Gold or Numbered

Maybe not all of the cards in the PWE, but my recent trade with Matt9975 provided some highlights which are serial numbered, or golden, so let's take a peek. 

Sure, I do still need some rather base of base cards like the O Pee Chee Iorg,, but plenty of parallels that I need too - like a Gold Rush Castillo, Topps Gold Manny Lee, and vintage stock, serial numbered to 99 Panik. The SN 1000 Batista is a nice "base" card as well.

For what it's worth, the Kapanen is a puzzle back parallel, and hockey Topps Chrome anything are lacking in my collection, so nice to add any there too. Still, love adding any Wendel card I can - even if the photo itself is on other cards I already have.

Again with this smattering, my lack of focus means lots of adds, but no completion for Toronto team sets. Maybe next year, or later this one, I'll focus more on completing rather than just collecting.

bustedfare Trade

Another day, another great TCDB trade, this one with busterfare. As it has just turned out, I'd say most of the recent trades have been adding Leafs to the collection - I have a nice pile I need to go through and "put away" soon. This trade continues that for the most part. 

I swear, I am going to end up with 100 1990 Donruss Diamond King cards for my collection by time I collect one of each variation between border, dot variation, and error cards. That's why the few more here - just more variations of each.

As for the Leafs, most are from the late 2000s and early 2010s. 

In logging these, I thought I was closer to have the base sets for 2009-10 O Pee Chee and 2011-12 Score completed, but the sets are big enough, I still have a handful of cards left to go in each. The last two in the bunch are glossy parallels, though you can't really tell in a scan.

The team checklist card at least is a one and done Leaf insert, so at least that's successfully received and complete!

Not a bad way to start "March Break" - kids may have the week off, but with work, not me!

Frenchified

 So today, sharing a trade with TCDB member Gaetan Menard who is from the neighbouring province of Quebec. Now, I may not be a big fan of Quebec (though I do have strong ancestry from the province), I can appreciate the opportunity to get some French version hockey cards that I have been missing. Given the official second language of our country, I will accept French sports cards to the extent they otherwise fit - so in this case, we are generally speaking of some 90s hockey cards.

The trade did include some older, English cards and stamps/stickers, which are awesome little pick ups. As I say though, the Frnech Upper Deck and Ultimate hockey cards below, are the bulk of this package, though maybe not the star for me.

It's the SPx sets that win today as we get the pure base sets for both 2007-08 and 2009-10 completed here. SPx sets have a bunch of "special" base numbered cards that I don't count in the sense of pure base cards - like SN or MEM cards, so nice to get those done here.

We also get the second of two Game Day Timmis inserts from the 2019-20 set with what is my 74th Auston card (59 different cards), which isn't too shabby since I may have only pulled a couple and received the rest in trades.

Appreciate the great trade from a fellow Canada! More trading recaps tomorrow.

Wrestling With PWEs

 More PWE goodness, and today we get two different wrestling PWEs.

Yeah, so when it comes to wrestling cards, I decided that I want everything. I think being English language cards is about my only qualification - WWE, WCW, AEW, NWA, ROH, TNA, it doesn't matter, I want one of everything.

Granted, 98% of the cards will be WWE, but that's cool too. Here we get a number of different sets but 2020 Topps Chrome has the most entries with a couple base and refractors - but all of these from TCDB member JeffWestlake who I have had a couple great trades with now.

The 2020 Topps Road to Wrestlemania base set is the one of these most close to completion at almost 85% now. Finn Balor - I do wonder how different the last 5 years would have been without the injury after winning the world title as having to drop it immediately and be injury for a number of months definitely impacted his trajectory on the main roster.

The other small PWE was with Tdorsay...

It was for the 1985 Topps card on the left, but he also threw in the one on the right which is a dupe, but may be a quality improvement, I will have to check.

Love the wrestling card trades guys, many thanks!

Classically Completed

It has been a while since I had traded to complete a set, but that is what we have today. The COVID lot provided most of the 99 card 1991 Classic I set, and I had the rest of the cards on my want list. As it turns out, member flyers4life had all of the cards I needed, and thus, a PWE trade ensued.

I needed all of my Jays in order to have a complete set as well as a complete team set, and then we also have the remaining guys which didn't make it into the COVID lot, or were pulled by someone else - which makes sense for some of them like Griffey Jr. or Frank Thomas.

Is it a favourite set of mine? No. However, having 90% of it handed to me, had to finish this one off. Now, I don't think I will bother with getting one of the certificates which were provided with the sets (only 175,000 were printed.....talk about rare....lol), so we are as done as I plan to ever be on this one!

PWE Applause

Hello again, and welcome back to daily post number 2,633 in a row. I may not be Cal Ripken Jr., but that's one more than has consecutive game streak now. :)

I have a few days of trades to share as, with it being busy season, longer blogs are harder to squeeze in, and I like trying to keep on top of the trades, so we will how this goes. Today with have a trade with TCDB member francoisangers which sent across some Bruins which I won't share, as well as a few keepers below...

I thought I had the 1990-91 O Pee Chee Premier Leafs set of 3 cards, but hand't caught on to the "now with" Leaf Broten, so will now be able to say I have all 4 Leaf cards.

Todd is one of the many error cards from the wonderful 1990-91 Pro Set...set...which I needed for my error binder.

We finish up with newer throwbacks with mid-2000s In The Game products. Not my favourite products, but I can live with keeping the Leafs.

Always appreciate the trade, many thanks francoisangers!

Quality Control

 So, let's share a little problem with 1995-96 Upper Deck hockey providing the back drop. Sometimes when cards are stored for a long time in not so favourable conditions, they can brick and become near impossible to pull apart. That is like a worst case scenario for card collectors.

Sometimes, it's not enough to fully brinck, but instead there may be a bit of stickiness, or an endge where cards fuse, and then the damage may just be a sputtering of small white dots on the card, or tear on that one edge when you pull them apart.

Below are the keepers, and there were about a dozen damaged cards I didn't scan, which I will use for packaging.

I generally don't trade cards with anything that would be visible damage. I think there may be a few white specks on a few of these as I am not perfect, but no tear at all. Besides, for some of these, as you can see, we have up to a dozen copies, so I could spare a couple not being up to snuff.

It's one of the hazards of buying card lots, there can be some damaged cards like this. Not the end of the world if the bulk is big enough and damaged cards make up a small part of it, but worth keeping in mind depending on the years for the lot covered - and in some cases, the specific sets.

What's the worst bricking/sticking you have had to deal with personally?