Group Trade highlights: The Keepers

Whew!

I used up every bubble mailer and shipping supply I had on hand (and had to run out and buy some more Sunday night), but I'm happy to say that every address I've received now has a parcel of cards on their way!

The Group "Trade" turned out very nicely for me, even before any return packages have been opened. I claimed the Twins and Athletics for myself, and in addition I am hanging on to all the unclaimed teams as well.

Before this weekend, I had zero cards from 1999 Fleer Ultra, zero from 2002 Topps Gallery, zero Fleer Greats of the Game, and zero 2003 Topps Stadium Club. Now I have a nice fat stack of a little bit of everything.

Here are some of my favorites from each box:

1996 Pinnacle:

That's quite the mullet.

1999 Fleer Ultra:

Otis Nixon with the facemask, the ridiculous PC interface on the Eric Chavez card, Tony playing a little D, and Kenny Rogers ... yeah.

How about some horizontal heroes?

2002 Topps Gallery:

2002 Fleer Greats:

Stan "The Baby Face" Musial, a great action shot of Vida Blue, and three greats of the Twins/Senators franchise.

2003 Topps Stadium Club:

Just great photos, as you might expect, from Stadium Club.

If you missed out on the trade and/or one of the unclaimed teams is of interest to you, I can still be persuaded to trade those cards for something. I've been trying to expand my "collecting goals" page to include more Players, and over the next few days/weeks/etc. I plan on building up the Junk Wax list to move beyond 1993 to start to fill in the years I missed the first time around.

Group Trade: The Aftermath!

Daylight Savings has stolen an hour of sleep from me, but that can't stop me from organizing and collating the cards from the big group trade!

The Google Hangout ran into a little technical glitch about an hour in, but the connection was eventually restored after a few false starts, and the last all five boxes were opened on webcam. You can watch it all here. Comments from everyone watching live are also found on that link.

Here is a quick recap:

Boxes opened:
1996 Pinnacle
1999 Fleer Ultra
2002 Topps Gallery
2002 Fleer Greats
2003 Topps Stadium Club

Here's all the cards, unsorted:

Here are the HITS!

Pinnacle Inserts:

The last card shown is a rookie base card, red letters instead of black.

Fleer Ultra Inserts:

1 Gold Medallion per pack, I think my favorite insert was the Jeff Bagwell "THUNDERCLAP" card. So 90s!

2002 Topps Gallery Inserts:

 Top row are base cards, bottom row are the inserts - it was pretty much all base cards in the box. Fortunately, the base cards from that set are awesome!

2002 Fleer Greats:

I did a coin flip on the card featuring Tony Perez and Carl Yazstrezmski - it went to Shane (Red Sox), so I'll throw in something extra into the Reds side of things - some kind of insert...

2003 Topps Stadium Club:

1 gold card per pack, two Beam Team cards, doubles of Jason Giambi's "Stadium Shots" card (thanks Topps) and that was it. Some of the stadium club base cards had some odd residue on them, reminded a bit of soapy buildup on glasses. As a result, I put a little extra into everyone's stacks, just because it seemed like the fair thing to do.


If I have your address already, your package is ready to ship. If not, please e-mail your address to me!

I still need addresses from:
 Play at the Plate

my e-mail is: brian dot d dot oneal at gmail dot com 

Group Trade Boxes Revealed!

Here they are, the boxes we'll be breaking for the big group Trade:

First up, 1996 Pinnacle:

The deal I got on this box that was too good to pass up. Lots of Jeter Inserts in this one, you lucky Yankees fans... this is a nice little appetizer box for the group trade.

1999 Fleer Ultra:

An under-appreciated design, in my opinion, very nice photography and plenty of fun insert sets to chase.

2002 Topps Gallery:

I hope I wasn't being overly selfish on this choice, there weren't many Twins to be found in Topps Gallery in the years prior to 2002. This year features a Joe Mauer Rookie card. This has some nice Gallery-style Reprints of key Topps Issues from the past. A very nice "All-Painted" issue. There is a chance that there will be an auto and or a relic inside this box. The odds say one in two boxes will have an auto, for whatever that's worth... 

Oh. But that's not all.

2002 Fleer Greats:

This box should have some hits  - Autos and Relics - Some historically great players from the past. This is the one that held the process up a few days, but I'm willing to say that it was worth the wait.

and as a bonus, 2003 Topps Stadium Club:

I saved some $$ on 2002 Topps Gallery compared to 2003 or 2000, so I used those savings to add another box. How fun! This is the Relic Edition, it comes with one Relic in the box for sure.

There you have it - five boxes ranging from 1996 to 2003, some low-end, some high-end. We'll see how this one goes and maybe I'll host another one later in the year!

The Break itself with take place on Saturday - should be starting in the evening at some point - let's say 7pm Central Time?

In the Comments below, please feel free to offer any tips on a great break, or any pet peeves you may have about breaks that we can try to avoid...