A Surprise PWE From Johnny's Trading Spot

     When it comes to generosity in the blogging world, I have found that it is quite difficult to compare with Johnny of Johnny's Trading Spot. 

    When I went to get the mail two weeks ago, I was more than surprised to see two envelopes from him amongst the rest of the usual potpourri. 

    I wasted little time in opening them up, and there were lots of goodies for me to share.

    We start out with a handful of 2025 Topps chrome Rangers. The photographers came up with some good action shots for these cards. It's always great to add more deGrom, Seager and Semien to the collection.

    More shiny! I wasn't very familiar with Anthony Gutierrez. However, a quick look at Baseball Reference reveals that the 20-year old speedster is currently in High-A with the Rangers. This season he slashed .258/.333/.320 with 48 steals in 89 games for the Hub City Spartanburgers (what a name!).

    We have two A&G cards next, the first being 2021 Allen & Ginter X (had to look that up) Sam Huff, and the second being a 2024 A&G chrome card of Owen White. I always enjoy a good Allen & Ginter card. White is with the White Sox right now, and Huff with the Giants.

    Three more Semiens added in. I've said this once before, but I'm a fan of Bowman's design this year. I'm also a big fan of this particular card. The amount of Marcus Semien cards in my collection that came from John is kinda insane. 

    I had forgotten Leody is with the Mariners now. 

    I like this card a lot. After all, what can be more fun than 'Flashback Fridays?' Young is currently in the Rangers organization as a special assistant to the general manager. Fun Fact: he has a cousin who is a former boxing champion. Who knew?

    Larry Parrish played with the Rangers from 1982-1988. His drop-off from 1987 to 1988 is really sad. He went from Star Sticker (32 HR, 100 RBI in '87) to .190 in 68 games with Texas before he was released in 1988. His career as a whole was a solid one though -- .263 batting average and 256 home runs in 15 seasons.

    As much as I love my current Rangers, this card has got to be the main highlight of an amazing couple of PWEs. I like the dual-colored stripes coming up the left side of the card. But the autograph is what catches my eye, of course. And not the facsimile one.

    Mickey Rivers played an impressive 15-year career which ended with five and a half seasons (though they weren't complete years) with the Rangers. All in all, Rivers batted .295 with 1,660 hits and 60 home runs. He also stole 267 bases.

    We're not through yet. There was one other item included in the PWEs.

    The 1991 Rangers finished the season third in the AL West with a record of 85-77, 10 games behind the World Series winning Twins. The playoffs were so much simpler then. These days it's hard to think only four total teams made the playoffs.

    Along with holding the team's schedule (of course), the pocket schedule contained a list of promotions they did in 1991, and order slip for the tickets you would purchase, and a diagram showing ticket prices.

    Would you believe tickets behind home plate were only $13?!?! Or that a group of 25 tickets were just a dollar each? If you went to a ballgame in 1991, maybe you do. I'm a little too young to know prices that good 😂

    That does it for the surprise from Johhny's Trading Spot. Thank you so much for your remarkable generosity and for the amazing new additions to my collection. I truly appreciate it.

    Y'all have an amazing weekend, and happy collecting!

Serial Card Countdown (#10-6) and the Return of Shiny

     Thanks again to The Diamond King for 100 awesome serial-numbered cards as well as some sweet post material. This the third of four posts where I count down my top 20 of the cards sent to me. After today's post we will be narrowed down to the top five (although you won't know what they are). I'm happy to announce that shiny is back and better than ever for this post, so if that's you're thing you may well enjoy it!

#10: 2021 Topps Update - Fast Friends Green Foil (326/499)

    It's really quite strange to see the word 'jell' on a baseball card. It doesn't remind me of team bonding, but more of desserts. Anyway, this card looks so much better in hand then on computer. Hopefully Bo Bichette and Vladdy can be a force once more this year. I'm not even a Jays fan -- it's plain sad to see flops like Bichette's 2024 season.

#9: 2022 Topps Chrome Platinum Anniversary Red Atomic Jacob deGrom (014/100)

    It's Jacob deGrom, which will explain partly why he's ranked so high. I like the design of the card, even though the 'Red Atomic' background doesn't fit amazingly with the orange and blue color scheme of the Mets. It looks good even so. I've already stressed how much I would like for deGrom to be healthy for 2025, so I won't go into detail right now :)

#8: 2020 Topps Big League Award Winners Rainbow Foil Jacob deGrom (077/100)

    Two deGroms in a row! I really like the Award Winners from 2020 Topps Big League (Mike Trout and Pete Alonso were featured on an earlier post). It's entertaining to see how these guys clean up after dirtying themselves up on the diamond. I think deGrom cleans up best out of the Award Winners I have.

#7: 2015 Bowman Purple Ice Troy Tulowitzki (39/50)

    This is a really nice card, and of one of my favorites. The Purple Ice design is perfect on the card for so many different reasons. This is easily one of the best cards in the box. 
    I'm a little bummed about Tulo getting kicked off the ballot this year, but it was inevitable.

#6: 2024 Topps Chrome Sonar Purple Refractor Esteury Ruiz (051/275)

    'Whoa!' describes my reaction perfectly when I laid eyes on this card. It's truly eye-popping. There is so much going on in this card. I don't think this would work well with any design other than the already neon design of 2024 Topps. The photo taken for this card was perfect too. Overall just a solid one.

    

    That's it for the penultimate countdown post. I hope you enjoyed the post, and next Wednesday will see the finale of the serial card countdown. Thank you to The Diamond King for the amazing cards which get better every week, and thank y'all for reading! Have a great rest of the week, and happy collecting!

Serial Card Countdown (#20-16)

    I won The Diamond King's last serial-numbered card guessing contest, and the prize was 100 numbered cards. Firstly, a huge thanks to The Diamond King for the cards! They are truly amazing, and I could take forever going through them.

    I said half an eternity ago that I would start the countdown, but never got down to it. Now I've finally started, and will hopefully remember to finish the four posts on the subject.

    I'm going to start the countdown of my twenty favorite of the numbered cards, and continue on down, posting every week until I get to number one. There were so many cards to choose from, so it was very difficult to narrow it down. But I finally did it, so here we go.

#20: 2020 Topps Major League Material Relics David Dahl (016/199)

    Alright, things get started with a former Ranger in David Dahl. The game-used patch took the card into the top twenty. Other than the lovely purple patch there isn't a ton on this card other than a decent action shot, but it's a great one. David Dahl has played seven years in the majors (2016, 2018-2021, 2023-2024) and is batting .268 with 324 hits and 46 home runs. He was an all-star in 2016 when he batted .302 with 15 home runs in 100 games.

#19: 2016 Bowman's Best Atomic Refractor Nomar Mazara (067/250)

    The design of this card was just too cool. Obviously, being a Rangers fan pushed it a little bit higher in the standings, but the background is plain awesome. Nomar played from 2016-2022, mostly with the Rangers, and in 684 games batted .256 with 85 home runs. He finished fifth in Rookie of the Year voting in 2016.

#18: 2018 Panini Immaculate Collection Clint Frazier (38/99)

    The patch on this card is enormous! And besides that, I like what they did with Frazier's photo -- it looks very....Panini. Well, that was the first word to come to mind anyway. Though Panini isn't my favorite brand of baseball cards, I like some of 'em (especially Panini Prizm...I dunno why, but I've always liked those). Clint played in the bigs from 2017-2023, and also played under the name Jackson Frazier.

#17: 2023 Bowman Chrome Pink Christian Yelich (082/299)

    Correct me if I'm wrong on the card identification, but I'm not very good at surfing the TCDB for unknown subsets yet. Anyway, I love Christian Yelich, and though the color scheme on the card is awfully strange, it resonates with me. I hope Yeli can have a healthy 2025 season, because it looks like he's coming back to form and I'd hate to see another season go down the drain, especially if it's one of his last good ones.

#16: 2006 Topps Sterling #76 Nolan Ryan (124/250)

    Three of the first five cards in my top twenty feature players who have played for the Rangers (not biased, shhhhhhhh). I really like this card, although it is a little bit difficult to read what the year was (I thought it was 2015 at first). I like the classic photo of Ryan tipping his cap, and think this is a worthy card to finish out the post with.

    Well, there's the top five cards in the countdown. I intentionally got the sheen on the cards -- I like that kind of thing, plus it helps to show how nice the cards look in-hand. I hope you enjoyed, and next Tuesday will be numbers 15 through 11. Thanks again to The Diamond King for the awesome cards, and thank y'all for reading. Have a great rest of the week, and happy collecting!

Quick Additions

    I got the chance to take a quick look into the LCS a couple days ago. Time was limited to just a few minutes, so I had minimal time to poke around. The store had finished their expansion since the last time I had been there, and now had two separate parts of the building; one for Pokemon and gaming cards, and the other for sports cards. The latter is more in my wheelhouse.

    I took a look in one of the many quarter boxes (which they have many more of now) and pulled out four cards. These were the only cards of the whole trip. I forgot my wallet anyway, so a dollar ended up working out just fine.

    I also forgot that the same day was the day of the new Topps flagship release. I didn't know it at the time, and I think I may wait a little bit to actually purchase some of the new cards. They were selling at almost fifty cents a card in some of the packs.

    Anyway, the four cards I acquired were all part of 2024 Bowman Chrome.

    Why not start with Brandon Sproat? I scouted him out in a post earlier this year, and since then I have become very interested in him. I was not at all expecting to find his card, so it ended up being a pretty nice addition. I hope to see Sproat pitch in the majors this year. The Mets are looking pretty good for 2025, but maybe they could use a little bit of help on the starting pitching side.

    Honestly, I don't think it's a very good shot of a player (especially a prospect) when you can't even see his face. Anyway, Bryce Eldridge is another guy I hope to see in the big leagues in 2025. At 20 years of age, he has a lot of time to improve, and he has already shown a lot of talent in the minor leagues. The Giants (who I am still loyal to) could use a sturdy first baseman, and hopefully Eldridge can be that guy.

    I am very interested to see what happens to Sam Basallo as he hits the majors. He's shown a lot of talent and is expected to debut this year. However, Baltimore already has one of the best catchers in the game (if not the best), and Ryan Mountcastle is a pretty good option at first. I guess that's what DH is for.

    So all four of the cards were of pretty high-profile prospects. Roman Anthony is the #2 prospect for 2025 via MLB.com, and of all the prospects here, I think he's the one I'm most excited to see play. He possesses the skills to become a superstar in the near future, and should provide a boost to an already good Red Sox team. 

    That wraps up the grabs from the last LCS stop. I like these cards a lot -- I've always liked Bowman as I have said before, and think the design works very well with the chrome aspect of the cards. The photos do not do them justice; these cards are very nice. I will be paying attention to each of these guys in Spring Training and rooting for them to make the Opening Day roster. 

    Thanks for stopping by the blog, have a great rest of the week (we're so close to weekend guys), and happy collecting!

More Help With the PC (and some mystery items)

     I've been working on the Evan Carter PC for about a year now, and while I can't say it's big (yet), I've gotten some sweet new additions for it, including two more from the biggest contributor of the PC, Johnny's Trading Spot. He sent me a package that arrived several days ago, full with lovely cards.

    

    I really like both of these cards. My LCS doesn't carry very many A&G cards that I know of, so I don't get my hands on very many. 

    The picture for the left-hand card really doesn't do it justice. It's a wonderfully vivid card, and of course, it's very shiny. These two cards are going straight into top loaders and then the PC box. Thank you!

    Now, this may have been the end of the post is John hadn't sent me a smorgasbord of other Rangers cards.

    Four more Rangers from the 2024 Topps Big League set. I'm really glad that the team kept Eovaldi around for the next three years. Hopefully he and Jacob deGrom can throw a pretty one-two punch. I hope Jonah Heim can rebound also after an abysmal 2024 season. 

    I'm remaining in 2024 with Topps Chrome Justin Foscue. Chrome and 2024 Topps looks like they were meant to be. They look so good together. I'm gonna miss the 2024 design. 

    Next we have a tiny little Josh Jung. I didn't mess with the size of the image to bring the point across. Though the card is small, I actually really like it; it looks old. I hope that Josh Jung can have a fully healthy season in 2025 that includes no hand breaking.

    I didn't know this at first, but this is a member of Topps Big League, so I probably should have put it with his quartet of friends earlier. Oh well. Die cut cards are so interesting to me. The first one I got was Steve Carlton from 2022 Topps, and my reaction was, 'It looks like they gave a two-year old scissors!' This card doesn't quite look like that. I like this one a lot, with the baseball directing the cutting on the card. It looks really nice.

    This is a last of the 2024 Cards(?). I think we all agree (from reading other blogs) that Topps did a really good job on their 2024 Holiday design. The Corey Seager ornament is fantastic. Besides just looking amazing, it also has a glorious shine to it, which makes it even more appealing. 

    This is 10 wonderful cards. And yet we're not done with this package! The generosity is really quite unbelievable. 

    This card looks like it came straight out of the '90s.....which would make sense since it's 2022 Bowman Heritiage -- based on the 1994 Bowman design. I wonder who the catcher is.

    The Lone Not-Ranger. I had to do my research on Spook Jacobs, because I did not know who he was. Jacobs was a second-baseman who played from 1954-1956 with the Athletics and Pirates (he played with both the Philadelphia and Kansas City Athletics). Before he played in the Majors, spook was a sergeant in World War II. Apparently a sportswriter gave him the nickname. Spook played 14 seasons and 1735 games in the minor leagues, where he slashed .300/.383/.364 with 1162 runs. He hit 9 home runs in the minors.

    Well that was a fun three minutes of research. Spook seemed to be a pretty cool guy. He died in 2011 at the age of 85.

    This is a cool little box full of near 35-year old bubblegum. I've chewed 1990s gum before (in the 2020s), but I don't think I'll be chewing this one any time soon. The box is really cool; that's my favorite Rangers logo. I actually really like this. I would not complain if this were a thing again. However, there's probably some law regarding food-borne illness which wouldn't let it slide.

    A huge thank you to John for all the amazing new cards! His generosity is shocking. I had never seen some of these before, but I really like each and every item inside this package. 

    Thank you all for reading, have a great rest of the week, and happy collecting! I'll catch y'all later.

    This post featured almost completely Rangers cards. While I'm on the subject of the Rangers (which it seems I almost always am), I have started yet another new blog. This one was the result of being turned down from a writing job. In my hopes of one day reapplying for that job, I've started Rangers Nation. This blog will feature bi-weekly posts on the Rangers upcoming 2025 season. I'm trying to keep the quality of writing on that blog to a peak, although it probably won't stay that way very long (once I get into rants and the like). If there are Rangers fans among us, you can go ahead and check it out. Or, if you're just interested, I won't turn you away.

The First Card Shop Trip of 2025

     Due to some forseeable expenses coming up this year, I'm not really going to be able to spend as much money on cards. That doesn't mean that I'm going to hit the card shop less than usual -- I'm just going to have to spend less money there.

    The first of my trips to the LCS in 2025 came a couple days ago, on the eleventh. While I didn't spend as much money there as I may usually have, this wasn't really due to expenses; there were errands to be run, which limited time to pick through boxes and really look at cards.

    I had a few objectives with the card store trip, these being a couple birthday gifts. Once presents were through, then I could have some real fun picking through boxes for a few minutes before continuing the rest of the errands on the agenda.

    By now I'm probably boring y'all to death, so I'll just get down to the cards acquired (not including the birthday gifts, of course).

    The quarter boxes did well, yielding some chrome and a few refractors. Could you not tell that I like shiny? The Woodruff is my favorite card in the small stack. If I had more time to spend, I probably would have liked to sit down and find some more goodies, but as they say, tempus fugit.

    Another Merrill for my PC, in the form of a Bowman Chrome rookie. This card was in the dollar box; it may have been a little bit much, but whatever. It's great to get another Merrill pickup, and it's a goal of mine to come away with another Merrill card with each visit to the card store. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to get the card out of its penny sleeve yet (which is why the image is blurred), and don't want to damage the actual card.

    This card made me the most happy of them all. I didn't actually buy the card - in fact, it had been sitting on a shelf since my last birthday, which was forever ago. I've been waiting to post it on the blog until I got the proper protection for it, which was found with this trip to the LCS. The card is from the 2024 Topps -  Postseason Performance Relic Gold set (thank you TCDB), and is numbered 16/25. I considered getting it graded, but opted not to. The grading process costs too much money, and the card probably wouldn't get an amazing grade, having been pulled from a hanger box from Amazon. Nonetheless, it remains a favorite in my collection.

    I got the pack of Comic Ball cards for 50 cents. I liked the 1990 Comic Ball set I received for Christmas a year or two back, so it was worth less than a dollar to pick up this 12-card pack from the 1992 set. 

         

    I love the use of major-leaguers on these cards -- Ken Griffey Jr. and Jim Abbott are visible on these ones. These are always fun cards to have. However, there were three dupes in this pack (cards 22, 128, and 134) which I am happy to give away to whoever wants to claim one in the comments.

    And, as promised, I finished out the trip with a pack of hockey cards (Upper Deck MVP). My collection has gotten a few nice little boosts these past few weeks, and I was hoping to get a few more here. The pack wasn't opened until the night before the publication of this post.

    I was surprised that I recognized more than half the names on the cards. Most notably was Brent Burns, who was once described to me as 'Santa Claus without teeth.' The other big name for me was Thatcher Demko. I think the design and coloration of the cards goes really well with the sport they represent. This was a nice eight-card addition to my still slowly progressing hockey collection.

    That'll wrap up the entirity of the first LCS visit of the new year! The whole deal cost me $10, which I'm more than happy to pay with my new card budget. 

    It was crowded in the store, which is good because I like to see small businesses succeed. It looks like they'll be expanding pretty soon, which is awesome.

    Thank y'all for reading, have a great start to the week, and happy collecting!

A Thank You To Johnny's Trading Spot

    Got a shorty for today. 

    Yesterday, a couple cards showed up from Johnny's Trading Spot. He very generously sent them to me for telling him some players born on October 31st. 

    Methinks John knows what I like: 2024 Topps, Evan Carter, and shiny cards. Can this day get any better? I submit that it cannot! And yes, the Stars of MLB card reads SMLB on the back (I don't know what the deal with SLMB is). 

    I am happy to add these new additions to my PC (now that I've decided to have one, though it's small). Thanks again John for the sweet cards! You've probably dealt me close to, if not half of the Evan Carter cards I own. 

    Now, I shall leave y'all to your days. Enjoy Sunday and the start of the week, and happy collecting! 

Mission Accomplished

     This Wednesday I went back to the local card shop. I grabbed some things for an upcoming event, and then spent some extra time picking out a few cards for myself. Most of these personal acquisitions came from one of the many quarter boxes at the front of the store. 

    These seven 2023 Topps Chrome Anniversary cards came from said quarter boxes. My favorite in the bunch is probably J.T. Realmuto. They didn't show up great on camera, but I think they look really good in-person. I like the color-scheme of the cards. Had I more time, I probaby would have added a lot more of these cards to the mix, but I'll take what I can get, of course.

2024 Bowman #85 Pete Crow-Armstrong

    PCA cost me a quarter too. I really like what the young rookie brings to the table and think that with a few touch-ups he could be a really good player for a young Cubs offense. I think the 2024 Bowman design is great, but I have heard mixed answers when it comes to that. I also just plain like Bowman.

2024 Bowman Prospects #145 Jackson Merrill

    This was the best card of the day for me (the mission accomplished). This is the first Jackson Merrill card I've gotten, which is surprising considering how much I talk about him on the blog. He's become one of my favorite players (probably my second all-tim; Buster Posey will always be #1, and Evan Carter gets the bronze), and I was very happy to find this one in the quarter boxes. I spent a little bit of time looking for more of his cards, but in vain. The individual cards aren't organized by team or player or anything, so I gave up.

    You can't see the picture very well, but it caught my eye immediately with the tongue-sticking mainly. The autograph is of the guy in the middle, Jackie Moore. Moore was a catcher who played 21 games with the Tigers in 1965. He batted 5-for-53 in his only big-league season. He managed the Oakland A's for 2+ years from 1984-1986, accumulating a record of 163-190 in that time. Moore also coached for multiple teams, including parts of twelve seasons with the Rangers. This picture/autograph was only $5, so even though I didn't know who it was at the time, I grabbed it anyway. And hey, I'm not complaining.

    I've saved this card for last.....don't ask why, it just felt right at the time.

2023 Panini Elite Extra Future Threads Relic #FT-CF

    The final card from the trip cost $2, and is a jersey relic (though not from any specific event or game). Cole Foster played at Auburn from 2021-2023, and was drafted in the 3rd round of the 2023 MLB June Amateur Draft. The card boasts of his bat-to-ball skills and ability to switch-hit. The middle infielder, now 23 years of age, is playing A-ball in the Giants organization. He has a minor-league batting average of .225 in 109 games in Rookie Ball through A+. As for his contact skills, he's struck out 134 times in those 109 games, but I guess that's part of getting used to a higher level. I wish him the best of luck moving forward.

    

    That'll do it in terms of my acquisitions from the last card store trip. As I said, the Jackson Merrill was the icing on the cake for me. I would consider this trip a win. The cards don't need to be worth money to make me happy.

    Thank y'all for reading, please enjoy this Friday and your weekend, and I'll catch y'all later. Happy collecting, and see you next time.