Welcome Trollites to the Collective Troll’s 299th Post!!! The number has risen pretty quick with all of the group pack breaks of late, but that has really only accounted for less than 20 posts… Anyway, for this momentous event I am going to take a quick (who am I kidding, really LONG) break from the group pack rips to do something a little different here. I did have a bunch of “Card of the Day” posts planned for this week and weeks upcoming, but they will remain on hold until this pack ripping is done and over with. No regrets here. I just had no idea how much time it would take to post the results of 84 packs (most with 14 cards in them). I know I can speed them up by limiting the number of cards that I scan, but I feel like if I pull a HOF player then I NEED to scan him. Same goes with a goofy picture or a really great action shot or a card of one of my childhood favorites. Any of those cards I just feel like I NEED to share them with the world, with the entire Blog-O-Sphere…Oh, speaking of Blog-O-Sphere (try not to slip on that smooth segue folks) I wanted to use this non-pack-ripping, milestone post to talk about the first ever, 1st Annual 2009 Blogger Awards.
The brains behind these awards are two awesome bloggers in their own rights-
Drew from Drew’s Cards and Alfredo from
My Past Time…I Love It! Drew is the gracious host of the awards. He accepted and tabulated and organized all of the nominations and he is processing and tracking all of the votes. This is 100% confidential by the way. Only Drew and the person voting know who votes for whom and it will not be made public as to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. Hosting the awards is a ton of work and Drew has a ton more ahead of him and unfortunately there is no reward or award for hosting the awards, so I want to take a moment and say THANKS
DREW!!!!!! I would love to take up a collection of Nick Swisher and Robby Cano cards to send your way to say thanks after this is all said and done (don’t want them to be misconstrued as a bribe), but for now I just want to thank you for graciously volunteering all of your time and efforts so that the great blogs out there can receive their proper recognition. You can view all of the nominees and categories for the 2009 Awards right
here. There is a vote for athlete, coach and sports moment of the year and there are votes for top products in both football and baseball as well. You can vote for your favorite insert set of the year, your favorite autograph and there are also a slew of categories celebrating You Tubers. It’s all on the front page of
Drew’s blog. You can also vote for the regular
Blogger Awards there, too. That is what I am going to talk about right now. A big part of blogging for me is connecting, communication and trading with other collectors out there. Like a lot of folks my introduction to card blogs involved scouring the want lists and trade lists of other bloggers out there. Eventually I started a blog of my own, but in the beginning I was just a reader named Troll who traded with bloggers. I think I started out as a pretty good trader. Folks seemed pretty happy with what I was sending and in the beginning there were a lot of people who were pretty excited to be able to get rid of all of their Devil Rays cards and get something in return for them. After a month or two, I ran out of cards and I didn’t have the funds to replenish them, so my days as a top-flight trader were very short lived. Being the best trader isn’t easy.
These guys have like 30 deals going on at once. Keeping everyone’s cards together, going to the post office everyday, keeping everyone happy but keeping your collection happy, too, is a crazy balancing act and not everyone can do it. The five bloggers nominated for the Trader of the Year Award never seem to run out of great cards, they respond to trade offers quickly and they are mega super generous and trading with these top-traders is always a great experience. Before I name the 6 deserving nominees, I want to give a shout out to two of my favorite trading partners who for whatever reason didn’t make the final cut. These two have spoiled me this past year, filled my mailbox and my collection. They have sent me way more amazing stuff than I could ever pay back (but I will! Someday) and I wanted to thank them here on this post. It is funny, but both of them are Blue Jays fans (that is why I seek Jays cards in trades, to pay these 2 back!) and amazing internet friends.
I get (almost) just as excited to get an email from them as I do when I get a mind-blowing package. They are
Duane, who lives on the republican highway of central Ohio. He is a Jays fan and an Allen and Ginter mini maniac-he runs the blog
Democratic Roadkill. The other super trader is
Joe L from Upstate New York. He is a Jays fan and a Bills fan and a hockey fan of some team, too. He also collects Grady Sizemore and a class A great guy. He runs a blog, but doesn’t update it, ever-it’s called
Cobb and Halladay and I thought he might update it now since the trade, but who knows… Either way these two guys definitely deserve an Honorable Mention (which is what I am giving them) as Trader of the Year because they represent everything a great trader should embody. So do these five nominees. I will say that all of these categories are very tough to pick from.
I have traded with all 6 of these guys, some of them MANY times. They are all super generous, have great stuff and aren’t afraid to share it. They are collectors first. They aren’t dealers; they don’t make money on their cards. They love this hobby and they make everyone who trades with them love it even more. Okay, here are the nominees…First up is
My Past Time… I Love It. Alfredo runs this blog; he is a rabid Florida Marlins fan with a long list of players he collects. He has a TON of cards and will always have the distinction of being the guy who finished off my 1978 Topps set. Next up is
Ryan’s Memorabilia Blog. Mike (Ryan) is a Baltimore Orioles super collector and lover of all things Cal Ripken, Brooks Robinson, Jim Palmer and all of the great Birds. I collect Brian Roberts and he has tripled my Roberts collection and I still owe him. The next nominee is another O’s fan and fan of all things bearded. I have only traded with
Beardy’s Baseball Blog a couple of times. He has also hooked me up with plenty of B-Rob cards, but I remember him most for efforts in this years Gint-A-Cuffs which totally hooked me on that product. Number 4 on the list is a great friend. We worked out quite a few trades before he started his blog-actually I sent him one package and he sent me about 10. This guy is an amazing friend, a GREAT trader, a huge Texas Rangers fan and a very deserving nominee. Oh yeah, I am talking about Brian from Texas and his blog
Play at the Plate. Next up is my buddy Chris and his blog Nachos Grande. He was one of the first bloggers I traded with before I started blogging myself. He is by far the most organized collector in the entire blog-o-sphere. He has amazing often updated lists and is very easy to trade with because you always know what he has and what he needs. He is also the only person out there who rips Topps Heritage as obsessively as I do, so you can imagine we have worked out quite a few SP for SP trades.
The 6th and final nominee for this very important Award is the mysterious
Mojo Hand. I can remember posting a whole bunch of refractors as trade bait a few months back. I had never communicated with Mr. Mojo prior to that. He had commented that he wanted them all. Okay, whatever I thought. Then I got an e-mail from him with a photo attached of a bunch of autographs and relics he was offering up. Holy crap, I jumped on that trade. Since then I have come home to a few emails from the mysterious
Mojo Hand saying he pulled a hit with my name on it. I love that! He also gets points for being a super collector of my cousin (in-law) the legendary Cat Osterman. This was a hard one to choose. I ended up picking 2, ending my vote in a tie. All 6 of these guys have trading down to a science and all of them have seriously upgraded my collections.
Another Award is for the Most Creative Blogger. This is another biggy (actually they all are) because card collecting walks a fine line and to many outsiders this hobby can be seen as boring. Of course outsiders think we are all fat, bald, geeks, nerds and freaks, too. Anyway, it isn’t hard to come across as mundane when writing about a flat piece of cardboard. It takes a whole bunch of creativity to keep things interesting. I personally spend between 5 and ten hours a day reading and writing about baseball cards (I know, I need to get a life!) and if there weren’t creative and interesting people writing these blogs, I would be pretty bored and would probably stop. Fortunately there are a ton of amazingly creative bloggers out there that keep things fresh, exciting and interesting. At least 4 of the 5 nominees for this Award have the savvy to keep you coming back and wanting more. The nominees are: I’ll start with
Beardy’s Baseball Blog. He is the 2001 Ichiro in this awards picture. He is nominated for Rookie of the Year, Blog of the Year (MVP), Best Trader and Most Creative.
He deserves them all, too. Beardy is hilarious. He writes a great blog, he knows and loves the hobby and the sport and he keeps it fresh and funny. The next three nominees I will group together because that is how I found them all. Months before I bit the bullet and started a blog with a silly name I was just a regular blog reader. There were 5 blogs that I read every single night after I got home from work (I used to work during the day). I tried a lot of others, but there were 5 in particular that really stood out to me. They all had a little something extra, some savvy and creativity that I never before experienced in this hobby. Keep in mind at that point the few cards I had were packed away in the garage. I was not collecting nor did I intend on collecting again. It began as casual reading to kill some time while my wife was at school, but it turned into a reading obsession.
Those 5 blogs are what roped me back into the hobby, what made me want to spend all of my time in front of a computer and spend all of my money on cards and postage. I don’t know whether to hate them or thank them, but those five special blogs (which are still 5 of my favorites) are
White Sox Cards,
Dinged Corners,
Cardboard Junkie,
Autographed Cards and the
Night Owl. Three of those 5 are nominees for Most Creative Blogger. They all rock and it isn’t because they have better cards than everyone else or because they have some sort of fancy degree-it’s because they make collecting fun and interesting. They love to collect and they love to talk about it and it shows. They see past hoarding and move on to something deeper and you never know what they will write about next, but you know you want to be there to read it. Anyway, the 5 nominees for Most Creative Blogger are:
Beardys Baseball Blog,
The Night Owl,
Cardboard Junkie,
Dinged Corners and The Collective Troll. Hopefully you have paid a visit to that last blog I mentioned at some point in the past. You may have been bored to tears by those long and drawn out posts or you may have laughed at the implosion of his favorite team, the Tampa Bay Rays. Yes, I was nominated for that award, but I am not going to suggest that you vote for me. I know it sounds terribly cliché, but it is seriously an honor to be nominated. I am honored to have my name mentioned alongside those 4 amazing blogs.
Beardy,
Patricia,
Greg and
Dayf are all AMAZING writers and put together amazing stories that leave me in amazement.
That said, PLEASE, please, pretty please with a refractor on top, go over to
Drews Cards and vote right now for one of these fine nominees. The more readers and bloggers who voice their opinion and vote, the more meaningful these awards will become. There are other awards to discuss-The Rookie of the Year, The Coolest (Best) Blog Design, The Biggest and Best Boxbreaker of the Year and the biggest one of all-the MVP, the Blog of the Year. I am gonna have to save my breath on those for another time because I can’t afford to be late to work again. Just please head on over here and vote! These are peer awards, reader’s choice if you will. If you are a blogger or blog reader, then it is your choice and you should make that choice. Excluding myself these nominees are the cream of the crop and they deserve the recognition for all of their hard work-so go and show your appreciation and
vote, PLEASE!!!! Regular blogging will resume tomorrow. Until then,
vote. In case you were wondering the relevance of the cards shown in this post-they are all Award Winners. Cy Youngs, Rookie of the Year and MVP winners (and they were all recently scanned on the computer I am using). I love a good tie in. All of the nominees that I listed so far are linked so you can check out their blogs and make an informed decision. Oh, if you are wondering why I made a big deal out of post #299... First, I miscounted and thought it was 300. Second, it is a two part post. #300 will be up by morning with the rest of the nominees. Have a happy! Happy collecting! Troll out.
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.
Everything went REALLY smooth with the team selections. I spent the weekend helping my mother in law move into a new apartment-I took a break every few hours, found a computer and checked on things. I was shocked and pleased with how many people wanted to be involved and how quickly the teams were picked. I was worried that everyone would want the same team and I would end up having to take 12 teams myself, but that was not the case. I ended up with the Kansas City Royals for myself. I am not disappointed-I had actually hoped that I would end up with a team in this, I am glad I only have 1! The only issue we had with selections was this… Not really an issue, but two collectors picked the same team within 5 minutes. Nico, the Oakland A’s are your team as you picked them first. IF you wanted to allow the other person to get in for the A’s-let me know, otherwise, let’s start ripping!!! I am going to start off with the1993 Topps Stadium Club and rip about 10 packs today and then some more tomorrow. I will post these rips one pack at a time. I will show one picture from each pack, but I will list every card and the player’s team as well. There are 14 cards per pack, 24 packs per box. That should yield 336 cards out of this box. In a perfect world each slot will get 12 cards. I found a card from this set in my PC, so this is a sample. It is card #609 of Hall of Famer Dave Winfield-listed as DH/OF but shown playing first base. 
I actually really like the design on these, but I REALLY like that Stadium Club shows the player’s Topps Rookie Card on the back. Its especially cool with vets like Winfield here, his rookie is from the ’74 Topps set. 
These cards have some of the best photography of any cards to date, so great, some goofy, but all very edgy. The card back also shares a fun fact about the featured player, like "Dave Winfield loves to play in Toronto". Also, here is an example of the pack. These are wax packs, not foil. 
There is no gum in the pack, but there may be a risk of wax stains on the back of one card per pack. The pack doesn’t list the odds of pulling inserts. I know there are parallels in this. If I remember correctly (and it has been 17 years since I’ve ripped a pack of this) the First Day Production stamped cards are one per box. There are also Members Choice cards. I think there are special cards inserted to commemorate the two expansion teams-the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies. Anything else that is in there will be a surprise to me and everyone else. Please check back frequently on this little blog as I will probable post between 10 and 15 times today. Tomorrow I will finish up the Stadium Club and get cracking on the 1994 Pinnacle. I will be going by the flea market this afternoon to find the 3rd box of cards-whatever I can find. Please review the team slot list and contact me if I made any errors. If you are in and know what you are sending me, please send me an e-mail with card numbers and the like if possible so I can update my needs lists. If you have traded with me before, there is NO RUSH getting your cards out to me. I trust you guys, I know this is a hectic and crazy time of year and I don’t want you all to go crazier than you have to because of me. Okay, I think that covers everything. Stay tuned, the first pack will be ripped within an hour!!! Thanks to everyone who is participating, this is gonna be fun!!! Again, if you are a new trader, please email me your mailing address as well which cards you are offering me. If you "bought" a slot for another collector and they are a regular trader of mine and you want me to ship to them directly, let me know and I will tell you if that is possible. You can contact me at bacontowne at yahooo dot com. On a totally different topic… Drew’s Cards has posted all of the 
I think it stands at only 24 votes so far and right now the first great rookie of the decade and the last one are in a neck and neck race for the finish. I speaking of course about the 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson being locked up with the 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. PLEASE 
Speaking of contests… As you may or may not know, I am a part of the panel that will be voting and selecting the winners in this years inaugural blogger awards. The awards are being hosted by Drew from 
One of the awards is the Blogger Rookie of the Year. The perquisite is that your blog was started on January 1, 2009 or later. The voting isn’t opened up for this just yet, but I am going to ask you all to start thinking about it. I hope to be able to “host” this particular award (that has yet to be decided) but I am interested in getting some talk going on it. 
I personally started my blog in May of 2009 (so I believe that I would qualify…) and most all of you were here when I got here. What I am asking for right now is some suggestions or at the very least some names of blogs that would qualify. Feel free to comment with your own blog, or suggest some others that you know were started in 2009. I think this is a pretty great award idea, but again I am ignorant as to when everyone started their blogs, so PLEASE comment here with the names of some blogs that were born in 2009. 
Thanks in advance dear blog-o-sphere! Oh, if you wanna get the wheels turning-some of the other blogger awards will include Blog of the Year (MVP!), Most Generous Trader, Biggest Box Breaker (another one I might need some suggestions for), Most Creative Blogger and Coolest Blog Design. Go Rays! With the acquisition of Kelly Shoppach we will be unstoppable! By the by… The cards scanned in this post don’t have any actual relevance to this topic-well not really… They are all former Rookies of the Year (and mainly bad-ass cards) and that is what I am looking for help with. So once more so we are clear... 
These aren't nominations, just mentions so I know who qualifies. You can list thirty blogs including your own as long as they were started in 2009. If you have any questions or input, please contact 
