A PWE from CB, a BA Benny teaser, and @floppscards

CynicalBuddha's PWE is anything but plain:

I received a couple card-related items in my mail yesterday, and the more manageable of the two (more in a moment) came from Mark/CynicalBuddha of Collector's Crack.  Apparently he was fairly pleased with the package I sent his way recently, so he decided to send me a few more Tigers, not that he needed to do so after our last trade.  Still, it was a nice PWE surprise on an otherwise dreary Monday:

I think at this point everyone in the civilized world knows these are the Gold and Emerald parallels from 2013 Topps.  While Delmon is now part of the group of players traditionally called "former Tigers," his exploits last fall were enough to sway me to hold onto his Detroit cards. (At least until I forget why I'm keeping him and send them to someone else!)  So in short, this was a perfect kind of PWE trade to open up after the first work day of the week.  Thanks, Mark!  I definitely look forward to more trading in the future.

BA Benny tradesplosion preview!:

While he's not back among the land of bloggers (or, I guess, Blogoland, since that's one of his favorite terms), Mike from BA Benny's Stuff and Junk sent me a trade package that I've been looking forward to for a while--not that I don't understand why he just got around to sending it considering the 1980s Hollywood cocaine party's worth of snow and assorted bad weather that got dumped on his state.  As always, he made it worth the wait, and while it'll take me a while to get everything scanned and posted (I don't even know where to begin right now!) I wanted to at least give you guys a teaser of what's upcoming:

Medium flat-rate box = SCORE!

Three boxes, a boxed set, wrapped-up stuff, cardboard-protected stuff, and MegaBarry

THAT'S A LOTTA NUTS CARDS!

So, yeah, that should be a lot of fun!  Stay tuned for what I'm betting will be a series of posts about one of my largest trade packages ever from my #1 favorite trader ever.

More like...FLOPPS trading cards--oh wait...:

I don't know how I missed this up until now, but someone made what just may be a parody of Topps' Twitter account.  See, based on what's being said, it's not completely out of the question that @floppscards is the new official mouthpiece for the dictatorial card company.  I mean, they're certainly consistent with Topps' messages to and sentiments towards collectors:

Spooky.  Anyway, the whole reason I found out about this account was reading Blowout's boards as usual.  Oh sure, there's multiple threads a day about the impossibility of getting through to customer service at Topps (and, to be fair, Panini).  Still, some collectors had found a reasonable method of resolving their cases of missing hits, long overdue redemptions and the like:  tweeting at Topps' support account, @toppssupport.  Some chose to directly message Topps there while others, usually with more success, made their requests public, so that at least in theory, Topps' hand would be forced.

Well, a Blowout member noticed today that the @toppssupport account has gone the way of Topps Total, leaving lots of collectors in the lurch.  While it's possible something will step up to take its place by the time you read this, or not long after, this is a second black eye on Topps face when it comes to customer service. I'm pretty sure that means they've run out of eyes.  The company already does a horrible job of packing out its products, considering the multitude of reports of missing hits, and it appears as though they insert redemption cards as a practical joke on consumers as they fail to fulfill those in a timely fashion, if ever.  More recently, they've also taken a reputation hit after completely messing the Turkey Red distribution to disappointed buyers.  Still, at least people had the recourse of working with someone through @toppssupport instead of dealing with the most common experience I've heard so far:  trying to call, getting stuck on hold for a half hour or more, then either leaving a message that's never responded to, or failing to leave a message because that box is already full of other collector complaints about Topps' shitty QA.

So considering the fact that Topps has killed the most effective means of customer support while keeping the propaganda machine humming along, is it so far-fetched to believe that @floppscards is simply a misspelled official Topps account?