This Week in Envelopes

Actually, one of them is from last month. Don't tell anyone. 

I use plain white envelopes as my primary delivery vessel for my Listia auctions (yup, I'm still doing that) and have achieved a more than 99% success rate as far as my calculations can take me. Amazon has already managed to screw up more deliveries for me than the good ol' USPS, and I've only been a Prime member for several months. In any case, I can certainly appreciate a well crafted PWE, and I received three such examples recently(ish).

Marc of Remember the Astrodome sent over some brand new Cardinals cards, including one of the Cardinals new callups (DeJong) and these two Gypsy Queen parallels of former/future super prospect Alex Reyes. Like most things in life, all I can do about Reyes is keep my fingers crossed and occasionally yell things at the TV.

Marc was one of the many who answered my Heritage call, and sent along a nice stack of the 2017 stuff. We all need a good laugh now and again, so I thought I'd bring out Smilin' Matt Kemp here.

Before he hooked me up with some group break goodies, Peter sent me my first Matt Holliday of his post-Cardinals career. Holliday has had a productive first season in pinstripes, though he was recently shut down with some sort of mystery illness.

Peter also sent me my first look at the 1992-style Archives cards from 2017. These are fairly accurate representations of the original set, aside from the usual quibbles about fonts and trademarks and colors and such.

1992 was part of a two year experiment by Topps with their flagship set to find themselves in a competitive market. The cardstock on these and the 1993 set were completely unlike anything they did before or since. In 1994, they would unfortunately settle on the thin white stock with the UV coating that we know and loathe today. (Well, at least, I do.)

We go back to the original set as we move on to the envelope sent over by Matt of Summer of '74.

This isn't your garden variety '88 Fleer version of Kenny "Two Gloves" Dayley. It's glossy, folks. Only the good stuff here. (Side note: I kind of like 1988 Fleer, the basic version. Don't tell anyone.)

Glossy Dayley came with a glossy friend in rookie Lance Johnson. Matt also sent a 1/1 sketch card that I'm saving for a rainy day. You're just going to have to trust me on that. (Matt is on my list of people I'm overdue to send stuff to, in case he's reading or in case you're nervous about trading with me.)

I haven't done so well on the 10 Most Wanted list lately, but Matt was cool enough to help me out with this 1984 Topps card that I really should've owned decades ago already.

Finally, I neglected to mention last night that the group break came with this Topps (all CAPS) BUNT code. If anyone is interested, let me know. I guess it probably only has appeal to people who haven't tried the app and are curious about it, or perhaps a Kris Bryant super collector who hasn't bought any packs in awhile? I downloaded this and played it for awhile a couple years ago and then got mad and threw my phone in the river.