Two Dodgers Fans and a Rockies Fan Walk into a Bar

It's not a joke, it's a PWE round-up from @nightowlcards and more! 

 

It's time to look at the contents of a few more stamped small envelopes sent my way this spring. First up is a few cards from Rockies fan hiflew of Cards from the Quarry. There's been a near-weekly feature at Cards from the Quarry where a serial numbered card from each team is offered up for trade. I've claimed a few of these this year and was able to jettison some extra Rockies cards in the process.

Say what you will about Panini's Donruss sets, but they've definitely improved since the first offering back in 2014. This is one of the stat line parallels, which does have an interesting foil effect on it at least. The design is pretty rough, though, with the only really welcome element being the throwback baseball pattern on the sides.

The last card from hiflew is this Luke Weaver Prizm Draft card numbered to just 35. 

Next up is some cards from Dodgers fan Night Owl Cards, who has sent me a lot of cards over the years to put it lightly.

Night Owl keeps hitting my set wants, which is always appreciated. As a Cards fan, I'm bummed that Kris Bryant is a thing again. Sometimes that walk year will do that to a guy.

Luke Gregerson was a former Cardinals draft pick that was traded before he hit the majors, but finished his career in a Cardinals uniform. I try to forget his time in that uniform, honestly.

Dude.

Night Owl also found a couple of Cardinals cards that I needed. This one was chunky enough to warrant its own envelope. I haven't looked at the Series 2 checklist all that carefully yet, but I'm guessing there's another one or two of these manupatch cards that I need to track down.

Series 2 is also carrying on the 70 Years of Topps theme with star players (old and new) on designs of the past. We'll hopefully check out a few of those next week. It sometimes produces weird results, because I swear I've seen a card just like this before.

Last up is another 70 Years card, sent from Dodgers fan gcrl of cards as i see them. I think I end a lot of my posts with a Yadi card, but I think it's always a good way to go out.

Feel free to actually write my joke in the comments, if you're so inclined.

Postage Rates are Out of Control

In better news, it looks like someone checked the want list. 

I've had to restrict my shipping to Canada of late, with the rates to send tiny packages with just a handful of cards from US to Canada threatening to overtake the cost of a decent dinner. PWEs are the way to go these days when shipping internationally, which unfortunately introduces increased risk that your stuff isn't going to show up (or might get eaten by wolves.) Fortunately, the envelopes I sent off recently to Condition Sensitive seem to have arrived in passable shape.

Domestically speaking, we're suffering through our second major postage increase in just the past four months. This is hitting people (like me) hard -- people who like to ship some team bags around the country without breaking the bank. Check this chart out below, which is for First Class Package Retail service:

Ouch! Now, just consider the fact that the "Old Rate" column was actually the NEW rate increase from September 2017. Bad news all around. If you have the means, definitely take advantage of the cheaper rates that come with online shipping through third party commercial arrangements.

It's not all bad news, though. We have some great cards to look at, thanks to Condition Sensitive. Although he caught on briefly with the Red Sox minor league system last season, Johnny Peralta may have played his last big league game. If so, he did it in a Cardinals uniform, which is certainly the best uniform.

In addition to some Cardinals cards, because... well, that's I do here... I also snagged a healthy stack of Blazers cards. There was a common theme with these cards. (No, they're not all little known outside of NY Erick Barkley.) I needed them all! Someone clearly checked the want list, or at least the "haves" list I have posted up at TCDB. What do you call a "haves" list, anyway? A reverse want list? I'll go with reverse want list.

Nurk! Jusuf Nurkic came to Portland in a trade deadline deal last season with division rival Denver. Nurkic has had his ups and downs, but I'm generally in favor of him being the starting center of the Blazers. There aren't a lot of quality centers in the league (there never has been), and he will sit for stretches when the team goes small to match up with the other trendy small lineups out there. I'm not sure how they're going to afford to pay him, though.

Scottie Pippen was the first in a long procession of past-their-peak star players to wind up in Portland in the early '00s. For all things considered, he was probably the best.

I don't want to say the same things I always say when I write about a Sabonis card here, so I'll just say this: Sabonis was legend. Is legend. Is. Legend.

Our local alt-weekly's cover story this week is about the so-called Jail Blazers era, and leaves us with this artistic gem featuring Rashe... oh, just click on it!

Thorzul Group Break Results

Any time you wind up with a serial numbered Chuck Finley card, things are golden.

Late in the spring, Thorzul held a group break where he divvied up a bit lot of craziness that he purchased online. I haven't participated in many group breaks lately (too many Cardinals fans and not enough money to go around, I guess) but Thorzul knows what he's doing and I happened to read about it at the right time. The Cards cards did not disappoint. I'm just showing a few of them.

Would it have been so crazy for Topps to actually use a border color that was generally well received as their base color? I know, I know, that would open up the doors to the concept of white parallels inserted into retail packs, but that's a fair trade-off. I'm sick of white bordered cards. Really sick.

I've been slowly cataloging my Waino collection and am pretty happy with the way things are turning out. Once I finish his cards off on Zistle in the next day or so, I will have all of my PCs online, scanned (if necessary) and up-to-date. How's that for efficiency? If you're bored and you have cards, I strongly suggest you check out any of the links at the side to see if I need any of those cards that you are hanging on to for no reason.

This might be the juiciest card in the lot as Yadi cards can be pretty pricey these days. Alas, it's going to Erin's collection and I'll have to go find my own someday. This is a photo variation of Molina's All-Star card from last year's Update set.

Finally, a pair of 2014 Gypsy Queen jersey cards were found among the assortment. I don't really understand why Topps has felt the need to do both framed and full memorabilia cards. This is happening more and more in A&G now as I've heard. The framed cards look nice. If you're going to bother making them, just roll with that.

Both of these jersey cards feature new Cardinals acquisitions, which means that the mystery piece of memorabilia has nothing to do with St. Louis. That's okay, though. As long as they didn't come from some shirt hanging up in a mall store, I suppose...