Three Collections In One Awesome Card

I had been emailing back and worth with Jeremy from No One's Gonna Read This Blog! regarding some 2008 Allen and Ginter cards he had come into. I really wanted to finish that one off and sure enough I recieved a package from Oklahoma with the remaining cards I needed to finish that set off. I will probably post them on another day, I hope. Game 4 is on and in the 8th inning and I have my fingers crossed and rally cap on. I do have time for a one card post.

This was a surprise addition and total bonus from Jeremy and it combines three of my favorite things in collecting.

1. Its a custom card and they rule!

2. Its roller derby. One of my favorite things in the world and

3. Its a sombrero card! Cards of people wearing sombreros is one of my odd genre collections that has stayed pretty small. Check it out, 3 birds, 1 stone (card). I love it!!!

Thanks so much Jeremy! You are a GREAT artist and a very generous collector and a pretty dang good blogger, too! Go Ra(y)ngers! troll out.

Wait... Couldn't publish cuz of blogger issues. The game is over, Rangers lost. My guy Aubrey Huff had a monster homerun and Freddy Sanchez had some nice plays in the field. Happy for them, bummed for the Rangers. While I wait on blogger, here are a few 2008 Allen and Ginter cards that need to go to the binder. The base set (1-350) is done! The State cards are done! Now my focus is on the Baseball Icons, Ancient Icons and Team Orange minis. As well as gathering the complete rainbow of Carl Crawford minis and inserts. Feel free to help... Wantlist is here... Thanks again to No One's Gonna Read This Blog for finishing that set and making my week with the rad custom roller derby girl! troll out.

THE TROLL IS BACK and bringing The Joy of a Completed Page!

I am back people...
And I am here to show off another completed page, this one comes from 2009 Topps Updates and Highlights. I had exactly zero finished pages in the U and H binder, but I just received a package from Jeremy from No One’s Gonna Read This Blog which included 23 cards I needed for the set and I put them to good use and finished off 12 different pages. Considering there are only 37 pages in the binder, I am doing pretty good… If you have any doubles from this series, you can find my want list right HERE. On that topic, I finally got my hands on 2010 Topps and will post on them later tonight. By the by, the Troll is back! I am a little worse for wear, battered and bruised and I am rolling without a car, but I am alive and blogging again. Thanks to EGNJ for filling in and emptying out the queue and keeping the Collective Troll and Nitty Gritty Blogs alive. Huge thanks to Cards on Cards and No Ones Gonna Read This Blog for hooking it up U and H style! Go Rays! Troll is back and he is out!

Panning For Gold

I have been saying along (to myself at least) that if and when I ever finished the Tampa Bay Rays team set from 2009 Topps, including series 1 and 2 and Updates, that I would start working on the set in gold. Well, Jeremy from No One’s Going to Read This Blog helped me out in both aspects. He sent the final card that I needed in order to finally write COMPLETE under 2009 Topps. The card that has eluded me all year was #519 of Dioneer Navarro. It’s crazy, there are cards from ’09 Topps that I have at least 15 copies of, but I didn’t have a copy of #519 to speak of. I really do appreciate you helping me knock that one off my list Jeremy. He actually sent me quite a few cards off of my Rays team set want list, but that will have to wait for another post. For now I want to talk about my new quest to finish the 2009 Rays Topps team set in GOLD. Like bling, bling! I figure it shouldn’t be too hard, I already #519 in gold. I actually have 9 GOLD cards in all now. Thanks to a bunch of different generous readers, traders and donators I had 7 GOLD cards already, and then Jeremy added 2 more to my collection with this last trade. He sent along #347 of Jason Bartlett and #UH272 of Carlos Pena to bring me up to 9, which means a COMPLETED page of Rays bling! I have added my GOLD Needs to my want list page (which is here) and I plan on posting some trade bait later tonight, including a bunch of 2009 Topps gold cards. Including all 3 different series of 2009 Topps there are 34 different Rays GOLD cards. I have 9 so far, so I need 25 more (I did that in my head) so please do a Troll a favor and check your stacks for any Rays gold please! Between the 3 different series', there are 6 different Evan Longoria cards... That is gonna make it tough! I am interested in past years, too, but 2009 is the only set so far that I have more than 2 cards of, so I will focus on it for now. Thanks again to Jeremy from No One’s Going to Read This Blog-go read it RIGHT NOW! I do appreciate everything you sent. There will be some Johan Santana cards heading your way this week. Anyway, look forward to fresh trade bait pages going up daily for the rest of this week. These will include Topps Gold cards, Legends of the Game inserts, short prints and inserts from Heritage and Allen and Ginter, relic cards and whatever else I can find. There about 100 trade bait cards total and they will be randomly be posted throughout the rest of this week so PLEASE keep on checking back! I do also have at least 100 dupes from 2008 and 2009 Allen Ginter as well as Topps and Topps Updates from the same years. Please check out my want lists for those sets if you are so inclined (Sidebar on top of page) and contact me with your base card needs at bacontowne at yahoo dot com. I also have 1,000s of base card dupes from 2007-2008 Topps Heritage. The group break will continue as well. There are a few teams left… Thanks for reading. Go Rays! Troll out!

Total Awesomeness in the Mail from "No One's Gonna Read This Blog"!-or-Total Annihilation at the Hands and Hips of Esther Gin N Juice!!!

I have traded with Jeremy from No One’s Gonna Read This Blog a couple of times now. He, like me, is on the endless pursuit of this year’s Allen & Ginter. He is taking a much more difficult route, he is trying to finish not just the minis set, but the black-bordered minis set. Good luck on that my friend! He also collects players that I don’t really care for and therefore has been a good spot to donate my unwanted Jeter, A-Rod, Johan and David Wright cards. The last trade we did, he loaded me up with Ginter Goodness. This trade included some cards, too. He sent this trio of X-Rays who all have more hopes of playing in the postseason than anyone on the current roster. He also sent along this sketch card of the best hitter of this generation, Ichiro. I do love the Ginter sketches. A lot of bloggers don’t, but I most certainly do. According to my want lists, I need only card #3 to finish this little set off. According to what I actually have in my little Troll hands, I still need cards number 2,3,4,10 and 25. I am hoping that there are some cards being held hostage by the US Postal Service and I do, in fact, only need card #3 to be done with this set and finally post them all, as a set. Jeremy sent some other random Rays and a few more Ginters as well, but this trade involved something far cooler than cards. If you have read his Blog then you know that he is a very talented photographer who also dabbles in the art of sketching. He has done drawings of Johan Santana and Sandy Koufax on his blog that are really freaking’ cool. In fact, before you read on, check out the archives on his site. Okay, assuming that you have checked his work out and you are already thoroughly amazed and impressed, I will continue. He had mentioned something about doing a sketch of some roller derby action a while back in an e-mail. The lazy guy that I am, I never sent him any pictures, so I certainly didn’t expect anything from him. I guess he had found a photo of my bone crushingly awesome wife on my blog and went to town with it. When this package arrived last week, I was a little curious because A. I didn’t know he was sending me any cards. B. The envelope was HUGE! So, I got the package on a Sunday on the way to work (I know there is no mail on Sunday, it was leftover from Sat) and as soon as I got to work I C. opened up the package. I didn’t even look at the cards at first cuz I saw art in there. The first image that I pulled out had me a little puzzled. It didn’t look anything my wife; it appeared to be a girl taking a huge hit and was also alone in the picture. Weird. As I pulled out the rest of the images, it made sense. He had made a multi-media, mixed media animation cell of the wife, Ms. Esther Gin N Juice, laying the smack down on another derby girl. Jeremy, you have no idea how many hours I have spent playing with this. You can make Esther creep up on the other girl, she can start to hit her, and then you get the finished product. Total annihilation at the hands and hips of Esther Gin N Juice!!! Thanks so much Jeremy. This is easily the coolest thing anyone has ever made for me. Of course, the rest of the team is jealous now and they all want you to make them awesome animation cells. Hell, I would love to have one of myself putting the hurt on the characters on my keyboard! Thanks again for the trade and the super awesome art! You are a truly talented individual my friend. I am sorry that my crappy snap shots don't do your art justice. This is truly amazing! Go Bombers! Go Rays! Troll out.