2019 trade package #41: Scribbled Ink

My final trade cards of 2019 came courtesy of buddy of the blog and fellow Michigander (for a bit longer!) Paul of Scribbled Ink.  He's a busy dad so I try to meet up with him now and then if we get the chance, and as luck had it we were both available for his monthly neighborhood show in Troy on the last Saturday of December.  I don't tend to enjoy that show as much as the one I frequent in Taylor, though this one ended up working out quite well.  More on that soon!

Anyway, Paul let me know that fellow TCDBer C2Cigars would be in town and was interested in a meetup, which sounded like fun to me.  He was a cool guy and we all swapped a few cards while hanging out at the show for a while.

On a related note, Paul brought a box of stuff for me, and out of that big pile I ended up with a nice chunk of new cards for my PCs.  (I'm trying something a bit different tonight by only scanning the new stuff instead of everything, and we'll see what I do in the future.)

We'll start with a few 2019 Topps Tigers.  Greene (the only Update example here) was traded to the Braves, of course, and utility guy Rodriguez went to Milwaukee on waivers, but the other two seem to be ticketed for a good amount of playing time in 2020.  I think I've mentioned this once or twice before but I got to see Lugo play with Single-A Lansing a few years ago when he was in Toronto's system; He then got flipped to Arizona before heading to Detroit in the J.D. Martinez deal.

Pretty much everything else was baseball PC stuff.  Before I show off the spoils I wanted to demonstrate the composition of this box.  The pile on the left is all Jim Abbott cards while the one on the right is everything else!  I did a count and came up with 80 total Abbotts, 48 of which were unique, and I needed five of those, which means Jeff's getting a bunch of new cards of one of his favorites!

One of the words of the day is definitely "oddballs," and that's a good word when it comes to sending cards to me because there's always a high likelihood that I don't have one you're sending me.  Four of Abbott's cards here fall into that category, including some unlicensed issues and a '92 U.S. Playing Cards four of spades.  Even the more mainstream card is a bit odd--a '92 Studio Preview.  I happen to think preview cards are lots of fun to collect too, and my collection of those is also fairly small.  By the way, there were some really nice Abbotts in the dupes pile, so I want to make sure to give Paul credit for those as well.

The letter "G" is a big one today as well.  One Grandy isn't "too many" but it's a great place to start, and this Orange Refractor from 2012 now has a happy home with me.  Griffey cards from '96 Summit (co-starring Johnny "Noodle Arm" Damon) and 2019 Topps Perennial All-Stars are also very welcome, especially since they push his collection over the 900 mark to 901, allowing him to join Ripken in that very exclusive club in my collection!  A nice little run of Gwynn--the player who got the most new cards this time--follows, and that begins with an odd-ish boxed set Fleer card from '86.

Again, I give lots of credit to Paul for sending some super nice Gwynn cards that I obviously liked since I'd picked up a number of them myself.  This run of five (with more below) starts with another unlicensed item, then jumps ahead to the next couple of decades.  The UD Heroes card actually came out of Prospect Premieres in 2002, which might explain why it looks so different compared to that name's usual design.  And I love the throwback to Donruss's Heritage Collection on Panini's beautiful Diamond Kings card from 2017.

Supercollection guy Rich Hill would appear here but both his items were dupes; That's still worth mentioning since Paul smartly tossed them my way in hopes of feeding my favorite PC.  I can generally find good homes for those anyway.  Instead, how about a super cool Pacific Barry Larkin card, 2000's Invincible, which, as a reminder, is a base card!  Man do I miss Pacific.  Paul certainly didn't miss when he managed to hit my Clayton Richard wantlist twice:  2018 Topps Big League's Blue parallel and 2019 Topps Update.  Clayton's made a decent number of Topps appearances in the last few years for a lower tier pitcher so there's still plenty I need.

I'll include the last card from that scan in this group, which includes four of the packages five many Verlanders!  The Chrome 2019 Topps 150 card above has a Refractor finish while the one that follows it is an X-Fractor from the base product.  Topps Fire isn't really high on my list but of the Gold Mint and Orange (#108/299) parallels above, the latter looks pretty sharp and I do like that it's numbered.

The horizontal cards formed a nice group of eight, and it starts with more winning with Gwynn.  '94 Select and '96 Collector's Choice (with Edgar!) take me back to the early years of my teens when I was collecting a bit, but the UD3 and Ionix cards from a bit later really hit home with memories of some of my prime collecting years before I took a bit of a break in college.

And again, props to Paul for hitting a couple of my slightly more obscure PCs.  Two-sport star Henson gets his 59th card, and and awesome one too, from back when Refractors really meant something and didn't have like 80 versions.  His 2003 Topps Chrome Gold Refractor has that big fat serial numbering (#062/449) that brings back fond memories of collecting in the first half of that decade.  And he also surprised me with a 2002 card of Putz I needed from that year's Piece of History product (#793/950), my 199th checklisted card out of 217 overall.  Well done!

Closing things out here, Cal makes one appearance as a co-star on a 2019 Topps Historic Through-Lines insert with Astros star Carlos Correa.  Baseball-Reference finds that the latter's age 22 season, 2017, was Ripken-esque, plus there's the card's point that both were AL rookies of the year.  And then there's one last Verlander, another appearance from 2019 Topps Update.  Not only can I credit Paul for the 900th Griffey I'm posting, but he's also responsible for JV #400!  As with Junior he's now one card over that mark.  Quite the exciting trade package, no?

Well we're not quite done yet.  "Bipped with Sabos" is your new favorite band name that you're gonna steal, and in my case I laughed at seeing these 90s Topps second-years of Spuds because of a purchase I made that that day's show.  Anyone need this card in quantities ranging from 1-12?

The final baseball item is a graded copy of Alan Trammell's '84 Topps Rub Downs oddball issue.  I already had a regular copy but Paul pointed out that this one got an '84 grade, so it'll be fun keeping it this way.  Until I crack it, trim it, and resubmit it under the name "Vary Gee, sports card influencer" and it comes back as a 110.  By the way, SGC bills itself as "THE MOST TRUSTED GRADING & AUTHENTICATION SERVICE IN THE INDUSTRY," which is like Curt Schilling calling himself the most trusted athlete in a room with Aaron Hernandez, Ray Rice, and Pete Rose.  Good luck with that.  Anyway, cool item!

And at last, the final item in the box was this Jordan Poole 2019-20 Prizm Draft Prizm parallel, my first of a guy who 1) hit this amazing buzzer-beater in 2018 to send Michigan to the Sweet 16 on the way to an appearance in the title game,

and 2) is not Jordan Peele, the hilarious actor and brilliant writer/director of Get Out.  I'm very happy to begin his collection with a college card.

Paul, thanks again for all of this and so much more!  I'm looking forward to more trades and hopefully a couple games and shows before you head to the northeast.

With my 2019 trade packages wrapped up I'm planning on covering the aforementioned late December show next, then I'll decide if I want to finish up 2019 with my COMC loot before moving on to my first show of 2020, trade package (a box!) #1 from this year, and my first buy on eBay.  Stay tuned!