may be the best looking pic from the entire OPC set... I think I am only 3 cards away now. Speaking of young Mr. Upton, here is an X shaped jersey swatch of BJ from the 2008 Upper Deck X set. I know I have at least 100 different Upton cards now and I will probably make a list of them someday-if I can ever control all of the lists I already have going… Another player I might add to my PC is Jeff Niemann and a sweet Donruss Zenith rookie card of young Jeff from 2005. I think I have about 10 Niemann cards right now-I’ll let y’all know…One player that I am definitely collecting is Carl Crawford. I was on a mission to get 200 different cards of CC before 2009 was up and I did it! Now if I could only find them… Alfredo helped me out a lot on the quest and he keeps on helping. You can view the list here-thanks to Alfredo and all of the rest of you the collection stands at 234 different cards! Woo hoo! I am pretty happy with that number. My new goal is to hit 250 by April. This package raised the CC total by 4 and included this 2009 Updates and Highlights Gold card of CC, #UH179. I still can use another copy for the team set because once I finish up all of my Rays Topps team sets I am going to try and build them all in gold… Speaking of shiny… Here is another insert of CC from the 2008 UD X set, #X-CC. Sweet. My second favorite CC of the bundle was this SPXTRA Info card from the ’06 UD SPx set. I love the way it proudly shows the Rays all time (losing) record of 518-775. Go Rays! This package included a bunch of other sweet Rays cards from sets I don’t have lists for yet. It also had about 10 different (AWESOME) cards of Satchel Paige (I put one of them at the top of this post), my favorite pitcher of All Time (with Bob Gibson and Steve Carlton not far behind…) as well as nice new cards of Roberto Clemente and Larry Doby, but I will have to save them for another post… I am gonna show one more Carl Crawford card. This is special because it brought me up to 234 on my list, but more special because it is a really generous gift straight out of Ortega’s personal collection. Wicked, I couldn’t believe that you parted with this, but I do REALLY appreciate it! It is from the 1999 Just Minors set and shows CC in his Princeton Rays uniform, which is pretty freaking amazing. It gets better… It is hand signed on the front! Woo hoo! Thanks so much Wicked! On the back of the card is a message to me: “Pay it forward Homie! Hope you keep this one in your collection for a long time, Merry Christmas!” You bet I will. Pay it forward is an expression Alfredo and I have used a lot in our trade packages. For him it is a way of life. If you luck out, pay it forward… That is why the blog-o-sphere elected him trader of the year. Thanks my friend, I really appreciate it! Now, speaking of Awards (keep them segues smooth like silk!) the voting for the 2009 Gummie Awards is live and will be up till the end of this week. I love the Gummies because the nominations for worst of 2009 keep me laughing. If Topps Attax doesn’t win worst product-I will be pretty disappointed and don’t get me started on UD 20th Anniversary being the WORST inserts of 2009… I wasn’t going to mention this, but this blog is nominated for an award on there, too. I wanted to thank Chris Harris and the Stale Gum syndicate for nominating me; I am really honored by that. I am included with 4 other rad blogs-Beardy’s Baseball Blog, New Card Smell, A Pack To Be Named Later and JDs Wild Cardz. I personally voted for Beardy, but I could’ve gone with any of those awesome blogs. Wait, speaking of Beardy... I picked up this 2008 Sweet Spot relic of Nick Markakis for him but he already has it. Does anyone else need it? Anyone who perhaps has some Heritage SPs or Carl Crawford cards? I also have one of King Felix from the same set... Anyway, back to the Gummies... After voting you can view the results which is pretty neat. I do encourage everyone to VOTE for the best and worst of 2009! Thanks again Alfredo! Now, in review… Please vote for the Gummies, please check out my Rays team set want list and CC collection and please head on over to check out the #1 Trader in the Blog-O-Sphere… He has about 6,000 different players in his PC now, so chances are you have cards he needs and he WILL hook you up. Troll out.