Bradentucky Beer Fest AND Catching Up on Trades, A Few from Drew!

The mission is to post a few trades BEFORE I embark on another box break… I have MANY to scan and post, today I will start with a great package I received from Drew of the Drew’s Cards blog in late December. Drew was in on the group box break and this was his payment, plus a little payback for a Nick Swisher relic I had sent his way. Before I began I know most of you are hunkered down, surrounded by friends, snacks and the beverages of your choice, ready to watch the big game. As I do every Sunday night, I am at work. I haven’t watched the Super Bowl live in 3 years now. Last year I was really upset, this year I am dealing with it. You can’t ALWAYS get what you want. Anyway, yesterday was a near perfect day and night. I had the entire day off, which is a rarity. Said day off coincided with the Annual Downtown Bradenton Beer Fest with beer vendors from all over the world. We (the Bradentucky Bombers) had a booth there. We didn’t have beer to pour, but we had a bunch of girls and a bout to promote and tickets to sell. We had an awesome booth and tables with live bout footage and neat things to look at, plus we offered the chance (for a couple of bucks) for folks to have their photo taken with a real live derby gal. I took over 100 of these pics. I will probably do a full scale post on this awesome day, if anyone is interested, but for now, here is one of Bradenton’s Finest. With so many brewmasters and beer makers on hand I did my part trying to select the Official Beer of the Bradentucky Bombers. We should have the deal finalized this week and there will be a post on that as well.
Okay, back to baseball cards and some of the awesome stuff I received last year from Drew’s Cards. Here is nine at a time. Sorry to make you squint, but I haven’t made any progress on the scanner issue just yet, so I still have to bother my friends and use theirs. This block of nine includes: 2008 Stadium Club BJ Upton PHTOOGAPHERS PROOF, card #17 of BJ Upton. This is the first Photographer’s Proof card in my collection and it is serial numbered 31/99. From 2009 SP Authentic, card #80 of Scott Kazmir. From 2009 Topps T206, card #142 of Evan Longoria. From 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom, Deckle-Edged Andy Sonnanstine, card #190. From 2004 Cracker Jack (one of my fav sets) is Carl Crawford #98 along with a 2009 Carl Crawford Sweet Spot, #11. Next up is a Scott Kazmir, card # 419 (which finishes off my Rays team set from that product) and from 2007 Topps Opening Day, a Diamond Stars insert of Delmon Young. The 9th card on this page is from 2008 Heritage High#s of Ben Zobrist, card #577. This wasn’t all he sent though. There were some great 2009 Bowman Chrome cards that I needed to finish off my team set and then were was this AMAZING card. It is from 2008 Goudey and despite the goofy Jeter face at the bottom, it is an amazing card. It is #M-CC and looks just like the base card, except it has a G shaped relic in the lower corner. Nice! Thanks for all of these great cards Drew! It is always great trading with you. Happy Super Bowl Sunday to all! Enjoy the game and have a cold one for me! Thanks again Drew! Sorry it took me a year to post these. For those interested, the complete list of ALL of the Carl Crawford cards in my collection can be viewed HERE. There are 249 different CC cards on the list as of now, BUT I have some fresh new envelopes that I haven't sorted yet so hopefully that number will go up. In the category of recommended reading, PLEASE check out Play at the Plate's Super Bowl Sunday special trade post. I also want to remind everyone that is in on the next Collective Troll group box break that I will be posting the rips on A Pack to be Named Later. If you aren't following it yet, correct that error! Also, after the Beer Fest was over we stopped at Wally World and guess what they FINALLY had in stock? At least one of them will be added to the group break and YES I will be chasing that set! Oh, IF anyone wants to fathom a guess on WHO will be the official beer of the Bombers, a prize will await you if you get it right (before I announce it). I should mention that the Collective Troll in no way endorses underage drinking OR drinking and driving. Do sports not drugs kids! One LAST thing... $135.00 of the "Get Your Photo Taken With a Derby Girl" donations has already been sent to Doctors Without Borders. If you or your group is interested in donation, you can do so by clicking HERE. Go Bombers! One last thing, EVERYONE in the first group break has made arrangements EXCEPT the Rockies fan. Tomorrow is the deadline, PLEASE get in touch! My email is bacontowne at yahooo dot com. Go Rays! Troll out.

Happy New Year! or What Day is It????

Greeting Blog-O-Sphere!!! Happy New Year to everyone! I have been working what seems like an endless shift. The other day when my double ended some people had called out, so I drank some more coffee and kept going… I don’t know how long I have been working, but it’s been a while… I am glad there is no one here with me now to snap a picture because you may get me confused with another blogger (I have a beard, sort of). I am somewhat delirious, but still can’t fall asleep so I got on the computer and was greeted with an amazing surprise… The 2009 Blogger Awards were announced… The Night Owl is the Blog of the Year, the MVP of the blog-o-sphere, Dinged Corners is the winner of the Most Creative Blogger, I Am Joe Collector is the Box Breaker of the Year, My Past Time…I Love It! is the Trader of the Year, Drews Cards is the Best Designed Blog of the Year and the Rookie of the Year went to… Well, you can read it yourself here. Other than the last Award I was pretty happy with the recipients, all great blogs, all well deserved honors…I was honored to be included among the nominees and listed among so many classy and inspiring blogs that I read so often. Congratulations to all of the winners, all of the nominees and all of the awesome and amazing blogs that I read everyday! I’ve said it before, but I will say it again…This community we have here is an amazing thing, I love being a part of this family and I love reading all of the blogs in the card blog-o-sphere! Huge thanks and congrats to Drew from Drew’s Cards for hosting the whole event, I know it was a ton of work and you did a great job on it. 2010 is gonna be a great year for blogging! I look forward to checking out all of the new blogs that will hopefully be popping up on a daily basis…Thanks! Happy New Year!!! Oh... I have got a TON of awesome packages in the mail that are awaiting posting. Christmas gifts, birthday gifts, trades and the like... As soon as I can solve the scanning and workaholic issues they will be posted, thanks again to everyone who has hooked me up!!! I have a bunch of pack rips to throw up, too... Troll (passed) out!

I'm Back! Trying to Catch Up, Let's Start With a Great Trade With Drews Cards

Well, it seems like months since I have posted anything, I feel awful about that. I love posting here; it truly is therapy for me to get everything out there. I also love and live for the interaction with other bloggers, readers and collectors. I’ve been going though a lot of late and haven’t been able to post. I had a PayPal account that someone tapped into and made a bunch of purchases with, ever though the account had no money in it. Twenty small transactions at less than 10 dollars each were made. I apparently had the account linked to a checking account that I don’t use any more and all twenty transactions posted against this account (without my knowledge or authorization) which didn’t have any more in it. For whatever reason the bank paid them all and I am stuck with $700.00 in fees (based on 35 per overdraft). I’ve been on the phone with PayPal all day and have resolved nothing. I refuse to pay the fees, and the bank will let me file a fraudulent claim against them, which is cool, but PayPal has me very pissed off right now. They allowed someone to change the password on the account to use it for their thievery, but since I don’t know this password, they are leery of helping me. Fraud protection my ass.
That said my planned afternoon of posting is blown. I write posts in a notebook every night at work, but I haven’t had the time to type them up and turn them into actual posts. To give an update, I sent 4 packages out yesterday and 3 more today. Everyone that I have arranged a trade with or owe something to-your cards are in transit to you. I am going to try and stay composed long enough to post a trade, though. I have to be to work in 45 minutes, so it’s a race against time. I apologize to Drew for starting this post off with all of this garbage. Sorry Drew!
Drew gets the call to be first in line in my attempt to catch up trades. The reasons being many, but include: I think I got his cards first; he posted what I sent him a month ago, but also because he runs a cool blog and seems like a cool guy even though he is a Yankees fan. That list bit is important because I have been looking for a trader to ship my Yankees cards off to for a while. Drew answered the call, he is the man. Get in touch with him if you have unwanted Yankees cards (and who doesn’t?) and work out a trade. He also collects Nick Swisher and Robby Cano, so he has better taste than your average A-Rod fan (ha!). He sent me a TON of Rays cards in exchange for said Yankees and some cards I had from his Ginter list. With time being an issue, I am gonna fly through these. This first one is my favorite; I really like this insert from 2009 Upper Deck. I ripped a bunch of these packs and did pull a few of these inserts, but they were all of NL Central teams, I kinda figured that was it for the set. If there are any other Rays in this subset, I want ‘em! I do like the style of these, but it puzzles me why Upper Deck is recycling the design from 1975 Topps. Oh well, the card is of Carl Crawford and is number OPC-7 in the set. Next is a carryover from my magnificent 7 want list of Rays Heritage cards. Someone else sent me this one for my set, but I needed 2 more to fill the team set and player collection. The card is of Ben Zobrist, card #577 in the Topps Heritage 2008 High Numbers series. Trade bait trading has brought at least one copy in of all of those cards, but I still need player collection cards of Gabe Gross (#702 I think) and an extra copy of Jason Bartlett and the Coaches floating head card, too.
Next up is Topps Town Evan Longoria. It’s kinda funny because I got to within 2 cards of finishing the set and gave up and split it into team piles for trading. One of the two cards that I needed was this Longo!
Another new card to my collection is this shiny 2008 Bowman Chrome card #171 of Carlos Pena. This BJ Upton card made me do a double take. Its from the 2007 Topps Opening Day set, which I ripped a ton of, but something seemed different about it. I dug up the 10 or so copies I had and realized this one is different. It has the opening day date on the top and is serial numbered 0514/2007 on the back. Sweet! I am trying to rush here, so please forgive me. Here is a triple panel of Upper Deck cards of 3 of my favorites, Edwin Jackson, Carl Crawford and Jason Bartlett. I really miss having Edwin on the team. I hope he can make a statement in the playoffs-not that I am a Tigers fan or anything… That said, I am loving this race between the Tigers and the Twins and the Braves chasing the Rockies, I love it! Anyway, here is another strip of cool 2009 cards for the Rays binder. Then a very shiny spectrum card of BJ Upton (shown above with chrome Pena). I don’t know why, but I really have avoided buying Spectrum, I like chasing the Rays, but there’s something about the product I just can’t get into. The next card is an Upper Deck Documentary. I have gotten quite a few of these, I don’t know how close I am to finishing up all of the Rays cards in it, but I think this one is new to me. It has Carl Crawford running the bases on the front, which is weird because the game they detailed on the back mentions nothing about CC. Longo and Hinske homered and Kaz got the win, yet CC is on the card? Odd. Again, not a product I would buy, but Rays are always welcome here! I can’t show all 80 or so cards he sent, so I am gonna wrap it up with one more. This is the key to the trade, I guess, since it is the lone relic. I really appreciated this because I didn’t send Drew any relics, so this was a bonus. It is actually my first Greg Vaughn relic of any kind. I really like this card, the lumber-y look of it, and the giant hunk of bat in the center. It has a classy look. It is the first Vaughn card to find its way into my fancy Rays card display case. Now this doesn’t mean I want anymore, one is enough, but I do really like this one. I gotta motor and head to work. More stuff to come manana. JDs Wild, SOTCS, Beardy, Wicked, Joe, Jim, GCRL, you guys all have packages in transit. Sarah, I have some cards and stuff for you that I think you will really like-it will head out before the end of the week. There are a few trade bait cards left, not many, but I can still listen to offers. I think there are 7 cards left (out of 43!) and 3 are Braves cards which kinda surprised me. Whats up Braves fans? I missed the Twins and Tigers double header, but I caught the replay of the Braves vs. Fish game and the Rays handing the Orioles their 11th loss in a row. Josh Johnson hitting an RBI double, those fish don’t quit! Congrats to Brian Roberts on his 56th double of the year, too! I am babbling, so I will sign off. Thanks to everyone for their patience, I will be back to posting regularly again soon! Thanks Drew for this trade, I really appreciate it! Please excuse this post for being all over the place and rushed. My mind is on other things, but I really love this community we have here and I wanted to make my contribution daily. I do really hate trying to deal with paypal. That is one of the reasons I have sworn off ebay. I do promise to post as many trades as I can till I am caught up, then I have a few surprises for y'all. Thanks again to Drew, go check out his blog and send him some Yankees! Go Rays! Troll out.