My Dish at the Baseball Card Buffet!

I am putting my new scanner to good use with a GREAT trade that I worked out a few back with the legendary BA Benny’s Baseball Card Buffet. I had posted up some 2011 Topps trade bait and we started going back and forth. It grew into a pretty big trade with me crossing many cards off of my needs list. The more awesome thing is that we already have another trade in the works… Anyway, here are some of the awesome cards that he sent. I tried to pick cards that haven’t been posted to death, plus I really wanted to show how cool he was to hook me up with cards from nearly all of my different collections. Lets start with the first card I have seen from 2010 Bowman Platinum, it’s a purplish refractor of Rays pitcher Jeremy Hellickson, #PP3. Ya gotta consider Hellickson as one of the front runners to be the AL Rookie of the Year, I just hope he sticks around Tampa Bay for a while…
Next up is a card from 1994 Ted Williams featuring AAGPBL All Star Alma Ziegler… Yes, I collect cards of female baseball players and yes, I did not own this one yet, so it is awesome!
Another great card for my oddball PC is this sweet 1992 Upper Deck card of Danny Tartabull, card #237. The Bull wasn’t a great defensive outfielder, but I love that this card shows him making him a running catch, or at least running…
Next up is Rays awesomeness from 2011 Topps. Before this trade I had 1 Rays diamond sparkley card (Carlos Pena from Series 1) and no gold cards. Now I have 2 golds and 2 diamonds. It starts with the coolest of the bunch. The Longo sparkle! Card #340 of the Rays All Star third baseman. The golds are of the aforementioned Rookie of the Year candidate, Jeremy Hellickson on golden card #165. The other gold is a great looking card of the Rays shortstop Sean Rodriguez turning two on Delmon Young and the Twinkies on card #397.
I am going to end this post showing off 2 of my favorites out of the stack of 2011 Topps Series 2 cards he supplied me with… Card #347 of Cubs infielder Darwin Barney and my favorite – card #501 of Twins middle infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka putting Jose Bautista out and going for 2. Nishioka hasn’t really impressed in Minnesota yet, but I love the intense game face on this card. A HUGE thanks to Mike from BA Bennys Baseball Card Blog Buffet for hooking me up with these great cards. Thanks brother! Go Rays! Troll out.

600 Posts Later and I STILL LOVE This Hobby!!!

Okay, so when I started writing this I didn't realize it was POST #600. I knew I was close, but I didn't know I was that close... I didn't have anything special planned, but I did want it to be wordy with a lot of pictures-a typical Troll post. I think this exemplifies that just fine, plus it shows off some great new cards from an awesome blogger. Since it is a milestone post I am going to add in a bonus card. This came in the FIRST pack (jumbo rack) of Series 2 Topps I bought. It is the FIRST Rays HIT card I have EVER pulled myself. Please read on...The rest of the blog-o-sphere is completely Allen and Ginter crazy. I am not complaining. They are great cards and I can’t wait till I have the funds to get my mitts on my box. For those of you who want your Ginter fix, but can’t swing the bucks for a box there is a great case break at Long Fly Ball to Because… where you can get a case worth of cards of your favorite team for less than half the price of a box. Go check it out and tell him the Troll sent you! I am not going to end the post here. Even if I had the cash to order my box I wouldn’t have time to post it. My desk is still full of unposted cards. Rather than waste my time being bitter that I am not in the Ginter party I am going to use my time wisely and try and post up some of the great cards I have received this year. I have said before that I don’t have a specific favorite person to trade with. Actually I am pretty lucky that there are about 10 bloggers who send me a package like clockwork every month or so. These folks rock! They rock because they aren’t prearranged trades; they are awesome surprise packages that make my day. I have received at least 4 of these packages from Madding at Cards on Cards that I haven’t posted. Some great relics and other Rays awesomeness. This package I am posting today is the most recent surprise pack I got from my favorite Cardinals fan. Now I will say that I have gotten plenty of “mojo hits” from CoC in the past, but you won’t see any in this post. This trade rocks because it was SUPER thoughtful. Sometimes I post about wanting a certain card and wonder if anyone is reading, well apparently someone was cuz I got it! Anyway, without further adieu, here are some of the highlights for me from my latest trade pack from Cards on Cards…
First up from the 2002 Donruss Super Estrellas set, card #92 of Greg Vaughn. I was never a Vaughn fan when he was with the D-Rays, or before or after for that matter. This card rules because I love this set and it is the only D-Rays player in it. 2001 was a lean year in Tampa Bay and Vaughn’s 24 homers were enough to attract National attention. As a Mexican-American I enjoy cards geared towards Spanish speaking people and this set is ALL Spanish. Super Estrellas translates to Super Stars and yes “super” has the same meaning in both languages. Next up is another favorite obscure set of mine. This one is special for different reasons. It is a 2000 Royal Rookies card of Charleston Riverdogs (D-Rays) shortstop Ramon Soler. Soler stole 46 bases in low A ball in 1999. That would be his career high. He spent 5 years in the minors getting a cup of coffee with the Norfolk Tides (Mets) in 2002. That would be his highest level; he never sniffed the big leagues. This card is rad because Royal Rookies was one of the worst card companies ever and I took this picture and never got paid for it. Next time you get upset with a card company, google Royal Rookies and remember that it could be worse... I am psyched to at least have a copy of the card now… Next up is a great card of my favorite player of all time, the great ballplayer and humanitarian Roberto Clemente. I try to collect any cards of Clemente I can get my hands on. His vintage stuff is a little out of my league, but I do enjoy his modern stuff as well. This card looks AWESOME! It is a 2009 Topps refractor, card #GR-9. This is one of those cards you get as a bonus for buying the cereal box. I am pretty sure that is the only way you can get one. I love it! From the greatest ballplayer of all time to one of my favorite players who never really made it, former Devil Rays third baseman Jared Sandberg. This one is a 1999 Bowman Chrome, card #118. The front of the scan looks awful in the scan, so I scanned the back. I am on an active mission to collect one of every card every made of the less famous Mr. Sandberg. Thanks to Madding I have a complete list of all of his cards. His career wasn’t too long, but with all the parallels out there I still have a long way to go. I do appreciate getting his cards whenever I can. Another player that I am trying to collect completely is Danny Tartabull. The Bull was my favorite player as a kid and the first player I ever collected. I still have the original binder my Mom got me when I was 10 years old for my collection and fortunately still have most of the cards, too. I stopped collecting Tartabull after he signed with the Yankees. Enough years have past that I have forgiven him for playing for such an awful team and now I am catching up on his pinstriped cards. Madding sent me several I needed including this die-cut, foil gem from 1994 SP. The card is number 200 in the set and the back of the card mentions that when Tartabull hit 31 homers and drove in 102 runs for the Bronx Bombers in 1993 he was the first Yankees to top the 30/100 plateaus since Donny Baseball did it in 1987. Of course MANY have done it since, but the Bull brought it back in style! Another Tartabull I needed is this card from 1995 Topps Finest. I have started and stopped collecting so many times it is ridiculous. I have also started collecting specific brands only. In 1995 I did that. Topps Finest and Bowman are Best. I ripped both products like crazy. The Bowman’s Best cards are long gone, but I still have some of the Finest cards. I swear I will put together a want list and finish that set someday. For now I am glad to have the Tartabull card. I am really glad that Finest ditched the “protective coating” stamps all over the face of these cards, I am also on the lookout for the refractor version of this card and all of the Bull’s Finest releases. I don’t have ANY. He also included a White Sox card that I didn’t have. Card #356 of Tartabull from 1996 Pinnacle. The Bull had resurgence with the Chi Sox in 1995 when he topped 100 RBIs for the fifth and final time of his career. Batting between Frank Thomas and Harold Baines would be a luxury for any slugger, but still… The final Danny Tartabull card he sent in this package was this card from 1995 Upper Deck SE, card #9 of Tartabull in full foil. Shifting back to pseudo vintage and one of Roberto Clemente’s former teammates, this is a 2008 Goudey card, #151 of the starting second baseman on the All-Troll-All-Time-All-Star-Team Bill Mazeroski. A wizard with the glove who also hit a very famous homerun that won the Bucs the World Series against the seemingly unbeatable Yankees. I am going to try and get this one signed. I am running out of time but I will post two more cards. Each one is serial numbered and shows players I collect who are also starting for the American League in the 2010 All Star Game. First up is card #95 from 2010 Topps Series 1. This is the gold parallel version of Carl Crawford. I am collecting the team set in gold. Thanks to trades I finished series 2 before I bought a single pack, but I am only halfway to series 1. I love the CC! Now if only someone would send me the platinum… Another sweet colored and numbered parallel is card #99 from 2010 Topps Opening Day, the BLUE version of David Price. It’s a little ironic that Price is in this set considering he wasn’t in the opening day lineup, but it is a great card nonetheless. To Madding of Cards on Cards – I owe you a HUGE thank you sir!!! You should be getting a package from me later next week. All of the goodies from the long overdue group break and some odds and ends I have gathered over the past few months. To anyone interested I did finally arrange for the proper adult supervision and ripped into a few cans of cards. These will be posted on A Pack To Be Named Later very soon. If you haven’t checked out Cards on Cards yet, do yourself a favor and check it out right now! It aint just for Cards fans… I started this post talking about 2010 Ginter. Well, Cards on Cards is part of the Gint-A-Cuffs battle. He has pulled a Carl Crawford mini AND a spinosaurus so far. I repeat, check it out! To anyone reading that wants to get their trade on, please shoot me an email. If you sent me a package and I either owe you a return package OR you were hoping I would post it and haven’t yet, PLEASE send me a reminder. I’m not being a jerk; I am just really behind and really scatterbrained… Another end note... I know blog milestones are normally coupled with contests. I have 2 coming up, but I will be honest-I just don't have the time to keep up with a contest right now. One of them will be the "guess how many different Carl Crawford cards the Troll has". My wife has promised to help me attack the many stacks of cards all over the house to sort out the CC cards so I can get a count. Once I get all of the group break stuff ripped, packed and shipped I will post one so stay tuned! Thanks again to Cards on Cards for making my week with these cards and making my day again today as I flipped through them again. To all the new traders and bloggers-take this trade as some advice... You don't need to send people autograph relic cards or one of ones to make a great trade package. If you read someone's blog you can score WAY MORE trade points hooking them up with inexpensive cards they really want and will enjoy. Just a little message from experience. One more postnote... I need addresses to ship cards. If you have the Tigers, Astros, Angels, Giants, Pirates, Rockies, Yankees, Mets or A's-I have probably misplaced your mailing address. Anthony K, the Astros fan, I got your cards from the first break returned to sender so you will be getting a REALLY big box of cards this time around... Anyway, please shoot me an email at bacontowne at yahoo dot com. Thanks! I love this game, I love this hobby and I love this community!!! Oh, one last end note before I leave for work... Congrats to Rafael Soriano for being the 4th Rays player on the All Star team. He is 2-0 with a 1.65 ERA and 23 saves. You deserve it Sor! Go Rays! Troll out.

Back From Gainesville With a Bunch of Goodies!

I don’t know if anyone noticed my absence from blogging over the past few days. Probably not as my presence has been minimalized with my new job, but I did have a reason… The Bradentucky Bombers had a road bout in Gainesville, Florida on Sunday May 23rd. G-Ville is around 200 miles away from my towne of Bradenton. Anyway, we went up very early and I checked the towne of Gainesville out a bit. I found a card shop and spent a little bit of money working on my collections. I grabbed the ’65 Brooks Robinson that I posted on Saturday and picked up 21 more ‘65s at a very fair price. I also bought 29 random cards from 1961 Topps which will be posted as Old Vs. New on the Nitty Gritty. The shop didn’t have much in terms of vintage, nor did it have many current autographs, but it did have plenty of odd ball stuff. I picked up my second (hopefully of many!) roller derby card. I don’t know what year this card is from, the clerk thought it was from the 90’s and it is made by Superior Trading Cards. It isn’t nearly as awesome as a SlangKo roller derby card, but it is still pretty awesome. It shows one of derby’s biggest stars, Ms. Marjorie Brasuhn, AKA Toughie. She was the Captain of the Brooklyn Red Devils in the 1950s. I never met Toughie, but I have interviewed several of her former peers and all accounts say she really earned her nickname. Along with the derby card I added another biggy to my biggest PC. It is a 1993 Topps Stadium Club Master Photo of then Yankees designated hitter Danny Tartabull. I’ve always liked the angle of this posed shot of the bull in front of an empty batting cage. The master photo is the same size as a regular card, but has the TSC logo and a lot of white empty space framing it. The back of the card is blank. I am not sure how I feel about that. I do still need the card sized redemption card that would have been exchanged for this one. Trying to maintain a size balance in the binder I picked up another master photo of his teammate at the time, Wade Boggs. After buying those 2 the shop clerk asked if I liked oversized cards. I responded affirmatively with a big hell yeah hoping that he would return with a pile of ’64 Topps Giants. He didn’t, but he did produce a rather large stack of random oversized cards from the past 30 years. I picked up some ’81 Topps Super, a few from ’86 Super and another copy of this card from 1985 Topps Super. I had posted a pack rip of this for a Pack to Be Named Later Earlier this month. Lance Parrish was in the pack and a reader commented that he would like the Lance Parrish card if I was willing to part with it. Normally I would have sent it to him already, but this pack was part of the group break so technically the Roof God owns the card as he chose the Tigers in the break. Well it all worked out because All Star Cards and Comics had a copy of the Parrish card and I picked it up cheap, so if you still want the card send me an email with your address and I will send it on its way. Anyway, it’s nearly time to leave for work and this story is becoming far longer than I had intended… I picked up quite a few more oversized cards and most of them I already have homes in mind for. I grabbed some very cool 2008 Allen and Ginter cabinet cards from the Historic Battles series which I will post another day. He also had Toys R Us master photos. I picked up a few of those, too, but he didn’t have the Tartabull so I still need that one. The last LARGE card I will show off is a giant from 2007 Topps Turkey Red, Cabinet Card #DP-NM. This cabinet card is just an oversized version of the regular Dick Perez painting from the set, but it is an amazing rendering of a pretty cool player. I would say this card is suitable for framing. I will also say it would look way better autographed. I will ALSO say that I am not so in love with this card that I wouldn’t be willing to trade it. Until this weekend I didn’t know that Turkey Red cabinet cards existed. Now I know they do and I own one of them and naturally I want more. I don’t know for sure who made it to this set, but if there is a Carl Crawford version I NEED it! I also wouldn’t mind swapping this one for Brian Roberts or Akinori Iwamura. Any takers? Anyway, this wasn’t all I picked up. The store had some very neat stuff in it and the guy gave me a great price on everything. I left a very satisfied customer with quite a few large and normal sized cards. Some stuff for my PC and some other stuff that will be heading to Texas and the land of Cards on Cards later this week. Oh, you may have noticed that there is a new header up. To learn when and where this card came from you will have to check out a Pack to be Named Later. I really LOVE the Sombrero custom and it will return soon, but I also like the idea of rotating the header picture every week to keep things fresh. Oh, the reason that I was in Gainesville wasn’t just to buy cards. We had a derby bout, too. The fans in Gainesville are AMAZING! Very knowledgeable and vocal and they have a great team to root for. Their announcer Glyph Huckster is a good friend and it is always great to work with him. They had a really big and nice rink and drew a great crowd. The crowd was silenced pretty quickly as the Bombers had their best bout of the year. Everyone was synched up perfectly and we brought our A game. We got off to an early lead and held it for the whole game and won by our largest margin on the road ever. The final score was Bradentucky 175 and Gainesville 65. Gainesville actually played quite well, we just played better! The hospitality they showed us in the after party was pretty amazing too. We had a private set-up behind the bar in a really swank bowling alley. It included 4 private lanes for bowling, buffet food, 4 movie sized big screen TVS and lovely waitresses bringing us all the free booze we could drink. It was decadent! I had a blast, but it is really hard to return to reality the next day. I felt like a star last night, but now I need to rush to work to clock in to my stupid job. Thanks for reading! Go Bombers! Go Rays! Troll out!

Thursday Afternoon Odds and Ends...

Okay, here are a few Thursday afternoon odds and ends from the Troll… First off I need to do my civic duty as a blogger and pimp the fantastic contest over at Hey That’s Mine! Hosted by blogger and card creator Big D. You can check out the contest HERE, but I will give you a quick synopsis. Big D makes custom one of a kind cards. I am really lucky that I own two of these already, including this one of super-lefty David Price who is finally having the season that he was supposed to have last year. Since Big D made me two one of a kind cards AND since it isn't completely out of the question that Price and Longoria could win Cy Young and MVP Awards this year, I am posting my other Big D custom card of Longo. These are NOT up for trade... Okay, to enter the contest you simply have to comment with your name and which player you would like to have a custom card of. The possibilities are endless, but you do have to supply Big D with an image. Okay, go there and enter the contest, tell him the Troll sent you, yadda yadda yadda… While I am pimping links I want to encourage you to check out a Pack to be Named Later. I just posted a pack that you can find HERE.
You should follow it and check it out daily though. If you are involved in the long overdue Collective Troll box and pack break, you should definitely check it out to see what you are getting. I will post the list soon of who has what team. For those of you who read this post on 1993 Donruss Masters-I got curious and opened 3 more packs.
The first two yielded Jose Canseco and Gary Sheffield, but I got this sweet Ryno in the third pack. Okay, I have been very lucky in the getting great stuff in the mail department lately so I have a TON of great cards to post. I am also buying cards here and there for my personal collections of Danny Tartabull, Jared Sandberg and Buck O’Neil. My newest one is this 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection card of Danny Tartabull. The Yankees uniform nearly ruins it, but I really like Dufex cards, so I am happy with it. Plus I got it, shipping included for $1.25. Sweet. For those of you following my progress with collecting the 1965 Topps set I have restarted that journey after losing it all. I finished my first page today thanks to my local card shop, my awesome readers and a few really cheap auctions, here it is: With card #25 or 72 I can finish off two more pages. Right now I am working on 10 pages at a time so I am focused on cards #1-90; I am 65% of the way there. My weakest spot is League Leaders 1-9 right now cuz these can be a bit pricy. That’s all for now, I am gonna try and pull off a Nitty Gritty post in the 15 minutes I have before work. Thanks for reading. Check out Big D’s Custom Contest. Go Rays! Troll out.

Huge PC Hits and a Contest Addition...

Okay, so another day and another delay on the contest. I PROMISE that it will begin tomorrow regardless. In an effort to make it up to my dear readers I am adding to the bounty. In addition to the previously mentioned Hall of Famer autographs, I will add one more HOF autograph that will not disappoint. I have also decided to add one more non-HoF auto, but a great auto nonetheless. This certified auto of the Capital Punisher will now be added to the prize group when the contest commences tomorrow. Now, since I am in player collection limbo with my undecided new player, I am gonna hit the current player collections HARD. I am speaking of my Jared Sandberg and Danny Tartabull collections. I am confident that I can gather up EVERY single Sandberg card ever made. Tartabull may be a little more difficult, but I am gonna go down swinging with that one. Of my current PCs, I am still looking to build on the Carl Crawford, Jonny Gomes, Brian Roberts, Pat Neshek, Akinori Iwamura and Jason Bartlett collections. Yesterday I showed off another Bartlett auto from My Past Time I Love It!, today I am going to start with my first Bartlett relic, a 2009 Topps U&H All Star insert of JB. Embedded in this card is allegedly a piece of JB’s All Star workout jersey. It isn’t quite a Rays relic, but its Rays era and it celebrates Bartlett making his first All Star appearance, plus the card is numbered to 50. Now, onto Danny Tartabull. This first card doesn’t look like much, but it was a tough pull back in 1993 that I never thought I would own. This is from the 1993 Topps Stadium Club set. It is card #85 and shows my fav outfielder of my youth in a stupid Yankees uniform, but this card has a little stamp in the corner that says “1st Day Production”. Cards with this little stamp were one per box and I am really happy to add this. I think there are few more years of 1st Day cards that I still need, but I am on the right track. In addition to that ’93 Yankees card I also added a 1996 Leaf card showing the Bull as a member of the White Sox. The Bull had major career resurgence with the Sox in ’96. I know it was the live ball era, but as a fan I was thrilled to see Tartabull hit 27 long balls and drive in 102. This card is special because it was from that time frame, but also because it is my first Tartabull certified autograph. It comes from the 1996 Leaf Signature Series which is really affordable and loaded with players who don’t have any other certified autos out there. Speaking of certified autos, I also added my first Jared Sandberg certified auto this week. This card is from the 1999 Bowman set, card #BA57 with a nice bold blue signature across the front. Now I have officially completed the Trifecta for Sandberg, owning his rookie, a jersey relic and now a certified autograph. If I can find a bat relic, I will be ALL SET! I have been collecting Tartabull for 25 years now and I still don’t have the Trifecta of him, lacking a relic card. If anyone has ANY cards of Sandberg or Tartabull, please get in touch. I am still looking for a good idea to break the tie between Maz, Mad Dog and Doby, too. Off to work... That is all for now… Contest will be posted tomorrow, by hook or by crook! Thanks for reading! Go Rays! troll out.

Collective Troll Card of the Day!

I have never owned this card and I have wanted it for a long time… I collected Danny Tartabull as a kid and when I got back into collecting, it seemed only natural to finish chasing his cards. I got a package from Madding of the Cards on Cards blog this Friday past-it weighed about 10 pounds and was a total surprise. He sent cards I needed for 2008 Allen and Ginter, 2009 Topps Updates, cards for my Rays team sets, Carl Crawford cards, Brian Roberts cards, Roberto Clemente, Jonny Gomes, Pat Neshek and Danny Tartabull. Its going to take a bit of time to get all of my lists up to date again. I got another 10 pounder from Adam E of Thoughts and Sox on the same day. There are so many cards I want to show off from these two packages, but I will start with this one… Danny Tartabull’s father, Jose Tartabull spent parts of 9 seasons in the big leagues in the 1960’s. He was a speedy centerfielder with a good glove and gap power. He was a part of the 1967 Boston Red Sox team and split time in right field with a young Tony Conigliaro. The card is from 1993 Pinnacle, card #473. This subset, called The Idols, shows current players with their baseball heroes. I love this card because Danny Tartabull picked his Dad, Jose Tartabull as his hero. I have always considered my Dad to be my hero and I like seeing that from a pro ball player, especially one of my favorites. Thanks so much for this and the other 500 cards you sent Madding! Oh, I do still collect Tartabull cards. I THINK that I have EVERY card made of him up till 1989 and most till '92. I am seeking Tartabull relics and any card I don't have of him. Go Rays! Troll out.

A Staggering Surprise!

I love surprise packages. Nothing brightens my day quite like an unexpected manila envelope in the mailbox. It’s even better when said envelope is packed with really awesome cards! I didn’t know a whole lot about Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius. It is an amazingly cool looking blog and I read it on the occasions that he posts, but he has been on a hiatus since I began blogging and we had never had the occasion to trade or communicate. Several months ago I had posted the lot of cards that I had accumulated of Presidents, Generals, Congressmen and Senators. I collect baseball cards; political cards-not so much. I posted them all in hopes of trading, but no one bit. Adam from Thoughts and Sox emailed me and suggested that I contact HCoSG and I did. He said he would give them a good home and sent along his address. By this time I had misplaced the cards and had kind of forgotten about the whole deal. Then it happened again, I ripped a half-off blaster of 2008 Topps and found more political cards. I dug through the collection and found everything; stuffed them into an envelope and (about 2 weeks later) shipped them off to Kansas. I had completely forgotten about those cards-they were intended as a gift, I had wanted to trade them, but when I realized their “white elephant” status, I was just pleased to find someone willing to take them. What Mathew sent me in return was (and I know this sounds cliché) was STAGGERING! There were 4 team set bags full and one stray card floating around the envelope (secured in a top loader of course!). When I say that the package was staggering, it isn’t an exaggeration. This stranger, this blogger whom I have never traded with in the past seemed to know me and know my collecting tastes. He included the standard array of Rays cards, including this horizontal Rocco card, but got far beyond that. One of the Devil Rays cards he had included got me one step closer to my team set goals, if you think that you can help, please check out my want list here.
I will save the most staggering card for last, but I will jump right into to the neatest thing included. Not too many people read this post from my first month of blogging (May 2009)-I actually think that Captain Canuck was the only one and he was also the blogger friend to revive the long forgotten collection. I am speaking of my childhood obsession with Danny Tartabull. When I started collecting as a kid I got into set building first, but soon discovered the joys of player collecting. You can see a shot of the old binder in this old post, there weren’t a lot of different issues in the mid-80’s, so I just collected as many cards as I could, regardless of whether they were duplicates. I had page after page filled with Tartabull’s 1987 Topps card. Anyway, the Captain still feeds my Tartabull collection, as does Wicked Ortega and a few others. I stopped collecting him when he signed on with the Yankees-that was the last straw. Anyway, I thought I had every card covered from his days with the Royals, but Staggering Matt proved me wrong, but helped out with nearly a dozen new (to me) cards for the binder. He is a Kansas City Royals player collector, aside from being a political card collector, and he actually had Tartabull dupes of the odd ball variety and they weren’t just cards of him on the Royals. He chipped in some Bull rookies, so newer cards of him on the dreaded Yankees, but the coolest ones are the oddball Royals cards. The Ames All Stars (produced by Topps) may be the coolest, but the stickers are pretty awesome, too, and so is the RevCo card (I didn’t realize the Revolting Cocks made cards…). Either way, these Tartabull’s were an awesome and unexpected surprise, thanks Matt!!! The 1990 Upper Deck isn’t brand new, but the cocky pose and the silly diamond number 4 around his neck deserved a scan! Of course Matt didn’t stop with all of the amazing Tartabull cards either. The last card, the one floating around in a top loader in the package, with a sticker on it that read “thanks for the trade troll” was this card from the 2006 Upper Deck set. It is an Auto-Facts Signatures insert, a subset that I had never even seen before. The card is serial numbered 212/700 and bears the autograph of my favorite ex-Ray, Jonny Gomes. The back of the card Auto-Facts moment is July 30, 2005 when Jonny Gomes hit 3 home runs against the Royals (sorry Matt!) to become the first Rays player to accomplish that show of power. Since then Evan Longoria has had a 3-homer game, but this past season Gomes did it a second time, this time in a Reds uniform. I love getting cards of my favorite players regardless, but I love any card that focuses on one moment in time, one specific day in a player’s career. Thanks so much for the awesome cards Matt! The rumor is that your hiatus is set to conclude this month; I can’t wait to read your blog on a regular basis! If you have any spare Royals cards or cards featuring politicians, or just want to read a really funny blog, check out Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius immediately! Switching gears completely and onto the blogger awards… Thanks Night Owl for sharing the names of some rookie bloggers that is going to be a really tough vote. Some other categories that need nominations (of the non blogger category) include the sports moment of the year, the athlete and coach of the year, the card company of the year, sets and inserts of the year. Get thinking blog-o-sphere and for more on the voting, check out Drew’s Cards.
Oh, and don’t forget to enter my contest! Oh, another blog that is issuing awards is Stale Gum. He is taking nominations for the Gummie Awards of the best and worst cards this year and this decade, so check that out, too. Thanks again for the awesome cards Matt! Go Rays! Troll out.