Sunday, June 19, 2016

2016 trade package #14: Happy Random Tigers Appreciation Month from Night Owl

Although he might be the most well-known baseball card blogger, I don't trade with Night Owl very often; in fact this is just my third trade with Greg since I started my own blog, and that last deal came almost four years ago.  But I guess he was thinking about me after I helped him with some of his Nebulous Nine wants as part of my Wantlist Awareness Month effort a few weeks ago because he responded in kind with his own theme:  Random Tigers Appreciation Month.  I would argue these Tigers are more quality than they are random, but I'll let y'all be the judge of that:
Scan #1:  the A&G Greenberg is very nice but is the outlier here as everything else hails from 2016 Diamond Kings (Miggy and the second McCann), 2015 Stadium Club (Castellanos, Cespedes, and the second V-Mart), and 2016 Opening Day (J.D., the first V-Mart, and the first McCann).  Opening day is its usual solid if unspectacular self while Stadium Club does a very nice job of returning to its roots, and Diamond Kings looks simply fantastic.  I'm especially happy to add more of J.D. and McCann here, but everything's a winner.
Scan #2 includes the final Stadium Club card from last year--the recently called-up Moya, who went 3-5 and knocked in Detroit's only run in today's loss.  Next we have three former Tigers:  Ordonez, of whom I've mentioned multiple times that I have a ton of cards;  a Purple Opening Day parallel of Scherzer, who's having a very nice 2016; and Miller, who was sent to Miami in the deal that brought Miguel Cabrera to Detroit and may find his talents on the move again this summer.  Next is a trio of rookies:  from 2009 Heritage we have pitcher Alfredo Figaro and OF Wilkin Ramirez, then Brian Powell from '96 Topps.  Figaro last pitched in the Majors in 2014 and Ramirez saw some action with the Twins in 2013.  Powell was sent to the Astros in a deal for future manager Brad Ausmus and returned later as a free agent.  Last up is a '79 Hostess oddball of Detroiter and former Tiger Ron LeFlore.

Greg also hit one of my player collections with a very cool oddball:
I have Gibby's 1981 Topps rookie but until Night Owl included it in this package I'd never added his Coca-Cola version of the card.  The pop manufacturer co-branded these Topps issues of 11 team sets of 12 cards each.  While I'm not sure of their overall scarcity I will say that to this point I've never found a Gibson card at a price I liked, so I'm impressed that Greg sent me a graded one.  I may pop it out of the case eventually but for now I'll keep it as-is.  What a fun piece of a guy who's a hero to Tigers and Dodgers fans alike!

Greg, thanks for an unexpected and not-so-randomly excellent package of Tigers!  Don't think that the cards I sent you recently will be my last attack on your Nebulous Nine needs, either--every month should be Wantlist Awareness Month!

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