GERONIMO!!!!

I think he should go by Geronimo Jansen instead...

What I Like About Blue

I could have titled this one, "What I Like About Night Owl," but that doesn't sound like a song-title.  At least not one that I have heard, anyway.  Maybe it's a dubstep song, but I don't know anything about that.

Night Owl sent me a PWE back in March and it was blue, through-and-through.

He sent these blue Royals:

He sent these blue Dodgers:

He even used the BLUE TAPE. 

 I can not stress enough how much better it is to get the packages with the painter's tape versus the ones with clear scotch tape 3-layers-deep over everything (that's right, Listia, I'm talking to you).  Bloggers, if you aren't using this stuff for shipping, do everyone a favor and go buy some.

So I told you this package was blue through-and-through.  That was a lie.  He included one more color.......

YELLOW!!!

1991 Fleer...can't beat it.  :-)  Thanks, Night Owl!

Des Moines, Iowa Baseball Card Show

I was back home in Iowa in October to visit my parents and my little sister.  I knew I was going to be in Des Moines one weekend, so I just checked the Beckett Show Calendar to see if there were any card shows happening then.  It turns out that there was!  Here's what the listing said :

Urbandale American Legion Hall, 6805 Douglas Avenue, 8-3, 80T
Ryan Grother 515-491-8403 ryancardz@gmail.com

Based upon that, I was pretty stoked.  80 TABLES?!?  This thing is going to be massive!!!!  Well.........not so much. When I got there I counted 8 or 9 dealers (10% of the advertised amount).  I only had to go about 4 miles from my sister's house to this show, so it was no biggie for me, but if I'd made a longer trip based on that info I'd be pretty ticked.

However, this show DID redeem itself.  6 of the 8 dealers had either dime or quarter boxes to sift through, and I was able to find a bunch of "treasures" for myself.  Some of them were also willing to negotiate on bulk pricing on those dime/quarter cards, helping me to stretch my budget a little farther.  All-in-all, I came home with a 250-count box nearly full.  It was all cards I wanted for myself or for trades, and I think my total spending was under $30.

Here's a sampling of the stuff I picked up.

The greatest athlete to ever come out of Iowa State.

2007 Allen and Ginter - Cael Sanderson - #23

The last two "State" Royals that I needed from that Ginter Subset.  I am still looking for the Iowa card (Casey Blake) if anyone has that.

Three more MINDS.  Now I want to go do electro-magnetic experiments on a steamboat...

One guy there had a whole mess of Panini Americana.  He must have just busted a few boxes and was looking to dump cards.  He had Presidents with lovely facial hair:

A Married Couple (The Yale card will go in my wife's binder):

And some gentlemen with VERY unique leaping styles:

I always liked Barbara Bush.  She felt like "America's Grandma" to me.  She was the REAL Barbara Bush...not like that fake one.  :-)

Here were a few dime-box cards I grabbed for trade.  Do any of my Dodger-blogger friends need any of these?  The "Invincible" card is half-cardboard/half-plastic.  The Goodwins are minis.

After that I was just looking to pick up miscellaneous Royals cards.  Neither of these gents are with KC anymore, though. 

Some randoms....Bo Knows Archery!  Don Denkinger is the favorite umpire of all Royals fans everywhere. 

Finally, I grabbed a card off my "Most-Wanted" list for just 10 cents.  Justin Maxwell taking BP in the construction site.

2008 Upper Deck - Justin Maxwell - #326

Just think what I could have come back with from an 80-table show!  Probably 10 of each of those cards above....

Berroa, Thy Pants Aren't Argyle

Angel Berroa - Hot Materials Relic - Future Swatch

Back in January (yikes!), I made a trade with Greg Z. from Plaschke Thy Sweater Is Argyle.  He was the prompt-posting half of this trade...posting what I sent him in February.  I sent him a Poker auto + Dodgers + Phoenix Suns.  Here's what I got in return.  The Berroa card above Greg was HAPPY to part with, and I was happy to get it.  I figured it was a jersey/shirt relic...until I looked a little closer - "Spring Training Pants."  I like to think that the card company had him changing in and out of pants all morning so they could make more of these.

Run your sprints...change your pants.

Take some BP...change your pants.

Hustle down the line....


...Change your pants.

The other relic I got out of this trade was a nice blue Brandon Marshall relic from the Broncos.  Yeah, that was 2 teams ago for him, but it's still a nice card.  

Leaf Rookies and Stars Relic - Brandon Marshall

 I like the weird stuff, too.  One of my fun collections is "Grumpy Coaches."  Greg was more than happy to oblige me with some NBA guys, a Zen-free Phil Jackson, and old Tommy Lasorda. 

 We also got an example of some fine NBA fashion.  Rec Specs + KJ's Bow-Tie.  SWEEEEEEET.

So which of these is your favorite??

Thanks, Greg!

Dodgers Trade Bait

When Spankee ran his big Group Break awhile back, in addition to picking up the Royals, I decided to buy in for the Dodgers, too.  I figured one of three things would happen:
1) I would get something I really liked and wanted to keep.
2) I would get some cool trade bait.
3) I could give the whole stack to some local fans (there are LOTS of Dodger fans here in the LA burbs).

Well, I got a bunch of cool stuff, but nothing that jumps out and says KEEP this, so everything here is for trade.  There were a bunch of other base cards from the break that I would also happily trade, so if you are looking for anything from the packs that he busted, let me know.

Here was my Dodger hit.

2008 Baseball Heroes #94 Relic - Chad Billingsley - #013/125

 Some Gypsy Queen:

2011 Gypsy Queen Green Paper Paralle #59 Duke Snider, Great Ones #GO17 Pee Wee Reese

Campanella:

2009 Topps #PR-14 Roy Campanella, 2011 Topps T60 #T60-59 Roy Campanella

A few oldies:

2004 Donruss Studio #100 Duke Snider, 1988 Stadium Club #361 Adrian Beltre

Chrome and Refractor:

2011 Bowman Chrome #BCP80 Dee Gordon, 2010 Topps Chrome Refractor #20 Manny Ramirez

Clayton Kershaw:

Clayton Kershaw

Other Dodgers:

Dodgers

In addition, there were a few other non-team-specific cards that came my way.  The first one is a 2009 Goodwin Champions on-card auto of poker player Evelyn Ng (#A-EN).  The second one is the 2011 Gypsy Queen "Levitia" (#GQ10).  Finally is a Kenesaw Mountain Landis Obak mini (#13)

Evelyn Ng, Levitia, Kenesaw Mountain Landis

If you see anything there that tickles your fancy, please leave a comment on this post or send me an email. Thanks!

Sewing Machine Guy HOOKED ME UP - Baseball Style

Still not the "Real" Sewing Machine Guy

Like said in the last post, Sewing Machine Guy hooked me up plural.  (Btw, stay off that ankle and Get Well Soon, man!!)  I showed off the football cards already, but there was a STACK of Royals baseball that he included, too.  I have neither time nor space to display them all, so you will get my favorites here.

First off, some oldies but goodies -- One for my managers collection and one for the KC collection:

1969 Topps #547 Billy Martin

1972 Topps #205 Dick Drago

Three Generations of Ginter:

Allen and Ginter - 2007 #34 Mark Grudzielanek, 2008 #347 David DeJesus, 2009 #337 Billy Butler

SHINIES!  Shiny Royals!!

2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary #244 Mike Aviles, #658 Mitch Maier

More Shinies!  Well....Chromies.  The purple on the Espinal is sweet.  The George Brett might be my new favorite card -- the chrome on it looks AMAZING. 

2010 Bowman Chrome Purple #BCP84 Yowill Espinal, 2001 Topps Archives Reserve Chrome Reprint #9 George Brett

SMG hit a bunch of my favorite players, too.  I love cards of Mike Sweeney when he was still a catcher (played 1B and DH for much of his career).  Billy Butler is my favorite current Royal, while DeJesus is my favorite Royal period.  The DeJesus card is a perforated parallel - designed to look like a ticket on the top and bottom.

1999 Stadium Club #178 Mike Sweeney, 2011 ToppsTown #TT-37 Billy Butler, 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom #10 David DeJesus

SMG, these were awesome.  He included one other Royal I wanted to show off. 

Oh well.  The color scheme is still good.  :-)  I guess that one must have fallen into the trade box by mistake.

Trading with a Superstar

Every subculture has its stars.  Lifestyle Design has Tim Ferriss.  Trivia has Ken Jennings.  And Card Blogging has Night Owl.  His frequency and quality of posts is unsurpassed, in my opinion.  Needless to say that I was taken aback when one day I saw a note from the king himself.  He had seen my post on the Classic garage sale cards and wanted those purple Dodgers.  I was more than happy to oblige, so I shipped him that Purple Haze along with a bunch of other miscellany.

He told me that he would send me "Random Royals and Orel Hershisers," which sounded great to me.  Last week I opened up my mailbox and saw that little yellow envelope we all love to see.  Without further ado, here are the highlights of the goodies from Night Owl.

Some Young Guys:

 

 2011 Bowman TP15 - Mike Montgomery, and 2007 Topps TP16 - Brian Bannister

Some Old Guys:
(Does he have these things just lying around??  AWESOME)

1982 Topps Stickers (#193 Frank White, #191 Dennis Leonard, #196 Willie Aikens)

One Hunched-Over Guy:

1972 Topps #178 Paul Schaal

And two more guys that I can't help but like -- the Mexicutioner and the Mustache I want:

 2011 Allen and Ginter #174 Joakim Soria and 1982 Topps #495 Dennis Leonard

Not only did he have a bunch of Royals for me, but The Bulldog came through, too.

1990 Collect-A-Books #6 Orel Hershiser

It's not every day you get another "Lanceur" for your collection:

1985 Leaf #38 and 1991 O-Pee-Chee #64 Orel Hershiser

And I saved my personal favorites for last...I never had many Sportflics.  I started collecting in 1987, when a pack of 15 Topps cards cost 40 cents and a pack of 3 Sportflics was a buck.  You can guess what 7-year-old me bought more of.  Even though they were super-cool, my pocket-change-budget could not get the Flics very often.  So when I saw these, I giggled like a little kid:

1987 Sportflics #43 and 1986 Sportflics #9 Orel Hershiser

Thank you, Night Owl.  This package was a blast.  You made this blogger very happy.

Chasing Down Some Chicle

I have a 2-year-old son.  I'm still new to this whole blogging thing.  I am also very lazy.

Those are the three main things that contributed to me not hooking up my new scanner for over 2 months.  And since I didn't have a scanner connected, I didn't want to show the results of any of my trades.  But tonight, a sudden wave of productivity washed over me, and I installed the darn thing.  And it works great! 

Back in September, Justin at The Hopeful Chase and I worked out a trade through Zistle.  These guys came my way in one of the familiar yellow bubble mailers.

2010 National Chicle Royals (#152 / #153 / #20)

AWESOME.  Love me some David DeJesus (and all Kansas City Royals), and Alex Gordon is on the way up.  I never got attached to Rick Ankiel as a Royal (there wasn't enough time before he was traded!), but I mostly collect the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back. 

There was one other card I had requested of him:

2010 National Chicle - # 65 - Clayton Kershaw

Art/Painted cards are some of my favorite, and I thought this one was cool-looking.  Besides, aren't there some Kershaw Kollectors (yes, I just made that up) that are reading this now?  If anyone needs it, it's for trade.

Finally, as the blogging veterans know and I am still discovering -- the generosity of many out there is so great as to add "throw-ins" of extra stuff the recipient might like.  Justin was generous to me and tossed in these two beauties:

2011 Topps Stickers!! - Alex Gordon and Mike Moustakas - Number 73 and 76.

These were my first 2011 stickers (believe it or not) and was happy to see them.  Just a few more needed for the complete base set.  :-)

So, thanks again, Justin!  You can see his whole post on what I gave him (Eddie Murrays).  It was a very smooth trade, and if you ever get a chance to trade with him I would jump on it.