Smed Lobs A Tactical Nuke Into My Wantlists

Before I start here, I need to mention that once more I was the winner in Monday’s trivia question on the Twins radio broadcast. That’s three now this year — almost as many as the Twins have wins this season. Q: Prior to Cuddyer and Kubel in 2009, when did the Twins have two players hit for the cycle in the same season? A: Larry Hisle and Lyman Bostock in 1976.

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Forget “shotgun trades” — as part of his Spring Cleaning project, Smed from Smed’s Baseball Card Blog threw a nuke at my wantlists, with hits all over the place — a good 2″+ stack of Twins that I needed, and a whole bunch more that I’ll try bundle into team sets or pass along to my nephews. In exchange, all he asked for was reimbursement for the shipping, and an effort to tackle his wantlists.

Here’s a representation of what he sent me. I’m going to do this in reverse order; first, some singles from my 1980’s/1990’s wantlists:

clockwise, from top left: 1993 Score Select #314 Willie Banks; 1995 Topps Stadium Club Members Only #26 Chuck Knoblauch; 1985 O-Pee-Chee #282 Mike Stenhouse; 1985 O-Pee-Chee #199 Dave Engle

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Trolling The Bay Of E: Part V — Summary

Finally, the last of my eBay experiment posts — one month hitting eBay to bolster my “relic/auto havelist” with cards I needed — which I was able to bolster considerably. Question is, was I able to keep the price per card at less than my goal of $3 apiece including shipping?

# of transactions: 15
# of cards: 33
12 autos, 1 auto/jersey, 2 bat, 1 bat/jersey, 15 jersey, 1 patch, 1 low s#'d

	card cost	shipping cost	total cost
total	$68.24	$21.80	$90.04
per card	$2.07	$0.66	$2.73

Nailed it. Also part of the end total was a wrong relic card which I didn’t order (later refunded after no reply from the vendor required eBay to intervene) and a non-Twin relic card that was part of a lot; assuming I turn these two around for an additional Twins relic or auto apiece, that brings the total down to $2.57 per card.

I know of at least one eBay vendor with many Twins autos & relics within my price per card limit, but at this point I’ve hit Mo’s you’ve spent more than enough on eBay, knock it off limit. Well, thanks for letting me play around a bit, Hon!

The last item to post, a current Twins player who isn’t one of the scrubs:

2006 Upper Deck SP^x Rookie Signatures #130 Jason Kubel [776/999] (auto)

A Gallery Of Trades

Been looking forward to trading with Beardy from The Mojo Beard for a while now; being one who sports a seasonal face-warmer myself (it’s in goatee form right now), I appreciate all that The Bearded One stands for. Well, Beardy had some box break Twins he sent me in exchange for some various Orioles cards. His package contained several Topps Gallery and Gallery HOF, some SP Authentic, and last year’s Bowman Draft — all appreciated. And some Killebrew singles to continue to show here:

clockwise, from top left: 1998 Upper Deck SP Authentic #21 David Ortiz; 2003 Topps Gallery Artist Proof #188 Joe Mauer; 2003 Topps Gallery HOF #43 Harmon Killebrew (red hat variation); 2003 Topps Gallery HOF #43 Harmon Killebrew (blue hat variation)

And in addition, I made my second trade to a trader from SportsCardFun.com. Alan had a Hunter relic and made a prisoner exchange with a relic card I had here.

2008 Topps Heritage Clubhouse Collection #CC-TKH Torii Hunter (jersey)

Two more traders to add to the trader list; thanks guys!

Trolling The Bay Of E: Part IV

Yet another in the continuation of the previous posts, showing items I picked up off eBay, with the goal of increasing my “havelist” but keeping the price per card at less than $3 apiece including shipping.

The fourth set, the first half containing autos:

clockwise, from top left: 2004 Best #BB-LTH Luke Hughes (auto); 2003 Best #BB-JM Jose Morales (auto); 2006 Autograph #228 Willie Eyre (auto); 2009 Signature Stars Impressions #IMP-GP Glen Perkins (auto)

I Drank The Orange Kool-Aid; It Was Good!

While checking out dgreen1899’s trade bait page at Drinking The Orange Kool-Aid, I spotted three Twins auto cards for trade. After a few emails back and forth, some ’71 Phillies, a Topps Silk card, and a slew of Gypsy Queen Orioles and Phillies were on their way in exchange for the auto cards, a Bazooka Red Chunk, and several “mystery cards”. Well, dgreen1899 did good; there was a really nice variety of Donruss, Fleer, and Topps cards, including several Justin Morneau Generation Now singles.

clockwise, from top left: 2006 Co-Signers Solo Sigs #SS-CB Boof Bonser (auto); 2006 Signs of the Future #SOF-HS Henry Sanchez (auto); 2008 Topps Gold #574 Scott Baker [1676/2008]; 2004 Donruss Elite #180 Jason Bartlett [0466/1000] (auto)

moosehead92

[I’ve put my header in black after hearing of the news of Harmon Killebrew’s death. You’ll be greatly missed, Killer.]

A while back I registered at SportsCardFun.com in order to talk trade with someone there. I decided to look around as well, and found moosehead92’s trade request looking for another Twins collector to swap dupes with. Don pointed me to his webpage, and I began digging through my (mostly unsorted) cards for some he was looking for. Meanwhile, he had found ~80 cards from just my Topps 2000s wantlist, so pressure was on. Don also had a second wantlist, and I was able to pull several more from that list to trade, too, coming up with ~80 cards myself.

What did Don send me? Well, several Chrome and Opening Day, Topps Total, Heritage, T-205, Allen & Ginter, and even a few Gallery and Stadium Club. In a future post, I’ll even show the auto card and relic card he graciously included.

clockwise, from top left: 2006 Topps Allen & Ginter #281 Harmon Killebrew; 2006 Topps Allen & Ginter #124 Lew Ford; 2008 Topps Allen & Ginter SP #307 Pat Neshek; 2006 Topps Allen & Ginter mini #124 Lew Ford; 2008 Topps Allen & Ginter SP mini #307 Pat Neshek

Feeding Thousands

For a second year, COS sponsored a weekend of Feed My Starving Children, a non-profit based in Minnesota that uses volunteer work and an incredible 94% of donations towards shipping healthy, life-sustaining food to those who most need it. Mo, K, and I were there for the opening shift on Friday, anxious to do our part again where we could help.

We got over the jokes about the white hair nets (everyone is required to wear them) by the time the orientation meeting is over, and then volunteers are split up between tables to get down to the work at hand. With jobs such as doling out the measured ingredients, checking meal weights, sealing packages, boxing the sealed packages, refilling ingredients tubs, hauling boxes, weighing boxes, stacking pallets, labelling packages, etc., there is enough going on that the two hour shift goes relatively quickly.

Here’s another box!

I decided to be a box jockey again this year, and haul the full boxes from the various tables over to the weighing table. Mo and K were busy at a table weighing packages, and K did some ingredients measuring as well.

Looks like they’re enjoying themselves!

Our shift filled boxes with 32,616 meals. Over the entire two days, we packaged and boxed enough for over 128,000 meals! That is a lot of lives touched.

If you get a chance to participate in one of these events, DO IT! If not, please donate at the Feed My Starving Children website.

Trolling The Bay Of E: Part III

Still more in a continuation of the previous posts, items I picked up off eBay, with the goal of bolstering my “havelist” but keeping the price per card at less than $3 apiece including shipping.

The third set, one manupatch and the rest relics:

clockwise, from top left: 2010 Manufactured Hat Logo Patch #MHR-291 J.J. Hardy [28/99] (patch); 2007 SP^x Winning Materials Silver #WM-MO Justin Morneau [135/199] (jersey); 2005 Champions Impressions Materials #123 Brad Radke (jersey); 2007 Sweet Spot Classic Memorabilia #CM-TO Tony Oliva (jersey)