2021 trade packages #17 and 18: Scribbled Ink

While it's hard to find reliability these days, I can just about always count on Paul of Scribbled Ink (but mostly on Twitter) to keep things interesting. He may have moved to New England, but he'll be damned if he ever turns into a Masshole! The erstwhile Michigander and current New Hampshirian was nice enough to treat me to both a bubble mailer and PWE recently, so I thought I'd round them up into one post. And I meant it when I said he made things interesting here as I didn't expect any of this stuff!:

We'll start off with the bubble mailer that I believe arrived in late June. This is how he packaged the contents, and the sticky note made me laugh since he'd hyped up one or more if the items he was sending here.

Here's a look at almost everything in the envelope. Up top we have three totally random packs: 1991 OPC Premier baseball, 2015 Panini Texas Longhorns, and 1990 Collegiate Collection LSU. He thought I might try to flip the latter two to fellow college collectors, but he was wrong since I went ahead and ripped all three (more on that below) since I don't really buy packs for myself anymore.

Next is a pocket schedule from a Minor League team about a half hour away from Paul's new home: the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Even with Sith Lord Rob Manfred robbing towns of teams, it's nice that you can often count on a nearby Minors franchise for fun, low-cost games. This one happens to be the AA team for the Blue Jays (previously the Cards, Mariners, and Rockies), and claims potential future star IF Austin Martin as one of its better prospects. I hope Paul gets to enjoy seeing some of Toronto's future stars on their way up!

And last up in this scan we have two of the most exciting items here: a pair of Gypsy Oak cards. I'll admit I don't know much about these, but I've seen the works of art by the talented Jeff Baker all over the place, and I'm always impressed by how great they look. There's some great people doing amazing things in the world of customs right now (more on that later), and this guy is clearly one of them. I believe Paul asked me if I was interested in the Greenberg (it may have been a dupe for him?) but the Ripken, apparently signed by the artist, was definitely a surprise. How great do these look?!

I thought it would be worthwhile to show off the backs. Hank's card definitely has an 80s Topps feel to it, and Cal's functions as a checklist. If you're interested in more stuff like this, I'd suggest checking Jeff out on Twitter or his site here.

Of course, "more stuff like this" includes by far my favorite item in the envelope, this carved(? Etched?) Braille card of Ripken. It's scanned here at roughly its actual size, and obviously it looks even cooler in-hand, but even in a 2D image you can get an idea of the level of detail and quality. I did some quick translating and the Braille reads:

Cal Ripken Jr

Balt Orioles

Stars of

Sports

Man, how cool is that? I really appreciate the great work Jeff put into his pieces, not to mention Paul for including what's now one of the most interesting items in my Ripken collection.

Before we get to the PWE, here's a quick look at the results of the packs:

1991 OPC Premier:  I got my 7 cartes de baseball as promised, and the pack definitely had a Canadian lean with a pair each of Jays and Expos. Crime Dog and Bonds are the most notable players here, but Boddicker, Key, and Gruber each had pretty nice careers as well, with all winning at least one ring.

2015 Panini University of Texas is just like the Michigan product I enjoyed so much. Most of the players are well known to me, as I'm sure they are to many sports fans, and I'll probably toss them up on TCDB unless somebody comments here that they want them.

I've seen packs like this LSU version before, I believe, and they're great for collectors of universities like me. Not that I can really stand any SEC teams for multiple obvious reasons, of course. Again, these'll go up on TCDB unless I have one or more readers who are a different kind of Tigers fans!

A bit earlier this month I was then the lucky recipient of Paul's favorite ammo: a PWE.

I get where he's coming from because despite collecting a ton of different players, for a lot of them I already have a lot of the basics. He's really underselling himself here, though, because I most definitely didn't have any of these items and was in no way likely to find them myself anytime soon:

Before I discuss these, here's a look at the backs of the first two cards, since there was no way I was going to have any inkling what they were without doing so myself:

Millburg Trading Cards looks to be a company that prints all kind of custom stuff like cards, stickers, and apparel. As with any customs featuring player likenesses and/or obvious use of other companies' designs, I don't know the legal workings of this, but I will say that their cards look pretty cool!

#1 is former Wolverine (as if I don't mention that fact enough) and 2021 All-Star Jake Cronenworth from the Lettermen line. Click the link to see the large range of players and schools, though, spoiler for fellow Michigan fans: Cronenworth is the lone representative for our team. Not a surprise in a set that's heavy on alumni of such programs as UCLA, LSU, and Vanderbilt. Anyway, Jake's card looks excellent, with a good (if a bit too zoomed-in) action photo, team colors, and the team nickname in fat capitals up top.

Another guy who was no stranger to the Midsummer Classic (and who I thought was fun during the Home Run Derby broadcast) is Junior Griffey, here repping the Quarantine Project Minis line. This 12-card set uses the classic '62 Topps design and places a cartoony or mosaic type of image of a player over a photographic stadium background. I like the resulting posed image of Griffey in a Mariners uni from early in his legendary career.

Last up is a card that was customized by the pictured player--an IP or TTM autograph of one of my bigger recent PC guys, Dean Palmer. The slugging 3B signed his '92 Ultra base with some decently legible writing, and I'm really happy to get a card like this for his collection since I never sent him a TTM request back in my younger days when I sent a ton of those out. It was very cool of Paul to think of me whenever he found that, and that's a great example of why I love trading with people like him.

While he obviously doesn't feel like he sent me much, there were clearly some gems for me in both envelopes, especially when it comes to the custom-type stuff that wasn't even on my radar. So, many thanks to Paul for this pair that came up aces! Once I get my end of my latest huge TCDB deal, he'll have a nice fat stack of stuff heading back his way to reward these efforts.

As for me, I have a few things in the pipeline: that TCDB deal I just mentioned, this month's show, an eBay win, and the final post in my latest Sportlots series, plus who knows what else? When will I get to all of that? At some point!