PWE prizes from bloggers

In my small corner of the hobby, not much beats a PWE from other bloggers.

I recently received two of them on the same day, which was surprising, as most PWEs nowadays are from the TCDB (a great place to trade if that's your sort of thing). While both appeared out of the blue, neither were necessarily 'just because.'

The first I opened was from Chris at The Collector. He held a PWE swap meet, where I sent him a random batch of basketball cards. In return, he sent me a Yankees themed PWE:

Very nice assortment. Older X-fractors still hold up. I also like the Goodwin Champions of Paul O'Neill and his big head. But my favorite card, not pictured above, was a cloth sticker from 2011 Lineage of A-Rod. Man, I really liked that set. If the cards had stats on the back it could have been an all-timer.

Thanks, Chris! Fun cards.

The other PWE was from Elliptical Man over at View From The Third Floor. I won his NFL Draft contest, and was awarded some auction points. He sent a note saying that he decided against an auction, so sent me a PWE of Yanks. No problem there!

Another really fun batch. A 1972 Topps Ron Blomberg?! Great card from a great set. That one takes the cake for me, although I liked the Gleyber inserts a lot too, as I'm still finishing that set.

Two excellent PWEs from two excellent bloggers. Thanks, guys!

Delayed zapping

Back around the holidays, Zippy Zappy zapped the sh*t out of me. I've been meaning to post about it, but just haven't gotten around to it, but it has finally been scanned and organized a bit on my end.

He sent a massive flat-rate box, not only of Yankee cards, but other odds and ends, liked signed baseballs, a bobble head, game programs, a foam finger, and some Stranger Things cards. It truly was an awesome gesture, and the entertainment value of going through all of this was just as high in value as some of the cards and items that were sent.

In a way, the package was also a bit sad, as much of it represented to me what Zippy used to be all about, or signified the end of various Yankee eras. One of those eras was the end of Dellin Betances' time as a Yankee. Zippy collected him fairly hard for a while, although even before signing elsewhere, he had started to disperse of his Dellin collection, sending me a few autographs over the years. 

In this instance, ZZ provided me with a bobble head, signed ball, and what I assume is the last remaining bit of his card collection.

I don't have many signed balls, but this will certainly go amongst the ones I do have.

Also guys like Austin Romine and Frankie Cervelli showed up, catchers who have now moved on to (sometimes) greener pastures.

I mentioned Stranger Things. I'm a big fan of the show, although never purchased any of the cards. Well, I know have the set. I'm not sure what to do with it yet. I sort of think I want to mount it to big wooden board of some kind versus bindering it up.

I also appreciated all of the minor league sets that were sent. I don't get much access to these, so I really enjoy getting them.

Plus, how cool are these?

As usual, ZZ just doesn't send cards in team bags. That would be boring. He makes custom repacks!

These can include awesome hits, like these:

Vintage like these:

Or non-sports cards like these:

(Hockey joke, sorry). I feel like the Zuccarello was sent because I went to Zac's return game at MSG?

But mostly the packs are just full of fun cards like these.

ZZ, as always, thank you for being so generous all the time.

Nothing random about this box

A while back, I got an email from Roy, better known as Bulldog, from Nothing if Not Random. Roy said he had been accumulating some Yankees he needed to get rid of. I was, as always, happy to take them off his hands.

What I didn't expect was an extremely generous, very LARGE box of Yankees from all years. It was really a blast to go through, and such a great sampling of cards. So great, that I feel like if I needed to condense my collection into one box, this would be a great sampling of cards to keep. I'm honestly thinking of just taking the cards from this box and put them in a binder and calling it my "Yankees Sampling Binder" or something a lot more catchy.

Here's the box:

That is a lot of Yankees! The first card I pulled out was this:

Gleyber Torres is awesome. I keep saying it, I know. He has 37 homers and is a 22-year-old middle infielder who, at his peak, was said to project as a 15-20 HR guy. This man has the ability to win an MVP award one day.

Anyhow, I did use the code when the Yankees were playing the Orioles...and of course, Gleyber didn't homer that day. I haven't won a single one of these this year!

Torres popped up a few more times. I really need to take inventory on my collection of his. I wonder if it's approaching 100? It's probably closer to 50.

There were several more 2019 cards, and here were a few favorites:

There were also a bunch of great Yankees rookie cards:

Topps Fire continues to be one of my favorite sets, despite never opening a pack. I liked this Tanaka a really lot.

This card made me chuckle a bit. I remember Classic 4-Sport well, and A-Rod was the key baseball player in these sets. This card is a SUPER RARE 1 of 80,000 ever made!

Jeter was well-represented throughout the box, and I really enjoyed this Upper Deck ESPN card, as well as the Topps 35th Anniversary:

Oh, and did a I mentioned JETER ROOKIE CARDS?! There were actually two from 1993 Topps! And I definitely didn't have this 1993 Score Select. Jeter RCs don't pop up in packages often at all!

Roy, this was a blast to go through and I'm still very appreciative of the cards. Thanks again!

Thank you, Wes

I've been wanting to post this for awhile, but the scanned cards in my folder have just been very daunting. Yes, I'm talking about my haul from Wes "You'll Always Be JBF To Me" of Area 40's final cardboard giveaway this past holiday season.

For whatever reason, Wes decided that I would be an often recipient of his generous "bombs." The first package came in May, 2011. I had started blogging in February of that same year, so for basically as long as this blog has existed, JBF has been a constant source of blog fodder, usually the result of his ridiculous card packages he'd send at any given moment.

I tried to think of a favorite card he sent, but I couldn't possibly. I've got over 65 posts dedicated to him, and he's really one of the main reasons my collection is as large as it is, and has as many amazing cards as it does. I appreciate each and every bombing, as they were always well thought out and personalized. You could make one small comment at some point, and Wes stored that information for future card packages.

So with that, I'll show a few of the amazing cards he sent my way as part of his incredible final giveaway.

The most interesting item was easily this jumbo memorabilia swatch of Mariano Rivera. The card is massive (and has a regular sized card embedded, with a truly enormous piece of jersey included. It's obviously a swatch of a mesh spring training jersey, with some elastic either from a sleeve or collar. It's so large really pops out of the card. I have never seen anything like it! Plus, this was pulled right around the time of Mariano gaining election to the Hall of Fame. Someday I'll probably frame this.

Probably the other most interesting card is a cut autograph from 2018 Leaf History of Baseball. Hall of Fame Hill Dickey is the subject of this card, with a cut HOF post card embedded within the plastic case. I know many are not big fans of cut signatures, but I'm very thankful to own a signature of a Yankee Hall of Famer.

There were plenty of more memorabilia cards pulled, including several from Topps Clubhouse Collection. Sorry these scanned so dark:

I really like relics of bases as well (why doesn't Topps do this nowadays?), and this Posada from the 2003 All-Star Game is definitely cool looking.

here were plenty of autographs too, including a Clint Frazier, who has gotten off to a torrid start this season. The Enos Slaughter IP/TTM is really beautiful as well.

When I saw this Winfield, I was definitely confused since I hadn't seen it. Turns out it was a Topps on demand issue.

Here's a few more cards that jumped out to me as scan-worthy.

Wes, all I can really say is thank you. Thank you for this card package. Thank you for the countless others over the last 8 years. And thank you for choosing me as one of the many recipients of your generosity.