A fourth PWE from Japan

Earlier this year, I showed three PWEs that made their was to me from Japan during Zippy Zappy's recent trip. I thought that was it, but to my surprise, a fourth showed up a few weeks after the first three.

There was no Kanebo Tino in this one, but it still packed a lot of punch. My favorite card is easy a Hideki Matsui Homerun Member's Card. Admittedly I have no idea what this is, but it's very cool and super unique to Matsui collection. I think that's my first card of him rocking the Giants uniform.

ZZ also sent me a quartet of Michael Pineda cards. While I no longer actively collect Big Mike, I still have a soft spot for him. I hope he makes the Twins rotation this year, but I assume he'll get hurt like usual.

There were a few Bowmans, Topps and a Gossage insert as well. With all my complaints about Topps inserts these days, I gotta say I wish I appreciated the "Blockbusters" set a few years ago. It was a cool concept, and a bit more outside the box than "Baseball Superstars" or "Golden Moments."

Thanks for the fun PWEs, ZZ!

Catching up with A Cracked Bat

I am close to finally cleaning out my scanned folder, and here's a post I've been meaning to get to. Over the summer, Julie from A Cracked Bat was kind enough to send me a great bubble mailer full of Yankees. Julie's packages are always great and are always full of cards I didn't have - new and old!

I was most surprised by the 1994 O-Pee-Chee cards in there. I honestly have never seen this set! I'm not surprised at all they exist, just for whatever reason I never came across them. Probably because Tino wasn't included in 1994 for some reason?

Gary Sanchez cards were plentiful too. I really like this Museum Collection card, as Julie is known to include cards from some of the higher end products. The Refractor looks great as well! For whatever reason, I feel like 2018 Refractors looked a lot better than years past.

Another card I really enjoyed was Yankees Old Timers Day insert. I mean, just look at Matsui's flow in the picture! It's amazing!

I think I've gotten some Tips Fire in about three or four of the last packages I've received. Since I found zero Fire this year, I'm very cool with this development.

Stadium Club was pretty nice this year, and these were two great Yankees to snag from the set.

Lastly, this was a fun card: a Jose Campos ONYX autograph. I actually couldn't tell if the silver was a real or pre-printed autograph, but I found a few copies of the card online and the signature differed in each one, so indeed, it'a an autograph! Neat looking card!

Julie, thanks for always keeping me on your list of trading partners!

Beam me up, Steiny

A few weeks back, Peter of Baseball Every Night reached out asking if I needed some Yankees from Stadium Club. I have found ZERO Stadium Club where I live, so of course I was more than willing to take them off his hands.

The highlights for me were the Beam Team cards. I don't think I ever pulled one back in the day - baseball or basketball - so they still feel exclusive to me. The "beams" this year feel more like a building going up under construction, but can't argue with the two players:

I only have a couple of Clint Frazier cards, so always glad to add those to my collection. I hope he gets healthy down the stretch, as concussion symptoms are no joke.

I like the Power Zone inserts a lot as well, although I always knew these to be a Topps Finest insert set.

Peter also sent a few base and parallels, including a Matsui base and black foil.

A red foil parallel of Don Mattingly rounded out the package. I've always loved Mattingly's post-swing pose.

Earlier that week, Peter also sent me a PWE with an early Tino Martinez card. I always get a kick out of Tino wearing #53 early in his career.

Thanks for all of the great cards, Peter!

A custom card contest victory

March was not been a great posting month, but hopefully I can get back to my daily posting shortly. I intend to within the next week or two.

Anyhow, I recently received a great contest package from Jeff at 2x3 Heroes last week. The contest was from several months ago, when we had to create a custom of our younger selves. Mine was this bad boy, which happened to receive the most votes.

I actually forgot about the contest, so Jeff would have been off the hook due to my increasingly faulty memory, but he’s a good dude and ended up sending it my way.

Here are the prizes he showed off that headlined the package. While none are guys I collect, there are some sweet cards and I appreciate Jeff's generosity. The Randy Johnson GQ relic is very cool, and numbered to 50. Not a bad card of a HOFer. The Springer is one of those camo SPs which I would have never seen if I hadn’t known from his post. My bro-in-law is a huge Mets fan, and while not a collector, will likely get a kick out of the John Franco auto.

 

There were some very cool Yankee cards included as well.

This Gary Sheffield is pretty cool. The fireworks are an awesome touch. I think UD First Pitch is similar to Topps Opening Day.

A couple of really cool Mantles.

I love Turkey Red. Those cards always look so awesome. I’d love Godzilla to sign this one day.

Refsnyder! I feel a little bad for him. He’s been jerked around a bit by the Yanks and really had to play out of position the last few years to get a few big league ABs. He was the best offensive prospect the Yankees had until some legit prospects made the upper levels. With that being said, he doesn’t have a true position and has little power, so it’s not hard to see why he’s been passed over. It seems like a breakup is inevitable soon, as his 40-man spot is valuable.

I’ll end with a sweet Rivera. I feel like it’s rare to get an action shot like this in an A&G. 

Jeff, thanks for the great contest!

SuperTraders #20: The Angels in Order

While it’s been a little hard to keep up, I will say that #SuperTraders has allowed me to trade with some collectors I haven’t traded much with in the past. I had a healthy stack of Angels, so I was happy to send those along to Tom of Angels in Order. Tom also sent me a great batch of Yankees from some sets that I definitely hadn’t seen before, which is always fun.

One card of note was from Upper Deck Flyball. I certainly hadn’t heard of this product. Baseballcardpedia tells me it was an interactive set issued in 2005. I was a senior in college then, so I definitely missed a lot of sets around this time.

Here is the back of the card. Do you ever notice how confusing baseball card games seem to be?

Another set I hadn’t seen were these Toys ‘R’ Us issues. From what I can tell, each card was either a future star, young star, or rookie star. They got Bernie’s right!

Again, an oddball I hadn’t seen, this time from 2001 Topps along with Post cereal. I’m surprised El Duque was included as the Yankees representative in this 18-card set, although I am a big fan of his, so no qualms from me.

Salt Lake Bees baseball cards! What a cool looking set! I’m not entirely certain why Yankees are featured on this. Does any know? I think they are great, and clearly a promo item.

Topps Turkey Red are some of the coolest cards out there. The vintage backgrounds look great. This is actually a shiny, glossy version, which I didn’t know existed.

These are so bad they are awesome. Not the card, the photos! Check out the school pictures of these 1991 Yankees draftees.

1993 Upper Deck. The best!

Tom, did you secretly collect Matsui?

I’ll end with a Yankees Wacky card. This one is kind of perfect for me. My name is AJ…apple juice…on a Yankees card? It works!

Tom, thanks for a great package!