Trade with Nachos Grande

A month or two ago, Chris, the writer of the Nachos Grande blog reached out to me about getting a trade started. He mentioned the Season of Giving that he does every year on his blog, and said he had a bunch of Rays to ship me, and he would be happy if I sent him some cards back, but if I couldn't that was ok too. Well, I sent him some cards I had for sets he was working on, and he sent me a bunch of nice Rays cards for my collection. 

The lot starts off with some cool late '90's Rays cards from sets that I have just really never purchased packs from (other than 1998 Topps). I had never seen any of the '98 Fleer cards (although I did buy one pack and pull a '63 Boggs insert). The Boggs card looks like the 2nd Paul Sorrento card, with a photo of Wade signing autographs. As with '98 Fleer, I only purchased 1 pack of '99 UD Choice and '99 Upper Deck. I vividly remember the '99 Upper Deck pack. I was at Wal-Mart with my mom. She got groceries, and I picked the pack of '99 UD and stood in line behind her, and paid for it with the few dollars I had in my wallet, and remember the cashier rolling her eyes at me like I should've been spending my money on other things. Well, the joke was on her, because I pulled a Jin-Ho Cho Star Rookie card, and a Glendon Rusch base card, which would allow me to retire at age 16. I still don't regret buying the pack, though. None of the other sets shown have ever been lucky enough to have me open a pack of, so all of these cards are new to me. I love the Jim Morris rookie. He doesn't have very many cards at all. 

The next photo starts showing sets I've purchased more packs of, starting with '00 Pacific (1 or 2 packs), '00 Topps (I purchased the whole Series 2 set), and then gets to stuff I have purchased a ton of ('02 Total, '05 Topps, and '07 Topps). The funny thing is that I haven't really pulled that many Rays from any of the sets, so just about all of these cards are new to me. I love the '01 Topps Opening Day Hamilton. I believe this just about completes the rainbow of this card for me, just leaving with his '01 base Gold card, and the '01 Chrome Refractor. I love the new '03 Heritage cards, and the Lucky 13 Delmon Young. I would've been stoked to pull that back in '07. The '07 Allen & Ginter Upton painting has me a little confused. I didn't purchase any packs of the set that year, but remember pulling a painting or two from the previous years' set, and it almost looks like on the Upton that it says 1/1 next to Dick Perez's signature, but there doesn't seem to be anything else indicating that it is a 1/1. I don't remember there being a 1/1 next to Perez's signature in the '06 version, but maybe it's just part of the card design in the '07 set. 

I think I was missing the majority of cards from the next photo, which is surprising, given the amount of cards I opened from '07-'11. Most of the newer Bowman stuff I am pretty lacking on, but I think with all of the cards Chris sent that I am close to a full set from 2012. 

Like I said, I think he helped me finish the '12 Bowman set, as well as the '12 Topps Rays set. Hopefully by the end of the month, I will go through all of the new cards I have, put them in binders, and get my Want List back up-to-date, and for sets that I only have 1-2 cards needed, listing those in a 'need it' form insted of 'have it' like most of them are. 

Chris got me close to finishing the '14 Topps, '14 Topps Heritage, 15 Topps, and '15 Topps Heritage sets with these cards. I started buying a lot more cards in '15, but from '12-'14, I barely purchased anything at all.

The last photo has more current stuff. I love the Brendan McKay Finest card. I hope with a rotation featuring Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, McKay, Charlie Morton, and the healthiest 2 of either Jose DeLeon, Brent Honeywell, and Anthony Banda, that the Rays can compete in the AL East in the future. It could be a fun next few years if they do.

Last up are some guys in my Favorite Player Collection, and a cool hit that Chris sent. I have never pulled that many Rolando Arrojo cards when he was a Ray, so it's nice to get some of them dumped on me. I never knew that '99 Upper Deck MVP had a Silver Signature parallel, but now I do, and I have one of Rolando. I think the Cust Draft Pick might be a double, but no worries, I can now stick it in my Rays binder, and use it to cross Jason Standridge's name off the list of cards that I need. The Joey Gathright '04 Ultra is a Gold Medallion edition. All 3 Aubrey Huff cards are new. I have the Camo version of the Elliot Johnson card, and now I have the base to go with it. Kind of the same thing with the Quinton McCracken card. I have a version of the card with a 'preview' stamp at the top, and now I have the regular verson. I don't believe I have either of the Ben Zobrist cards, as the first one fell into the range of years where I didn't purchase many packs, and as for the Gypsy Queen, well, I just feel that they mostly look the same year after year, and I never really purchase any packs of it. Still enjoy it when I get some as they cross cards off of my list.

The Carlos Pena relic is cool. It comes from the '11 Allen & Ginter set, and what makes it so cool is the relic. I don't believe I have ever seen Rays uniforms with that color combination in plaid. I could be missing something, but I really don't remember their uniforms having part that looked like the relic does. Maybe it is an undershirt, or maybe part of one of Joe Maddon's famous 'dress up nights'. A very cool relic on a very cool card. Thank you so much, Chris, for 'dumping' your Rays on me. I appreciate them all very much. 

I believe that gets me up-to-date with all of the packages I have recieved lately. I might have 1 or 2 coming in over the next few weeks, and I'm thinking about seeing if I can find a Rays team set for cheap on Amazon so I can use a 10 dollar gift card I got for Amazon for Christmas. Any ideas on how to get the most for 10 bucks on cards on Amazon? 

I am plugging away at missing player checklists, and am in the middle of 1957 right now. By this time next week, perhaps I will be somewhere towards the end of the '60's. I should have a good amount of free time, so we'll see. I have also been working on some templates and customs in the 1951 Topps set, and I think I will write about them in my next post.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.
-Jeremy