Unexpected Incoming cards

 The last few days have brought in some incoming cards, with all of them being pretty unexpexted. I went to Target on Saturday after work with my wife and son, and got a hanging pack of Pinnacle Prizm. Not unexpected, but I was kind of expecting to see more baseball on the shelf but that was the only thing besides yucky stuff like basketball, football, and Allen & Ginter. The pack yielded some pretty good cards. 

The Franco and Arozarena are nice adds to my Rays binder. One day a few months down the road hopefully, I’ll put all my loose Rays cards in binders and it will look nice. The Rodriguez parallel is the 2nd Panini Rodriguez rookie parallel I’ve got in the past few months. Not saying much with the amount of products and parallels out nowdays, but I’ll take it. 2 others cards not pictured will be going out in trade packages. 

Speaking of trade packages, when I got home, I had a package from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders sitting in my mailbox. I sent him a few Michigan guys and a card of the namesake of the blog, and he quickly returned fire with a bunch of cool cards he had been saving for me. 

Dewon Brazton was a top draft pick for the Rays who never turned out. I probably saw him pitch for the Rays and got him to sign a 2002 Donruss Originals card during Rays fanfest during the early 2000s. Niemann put together a string of good seasons for the Rays before getting injured. He was friendly to the fans too, as I remember getting him to sign cards a few times. I had hopes Desmond Jennings and Carl Crawford would form a 1-2 punch with speed in the Rays lineup, but Crawford left for the Red Sox and Jennings only lasted a few years. The rest of this picture is fairly well known guys, with a nice Players Weekend patch of Longoria. 

Dennis helped me with the 2022 Heritage set with the main portion of this pic. If you know me, the last time I purchased a pack of Gypsy Queen was like 2012, so the only way I get any of the set is from shows, card shops, or trades like this. The last card is a sweet dual patch card of Jacob Nix, who shares a last name with my wife before she married me. Thanks for the great package of cards, Dennis! Hope you enjoy the ones I sent you. 

Sunday after church, we stopped a Big Lots, and found some packs of 2022 and 2023 Topps, as well as a blaster of 2021 Topps Big League. I chose the blaster because the regular Topps packs would’ve been 90% doubles. 

I pulled some great Rays cards, featuring the main moments of the 2020 postseason run (somehow Arozarena was missing from this set). The purple box card was Mike Trout, who I may already have got from the other blaster I got about a year ago. It’s either Harper or another Trout. I’ll have to check tomorrow, but if it is a double and anyone wants it, it’s up for trade. I like the highlights cards, but wish it would show a picture from the actual moment for some of them. 

Wish I wouldn’t have pulled that Dodgers highlight, but the Rays will always be the 2020 World Champions to me. Nothing really earth shattering with the parallels, but I figured I would post them in case anyone wants them. 

Today when I got home from work, I checked the mail and found an envelope from John of Johnny’s Trading Spot fame. 

John sent some very cool cards. I’ll start off first with Austin Meadows. He could rake with the Rays and I believe he still can and I wish him the best as he is recovering from anxiety and mental health issues. I have high hopes for Josh Lowe, and hope he can start hitting and getting more playing time with Tampa. I got a number of 2022 Ben Baller cards, and even though I don’t like high end products, I do think they are nice looking cards. The Yandy Diaz card looks like it could be a Gold Rainbow parallel, but I thought the back identified those cards, and this one doesn’t. I’ve been doing a bunch of logging cards in on TCDB and I tell you what, the pictures help a bunch. More on that later. The final card is a 2018 Topps Chrome Future Star of Paul DeJong, who I hope starts hitting again. MLB needs as many DeJongs as they can get, as Chase DeJong keeps getting cups of coffee but not many cards the past few years. Thanks for the cards, John!  I’ve got a stack for you that I’m starting. 

I am off tomorrow, and should spend most of it putting these new cards into my loose card boxes and entering favorite player cards into TCDB. Im going alphabetically, and am up to Quinton McCracken. Some of these current players are tough as every set has 500 parallels and it makes it a little difficult going through lists and finding the card you need to click on. We’ll see how many players I can get done tomorrow. David Ortiz is going to be a beast but I’ll keep plugging through. Once the favorite guys are done, I’ll probably get back to doing the Topps team cards, finishing off the AL. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy