The Dust Has Settled on the Trade Deadline

The Trade Deadline resulted in a mini fire sale by the Twins, but I was looking for different sales on my own. I've had my eye on this 1972 Topps hi number card of Joe Morgan, his first in a Reds uniform.

It's good to know that the unbridled optimism of Topps cards is sometimes completely accurate. Joe Morgan was good before he came to Cincinnati, but his brand of speed and power transformed the Reds' lineup into a Big Red Machine.

I was thinking about the National show, which is happening this week (going on right now in Cleveland), so I entered "National" into the search engine on COMC to see what exclusives might crop up. This Dave Winfield was new to me, though it turns out the O-Pee-Chee was not. Who needs a copy of it? Lemme know and I'll send it over with some cardboard friends in a blind trade.

The Twins' GM Thad Levine was quoted at the deadline that the front office still believes the Twins' core includes Buxton, Kepler, Rosario, Sano, and Jose Berrios. My reaction was "Well, you traded everyone else, so what's left to be the core?" Buxton had a recurrence of wrist issues and has landed once again on the AAA Disabled List, possibly for the rest of 2018. Quite a precipitous fall from 2017 when he was a Gold (and Platinum) Glove winner.

I've made a pact with myself to always look for at least one 1959 Topps card each time I fill up my COMC cart now, and I found this later series common for under a dollar.

Affordable relics come into play as well, and I found this Mauer mini (complete with a throwback Saint Paul Saints uniform) for a steal.

Staying on the topic of Twins' first basemen, I found a rookie relic for Justin Morneau, as well as this fun quad relic with 1.75 Hall of Famers on it. Raffy would have been a lock if it weren't for PED controversy, and Olerud probably needed a few more peak seasons and a little more power to be in the conversation. Still a very cool card that would have been very spendy in 2002, but was a much nicer price in 2018.

Day Twenty - 2003 Topps 206 Framed Mini Relic Doug Mientkiewicz #TR-DM

Day 20: A Favorite Parallel*

Taking the lead from Tony at Off-Hiatus Baseball Cards this will be the twentieth of 30 posts, using the prompts provided. I won't necessarily post one every day, but I will do one for each card, toss in a few "insights" (as insightful as I can be, anyway), and usually include an honorable mention or two, just because I'm like that.

*based on the Parallel, not the player 

Here's my pick - I have a love/hate relationship with minis. They are a great idea, but I don't have a good system for storing them, different brands and sets have different sizes, so I generally end up with a bunch of tiny dinged corners. Put a mini in a frame and you've got the best of both worlds! This isn't the most elaborate design as it is a pretty early example, but Allen & Ginter's as well as Gypsy Queen have put out some very flashy, ornate, and creative frames over the years.

Since these are basically one card posts, why not show the backs, too? A little hologram of authenticity, and away we go! This one happened to be the most conveniently located framed mini, but it didn't have to be a relic card or an auto to get my attention.

Some Honorable mentions:

The Topps Gold "Winner *" is especially appealing to me if it is a Minnesota Twin, as they were coming off a World Series win. The Pinnacle Dufex technology was mindblowing to me as a kid. Paper Framed cards can be a mixed bag, but if you can find a good combo of border color and a Team's primary jersey color, the results can be quite nice. I hesitated about including Topps Clear as they are not very easy to come by, but they are very cool. Still Looking for the 2015 Kennys Vargas Topps Clear...