Delivery Time! No Heartbreak Here!

If you've visited my blog fairly often, you'll notice a recurring theme with the subjects of many of blog posts:  blog trading.  For me, trading is the lifeblood of blogging and without trading, I'm positive I would have given up blogging many, many years ago.  I'm glad I haven't given up writing though because the year 2020 has started off as a very good year for trading already!

Case in point is this envelope from Matt over at the wonderful Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius.  I have to say, I think Matt's blog header is the best of any baseball card blog out there.  I love that moose.

Back towards the end of 2019, I sent Matt a package of cards containing some inserts from Allen & Ginter that he needed.  As I often do with my loyal traders, I didn't demand or expect anything back immediately, in fact, I simply sent Matt the cards because I happened to have a bunch he needed and he's done the same for me over the years.

Anyhow, I promptly forgot about that particular trade package so you can imagine my surprise when I checked the mail box a few days ago and saw an envelope from Matt.  I immediately thought "hmm, what could this be, we didn't set up a trade lately."  

*side note:  Sometimes having a terrible memory makes life more fun - like when I get card packages in the mail.

I have to say, Matt's return package was a lot of fun and I don't want to bury the lead here so let's jump right in with the prize of the envelope:

That's a gorgeous Barry Larkin autograph from a fancy set that I'll probably never, ever buy for myself.  The gold ink for the autograph really pops on the otherwise understated, monochromatic card design.  Even the image used for the card is nice!

In addition to the Museum Collection auto, Matt also threw in what I believe to be a base card from that set:

Most people who bust sets like Museum Collection probably discard the base cards but not me, especially not if it's a Barry Larkin card!  I'm sort of intrigued by the "blueprint" thing going on in the background of the card.

Matt wasn't done finding neat Larkin cards for me though:

I believe that's one of the "legends" variations that Topps likes to include in its flagship set nowadays.  I didn't buy any Topps base stuff in 2019 so getting cards like this is always appreciated.

And finally, one more Larkin for good measure!

You'll see all of the Larkin cards that Matt sent me eventually featured as part of my ongoing Barry Larkin Collection series of posts.  I'm slowly but surely closing in on 750 unique Larkin cards scanned and blogged about (I own more than that but it's taken me a long time to get even close to caught up on my collection)!

Thanks again for the trade, Matt.  It was a fun surprise that even made me say "wow" when I pulled out the Larkin autograph.  As for anyone else, you know I like to trade so if you've got something to offer be sure to check out my want list and then email me!