Play at the Plate Has Lapped This Blog

My backlog of trades to post about has now officially reached desperate and pathetic levels. I received an amazing package from Play at the Plate late last week and realized that I still had not gotten around to posting about the last package he sent. At this point, I still feel like giving each package the justice that it deserves (I don't do this for the stuff I buy from eBay generally) and I thought it a bit cheesy to combine both packages, so I am presenting the last group of cards that were sent to me. If I can manage to stay on schedule, we're looking at a late-February posting of the second package. (This, of course, is reliant upon my ability to make myself do at least one weekend post, which is always difficult.)

We all know about Play at the Plate by now, of course, don't we? He likes the Rangers, he likes baseball cards and his blog banner is currently a giant picture of Ty Cobb karate-kicking some dude in "the tools of ignorance" which is pretty awesome for some reason. He sent me some Cardinals and a few other things last time around. Let's check it out.

It is really difficult, at least in my eyes, to tell the difference between a 2007 Ultra retail, hobby ("SE") or gold card. This one is "gold". I must have looked at this card about 5 times before I realized it was numbered, oddly enough not in gold foil.

This looks pretty awesome, even for J.D. Drew. It has a bat piece, which is still a novel concept to me, and the piece is cracked down the middle. Now, of course, I could not say with any certainty if the bat was already cracked or if the little piece was so thin that it just cracked on its own.

I love the framed Masterpieces parallels. Doesn't everyone else? I guess that's why people still buy this stuff by the boxload at discounted prices even though everyone has Bip-levels of all of the base cards they could ever want (I don't, exactly, but I have tons of the Cardinals regular base stuff.)

Erin and I are going to seriously reconstruct a Ryan Ludwick uniform with these Allen & Ginter relics. I have mentioned this before and I will keep mentioning it until it finally happens. I'm at the point where I want people to keep sending me more of these. I think I have 4 or 5 now, which is awesome, especially for someone with a fairly limited amount of relics and virtually no "high end" cards.

This is a pretty busy card, which I guess is fitting for the era it was released in. I just want to go on record to, once again, encourage anyone who is discouraged or disgusted by Mr. McGwire's behavior to send me all your unwanted McGwire junk. I don't want to pay for it, but I do want to own it. (Hey, at least he's a personable guy, unlike Clemens.)

Brian also sent over a few 2007 Bowman Heritage cards. At this point I'm sort of "stealth-collecting" this set. And that also means I'm collecting the foil cards like Mr. Frenchy here.

I also want the prospect cards. There are a few decent players in this little mini set and a whole lot of head-scratchers, but I guess that's typical for Bowman.

Thanks again to Play at the Plate!