Today is a sad day for me because it's my first official day back at work. One of the perks of my job as a college professor is having the summer off...but man, does it ever make it hard to go back to work. This year is even worse since I spent all summer with my baby boy - leaving him is definitely going to be tough!
Luckily, there are ways of coping with the changing seasons and heading back to work...and one such way for me is baseball cards - and even better than that, trading baseball cards. I still have a fairly large stack of mail sitting around waiting for me to post about - so while I might want to feel sorry for myself today, I think instead I'll focus my energy on positive things such as my latest trade with Sport Card Collectors.
You can read about SCC's end of the trade here as he was much more on the ball and posted what I sent him almost immediately. Me, on other hand, often takes longer but better late than never I say (well, I say that here but I definitely don't say that to my students when they want to hand in late homework)! I digress though, back to cards!
First up, a pair of the Ginter Greats inserts from this year's edition of Allen & Ginter.
I'm ever so slowly creeping my way to completing the full set - as of the time of writing this post I'm down to only needing five more cards from the set. Of course, as always you can find my completely up-to-date want list here. I don't have much else to say about the Ginter Greats cards, they are fine enough but I don't really need yet another legends-heavy insert set in my packs of Allen & Ginter. I'd much rather have cards of volcanos or planets or dinosaurs.
Heading back a year and also to a slightly better set concept from A&G 2018:
That's a Baseball Equipment of the Ages insert - another set that I somehow never completed in 2018...and now I'm still working on it in 2019. Much like this year's Ginter Greats set, I am missing five more cards from the Baseball Equipment set. The difference for me is that I actually like the Baseball Equipment set a lot more - getting cards celebrating black grease under the eyes is more my style rather than yet another Mariano Rivera card.
The final two cards of our trade were both of the mini variety...you know, the true star of almost every A&G set made. Both were from 2018, though each represented a different set. First, this nice little Sequoyah mini from the Indigenous Heroes set.
According to the card back, Sequoyah is the only known Native American to have created an alphabet for his tribe. See, that's the kind of stuff I like to learn from my A&G cards! I have a lot more yet to learn about the various Indigenous Heroes since I am still missing nine cards from the set. Like I said, I didn't do all that well on my 2018 stuff, probably because I had an incredibly fussy newborn who didn't sleep last year - my wife and I were still doing shifts where I would stay up until 3:30 AM with the baby and then she'd get up and I'd go to bed. There wasn't much time for baseball cards, let alone trading and as such I'm quite a ways behind where I'd like to be with the set. Still, I'm thankful whenever someone is able to help me out, no matter how big or small the trade is!
One more card that I was able to land in this particular trade was one of the three unannounced minis:
That's Dennis the Rash. I'm not exactly sure of the story behind ol' Dennis here, he's very obviously fake (the back of the card features a great write-up, in part reading "He earned his nickname when he insisted he'd seen a troll, and rushed into the forest in pursuit. His axe was discovered in a bear den, but no trace of Dennis the Rash was ever found").
I know that Topps had some cards celebrating (?) the also fake soccer club Asbury Park FC (more about that here). Perhaps Dennis ties into that fiction somehow, though if he does I'm not sure how.
No matter to me, I'm a set collector so I basically want all the cards whether I actually understand them or not! Of the three unannounced minis from 2018, I'm now down to needing only one of them (MS-1 (Cuddy Calabrese)).
Thanks for the great trade, SCC. And, as always, if anyone else would like to help me out with my never ending set quests, check out my want list and make an offer! Now I probably ought to get back to returning student emails since I'm that professor that assigns homework on the first day of classes (well, only to one out of my three classes, but still, I'm that guy).
Luckily, there are ways of coping with the changing seasons and heading back to work...and one such way for me is baseball cards - and even better than that, trading baseball cards. I still have a fairly large stack of mail sitting around waiting for me to post about - so while I might want to feel sorry for myself today, I think instead I'll focus my energy on positive things such as my latest trade with Sport Card Collectors.
You can read about SCC's end of the trade here as he was much more on the ball and posted what I sent him almost immediately. Me, on other hand, often takes longer but better late than never I say (well, I say that here but I definitely don't say that to my students when they want to hand in late homework)! I digress though, back to cards!
First up, a pair of the Ginter Greats inserts from this year's edition of Allen & Ginter.
I'm ever so slowly creeping my way to completing the full set - as of the time of writing this post I'm down to only needing five more cards from the set. Of course, as always you can find my completely up-to-date want list here. I don't have much else to say about the Ginter Greats cards, they are fine enough but I don't really need yet another legends-heavy insert set in my packs of Allen & Ginter. I'd much rather have cards of volcanos or planets or dinosaurs.
Heading back a year and also to a slightly better set concept from A&G 2018:
That's a Baseball Equipment of the Ages insert - another set that I somehow never completed in 2018...and now I'm still working on it in 2019. Much like this year's Ginter Greats set, I am missing five more cards from the Baseball Equipment set. The difference for me is that I actually like the Baseball Equipment set a lot more - getting cards celebrating black grease under the eyes is more my style rather than yet another Mariano Rivera card.
The final two cards of our trade were both of the mini variety...you know, the true star of almost every A&G set made. Both were from 2018, though each represented a different set. First, this nice little Sequoyah mini from the Indigenous Heroes set.
According to the card back, Sequoyah is the only known Native American to have created an alphabet for his tribe. See, that's the kind of stuff I like to learn from my A&G cards! I have a lot more yet to learn about the various Indigenous Heroes since I am still missing nine cards from the set. Like I said, I didn't do all that well on my 2018 stuff, probably because I had an incredibly fussy newborn who didn't sleep last year - my wife and I were still doing shifts where I would stay up until 3:30 AM with the baby and then she'd get up and I'd go to bed. There wasn't much time for baseball cards, let alone trading and as such I'm quite a ways behind where I'd like to be with the set. Still, I'm thankful whenever someone is able to help me out, no matter how big or small the trade is!
One more card that I was able to land in this particular trade was one of the three unannounced minis:
That's Dennis the Rash. I'm not exactly sure of the story behind ol' Dennis here, he's very obviously fake (the back of the card features a great write-up, in part reading "He earned his nickname when he insisted he'd seen a troll, and rushed into the forest in pursuit. His axe was discovered in a bear den, but no trace of Dennis the Rash was ever found").
I know that Topps had some cards celebrating (?) the also fake soccer club Asbury Park FC (more about that here). Perhaps Dennis ties into that fiction somehow, though if he does I'm not sure how.
No matter to me, I'm a set collector so I basically want all the cards whether I actually understand them or not! Of the three unannounced minis from 2018, I'm now down to needing only one of them (MS-1 (Cuddy Calabrese)).
Thanks for the great trade, SCC. And, as always, if anyone else would like to help me out with my never ending set quests, check out my want list and make an offer! Now I probably ought to get back to returning student emails since I'm that professor that assigns homework on the first day of classes (well, only to one out of my three classes, but still, I'm that guy).
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