The adventures of Salty and Hamrod!

I still love this old set. You know the ancient 2009 Topps baseball. It's still pretty new to me and I love the design of the cards. I'm still building that set and I got some help from Justin at Is This a Wasteland or is it just Tampa Bay Sports.




Me and Justin have pulled off a bunch of successful trades since I've started blogging. He runs a cool blog that centers around Tampa Bay Lightning hockey as well as the Rays and Orioles. He had some cool stuff for trade on this post.



It's kind of funny, I always check out other people's trade posts and they seem to mix it up with base and relic/auto cards. It finally occurred to me more than ever that I'm a base card enthusiast. That's not to say I don't like some of the inserts out there, but I really want to be a set builder not so much a player collector.

So on that note let's check out some of the Topps 2009 cards he sent over.

Here's one of the reason's why the 2009 baseball product was so successful: the cool action shots.


Especially this one because it includes the player's face and also shows a genuine action shot complete with the ball in the frame.

The little things in these trading cards are what kill me.

I'm not too familiar with Hamilton's tattoos, but it looks it says "Hamrod" on his left bicep. I guess he either uses that as his nickname or wants to use that as his nickname.

I don't know Saltalamacchia's nickname is or if he even has one: but "Salty" ain't too bad. I don't know how to pronounce his last name, so this might work out better for me.

Maybe Topps wanted to do something clever with the names. One guys name is Jarrod Jaay-rod and Ham-rod. but I think Salty and the Hamrod works better.



I haven't seen much Topps 206 cards around here. Maybe they are and I'm just fixated on other stuff. I bought a few packs and was only really happy to pull the Mickey Mantle checklist cards.

Here is a no numbered Mantle card.


Pretty awesome if I do say so.

Keeping with the 206 theme Justin sent over a couple of Mets.


David Wright.


FRANCISCO! There's something about that name that makes me want to type it out loud.




Seeing this cards in person makes me want to go out and buy more packs of these cards.

Thanks again for the cards. I hope we work out many more trades in the future.

Gift from Is this Tampa Bay Sports-or is it just a Wasteland?

After busting a few packs from Series two and UH I've pulled a few of these Ring of Honor inserts. I've pulled a few of them before, but I never really looked at them too closely until now.

Maybe that was because I've never pulled any players that I've been actively collecting.

That changed when I got a package in the mail from Justin at Is this a Wasteland-or is it just Tampa Bay Sports?

This is the second package I've received from him. The first being a huge allotment of Vikings cards. Thanks again, by the way.


I had seen a Pee Wee Reese Ring of Honor card that looked interesting to me so I asked for it.
He was nice enough to send it over with a HUGE selection of Allen and Ginter that I needed from the base set.

But first, the Pee Wee card.


I realize now why I like it so much. Not only is it a Brooklyn Dodger, (I've been a fan of theirs since doing a book report on Jackie Robinson when I was in 4th or 5th grade.) but it's also because from the scan I had assumed it was a black and white photo. Don't get me wrong I like black and white photos. Actually color is nice too, colorized black and white movies or photos usually look really bad.

It looks a lot more natural having the player in color with a desaturated background than some of the other Ring of Honor cards that I've pulled.


Here's what I'm talking about.


Two flat slabs of gray and dark gray. Boring!








These two cards are cool, but they have this blobbed out blury gray background with no personality.



This one is just weird. Whoever edited looks like the blurred it out with some weird effect.

Anyway, that's just my long winded way of saying I really liked the Pee Wee Reese card.


I mentioned earlier that he had sent me some Ginter. Actually he sent me a TON of Allen and Ginter base cards to get me to needing only 31 more cards to finish the set. Really cool!

I don't have enough free time to upload all the cards, but here are a couple that I really like.



I wasn't really expecting these, but they were nice to fill those holes in the binder.



This is one of my new faves for kind of a weird reason. I have met a few Colombian students recently and I always ask them about what kind of sports that they are interested in. Most of world seems to be hung up on soccer, but I was thinking that baseball should be somewhat popular in south and central America simply because so many players come from there. Apparently the only Colombian we could come up with is Edgar. This guy even new the town he came from: Barranquilla, Colombia. I can't pronounce it, I can't even pronounce Renteria correctly. Oh well, I should bone up on my Spanish more.

Thanks again for the cool cards. If you're reading this I'm preparing some cool stuff to send your way. At least I hope you think it's cool.