Trade with Democratic Roadkill

Quite a few months ago I received another large package from Duane at  Democratic Roadkill.  This is probably the 2nd or 3rd time that we have traded.   He always sends me a huge collection of cards, most of them Allen and Ginter. This time was no different; as you can see from the above photo he obliterated my want lists for the 2011 A&G set.  Duane usually sends over some cool, random Mets cards from vintage to present, but I'm going to focus on the A&G stuff this time out.

If you didn't already know, Duane is quite the Ginteraholic.  More so than me. I thought I could out Ginter him, but nobody can out Ginter the master.  From what I can tell from his blog he is basically putting together master sets of all the Allen and Ginter offerings and doing a much better job than I.  He's been showing off his rip  card collections as of late. 


Most people are probably sick of 2012 and 2013 A&G, but this is 2011 A&G so maybe you guys will like the rediscovery.


Anyway, here we go:

Some nice base cards to start us off.  Non-sports base cards at that. One is known for jumping around like a crazy person and the other is known for being an Iron Chef.  They both look like they are into the extreme area of their professions: extreme running and jumping and extreme chefing.

Here's a video of  Tim "Livewire" Shieff for you to get an idea of what this guy does.  I watched it with the sound off, so it could have language that is NSFW.  The sound does matter unless you can hear his ankles shattering. At least I'm assuming they're shattering,  my ankles and knees hurt just from watching the video.

A few examples of the short prints that Duane sent over. Vermillion is the only person that I haven't heard of.

I didn't realize that Brett Anderson was an Okie.  Both his and Matt Holliday's dads were both OSU baseball coaches.  This is Bedlam week in Oklahoma; the rivalry game between OU and OSU so these cards fit my mindset this week.  With the way OU is playing on offense (badly!) and they way OSU is playing on defense (pretty good) this could be crappy end to the football season for us Okies, I might have to avoid the internet for a while and seek solace in my trading cards.

The Animals in Peril mini set is nice.  A little depressing I guess, but informational.  Who knows, maybe a baseball card collector can some how turn the tide and help out some of these animals. Maybe influence a young person to go into agriculture?

The sketch cards are always nice. I like them because I have an interest in art and drawing myself.  The Twins card is a little odd in that it is a drawing of a drawing.

The David Wright card commemorates his being the youngest Met to reach 1,000 career hits.  This game was played on 4.27.2010.  According to the internet this was a game with the Dodgers and the Mets actually won the game!  With a 79-83 record maybe that should have been the highlight instead.

The Texas flag on Cliff Lee's jersey looks odd in black and white. The hat logo also looks out of place in B&W.  I guess the artist wanted to bring more focus to the player's faces.  The rest of the drawing isn't completely desaturated; the red piping on the catcher's gear is present.  It just seems like those logos would really make the whole drawing stand out more.

The one thing I like about these Worlds Most Mysterious minis from 2011 is that they continue the design on the back. I don't know much about design terminology, so let me show you what I'm talking about.

The World's most Mysterious Figures have this name plate, right?

....and Topps continued the same style of nameplate on the back of the card and just elongated it to hold the text and they added some curly q's. I think the correct term is strikes or keys, but I usually call them curly q's.  But it's still the same basic shape.

I don't think they usually do that even for A&G.  Since I haven't bought a lot of 2012 or 2013 A&G maybe they do now.  I just found it interesting at the time.  Up to this point I'm pretty sure the inserts all had a different border on the fronts and backs.

Some people might call that laziness; I call it continuity.

One insert set that I really liked was the Step Right Up set.  From what I can remember reading on the blogs a lot of people really liked this set.  It's colorful and who doesn't like a circus?

The subject matter is cool, but the design of the card fronts is what really drew me in. The background/border is really cool.  The font on the bottom is nice. I'm no font nerd, but it actually reminds me of the Oklahoma font that I've seen online. I'm sure their are many variations of fonts and they all have different names, but that's what I've always heard it called.

 A blogging legend makes an appearance on the Portraits in Penultimate set: Mr. Mike Gellner.

I'm spacing out on what the name of his blog was.  I'm pretty sure it was named after his kid (the little dude in the photo).

Thanks for the cards, Duane.  If you all have a chance go over and check out the dude's want list/trade list and help a guy out!

Thanks for reading!

My stupidity astounds me sometimes.

Like many people I pride myself on my intelligence. I realize that I'm not the most intelligent person on Earth, but I feel like I'm not the stupidest either.

I do have a tendency to make stupid comments on blog posts. I don't try to offend or be vague, but I feel like I'm not the best at make lucid comments especially on the fly. I don't think I have offended anybody yet so that's good. If the subject is something I feel strongly about I have a tendency to jump right in and comment without thinking.

One subject that gets me excited is Allen and Ginter. Specifically 2009 Allen and Ginter. That was one of the first sets that I tried to complete and after one year I'm still looking for a few select cards. I am also going after the black border and regular minis which has not been as easy as the rest of the set.

About a month ago Duane at Democratic Roadkill posted up a want/trade list on his blog and I thought it was just a trade list. Immediately after posting that I wanted some cards I realized that it wasn't just a trade list. My reading comprehension was lacking that day and I thought he was trading away the Pujols N43. He wasn't trading it away, he was looking for it. After a few emails and some apologies we came up with a trade for some minis and some random 09/10 A&G stuff. He mentioned he had some cool stuff for me, but he didn't mention how much.




As you can tell from the photo, avalanche is the perfect description of the amount of cards that he sent over. Every one of the cards was a new card to me. Literally no doubles at all.

He mentioned having some stuff to send over that might help me out with my quest to finish the regular border and black border minis from 2009 A&G. He sent over a good chunk to get me back on track to finish that set.

I don't have enough time to go over every card, which for me is a good thing. Having a bunch of cards to go through and collate is great. Collate is great is a nice slogan. I wish I had more free time to scan every one of these cards to show them off.

They look really good in a binder don't they? I don't have any one page finished so I just took a quick picture to show off the minis. You can tell there are some holes to be filled, but that's okay. I'll finish this thing off one of these days.



I pulled one Celestial Star of Mark Teixiera out of my box, but I wasn't really into that card. I liked the set, but I knew it would be a hard one to finish. I was just interested in the Johan and Wright cards. He traded me his Johan for my Teixeira! Definitely a good trade for me. Puts me halfway to finishing my goal for this subset.

Here are some of the cool Mets minis he sent over:


A nice Ruben Tejada. Rookie Short stop. The rookie card logo looks nice this year. I think it blends in with the design of these cards better than last years rookie logo. It's still a little weird for a new 21st century logo on a retro design.

The always photogenic Reyes.




... and a couple of Wright minis. Last year David Wright was depicted in a game action shot vertically, this year horizontally. Pretty cool even if the picture on the card is a little small.


I'm not doing the entire set in mini form this year, I'm just looking for a few sports and non-sports minis.


Sacagawea is one of two must haves for the non-sports subjects. The other would be a Leonardo Da Vinci black border card to go with the regular mini that I already pulled.


Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in getting up every time we do.
Appropriate Confucius quote considering how much falling (and failing) I've done in regards to finishing that black border mini set.

Reading the back of this card reminds me that I've always wanted to read Don Quixote. I always get that mixed up with the Cisco Kid.

The Water Buffalo peeking up from the bottom of the card is funny. I guess they designed it that way to make sure that the yellow star was visible. It looks good.


When I first saw this card I thought of Diplo. I didn't realize until now that the DJ Diplo took his name from the Diplodocus. Apparently he has a huge interest in dinosaurs.


Which would explain this album cover.

If you are so inclined, here is a song of his that is pretty repetitive, but it's catchy. Not one of his best, but I like it.




Duane didn't just send over the Ginter, he had some Mets for me.

I like these Unique cards. They look a little like 2010 Topps at first glance, but if you look a little closer they resemble 2002 Topps Post a little bit more.



Night Owl had a great post about the Post set. I found a two card pack of these recently when I was looking for a screwdriver. The pack was in a kitchen drawer. Pretty cool to find mint cards laying around your house.


The "wave" and the player are glossy, but the background has a matte finish just like in the Topps Post cards. It's a really nice look on these Topps Unique cards especially with the black border. I haven't seen any of these for sale locally. I need to search out some packs.

He sent over two Ticket to Stardom cards. I have had a few bloggers send me a few cards, but not these two. If it's not noticeable from the scan this card is the perforated parallel of the base card. This makes 5 cards of the Mets team set that I own without buying a pack. They're not as people made them out to be, but I'm still not buying. The nice thing about these cards is that Topps put the card number on the back and front. That would make collating the set easier for people chasing the set.

I don't know if this has to be said, but this was a great trade. Thanks again Duane. If anyone is still reading this go check out his blog. He's so close to finishing up 2008 Masterpieces and 2010 A&G. I'm sure he'll help you out with some cards.

Trade with Democratic Roadkill-and more topps cards!

For this blog post I'm going to run through a bit of my topps series one and twos that I picked up as well as a recap of the fastest trade ever! Since I've been pretty busy this week and will not even have a day off, I'll be blowing through this one pretty fast. Hopefully that won't reflect badly on the trade, because the cards were well appreciated.

Okay, on with the trade.

After a few e-mails me and Duane at Democratic Roadkill had come up with some Allen and Ginter cards that each one needed, so off the trade went. I had barely even had a chance to hit "Send" on the return email before my package had arrived in the mailbox! I was really excited to get these, because it means I'm that much closer to actually finishing one of these sets.

First off I want to show off some of the topps that he sent over.

I wonder if topps picked this card because they wanted to show off how long his name actually looks on the back of his jersey? It's a pretty cool card though. You can still see part of his face even though most of the card shows his back.



.. cool horizontal action shot.



A nice Ichiro card...



.. to go along with this allen and Ginter Ichiro card he sent over.


He sent a bunch of Allen and Ginter base and short print cards for me.

Another cool horizontal shot.




I believe this is the last Negro League star in the base set that I still needed.



Hip Hip Jorge!

This brings me to only needing 53 more cards for my base and short print set.

I picked up a few more topps cards. I was able to grab a couple of cool inserts.

Whenever I pull certain cards I immediately identify them with certain bloggers. I think their is someone out there who is a Jason Bartlett fan, he's probably already got this card, but maybe not the gold parallel version.



After seeing these all over the blogsphere, I've finally pulled one of my own. It's a redemption for from the Braves. I'm not sure if anybody has received their redemptions yet. It says on the website that it'll be a while before they're shipped out.
Might make a nice addition to the binder.



Another Pee Wee Reese card for my collection. I like the look of these cards, but after looking at the checklists I think it'd be too hard to do both the Target and Walmart versions of these. I'm sort of confused about this insert set. I think they are numbered differently depending on what store you bought them from. I can't remember, plus it's enough now for me to just try and get those Turkey Reds together.


And finally one of the few Toppstown cards I actually like. This one and the Johan card is nice. If theirs a Jose Reyes out there that might be cool too.

That's all for now, thanks again Duane. You guys should check out his blog!