The Puzzle and Trades w/Sooz and Beardy. Question...

The Puzzle is finished !

Sooz and Play at the Plate both had comments on this, so here's the finished product. 1000 pieces in a 16"x14" square.

Sooz had this Branyan jersey card in a post at one time and I said I would be interested if I could find something she needed. Actually, I kinda' forgot about it. Then I sent her a Jeter card, and being younger and probably much smarter than I, she remembered ! And I'm very glad.

She also sent a few others with it.

First is a Zach Putnam auto. He pitched for Kinston and Akron last year

A Luis Valbuena rookie card. It says Tribe on the card even though he's still wearing a Seattle uniform so it's a keeper.

Finally, a Grady Sizemore. I had never seen one of these before

An interesting concept, but both sides look like the back!

One last card that came from Beardy.

Unfortunately for him, a Masterpiece box break didn't go so well.

It did work for me, however, and I ended up with this red framed V-Mart.

Sooz and Beardy,
Thank you very,very much for the great cards !!

AND NOW A QUESTION FOR EVERYONE.

A new antique/collectibles shop opened up in our little village just before Christmas.

Neil and his wife Joyce own the business.Neil was a serious collector until the "crazy" period of the mid to late 90's.

He does have some very nice cards and I have made a couple purchases there.

They also have the item pictured below.

Does anyone know exactly what it is ??

The plate on the bottom reads:

No. 1 Reliance

Single Cell Dry Battery

Whitall Tatum Co.

Is it just a battery?

On the right side of the case there is a sheet of very shiny metal that is removable.

If anyone knows, please leave a comment. Thanks!!

When is Road Kill is a Good Thing ?

When it's Democratic Roadkill from Duane, of course!

He sent a terrific package, a few miles north up Rt. 71, to me.

Actually it's about 100 miles, someday we have to get together.

Anyway, Duane sent some wrappers along with some very nice cards.

I started to post some of my wrapper collection but it got sidetracked by some trades and holidays.

That's one of my winter projects.

The cards start with a couple '08 Ultimate collections
and a Thome flashback.

Next we have some '09 A&G minis, including a black border Choo.

Then we go back '08 for another mini collection.




These, however, were the main basis for the trade.

Victor is gone but he will always be remembered in Cleveland and will be missed as a team leader. Maybe someday he'll be back like Sandy Alomar to become a coach.

Thank you very much Duane for the great cards!!

Your return package will be in the mail Monday.

Awesome auto's and Colla from Offy

As I continue my quest to get caught up on trade posts, so I can start new trades and some other projects I want to post, here are some great cards I received from Mike over at Offy's.

We had an auto trade going on and these are some extra Tribe cards he sent.

Hopefully ,two of our stars for upcoming season, Grady and Fausto will be performing up to their outstanding potential.

This didn't show up very well but it's from the 1993 Marlins Inaugural Year set.
These are hard to come by. This might be my only one.

The photo doesn't do this card justice either. It's a 2006 Travis Hafner UD green Future Stars 077/499.

Ah, the days of Pinnacle Baseball.Pinnacle and Pacific both had some terrific inserts and parallels.

Maybe too many, but they always seemed to be on the leading edge of new technology.

I love these cards.

Yamid Haad. Played with Buffalo in 2007. In 10 years he played for 14 different teams.

Mostly in the minors.Short stints with Pittsburgh and the Giants.

Home: Cartagena,Columbia.

I wonder if he ever met up with Michael Douglas,Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito !!

"X" marks the spot for Sizemore and a nice Kerry Wood refractor.

Here we go, back to the 90's again.

There was so much going on in the sports card world it was almost impossible to keep up.

These Diamond Marks, distributed by Barry Colla, were sold in packs like baseball cards but were actually supposed to be book marks.

There were 120 different "cards" with 8 inserts. This was the entire Cleveland Indians team set.The only one I had was the Lofton, so thank you very much for the others!

Now to the real meat of the trade.

2007 Bowman's Best Josh Barfield auto and

2007 UD Masterpiece "Strokes of Genius" Jeremy Sowers auto.

Thanks Mike for the terrific cards and the great trade.

1954 Retro Bowman Tribe card from Marie

Marie over at, A Cardboard Problem, sent me me a very nice Christmas packet (I know this is a little late,sorry!)

I opened the envelope and spread the cards out on my desk.

"A nice assortment" I thought, as I looked over the cards. "A couple new T-206 cards (Sizemore and Sowers),some OPC, some Topps nostalgia (Matt Williams), a retro '54 Bowman..... wait, I don't remember those ! I have to take a closer look."

WOW!! This is an original 1954 Bowman Bobby Avila card and in excellent condition !!

That was incredible. All for a mini Puhols card.

I have two other cards from this set. #36 George Strickland and #52 Joe Ginsberg.

Neither is near as nice as this one.

I can't thank you enough for this !!

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You !!!!

Hafner time from Nico

Nico, over at Nr Mt, is fairly new to the sportscard blogosphere but he is already making many new friends ! I know he made one in me with these cards.

The Goodwin Champions jersey card is great.I like Hafner's pose at the top.

The x-fractor is nice also.I'm a sucker for some of the parallels.

I also love the bright colors of the 2008 Opening Day set.

Morgan Ensberg ? Yeah he was with Cleveland for about 5 months but I can't find any record of an at bat.

And what's a stack of Tribe cards without Grady!
He brings excitement every time he steps on the field.

Hopefully Fausto can get back to his winning ways

(maybe he just needs to have the midges come back!)
I love this shot of Danny Graves with his hair sticking out on both sides of his cap.

There were many other cards in the package.

Some old friends and some newer ones.

One last great shot of Grady performing one of his patented catches !

I think. since you can't actually see the ball !

Thank you very much Nico for the great cards !!

If you haven't already, check out Nico's blog !

Tribe Cards keep Rollin' in from Ed and CC

I'm still trying to catch-up on trades, so here are a couple more from November !

The first are from C.C. Martin over at From These Hazel Eyes.

Milton Bradley. What a waste of talent. He could have been a very great player and had a remarkable career if he could have just stayed in line.Did anyone take him for 2110? I know the Cubs were trying to unload him. Hector Luna, a decent player, also seemed to be searching for a home on his way through Cleveland.

Lary Sorensen, once an All-Star pitcher (although not for Cleveland) has seen his troubles too.Apparently likes to partake in liquid spirits.

Casey Blake, on the other hand, is a class act and I wish he was still in Cleveland.I didn't have this card of him taking a handshake from 3rd base coach Joel Skinner after an apparent round tripper.

Jeremy Sowers. An Indian card of a player who is actually still an Indian!That's almost a rare item these days.

Asdrubal Cabrera with his unassisted triple play on May 12, 2008.

These two cards were the main point of the trade.

First the Matt LaPorta Futures Game-used jersey and the Trevor Crowe auto.

Both, also still with the Tribe, at least for now.

Next up is large stack of cards from Ed over at Roll out the Barrel.

He sent me a very wide variety of terrific Tribe cards.

A lot of shiny !!
Fausto Carmona chrome and Scott Lewis X-fractor.

Plus two CC Sabathia exponential inserts I did not have!

(didn't have the chrome cards either)

Omar !!!

AC covers short pretty well but there was only one

Ooooomar Veeeeskel

Some more shiny 2006 Flair Showcase.

The Peralta is a Field Box (parallel ?). I had never actually seen one before.
There doesn't seem to be any listing in the catalogs. Help please!!

Then Ed added some 2008 Stadium Club including Sizemore,Kobayashi and Michael Aubrey 1st day issue.

Sticking with the upscale cards, we have these Ultra.

Cliff, Grady, V-Mart and CC.

Finishing with a mixture of CC, Kelly Shoppach and Jeffery Stevens (who left in the DeRosa deal).

Thanks very much to both of you !

You have added a number of new cards to my Tribe collection.

Trade reports ...finally ! And a non-baseball Christmas present.

Christmas is over and we almost have everything back in place around the house so I hope to get back to some serious posting.I am so far behind on trades but I do have everything organized (I think!! ). I'm starting with the oldest brown envelope I have to post which is from Jeremy over at " No one's going to read this blog ". I read it a long time ago and I'm very glad I did! This package is dated Nov. 6th!! (I told you I was way behind ) I had sent Jeremy a selection of old cameras for the cost of shipping, which thrilled him immensely as his package did me.



Inside there were some very nice Tribe cards. From Topps insert Turkey Red to retro Goodwin to high tech Toppstowne to retro player Tris Speaker to retro logo Topps parallels !

But that was just the begining ! Next was a Martinez bat card and LaPorta rookie.

However the piece 'd resistance was yet to come.
We had a discussion via email about an item he had seen in a shop in his area.He tried to describe what he remembered but it was a little unclear.He told me if he went back there he would buy it for me. Luckily for me, it was still there.And if I remember correctly, he only paid $1.00 for this:

WOW !!!

This is from the 1962 Salada Tea/Junket Pudding Coin set.

There were 180 different coins to start with, but the total jumped to 221 when the Mets and Colt 45's came into exsistance. Variations have cropped up to increase the number to 265.

This is the only one I have and I'm very greatful to Jeremy for finding this !! Now please find me the other 12 Tribe players in the set !

Thank you very much for the great trade !!

Now for a Christmas present.

One of my wintertime hobbies is working jig-saw puzzles.

My youngest son Andy also likes to help.
My wife has a girl friend who found out, and she now tries to find the most difficult one to give me at Christmas time.

This year she did good !!

It DID come in a very nice decrotive tin !

1000 pieces on a card table.

Very tiny pieces !!

Thanks Linda!!!