Merry TradePostMas!

Hi everybody!

Work and life have been plenty busy in the last week or so, especially with what's sure to be a kick-ass Christmas quickly arriving next week.  Because of all that, I've been lax in posting over here, but I owe y'all a trade post featuring a couple awesome trade packages I received last week.  You can also see two MORE over at Too Many Manninghams while you're at it.  It doesn't matter what time of year it is--bloggers and readers are always generous.

I do want to point out a quick programming note before I proceed, though:  this will likely be my last post over here until the new year.  If I get up the energy, I'll try to post a year-end look at my spending and resolutions for 2012, but this seems like a good time to focus on family and friends.  I will, however, be keeping up with the blogs in my Google Reader every day.

All right, onto today's trade post fun.  As I mentioned before, many of you jumped all over my fall cleaning lots, which I still really, really appreciate.  What was even cooler is that some of you who did so were also generous enough to shoot me something back.  Here are two examples of that:

Reader Shano (a.k.a. Shannon), who took the city of Cleveland off my hands, mentioned he had some football wantlist help for me, which is always welcome.  He wasn't kidding:

2008 UD First Edition

2010 Score

2008 Topps

As you can see, that may have been a touch of an understatement.  These 19 cards put a nice dent in those three sets, especially the 2008 Topps.  As an added bonus, those featured cards I didn't have of a pair of Wolverines in Tom Brady and Jamar Adams.  Sweet!  Because these weren't sets where I was within a small handful of cards, I'd been neglecting them for a while, but Shannon's got me motivated again to finish these very soon.  Thanks, buddy!  I'll be sending more stuff out your way pretty soon--hopefully this week.

Another fall cleaning lot participant who was nice enough to send something back was the guy who runs Brad's Blog--Steve something.  Oh, no, that's right, his name is Brad.  How the hell are you supposed to remember that?

Brad actually showed off the card he sent me in an overview of some recent show pickups, but you can also now see it here:

Yes, this is how it arrived.  THANKS, USPS!  'Tis the season to continue to be habitual fuckups.  Just to be clear, this is less than 0% the fault of Brad, whose care in packaging the card literally saved it from any damage--that's right, the item in that envelope arrived unscathed due to Brad's TLC ("tender love of cards"). So what did he send me?

An absolutely ridiculous dual auto of a couple Tiger greats! (and I do mean that, especially in Tettleton's case)  I actually already nabbed this one earlier this year, but I know I can find use for it, even if it's trade bait for a fellow Detroit collector.  In any case, it was an extremely generous return for a bunch of Phillies I didn't particularly want.  Thanks again, Brad!  I'm now following his blog, and all of you should too.

Well, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas/awesome holiday season filled with food, football and 'Fractors.  Merry Christmas from TMV!