Free Stuff Friday # 3 - Oh Brother

Inspired by the generosity of Jon at A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts, here is the third in what I hope will be a regular series of "Free Stuff Friday."

If you see a card you want, claim it in the comments below and I will send it to you in a PWE. 

Claim 1 or claim them all!

2018 Topps, Series 1 and Series 2 - If there's a particular year you want to see here, please indicate it in the comments below, if not I'll just cycle through the next year each week, as long as I have 9 cards to post! 

Parallels! Prince is numbered to /299, Tim Hudson is numbered to /2000.

The Giancarlo Stanton is a red Parallel Insert - not serial numbered, but still nice!!

This week's mini collection - brothers! I am visiting my brother this weekend, so I figured I would put together a small stack of baseball playing bros for you to pick from. Not a lot of variety as far as years go, these are all from 88 to 92, but there's always next week!

Let me know in the comments if there is a particular mini-collection, or year, or brand, or sport (all baseball unless someone requests something else...)! 

If we haven't traded before, please send me your mailing address. My blog has a contact form on the sidebar (you might have to view the web version rather than mobile...)

Manaea Mania - Baby Giraffe Avoids Bat Gaffes

DATELINE APRIL 21, 2018 -- Oakland, CA 
Sean Manaea, a flamethrowing southpaw on the left coast, has made quite the impression on the visiting Boston nine this evening, setting down the Americans in rapid succession. The giant Athletic twirled scoreless baseball for the full nine rounds, without surrendering a single hit. Nine of the final ten Bostonians went by the way, with only a pass on balls marring perfection.

Manaea came to Oakland via Kansas City, traded to the Golden State along with Aaron Brooks (now pitching for Milwaukee's AAA affiliate) in exchange for the 2015 World's Series Hero Ben Zobrist.

2018 Looks to be a big year for the young portsider - His 2017 contributions were tops among his teammates. The big question surrounding the one they call the "Baby Giraffe" - can he repeat the feat?

It was not that long ago now that Johnny Vander Meer set down two consecutive teams without a base hit, in June of 1938. Can Manaea match the mark? Both lefties are a bit under the radar. Both blanked Boston in their first no-nos. Before the first no-hitter, Manaea had never thrown a complete game, let alone a no-hit shutout. Johnny had thrown his first career shutout earlier that season, and had pitched three complete games in the starts before, including 10 innings against Saint Louis. All of those starts, and the three starts after the feat resulted in wins for the Redlegs.

Manaea's next start figures to be Friday night against the defending champs, the Houston Astros. A Tall task indeed for the six foot five lefty. 

Saturday is Card Show Day

The snow is starting to melt, and with warmer weather, the trip out to the card show finally felt manageable again. I made sure that I got caught up on all the series 1 standouts I missed the first time around.

I'm now caught up on Rookie Cups again, ready for Series 2 to do the right thing and keep the Cups coming.

Every show there are boxes and boxes of Puckett cards, and I usually just skip them because I assume there's nothing in them I don't already have. I gave it a shot and it turns out I was wrong!

I do check everyone's table for Kennys Vargas cards, and for the first time in a long time there was a Vargas card I'd never seen before.

Turns out this was a "custom" card made in New York to promote a local card show (or card magazine?) near the Twins' AAA Affiliate in Rochester. Makes no difference to me, I was happy to add another Kennys to my collection!

I did a double take on this card - Auto, relic, numbered to /25 for hometown hero Joe Mauer. As he's gotten further away from his MVP season, the prices on his cards have seemingly come down everywhere but here in MN. Well. until now! This one was a steal, easily the cheapest Mauer auto I've seen at a show.

It wouldn't be a card show without some cheap vintage! These were all listed between .50 and a buck, and by the time I left the table the stack was big enough to earn an even better price per card.

My set build of 1959 Topps is going to be a focus of mine all summer. I'm going to make a wantlist this month so I can make an even bigger dent at the April show.

The biggest name added to the set this show? Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn! He beat out Willie Mays for the batting title in 1958 by going 3 for 4 on the last day of the season. Way to go, Whiz Kid!

2018 Topps, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Building Other Sets

There it is - the first card from the first pack I opened of 2018 Topps. I've decided to keep the 1st card pulled in a separate spot.

Here's the last two years of first cards, just to give a sense of the evolution of the borderless design.

Here's the back - the trade with the Rangers looks like it worked decently well for both teams. The Rangers don't have Fielder anymore due to his retirement, and Kinsler is moving on to the Angels this year, but both teams ended up with several seasons of production from their player.

I purchased a blaster and 2 loose packs - and I ended up with just two Twins. The lens flare effect on the team logo doesn't really do much for me. It just gets in the way - might be better if the light source was behind the logo instead of in front.

Some nice action shots for the young guns.

The veterans are all brooding and intense. They've been through some things.

The horizontal shots are back again, which is usually a good idea. Overall, I thought there was a nice selection of photos for Series 1.

Here's where everything comes off the rails. The inserts have been getting more generic looking and unnecessary. I'd much rather have more base cards than these. The 1983 Salute is a head scratcher - the design was just recently used for Archives, and while I will be the first to admit is one of the better Topps designs of the junk wax era, it still seems like a slot that could have been used for something else.

The Derek Jeter set... I get it, that's fine, but I will just be trying to get rid of them. Opening Day... Why? Topps has a whole set dedicated to Opening Day, we don't need an insert set on top of it. Then there's the Home Run Challenge card.

Check out the website. This "card" is just an ad for the promotion, not the actual Home Run Challenge insert. You can't even use this card to enter the contest! Wasting space in the pack.

Ugh. Get over yourself, Topps. This is masturbatory.

This is the manufactured Relic, Royals fans, hit me up... Overall, the base set is fine - I'd prefer borders, but the photo choices are good and there's a variety of rookies and veterans. No Bartolo Colon? That's a bummer. The inserts are terrible, I would have preferred bringing back First Pitch and/or adding National Anthem singers or something. The inserts also seem position player heavy - would have been nice to throw the pitchers a bone too.

The blaster came with a bunch of coupons, and this last one caught my eye. What set is this? I checked Topps website and Cardboard Connection but I didn't see any upcoming releases for Topps with "BL" initials. The coupon is good from May to August, so I'm guessing this is a product coming out in the summer sometime.