2020 trade package #20: Sport Card Collectors

I'm sure by now many of you are aware of the degradation of the USPS service over the last couple months and are experiencing delays of varying severity. Please make sure not to blame your mail carrier, though, or anyone at your local office. This is due to new rules implemented by the latest Postmaster General, which have been successful in realizing his goal of gumming up the system by hobbling postal employees' ability to complete their jobs for the day, leading to bigger and bigger piles of unsorted and undelivered mail. Let's hope we don't have to wait for a new president for this idiocy to end.

That negativity aside, one recent ray of sunshine is that I received a PWE Matt of Sport Card Collectors probably thought would get to me much sooner. He always manages to pack a nice punch into these so I happily tore it open to see the following six cards:

The Griffey and Ripken cards are recent Topps/Chrome inserts--with great photos--that I already had, but if you can't find someone that wants your dupes of either then you're doing something wrong. Great choice of the shots of a young Junior's trademark swing and Cal's defining moment.

And then the rest of the envelope consisted of four many Verlanders! I'm happy to report that all of these are new to me, and they're also a pretty nice looking quartet.

Card #1 is a Masters of the Game insert from 2019 Diamond Kings. I think it could have used a bit more in the background to make it more interesting, but other than that this is another DK look I like. Sticking with Donruss brands, Panini brought back the old Highlights name this year and then made a bunch of parallels of them, as they're wont to do. I'm very pleased with how my scanner picked up the look of this Pink Fireworks version, which I thought was a fun choice from their designers. By the way, the back (seen below) notes that this particular highlight was JV notching his 3000th strikeout, and it reminds the reader that he actually recorded it on a wild pitch that allowed the hitter to reach first!

Last up we have a couple 2020 Topps-branded issues. On the left is a Gypsy Queen Tarot of the Diamond insert that was previously unknown to me. GQ's never been my style but I do really like how Topps executed the tarot card motif here, especially with the rounded corners and card stock. And you'd better believe he's an ace no matter what kind of deck of cards you're talking about! Speaking of aces, he's joined by former Astros teammate Gerrit Cole on a 2020 Heritage ERA leaders base subset issue. Verlander's 2.58 placed just a bit behind Cole's 2.50, but Verlander had the last laugh with 21 wins to Cole's 20, and the AL Cy Young Award.

Here's a quick look at the backs since I only had one page worth of cards to scan and thought the post could use a second image. Is that Donruss Verlander bringing back the 80s feels for anyone else?

Matt, thanks for hitting my mailbox and collections yet again this year! I happen to have a "Giant" stack to send your way at some point that I think will nicely return the favor.