Somehow, the USPS Did Actually Deliver Some Cards this Week!

The USPS was obviously swamped beyond anything they could handle for the majority of the month.  For myself, I have a number of packages (both incoming and outgoing) that have been sitting in various sorting facilities around the country for over two weeks with no movement and/or update during that time.  Luckily, there are still a few packages that are making it through the various USPS chokepoints - and for me that means some more TCDB trades to show off from the past week!

We begin this batch of Pacific goodies from user abide. 

That Jeff Cirillo Team Checklist insert might look familiar...somehow, I ended up trading for two copies of that card (that's alright though, hopefully I can flip this one for one of the many other checklists that I still need from that particular set).

One of the many nice things about getting on TCDB is that I've been making some progress towards completing a number of sets for which trading via the blogs has been (nearly) nonexistent over the past several years.  A perfect example is the pair of Pacific sets above - 1999 Pacific and 1999 Pacific Aurora are both sets that have languished on my want list for many years.  Now that I'm on TCDB, there's actually some hope I might finish either (or better yet, both) of those sets before another ten years passes!

Net gain of cards this week (so far) from TCDB trades:  -2

Next up, from user Clarkdubya2 is a pair of Barry Larkin cards: 

That 1988 Donruss card is supposed to be the factory variation but I don't think it actually is (from what I can tell, the factory set had stripes in a different orientation than the pack version of each card).  That means I ended up trading for a "regular" 1988 Donruss Larkin card...one that I already have too many of!  At least the 1989 Sticker was needed (it's Glenn Davis on the back of this particular version).

Net gain of cards this week (so far) from TCDB trades:  -2

Moving right along to better news, we get to a larger trade from user CubinSTLsets.  This was a larger TCDB trade than I'm used to - an 11-for-11 swap and it hit a bunch of my set needs!  

We'll begin with the minis - spread across three different years (2009, 2012, and 2018).  Of course, the main score for me was that Guys in Hats mini.  The Charles Eastman card from the 2018 Indigenous Heroes set moves within one more card (#17) of finally completing the set as well!

The other chunk of the trade was for a few full-sized cards...again from a smattering of years! 

That 1992 Edgar Martinez card was a card I thought I owned but when I finally got around to putting the '92 set in a binder I realized that I didn't actually own it.  Oops.  At least it's mine now!

Net gain of cards this week (so far) from TCDB trades:  -2

I guess I proposed a lot more "even" trades in the past couple of weeks as I'm only sitting at a net gain of -2 through the first three trades of the week!  

The next trade will double up my net gain of cards leaving my house as it was a 3-for-1 swap with user lpb331. 

That's the "no number" header card for the 1992 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes insert set.  I'm still missing three more cards from the Johnny Bench / Joe Morgan portion of the Baseball Heroes set (the only portion of the set that I've decided to collect, for what it's worth).

Net gain of cards this week (so far) from TCDB trades:  -4

Next, a trade where I ended up getting way more cards than the other person.  In this one, I sent off eight cards to user timriess while I received 17 back!  

All 17 cards were from the 1996 Collector's Choice set.  Obviously, I didn't scan them all but I did pick out my three favorites from the batch.

Net gain of cards this week (so far) from TCDB trades:  +5

And now, last but not least is the final package that I received this week...and it didn't come via USPS but rather by UPS!  I'm not sure it was worth user Shaggy69 sending me the three cards via UPS in a cardboard box but it worked out for me as it circumvented the USPS logjam!  

For me, I ended up with three more of the 2004 Upper Deck Vintage cards from my want list.  Like many of the sets shown off in this entire blog post, I'm nearing the end of completing the '04 set!  My hope is that I can continue to make trades on TCDB throughout the early part of 2021 and maybe then I'll actually start finishing some of the many sets that I've been working on forever!

The other "good" thing about this trade is that it swung things back in favor of more cards leaving my house than coming into my house since this was a 9-for-3 swap in favor of Shaggy69.  

Net gain of cards this week (so far) from TCDB trades:  -1

That does it for the past week, not a bad week by any stretch of the imagination!  In fact, it was kind of fun getting a bunch of cards from so many different sets!

By the way, if you'd like to find me on TCDB you can find my profile here.  I've been adding quite a bit of trade bait to the site - over 4,000 cards right now while my want list is at a rather robust 905 cards at the moment!