Another Batch of Goodies from Smed's

One of the best things afforded to me by way of having this blog are the opportunities I've had to match up my collecting interests with others who by and large have opposing interests. Simply put, it makes trading very easy when both parties has a bunch of stuff the other isn't the slightest bit interested in. On the other hand, I've yet to pull off a substantial Cardinals for Cardinals trade... at least, not in a very long time. While I have thousands of Cards dupes piling up in boxes all over the place, I'm afraid a trade might be rather awkward and result in both sides just pulling in more doubles. Smed's Baseball Card Blog fits in the former category. I'm not sure I'll ever run out of stuff to trade with this blog, and boxes of various sizes seem to keep showing up in my mailbox.

I blame the scanner for making this more reddish than it needs to be, but I'm really liking the orange retail Chrome refractors this year. They've got nothing on blue refractors (or blue anything) but they're still nice and see to be fairly attainable. I'm still not quite inspired to buy full-priced Chrome product of my own.

I will agree with others who really enjoy the 2010 Topps Update All-Star Game relic design. Similar cards from past years have resulted in some eyesores, but this is pretty nice.

Fake or not, I love the patch here. Perhaps that has something to do with the impressive Cardinal themed logo...

The largest chunk of the box was actually from the 2010 Allen & Ginter set. I've made pretty good progress on this set overall, but somehow I'm not even close to being finished. I really need to finish a set... some set... at some point soon so I don't feel like this set collecting thing that I dabble in has been a complete waste of time.

I don't know what I did to make my scanner hate me (probably scan thousands of cards) but it no longer likes to scan the black bordered minis properly. That's okay, though... you get the picture, no matter how skewed and poorly cropped it may be.

Ahh, Brachiosaurus, bringer of havoc... and extremely long necks.

And where else but Allen & Ginter will you find a miniature card dedicated to vertical eruptions of scalding hot water?

Thanks again to Smed's. Everyone else... join my contest! There's still plenty of time and we're getting a good turnout so far.