More Player Collection Ponderings and Some Goodies from Justin G of the Tampa Bay Sports Wasteland-Reader Input Required! Plus, A Contest is Coming!!!

Justin G from Tampa Bay Sports Wasteland blog has sent me a list of Jared Sandberg cards from Card Collector. This list shows 100 (a nice even number) cards total. It only lists 1 jersey relic card and I already have that… Of the 100 cards it lists, many are parallels. It looks like there are maybe 20 different cards and a whole bunch of parallel versions of them. He has several certified autos out there. From 1998 Bowman alone there are 12 different variations of his card including, regular, chrome, international and refractors of each one. There are also 3 different certified autos from that release. It is good to know what I am up against and I think I can handle gathering up ALL 100 of his cards. I need to dig them all out and create a have and needs list, but I believe that I has at least 15 different Sandberg cards. I would like to add the 1983 Topps, Donruss and Fleer trio of his uncle Ryne to the binder as well. I really wanted to find someone that I could realistically obtain EVERY single card of. With all that I lost I do still do own a 1/1 of CC. It is a magenta printing plate from 2009 Goodwins. It is neat, I guess. I am happy to own it, but I know I will never have the other 3 one of ones from this set. Carl Crawford just is not realistic, nor is Roberto Clemente and Evan Longoria is not possible either. Of the other guys I collect like Jason Bartlett, Carlos Pena, Ben Zobrist, Akinori Iwamura, Pat Neshek and Brian Roberts; they all just have too many high priced, low numbered cards out there. Jonny Gomes is more affordable to a certain extent, but again he has many low serial numbered cards that just aren’t available. I thought about adding Grant Balfour, but even he has a ton of cards. I think I can manage Sandberg. Any player who has 1/1 cards that has more than one fan can never be affordable or attainable. I hope to someday organize my Danny Tartabull cards and finish him off. I may never be able to afford his 1993 Finest Refractor, but I can probably track down everything else. Speaking of the Bull... If anyone has some free time and could put together (from Beckett dot com) a complete list of his cards, I would REALLY appreciate it. Since I started the Tartabull PC when I was 10 years old and still have most of his cards, that collection is very special to me. I have been trying to think of someone else to add to my list that is actually attainable. There are plenty of players I follow, both past and present, but the main ones just have too many high-priced issues out there. Bill Mazeroski, Monte Irvin, Bert Blyleven, Rod Carew, Dave Winfield, Willie Stargell, Tim Raines, Joe Carter, Dave Parker and Larry Doby are all HOFers (or should be). Anyway, I am open for suggestions. I would like to add a player from the 60s or 70s, someone from the 80s and 90s and 2000s, too. Maybe a current player. Someone who has around the same amount of cards as Jared Sandberg. At least 27, not more than 150 while remaining fairly affordable that is significant to whom I collect. That is former Negro Leaguers (or family of); Devil Rays, Pirates or Orioles, sometimes even White Sox or Senators. Mudcat Grant, Tony Oliva, Minnie Minoso, Bob Friend (another awesome card from SlangKo!), Elroy Face, Don Newcombe, Johnny Sain, Donn Clendenon and Junior Gilliam have always been favorites of mine, but how affordable are they? Remember, I am looking for total completion, but ideally would like a player with at least one current relic or certified auto, too. I am strongly considering Ben Grieve and or Quinton McCracken. Billy Pierce and Steve Carlton have always been high on my list, but after losing both their rookie cards last week, I don’t think I could go back. As for the new current player-I have received a few packages from Justin G this week. Today’s included a ton of awesome Evan Longoria cards. Some replaced ones that I had lost; a few were brand new to me. I haven’t scanned any yet though. Last week he sent a huge package of Pirates cards. He also sent this Octavio Dotel Career Best jersey relic from 2009 Topps. I don’t think I will become a Dotel collector. I claimed the card to give to my little brother. He met Dotel last month, but we didn’t have any cards of him. Looking at his “career best” numbers on the back, Dotel has had a pretty nice career. The other card that stuck out in the package was this 2010 Topps Gold card of Garrett Jones. I am a sucker for Topps Gold. After losing almost all of my Rays gold cards I thought I was done with them forever, but it just took me getting 1 more to feel the urge to chase down every one I can. Anyway, this particular gold card is of Pirates right fielder Garrett Jones. I think that Jones is the real deal and has a few really solid seasons ahead of him. Unfortunately I am not the only one. I checked a few of the popular auction sites and his stuff is blowing up. I guess that eliminates him too. He is a great player and a super fan friendly guy. I am really glad he has finally got his shot. I guess that is it for now. All of this player collection madness was inspired by Justin G by the way. When he announced he was collecting Floyd Rayford who has 36 cards total. That seems attainable. I need a few more than that, but not too much. The ideal candidate would have no 1/1 cards, at least one relic and certified autograph card and an affordable rookie card with less than 200 total cards. Oh, and I have to like him, too! I made this post because I really would like some input and advice. Any comments you can share will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the list Justin G. and for all of the great cards! Oh, as an end note, my local newspaper, the Bradenton Herald did see fit to send their worst reporter to our bout on Sunday. He left before the bout ended and seemed like he was drunk. It did make the front page (below the fold). Oh well, there is no such thing as bad press I guess. You can find the article HERE. Speaking of links (and we were) the Nitty Gritty Card of the Day is back! Has anyone noticed the new headers? One more thing to add... This blog is VERY CLOSE to having 100 followers. When this happens, ya know there will be a contest... The prize? A certified autograph of a Hall of Famer. It will be simple to enter, open to current followers only and there just might be prizes for 2nd and 3rd place, too. Stay tuned. Go Rays! Troll out!

Is This A Tradepost? No, It's Just the Troll Being Greedy!!!

Greetings! I think this makes 3 posts in one day after being gone for a week. The more things change, the more they stay the same… I am actually posting from home-thanks to Allison for coming by with her laptop! I really wanted to type out my Tampa Bay Rays team set needs and I was able to do just that today! This weekend I got a package from Justin at Is This a Wasteland… and he knows of my quest for total Rays cardboard completion and he has sent me probably over half of the cards I have in my team set binder. Up till this package I didn’t have a single card from the 2001 Topps set-I was weak in a few areas, but that was the worst. I actually had 3 different gold cards and not a single base from that set. I didn’t want to put up a want list having nothing for the ’01 set, but thanks to Justin I have a page full and that gave me the necessary motivation to get things rolling.
Anyway, I have been feverishly typing away on this teeny tiny little keyboard and my Topps want lists are all typed up and ready to go! I was able to finish the 2004 and 2009 (Thanks to Mike at JD Wild!) Topps team sets and I am really close on some of the others. For instance in 2007, I have the base team set, but I am missing quite a few of the Updates and Highlights cards. Anyway, here it is, peruse away and get in touch if you can help! The link will remain in the sidebar of the blog under Rays Collection. I couldn’t scan anything for this post, but was able to steal an image of these Randy Winn and Ben Grieve cards which were included in Justin’s trade. Thanks so much for all of the rad Rays cards and the bonus Pena’s too! You rock my friend, I really look forward to finally meeting you soon, and I will buy ya a beer at Fergs! Okay, if you have any cards at all from this list, PLEASE shoot me an e-mail at bacontowne at yahoooo dot etcetera. I will respond as soon as I can get to a computer. Also, if you have any Rays Topps Gold cards from any year-get in touch. I have about 15 golds from the 2009 Updates set, a bunch of stars, too. Okay, that’s it, thanks again to Justin and thanks to the entire Blog-O-Sphere, I have missed you all so much!!! I will end with a question regarding the Secret Santa deal that Sarah is running. I purchased all the cards for my recipient and have them all here wrapped up. I was going to wait a week or so to get them in the mail, BUT I was checking out my recipient’s blog and he has traded for several of the cards that I had already got him. Are we supposed to wait until Christmas to send and open these packages? Just curious, I am a little lost on the details of this. Anyway, it feels great to be back here, and it feels really good to get my binders out and make lists that I should have made months ago! Oh, and by the way, my Carl Crawford list is up-to-date, still need 6 more cards to reach my goal! Oh again... I have heard that 2009 Heritage High Numbers in live now. Still need another 35 cards to finish off the base set and I had already sworn to not buy any more wax, AHH!!! Anyway, if you rip and get doubles, please save them for a Troll, okay? Another one more thing... The 50,000 hit contest will be on. The question I have is should I start it this week to lead up to 50,000 OR should I wait till I get to 50,000 and then start it? Go Rays! Troll out.

Waste Land Trading!!!

Howdy, I am just getting home after attending the “Empty Bowls” benefit for the Manatee County Food Bank. It was well-attended, very successful and a lot of fun! I ate some soup, did some schmoozing and came home with an awesome bowl! I will do my best to write a recap of the event on this here blog tomorrow! I covered it for the newspaper, too, so I need to see what they end up using, plus time is super limited and I want to post another trade. I am going to manage to get through the entire day without posting any more ’78 Topps cards-I can’t make that same promise tomorrow, but it is coming to a very good ending, trust me. So, over the past few months I have received a number of trade packages from Justin who lives in nearby Largo, Florida. Justin runs a blog with a super cool name, its called “Is This A Wasteland-No It’s Tampa Bay Sports”-you can find it at http://tampabaysportswasteland.blogspot.com/ and if you have ever spent any time at all watching sports in this area, that title will make total and complete sense to you… Anyway, Justin and I have traded quite a bit, but up until now it has been totally one-sided. He has sent me a ton of cards from MY want lists, covering 2008-2009 Topps Heritage, Allen and Ginter and random Rays cards, but I was never able to return the favor. We collect the same things-Rays cards and Orioles stuff including Brian Roberts. I am a greedy guy and it’s hard for me to part with cards of my fav teams and players. Another thing that I have felt badly about is I’ve never really posted any of the cards that he has sent me. Maybe it was guilt from all the unreciprocated trades we’ve done, but more likely it was because most of the stuff he has sent me was super anticipated cards from my want lists that I couldn’t wait to get in their respective binders. Well, I am trying to be a more responsible blogger and trader, now. Plus, thanks to one of my “Trade Bait” posts, I finally had cards that he wanted and we are finally even. This makes me feel much, much better. I feel terribly guilty when I owe people cards. Anyway, this time around he also sent me a card that went straight to the binder, but it paused at the scanner for a moment, first. It is the FINAL short print that I needed for my 2009 Allen and Ginter set! It is card #312 of AJ Burnett, hired arm of the New York Yankees. I am a bit iffy about posting a Yankees card on the first day of the playoffs, but I posted Rays cards all season long and that didn’t help them win! I got the other two SPs (Curtis and Cameron) that I needed in the mail on Monday from a reader-THANK YOU!!! Now, my Ginter binder has 349 cards in it. Everything that was promised has finally arrived; I actually have all of those cards in my possession! I do still need one more base card and anyone reading this is more than welcome to send it my way. It is card number 222. Justin also sent along 13 cards from the 2003 Topps set. I had almost no cards from this issue up till now and I really like the look of this set. The bold, bright blue borders on the base cards are sweet-looks similar to the blue parallels in this year’s Topps Chrome. I wish my stupid scanner was actually able to capture the coolness of the color… Included in the lot were Joe Kennedy, Ben Grieve, Esteban Yan, Greg Vaughn, Ryan Rupe, Toby Hall, John Flaherty, Mark Malaska and current Royals pitcher Doug Waechter. He included a gold parallel, serial numbered Esteban Yan and an Opening Day card of Carlos Pena from his Detroit Rock City days. There is also a Future Stars card of two All Star outfielders in Josh Hamilton and Carl Crawford. From the oddball department is a free I-Tunes download card included in Bowman Sterling with Evan Longoria on the front. It’s plastic and credit card like and it reminds me of the phone card cards from the early 90’s. As is customary for me, I saved the best stuff for last. As I mentioned in the intro, Justin is a resident of the proud sports Mecca that is Tampa Bay and he is also a frequent flyer at Tropicana Field. He is also aware of my Tampa Bay Rays autograph quest. The original parameters of the quest required the autographs to be on card of the player in a (Devil) Rays uniform. This has turned out to be pretty difficult and beggars can’t be choosers, so here we go! This is a 1997 Topps card, #443, of my favorite original Devil Ray, Quinton McCracken. The card is signed boldly across the bottom front in sharpie, and you can see, Q actually has a legible signature! Justin got this during the Inaugural Season at the Trop and hung onto it for 12 years before sharing the wealth, thank you so much! He didn’t stop there either; this next one was the jaw dropper for me… The Q card is awesome, but Q was a fan favorite who was friendly with the fans, so seeing an in-person autograph of him isn’t so much of a shocker. This final card is from the Upper Deck Vintage set, card number 77 of former Rookie of the Year, All Star and fav of the Night Owl, Hideo Nomo. I hate that the card is of Nomo on the Red Sox. A Devil Rays card would have been ideal, a Dodgers card would have been cool, but I really don’t like the idea of having a Red Sox card in my display case, BUT it is an autograph of Hideo Nomo, so I guess I must make exception. He did have a stellar year for Boston in 2001. He pitched a no-hitter in April-I think it was the first Sox no-hitter in like 30 years or so, and he went on to lead the AL in strikeouts, so I guess its okay. I had always understood that Nomo was nearly impossible to get autographs from, so I was super shocked with this one. I asked Justin about how he got it and he told me the story. It was at a Devil Rays fan fest where all of the players were required to sign autographs at a table for a half-hour or an hour. He did say that Nomo was pretty standoffish. He probably also had a line a million fans long. Three years ago I arrived at the preseason Fan Fest late and when I got on the field where players were signing I saw two LONG lines. Lines of more people than I had ever seen in the Trop at one time and I asked someone who was signing-thinking it had to be Carlos Pena or Scott Kazmir or someone big. I was told that it was Pete LaForest and Greg Norton. No joke. Our fans might not ever pack the seats to go to games and cheer for our team, but they do know how to show up anywhere you can get something for free. That said these two autographs are awesome!!! I have gathered up over 60 autographs on cards so far and thanks to rad people like Justin, that number is getting bigger every day. Thanks so much for the great trade my friend!!! Thanks to anyone who read this. Tomorrow will hopefully bring a short write-up on the Empty Bowls fundraiser and hopefully there will be one more big post about 1978 Topps. It’s a good story and once it is told, the ’78 stories will be relegated to the brand new blog… http://1978topps.blogspot.com/ - Please check it out, I will start posting cards next week. Thanks again to Justin, you rock my friend!!! Many more awesome trades to post… Ed, Beardy, Mike, Alfredo and Jim-you guys are coming up very soon! Go Angels! Go Dodgers! Go Bombers!!! There is a Bombers bout this Sunday-is anyone coming out? Off to work, gotta run! Troll out.