A Trip, a ton of Refractors, and a Trade

So the last week has been crazy, but good for me. It has involved a little sadness, a surprise opportunity, and a bunch of cards. Let me start at the beginning. So my grandfather (my fathers' father) has been suffering from dementia, and it has got progressively worse. He lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and my family lives in DeLand, Florida. We hadn't seen my grandparents since I got married in December 2012, so last August, we decided to drive up to Michigan. It was a great trip, and we got an awesome picture of 4 generation of males with the DeJong last name (my son, myself, my dad, and my grandpa.

With my grandpa's health getting progressively worse in the past few months, we had talked about going back up sometime this fall. One of my aunts called this past week, and let us know that we needed to come up pretty soon because they didn't know how much longer he has left judging on how he has been doing lately. We decided to take a trip up.  That means I get an unexpected, but needed, vacation. We will be flying up on Saturday, and coming back home the Friday after that. If I get lucky with my work schedule, I won't go back until the Monday after that. If not, I'll go back Sunday. Either way, I get an escape from work, and get to travel back to where I lived until I was 8 or so. I really hope my grandpa holds through until we get there. 

During the trip, we will get to do some things that we just didn't get the chance to do this last time, including seeing my Uncle Bob's gravel pit, watching my son ride the Meijer's penny pony, and see a Michigan Whitecaps game. I have a few cards I'm going to try to get signed, so hopefully I can get a few autographs.

While going to Target to get some things for the trip, I picked out a 4-pack hanger of '19 Topps Chrome.  I got a good number of cards for some of my PCs, including a deGrom '84 Refractor and a Andrelton Simmons base for those player collections, Pink Refractors of Jake Lamb, Ronald Acuna, Nick Markakis, a regular Refractor of Corey Seager, a Fish Fractor of Aaron Nola, and a Negative Refractor of Rhys Hoskins. A pretty good 4 packs.

There are the base cards I got.

 
Then, when I got home today, I had a package waiting for me at the door. Mike from A Life Shaped by Baseball had e-mailed me about 2 weeks ago about getting a trade started. He needed some cards to complete his 1992 Topps set, and I probably have 3-4 complete 1992 Topps sets in my doubles boxes, so I scoured through them and dug out the cards he needed, found some cards for a few of his PCs, and tried to make some customs I thought he would enjoy (which I try to do with most of my trades). When I saw the box at the door, I was surprised at how big it was, and was really excited.
When I opened it, I was floored! There was a huge box of cards, all of retired guys I collect! Don't believe me? Just look at how big that stack is!!

He must have collected during the years where I mainly opened a few packs of Topps and nothing else (1997-2000), because many of the cards I received were from sets I maybe had 1 or 2 cards of. Here are some of the sets that I'm talking about.

                                          

I don't know how you got such a cool collection, Mike, but thank you for sharing so many of your cards with me! I swear I added new cards to at least 50 guys, and it took me at least an hour to update my Want List Page. 

On top of that, he said that he has lots more cards that he could probably send in a future trade. As if all of the cards I got today weren't enough! Just another example of how all of the bloggers in this small community rock and really are great people. 

Mike, I appreciate the nice comments about how my Want List is organized. I hope it isn't too confusing or seems like I am fans of too many players, and it's post like this that make me think 'Hey, maybe I am doing something right with this blog!'. I will definitely be looking for more cards of your PC guys and setting them aside for a future trade. I hope to go through all of my new card shop's nickle boxes, and I hope to pass all of the love along to guys I trade with.

I think that's about it. I have a post that I am working on, and I hope to post it while I am flying in the plane. After all, how many times do you get to make a blog post while you are flying high in the sky with clouds all around you. I'll probably be off of the grid while I'm in Michigan, but maybe I'll get a chance to do some work on checklists. Only the '51, '53, '54, and most of the '55 Topps set are keeping me from having every missing Topps card listed from the 1951-2001 sets. So close...

Thanks again for the awesome trade, Mike!  I hope to come back with some great stories, maybe a Michigan pack, and hopefully a lot of renewed energy.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy