Mailday Monday - Trades & eBay

I'm going to thank Sam over at The Daily Dimwit once again for a fantastic mail week. I didn't recieve anything from him directly this time but he did send quite a few new readers my way after our trade, who in turn scoured my Want List and filled my mailbox.

The first to make an offer was Jeff from over at 2 by 3 Heroes. We helped each other out with our Gypsy Queen set needs (he sent almost 3 dozen my way!). He also sent a 2010 Topps Tim Lincecum which completes that set for me. I cheated when I found a factory set on clearance but noticed the Lincecum was kind of dinged up when I transferred them from the box to the binder.

 

Jeff even topped the package off with a  couple of Cubs from the Heritage set that I needed, some Starlin Castro inserts and a few cool looking Cubs cards from years I was MIA from the hobby. Thanks Jeff!

  

Next up is Adam from over at ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession. I'm not sure how he found my blog, but I'm glad he did! He was interested in a bunch of the Archives inserts I had posted as trade bait and he sent over more than a blaster's worth of cards from 3 different sets I'm trying to kock out from this year. Some of you may know that my local minor league team is the Potomac Nationals so I go to quite a few Carolina League games each summer. As you'll see below, a bunch of the guys I've seen are rising through the ranks and getting Major League cards! Most of my favorite non-Cubs are these former Carolina Leaguers:

Current National Ryan Zimmerman and Royal Eric Hosmer from Gypsy Queen. I got to see both of them play in the Carolina League with Zim making a rehab start for Potomac and Hosmer making his way up with the Wilmington Blue Rocks.

 

      

After the case break last weekend, it's hard to imagine needing any Archives but from that set we have former Nationals Nyjer Morgan and current international sensation Yu Darvish. Two more Carolina League veterans Drew Pomeranz (Kinston Indians) and Brad Peacock (Potomac)

And finally from Bowman, we have current Cub Matt Garza, future Cub hopeful Paul Hoilman and former Nat Tom Milone. Milone also played for Potomac and he and Peacock were both part of the trade with the A's that brought Gio Gonzalez over to the Nats. Thanks Adam, great trade!

   

I've been trying to stay away from Ebay because while you can get a pretty good deal on cards, the shipping is usually an equalizer or worse, makes it more expensive than a shop or show. But one of my collecting goals for this year was to make my way through the 1991 Topps Desert Shield Cubs team set. I'm not rushing even though at least half the team is available on eBay at any given time. I'm hoping this is a slow and steady wins the race kind of goal because the thought of paying upwards of $150-200 for a team set is kind of scary. I picked up this Paul Assenmacher for a couple bucks and free shipping, which marks my 4th card in the set.

Also some of you may know that in my trade requests, I'm looking to fill in a bunch of huge holes in my Cubs collection with large and small lots of Cubs cards from previous years. Occasionally when I'm bored, I'll do a search for these kinds of lots on Ebay. And a few weeks ago a lot came up filled with relics, autographs and rookies. I put it in my Watch List along with a couple of other Cubs cards he had listed individually. I ended up winning the lot and with a pretty decent combined shipping rate, picked up a couple of the single cards too. Totaled up, the cards below (along with a couple of base card rookies) was just a shade over $20. Not too bad.

2008 Upper Deck Ballpark Collection Aramis Ramirez Jersey and Autograph.

2012 Topps Golden Moments Matt Garza Autograph

2011 Topps 60 Autographs of Starlin Castro, Marlon Byrd and Randy Wells

2011 Topps 60 Relics of Geovany Soto, Starlin Castro, Carlos Zambrano,Aramis Ramirez, Marlon Byrd, Carlos Marmol and Tyler Colvin. 

A 2010 Bowman Sterling Autograph of Hayden Simpson and a 2008 Topps Chrome Rookie Autograph of Randy Wells.

I also have two more trades that I'll be featuring tomorrow so all in all, a pretty successful week at the mail box.