Comment Spammers

Hey spammers - I'm a lot smarter than you are. If you persist in spamming up my comment section I'll just turn on comment moderation on EVERY post, and you'll never get your stupid ads posted. This includes you the Japanese spammers and you the PS3 spammer.

Trading Update

A few more packages have come in; FanofReds, yours got here today (damn son, Priority Mail?) and I'll be featuring my faves as soon as I scan them. I got a nice white bubble envelope with two small stacks that I think was from Daniel C, please verify with me - my daughter grabbed the envelope off my desk and I have no idea where it was. One of the key cards was a 1970 Angels Rookie Stars.

My end has still not been sent out, I am a sad, sad panda. However, I have eBay auctions ending this Friday, so I'll be doing a massive trip to the post office either Saturday or Monday, and then I will be mailing out EVERYTHING.

Thanks for bearing with me. Over the next month I'll be posting up more strange items to trade or sell, I've got to start getting rid of this stuff and STOP buying so much darn wax!

Mail Day!

Oh boy oh boy, don't you just LOVE getting cards in the mail? I sure do. As I previously stated I've gotten three packages, thus far in this round of trading, but unfortunately I've lost track of who sent what. So my apologies for that. In the mean time I did figure out what was causing my photos not to upload to Blogger from my laptop - turns out my permissions for my network are all messed up. That's fine though because what I really need to do is wipe the hard drive on the network machine and start fresh, I just have to make sure that there's nothing on here I need.

Oh well.

Here's some kick arse cards that I've gotten recently:

Here's a 1997 Pacific of Darin Erstad, one of my favorite former Halos. You can't tell from the front, but this card is bilingual, the back is primarily in Spanish with an English translation. You also can't tell but the bottom photo is actually an acetate cutout that you can see through on both sides. Pacific sure didn't make very collectible cards in the 90's, but they sure made some nifty gimmicky ones.

Here I've got the front and back of a 1992 Donruss "Spirit of the Game" insert featuring...err...I can't really tell. It might be Gary Pettis, but I can't make out a jersey number at all. (I looked it up, it's Luis Polonia and Wade Boggs). I like the interactive feature of this card, and I'm sure someone has looked up whether or not Polonia was actually safe. I could, but I'm way too lazy to go all the way back to a 1991 game between the Halos and the Sox.

A couple of nice Upper Deck X cards from the last two years. I wasn't a huge fan of the sets in packs, but for some reason the singles really speak to me. I love the die-cuts too, and the shiny Vladdy doesn't suck. It's numbered X4-VG, and I know there were several levels of Xponentials, not that I care one iota about that, I just like the shiny.

Wally World makes a return to my blog pages in the form of this lovely 1990 Leaf. Back in the day I bought maybe a pack or two of this stuff, not really being into baseball at the time - I spent the 90's collecting Football and Hockey for some reason. Hey at least I don't have a ton of junk wax from the overproduction era, I got rid of my entire Football collection in 1998 when I moved from San Diego to Los Angeles. Wow, what a tangent. In any case, I have a special affinity for First Basemen, being that's what I played in Little League my last two years, and I was pretty good at it I have to say. I even modeled my swing after Rod Carew, the Halos PREVIOUS All-Star at first. I learned something too by reading the back of this card, Wally went to BYU, and I can only ASSume that he's a practicing member of the LDS church (as are my in-laws). SO that's kind of cool I guess. Next time I'm in Utah, maybe I can look him up and grab an autograph.

From 2007 We have this retro 1972 Gary Matthews Jr. card. I always loved the 72 design, with it's garish color scheme and it looks even better on today's stock. I can see where they were trying to go with this doozy, 1972 was Gary's papa's first season, but alas, his RC is in the 1973 set, and it's one of those old multi-player cards. Probably a small detail that no one at Topps caught.

The 2009 Halos Fab-Four...err...well Fab Three and a Half? I dunno, sure it's a great card of four of the Halos studs, but considering that two of the four will probably be gone before the next season starts, this card is kind of bitter-sweet. Plus Kendrick didn't do a whole lot this season. What could have been, what could have been. I do simply love these Goudy 4-in-1s, but I have no idea how they did the numbering. I guess I could look it up on Upper Deck's site, but again, I'm pretty lazy these days.

JUST ARRIVED

As I was typing up this blog post the mail arrived, and I got yet another package, this time from Greg in NY. Greg sent a nice stack of Halos, from all eras, and I couldn't be happier. Here's a few choice samples:

This would be my first ever "ticket stub" card, and while I'm really pleased that it's a card that actually features a Halo who ACTUALLY PITCHED on the game in question, I'm a bit miffed that Topps doesn't make any mention of the outcome of the game on the back. Sure it talks about some of Big John's other good performances, but it doesn't say anywhere on the card that the Halos won the 32nd Athletics home game in 2008, nor does the stub have the date of the game on it either. Lets face it, we all have tons of ticket stubs from games we've been to, or we throw them away. Unless the game is majorly important, like a playoff or championship, stubs are mementos of our PERSONAL experience in the game. Why I would want a stub from an A's game from 2008 is beyond me. BUT, it's a cool card and I'm happy to have it. I just wish that the colors on the card and the stub itself were from an ANGELS home game, but I guess that's too much to ask. Hell the sample shot they have on their website is of Evan Longoria and the stub on his card is an Angel game so go figure.

Oh and there's also a little legal text on the back that says "FOR TRACKING INFO, PLEASE SEE WWW.TOPPS.COM CODE #00003142". I always check that stuff out and I could find NOTHING that has anything to do with this set. Not only that but on the site this particular card is supposed to be numbered /125, and the actual card is numbered /110. Not that I'm complaining about that.

Rodney Cline Carew is probably my all-time favorite Angel. I was 8 when he was signed by the team, and I remember my parents taking me to an early season game where he scored a run in the first inning and from that moment on he was my hero. Like many of my boyhood heroes (CF Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) from the era, Rod wasn't always the media's darling but who cares when you put up the numbers he did on the field. Sure he wasn't a power hitter, and it seems that the days of the spray hitting infielders are long gone, but I still have a soft-spot in my heart for the Panamanian born Carew. Since his playing days he's been a coach for both the Halos and the Brewers, and his daughter Michelle tragically succumbed to leukemia in 1996. I would think that the Halos would like to employ Rod for some great PR these days; as I see he's still involved in the periphery of the game. And hey, dig that crazy headband!

Hey, it's another crazy Pacific Die-Cut card, this time from their 1999 Crown Royale Collection. I still have a TON of the Hockey version of this set in storage, and even more of their successor Hockey die-cuts - as I really liked the one version that was a die-cut of the team logo. No other commentary here, other than I sure do like die-cuts don't I?

At first glance this appears to be a "broder" or unlicensed/bootleg card. However, turning the thing over I see that it's actually a Pacific card from 1989! But wait,is it really? It's part of a set called "Baseball's Best Four", and there were other sets numbered one through three. The Pacific Cards though is not our former friends in Washington state, nope, it's from Pacific Cards & Comics, Los Angeles, CA. Now I didn't live in LA in 1989, but I did visit a lot, and I can tell you that it was most likely a store set issued by a now-defunct card/comic retail shop. It's typical of the era too, no stats on the back, blurry picture on the front and thin paper stock. Looks like it was made at Kinko's to be honest. How fun!

Both Mario over at Wax Heaven and Dinged Corners have featured Fleer/Skybox's Metal card sets before, and I have to say I didn't much care for them when they hit the market. See, I'm a comic collector first, and back in the 90's we were bombarded with trading card sets based on comics, as comic shop owners tried everything they could to fleece their clientele of their hard earned cash. One of them was a Marvel set from Fleer way back in 1995, the progenitor of the brand. While that set did have a KICK ARSE full Metal promo card (which I do remember acquiring at some point only to sell it or trade it away) I thought the cards were way too busy and too "comic booky". You know what, I still think that about Fleer Metal Universe, and I'm glad that no one is endangered of having to buy a 21st Century version of those sets. But I'm always about the shiny, so here you go.

1979 was the first set of Topps that I remember getting a whole lot of. My father at the time was working as a L.A. Times delivery driver and I guess each morning during his run he'd stop at some donut shop on Santa Monica and Bundy and get some donuts, smoke some cigs and buy me a couple packs of 1979 Topps. Before I threw the lot of them out sometime in the 80's (they were beat all to hell at that point) I think I had about half the set. Memories...misty water color memories. Hey check the porn stache! This would be Aase's first Angel card, but not his RC.

Team Trading - Update & Housekeeping

Team trades have started to arrive. Thus far I've gotten three packages, one from Ed, one from DayF and one from Andy. My packages to you WILL be going out this week, I promise. Between the toddler's unwillingness to potty-train, her constant constipation (yes, we're going through all the tried and true solutions), and a mini-financial crisis I've fallen a bit behind. Rest assured though, I have never failed to come through on a trade and I won't start doing so now.

THIS is a full listing of all the singles I have left to trade

2009 Topps Heritage Chrome Parallels

C29 Rick Ankiel Refractor #197/560

2008 Topps Heritage Chrome Parallels

C169 Adam Jones Refractor #063/559
C167 Brett Myers #0722/1959
C287 Greg Dobbs #203/1959

2009 Topps Chrome

78 Joe Crede refractor

2008 Topps Chrome

Copper Refractor
186 Paul Maholm #108/550

X-Fractors
35 Mike Cameron
154 Brian Bannister

Refractors
75 CC Sabathia
79 Paul Konerko
119 Cameron Maybin
145 Francisco Liriano
163 Greg Maddux
181 Matt Kemp
218 Burke Badenhop

50th Anniversary Rookies
ARC13 Matt Holiday

Retro Inserts
TCCP16 Jacoby Ellsbury
TCCP 7 Chin-Lung Hu

Trading Card History Chromes
TCHC27 Manny Ramirez
TCHC42 Jake Peavy
TCHC44 Matt Holiday
TCHC46 Troy Tulowitzki

Mantle Series
MMSC49

2007 Bowman Chrome

154 Chris Young Refractor

Various Singles

2008 Upper Deck 20th Anniversary Preview Set #UD-51 Babe Ruth
2008 Upper Deck 97-BS Ben Sheets Jersey (White swatch)
2008 Upper Deck 98-MB Mark Bueherle Jersey (White w/Pinstripe)
2009 Upper Deck GCP -1 Joe Dimaggio Goodwin Champions Preview

Team Lots - between 25 and 80 cards apiece

All MLB teams available EXCEPT:

Angels
Astros
Braves
Brewers
Dodgers
Marlins
Rangers
Reds
Red Sox
Tigers

MAIL DAYS!

I know it's sort of a tradition when trading on blogs to go ahead and post the cards you get in a trade, and I fully intend on doing so. In fact, I've even got scans of 8 cards that I can't wait to post. HOWEVER, apparently Blogger isn't accepting the photos right now which are housed currently on my network drive. I want to get this posted though, so I'll try to get those up later today or tomorrow.

Team Trading Update - Arrivals & Departures + Destinations Needed

Happy Thursday everyone. I hope you all had a good Veteran's Day and honored the armed forces of our country appropriately.

I received my first package of Angels cards today, and am very pleased. I'm just about ready to send off my end for pretty much everyone, however, I find that I need some addresses...so if you've claimed a team lot, please make sure I have your address so that I can get these packages ready to go.

The Following Readers Have Claimed Teams, but I don't have your address:


• Wickedortega - Marlins & two singles
  
• Jackplumstead - Red Sox
  
• Jason C. - Reds
  
• Collective Troll - Rays & Orioles
  
• Brian - Rangers
  
• Dayf - Braves
  
  

Ah, and HERE are the Topps Chrome/Heritage Chrome that I have available. I'll be listing these in two posts, first up the GOOD stuff - and yes I know they're not all that spectacular. I'm looking for 1 for 1 or better deals here; Angels only of course. You can see my favorite players on the main page, always like Vladdies, Torii's, etc. Also love Reggie Jacksons, Rod Carews and older players. American Heritage chromes/inserts (especially the space flight ones) are also high on my want list.

2009 Topps Heritage Chrome Parallels

C29 Rick Ankiel Refractor #197/560
C55 Russell Martin #1792/1960
C25 Scott Kazmir #1530/1960
C64 Yadier Molina #1570/1960

2008 Topps Heritage Chrome Parallels

C169 Adam Jones Refractor #063/559
C167 Brett Myers #0722/1959
C287 Greg Dobbs #203/1959

2009 Topps Chrome

78 Joe Crede refractor

2008 Topps Chrome

Copper Refractor
186 Paul Maholm #108/550

Blue Refractors
24 Ivan Rodriguez
92 Adam Dunn
132 Chipper Jones

X-Fractors
35 Mike Cameron
116 Josh Hamilton
154 Brian Bannister


Refractors
75 CC Sabathia
79 Paul Konerko
119 Cameron Maybin
145 Francisco Liriano
163 Greg Maddux
181 Matt Kemp
218 Burke Badenhop

50th Anniversary Rookies
ARC2 Ivan Rodriguez
ARC13 Matt Holiday
ARC19 Nick Markakis - Blue Refractor #191/200

Retro Inserts
TCCP16 Jacoby Ellsbury
TCCP 7 Chin-Lung Hu

Trading Card History Chromes
TCHC27 Manny Ramirez
TCHC29 Ivan Rodriguez
TCHC42 Jake Peavy
TCHC44 Matt Holiday
TCHC46 Troy Tulowitzki

Mantle Series
MMSC49

2007 Bowman Chrome

154 Chris Young Refractor

Team Trading Update

The following teams have been claimed:

Astros
Braves
Brewers
Dodgers
Marlins
Rangers
Reds
Red Sox
Tigers

Everyone else is still available.

Will be posting the Topps Chrome, Bowman Chrome and Topps Heritage Chrome inserts that I have available sooner than later.

Just When You Think You're Out, They Pull You Right Back In

You know, you go for months in between posts, you barely post at all, and you think that no one is reading your blog at all. THEN you post something so innocuous as a trade list and all of a sudden you get half-a-dozen requests! Kudos to those of you who got your teams in early. I can't believe the Tigers are that popular!

In any case, these are the teams that are NO LONGER available:

Astros
Dodgers
Marlins
Reds
Red Sox
Tigers

Also these singles are spoken for:

2008 Topps HR-BU B.J. Upton Game Worn Jersey (white swatch w/sweat stains)
2008 Upper Deck UDJ-WI Dontrelle Willis Jersey (Black)
2009 Topps #595 Robin Yount Variation


I'll be mailing out later this week, as I have an eBay item ending soon too. I'll also be digging through the cards in the house and posting much more in the next couple of weeks, it's high time to trade this stuff and get MORE Angels.

Team Trading - Update - Plus Singles & Non-Sports Wants

Wow, it's only been a couple of hours, and already I've got one team down - The Detroit Tigers are now spoken for.

AH, but I have some nice additions to the trade list, this time, we have some singles that I'm going to offer for trade here first before I put them on evilBay. I'm doing this because while I know I could probably sell each of these, I'd rather they get into the hands of those who would really appreciate them. If you want scans of the cards, let me know and I'll do my best to get those up before too long. I may also already have scans of some of them.

I'm also going to be posting my wants from 2008's American Heritage, and the Topps Obama card set as well. I'm still collecting Last years' Indiana Jones Masterpiece set from Topps and of course this year's American Heritage, but I need far too many of both those sets to bother making a list. However, if you have doubles and want to send them to me, I'd be happy to have them. I have doubles of all these sets too, but for some reason I can't find my American Heritage doubles.

Also, I forgot to mention, if you've traded with me before and still have my address please note: My Address Has Changed. I'm no longer on Hamel Road, so please don't send me anything there, though I think the post office will still forward it to me for a few more months.

Whew.

SO here's the singles I'm looking to trade away:

• 2007 Turkey Red #40 Chipper Jones Turkey Red Back
  
• 2008 Topps HR-BU B.J. Upton Game Worn Jersey (white swatch w/sweat stains)
  
• 2008 Bowman SC-DO Dan Ontiveros Scout Autograph Redemption (not yet redeemed, expires 5-31-2010)
  
• 2008 Upper Deck 20th Anniversary Preview Set #UD-51 Babe Ruth
  
• 2008 Upper Deck 97-BS Ben Sheets Jersey (White swatch)
  
• 2008 Upper Deck 98-MB Mark Bueherle Jersey (White w/Pinstripe)
  
• 2008 Upper Deck UDJ-WI Dontrelle Willis Jersey (Black)
  
• 2009 Topps #595 Robin Yount Variation
  
• 2009 Upper Deck GCP -1 Joe Dimaggio Goodwin Champions Preview
  

That's not even getting into the chrome and refractors that I'll be going through in the next few days as well.

Topps Obama 2009 Needs

Foil Stickers
1
2
3
4
5
8
10
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

Regular Stickers
1
2
3
4
7
8
9
10
14
15
17
18

Regular Set Needs
3
4
5
7
8
13
15
16
17
20
22
27
31
33
34
35
36
37
39
42
43
46
50
56
57
58
59
60
62
63
66
70
71
72
74
79
82
85
86
89

Doubles To Trade :
6
9 x2
10
18 x2
24 x2
26 x2
30
40
44 x2
45 x2
47 x2
48 x2
61
64
65
69
77

Sticker Doubles
16 x3

Topps American Heritage 2008 Needs

15
17
18
21
25
29
31
40
43
54
61
62
67
68
75
76
78
79
83
86
87
88
92
94
98
106
108
111
113
115
118
119


Short Prints
Need All Except:
128
142
144

Presidents
Need All Except:
24
25
31
39

Topps American Heritage 2009

Spaceflight Subset
Need All Except
7
12

Back from the Dead - I'm READY to do Team Trading Again

If you look on the right side of the blog page there you'll see a link for "team trading." I have FINALLY put together all of my doubles/cards I'm not putting in a set and sorted them by team. The lots run anywhere between 30 and 80+ cards apiece, and all I ask for in return is some Angels cards. Yes, that's right, I'll trade you lots of your favorite team for my favorite team, the Los Angeles California Angels of Anaheim.

I only have a few caveats:

• NO 2006 Topps (The Black Bordered ones) - I have several team sets of this already, including at LEAST 9 Vladdies.
  
• NO 2008 Upper Deck - Again have tons of the Angels from this set too.
  
• You don't have to match the amount I send you, I don't really care. Send more, send less, it doesn't matter, as long as you send something cool. If you want to wait to send me Angels until you get your team, that's fine with me too.
  
• I won't divulge your personal info (Name, location), in a blog entry, unless you tell me it's OK.
  
• The Super-Stars are in lots, so if you want the Yankees, you'll get a few Jeters, a couple A-Rods, etc.
  
• Please no cards of current Angels in other team's uniforms (unless they're RC's).
  
• The BUDGET COLLECTOR has a very tight budget. I promise I will mail out as quickly as I can, but please understand if there's a slight delay due to lack of funds.
  
• There may be a small amount of "junk wax" in your lots, like 89 Topps, 80's/90's Donruss/Fleer, etc. That's only because I buy junk wax on occasion. In fact, I love Junk Wax. If you want to send me unopened junk wax, I'll open it for a blog post.
  
• Right Now I have lots for EVERY MLB team with the exception of the Angels, and actually I have some 2000 Topps Angels that I don't need either. As trades are made I'll update which teams are no longer available.
  

So that's the truth, rooth. I'm located on the West Coast, specifically Los Angeles, CA. I have no problems sending overseas either, but please make the trade worth my while to do so.

Thanks for reading, and let's start trading!

If you want to trade, feel free to email me at wmnoe at yahoo dot com, or leave a comment here.