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Delivery Time! Highly Subjective Stuff.

I've been working on cleaning off my desk for quite some time (months actually).  I had it almost completely cleared off right before the holidays - but then life got hectic and stuff got piled back up on it.  Well, now that the holidays are long, long over it's time to get back to a clean desk.  To do so, I need to go through a few more trade envelopes that have arrived since the holidays.

Today's post will be part 1 of a two part series on a trade completed with Brian over at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary.  Brian and I swapped packages around the New Year - he received a boatload of Twins from me and I a boatload of Reds from him.  So many Reds, in fact, that they won't all fit in one post!  Instead, I'll simply show off some of my favorites from the first of the two team bags full of goodies.

We will start with this pretty cool Topps Heritage insert, presumably from the Heritage Minors set.

You don't get to see a lot of minor league logos - and I love the idea of showing the progression of a player through the minor leagues.  Such a simple concept, but well done (and a lot of fun since many minor league teams have interesting names and/or logos)!

Next, we stick with the modern theme but head to the Major Leagues for one of the Reds' best players over the past several years: a  2017 Gypsy Queen card of Joey Votto.

I've been on a self-imposed buying moratorium lately (in terms of new cards).  Instead, I've been trying to acquire cards from years gone by to finish off the glut of sets that I've been working on.  As such, I appreciate trades such as this one that allow me to still acquire some newer Reds' goodies that would have otherwise passed me right by!

Another set that I haven't bought in years (truly!) is Topps Chrome.  I'm not exactly sure why - I mean, I like Chrome cards a lot. 

I guess it's because the set ends up being quite costly to put together if you buy by the box...and Chrome box prices are always higher than I think they should be since I never pull interesting autographs from my boxes.  Thus, getting nice cards like this Peraza rookie in Chrome is also much appreciated!

From new stuff, let's go way back in time to some true vintage goodies!

I love the little Redlegs logo in the corner - and the design of the set is obviously top notch (as evidenced by the incredible number of times that Topps, and other companies, have basically copied and repeated the design in more modern sets).  Brian filled the team bag with a lot of surprises but I think the vintage cards were perhaps the most fun things to pop out of the bag!

The final two cards from Brian's first team bag were the two cards that I could see as soon as I opened the envelope.  Each is an autograph - one from one of the players that I have a PC of and the other on a card image that's one of my favorites.

Let's start with the PC player:  Sean Casey.

I don't have many Casey autographs and now he seems to be a forgotten player of sorts so I doubt there will be many more new autographs of his to track down.  Thus, getting an official one is extra cool since who knows when or if I'll have that opportunity in the future. 

Back in the day, someone on the blogs (and my forgiveness please for forgetting who did this) used to post a snippet of a signature and have people guess the player.  Casey's signature would have been good for that - there's enough there to make reasonable guesses but it's not so clear as to be obvious and make the game no fun.

Finally, we end with this beautiful on card autograph of a guy who didn't play for the Reds all that long.

What a great card - and an even better image.  I love the collision, you can even see the baseball escaping the catcher's grasp. 

So many great cards in that envelope...and that's only the first half!  I'll show off the second half soon but I must say "thank you" to Brian right now for all the cool stuff.  As for anyone else, if you'd like to trade be sure to hit up my want list and then make an offer.

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