Group Break Trading

Right around the same time that I held my All-Upper Deck group break, Ryan H of “O” No!!! Another Orioles Blog, was holding a smaller 3-box break.  He came to me with the idea of trading.  We’d swap open slots in our breaks (and I think he floated a couple bucks my way to cover any difference).  That gave me 2 chosen and 2 randoms in his, and he claimed the Orioles (naturally) in mine.  Win-freakin’-win!

All for trade if so inclined

The boxes opened were 1999 Topps Stars, which I’ve opened in the past, but still need plenty of, 1998 Sports Illustrated World Series Fever and 2002 UD Victory.  Here are some of the better Non-Gwynns from my Padres choice.

By the way, I’ve mentioned this before, but I would love to see a company make jersey cards out of the camo uniforms.

Gold Ray Ray & friends

My other chosen team was the White Sox.  That netted me a parallel of some guy named Caruso I’ve never heard of, a Konerko for my hypothetical future collection and Albert Belle laying an egg on second base.

Big fish to fry

The Marlins were gifted to me as one of my randoms, and I must say that worked out well.  I always appreciate a good Derrek Lee card.  I get to see Kotsay with 2 teams in the same break, even though he kept his helmet on this time, and a 2-star parallel of Burnett could be worse.  The downside is all the celebrating cards. I don’t want to think about them winning anything.

A Sammy of Sosas

The Cubs ended up being a trade within a trade.  My other random team was the Astros, but Ryan wanted to bolster his Bagwell and Biggio stashes.  Who was I to turn that down?  The crazy part is the trade included that Ernie Banks rookie reprint from Topps Stars.  It’s numbered to 2500, so I have 1/1250th of the run.  Not too shabby for my general team lots, but I didn’t make the trade for the teams. I’m all about the players, so who did I land?

"Smells like....cardboard" -- Robert Duvall

The lone Cub to make the binders, but since it’s essentially a bonus, I ain’t complaining.

one of only 6 Ryan Marlins cards

My Dempster as a non-Cub collection grows ever so slightly.  At some point, I’ll have to make a bigger dent on this older stuff.  Today is not that day.

Anyone know if all these pictures were from issues of the magazine?

Who has World Series Fever?  Tony probably did, but he never won that ring.  He made the last out in the 1984 Series, and the Padres were swept in 1998.  He did hit a home run in that latter series, and you can’t take that away from the man.

Star swirl

Yay! Topps Stars has so many parallels and other random crap going on that my box couldn’t possibly have had it all.  I was skeptical that I would walk away from Ryan’s break with something I needed, but here we sit.  It’s here and it’s luminous.

That's a happy fellow

You know what that weird little puzzle piece phallic indentation for the logo is quite off-putting.

DH DNP

The Big Hurt was a bit hurt, so he didn’t play in the 2005 World Series with his White Sox.  Still, he did get the ring before Chicago dumped him like a rent-a-player.

Super

Another new ’99 Topps Stars, but it wasn’t the one I was expecting.  I have the One Star and Two Star parallels, but not the normal base card.  I’m quite alright “settling” for the subset.

I’d say that was a successful break.  I hope Ryan feels the same about his side of the deal.  Thanks for the trade and for taking part in the break.  Maybe we can do it again sometime!