Trading with Dustin from MI

Thanks to a recent flurry of trade activity, I continue to have plenty of cards to show off on this blog. Trade posts may not be the most exciting thing for others to read, but I have to consider how much I like to read about people's reactions to what I send them and remember why I do this in the first place. Reader Dustin from MI sent such a fat, card-for-card quality package that it almost seems a shame to boil it down to just 10 cards here. I have to show some restraint, however, or I'll never get around to posting anything else.

I'm not entirely sure why this card is in black & white, since I'm pretty sure color photography was readily available throughout the career timespan of Ozzie's career. It's a nice addition to my always lacking Ozzie Smith collection. This is from a Topps Stars set circa 2000.

I am completely baffled by the fact that Upper Deck issued an entirely different version of the 2006 base set (more than 1000 cards) in an extra glossy format and labelled it "Special F/X". Even weirder still was that this was apparently available in pack form and came with its own set of parallels, like this purpleish shiny Braden Looper card. With the way things have been going in Cardinals territory of late, I'm surprised that Looper hasn't been signed.

Ryan Ludwick has been about the biggest threat in the Cards lineup lately, but his presence still doesn't save the 2009 O-Pee-Chee set from being a comedic tragedy.

I have tons and tons of Cardinals oddball cards, augmented by my eBay purchase of a huge lot of late '80s mint condition oddball Cardinals stuff, so I'm always excited when I find something like this that I didn't have in my collection already.

The 2008 Timeline set introduced me to the fantastic 2004 Timeless Teams design and it makes me want to pursue buying some packs of the original stuff. I believe this is my first card from that set.

Dustin sent over a few non-Cardinals cards of current/former Cardinals that I like to collect including this 1997 Bowman Chris Carpenter. Does anyone have a Carp rookie that they feel like giving up?

Dustin hit my set wantlists pretty hard, and included a pretty healthy stack of 2003 Topps. This is my first Cardinals Chuck Finley card as far as I know.

Ahh! What happened to Brian Roberts' face?

About a third of the box was 2004 Topps Heritage cards, which is great. I don't see older Heritage packs for sale very often, so I'm really happy when people send me this stuff. The Fernando Vina card is something I hadn't seen before in a Heritage card. Most of the photos are doctored in these sets in some way, but they didn't bother to make Vina a member of his new Tigers team.

Thanks again to Dustin, who should be receiving a package in the mail any day now if he hasn't already.