Darwin Barney Gold Glove Replica Stadium Giveaway

I'll probably watch 100+ Cubs game this years between WGN,a friend with an MLB.TV account and hopefully catching the three game series in Washington in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, this will mark about twenty years in a row without stepping foot into Wrigley Field. As a Cubs fan, that's sad in and of itself but it seems like they are really kicking it up a notch in the giveaways department too.

After hearing about the Darwin Barney Gold Glove Replica, I headed over to eBay. I wasn't in a big rush to get one because I know they usually are pretty pricey right out of the gate. Sometimes you can catch things for a good deal when the're listed to end at an odd time or there's some kind of spelling error, but while there were plenty of them available, I didn't see any obvious steals.

Later that day, I read Wrigley Wax's post that he was actually at the game and came away with three(!) of them with help from his family. I'm sure a lot of you team collectors know how tough it is to trade with other collectors of your team. I've been reading WW for two plus years, writing my own blog now for a year but this was the first opportunity I saw to maybe work out a trade. But what could I possibly have of value that WW wouldn't already have?

My usual reaction to a Wrigley Wax post.

When I jumped back into the hobby I came across the Topps Vault on eBay with blank back 1/1's. I picked up a couple of Cubs including Darwin Barney, Ryne Sandberg, and Starlin Castro but quickly reined in the spending. Eventually I picked up the Tony Campanas when I could but no more of these since then. While Darwin Barney is my favorite current Cub (almost by default though), I knew the card would have much more meaning to someone with a Barney PC.

Long story short, the deal worked out! He got his card and wrote about it here and I received my replica trophy:

It looks much better in person, trust me. It's about half the size of a bobble head but just as heavy/sturdy.

I repurposed the hard plastic cardholder that came with my repack box from last week, printed out a small photo of Barney holding the actual award and trimmed it to fit (sort of). You can't see much of the photo once the award is placed inside but the award itself is a perfect fit for the case. It works for me just fine!

Thanks for the trade Paul!

And here are a couple of other fun relevant pictures:

A photo from Twitter of Barney holding the replica, most likely for promotional purposes.

And a little tongue in cheek humor I found.