Iowa Cubs

Hands down, the best package that came during my hiatus was my end of a deal worked out with a fellow collector named James through Sportscollectors.net. He participated in one of my group breaks early on and when I found out he went to Iowa Cubs games to get autographs, I asked for his help. We worked out a similar deal that I had last year with another collector (mentioned previously here) where I would buy a couple of team sets and he would try to get as many signed as possible.

Well, the Iowa Cubs season recently wrapped up and out of a possible 35 cards, I received 23 of them back signed. I'm very happy with that seeing as the set isn't usually released until July-ish and a lot of the players that were part of the team early on in the season when the sets were made have moved on in one fashion or another. And saying the Cubs made a ton of moves this year would be an understatement. Several of these guys are currently playing for the big league Cubs.

Here's the booty!

Blake Lalli, Nate Sampson, Brian Esposito, Esmailin Caridad, Matt Tolbert, Jeff Beliveau

Josh Vitters, Chris Rusin, Blake parker, Welington Castillo, Rodrigo Lopez, Adrian Cardenas

Casey Coleman, Scott Maine, Jay Jackson, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Brooks Raley, Dave Sappelt



Frankie De La Cruz, Juan Apodaca, Nick Frangella

Alfredo Amezaga, Mike Mason

Now if that wasn't great enough, James also took some of my customs for guys who had played for the Chicago Cubs at some point during the season but for whatever reason were back down with the Iowa Cubs. These are my first batch of signed cards for my custom 2012 team set.

Jairo Asencio, Casey Coleman, Blake Lalli, Rodrigo Lopez

And to top it all off, the fastest Cub north of Havana...Tony Campana!

Tony Campana

Thanks a ton James!!!