Trading to Completion: Part 2

 

So, after a couple of months, how is this project going? Eh, like most of the projects around these here parts, slowly (still haven't finished any of my Heritage sets!). There have been a couple of nice flurries of trades, but I often get distracted with other cards and forget that I'm trying to finish off this set as priority number one.

I did manage to pick up one more card in my most recent Trading Card Database trade. Mr. Kremer was the 117th 2024 Topps card that I've picked up this year which brings us to 33.4% completion. 

The card, and some 1993 Topps, came from user Yankee1952 and cost me just some Topps dupes that have been sitting in a box for the better part of 30 years. Kremer is the 7th Oriole from the set that I've picked up, leaving just a few more to go. Yes, they do have preference when I'm searching through other folks' want lists when I'm putting a deal together. 

As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, I tend to get distracted when putting trades together and sometimes forget to add 2024 cards to the transaction. There are also times when I receive a deal that has a card in it that I didn't know existed, or know that I needed. 

User RyanFrueh thew a trade my way that had some 2024 Topps along with a bunch of Orioles. Heading up the list was this gem - a 1996 Leaf Signature Series - Extended Series Autograph of Jeff Huson. 

Sweet card with a good-looking autograph of a sometimes forgotten Orioles.

Huson, initially drafted by the Montreal Expos (RIP) signed with the Orioles in December of 1994 after a stint in Texas. He would spend parts of two seasons in the Charm City accumulating 210 at-bats over 80 games with a slash line of .259/.317/.640 with 1 home run. 

The lone home run of his Oriole tenure came in a 9-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on September 24, 1995. It was his first home run in more than three years. The "unlikeliest" of home run hitters, as The Baltimore Sun put it, joined Raphael Palmeiro, Harold Baines, and Chris Hoiles in putting the ball over the wall as the Orioles won their fourth in a row. Sadly, it was also the day they were officially eliminated from the playoff race.

That home run came a couple of weeks after Huson stood at third base on the night that Cal Ripken, Jr. tied Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games. Huson went 0-for-4 on that historic night while Ripken homered off of Shawn Boskie.

The utility player (he suited up at shortstop, third base, second base, DH, and one game in right field for all of you Immaculate Grid players)  would play 17 games in 1996 for the Orioles before they released him in August. He wasn't out of work for long as the Colorado Rockies signed him to a deal. He never played for the Rockies, but did bounce around with Milwaukee, Seattle, Anaheim, and the Cubs before retiring in 2000. Currently he is working color commentary for the Rockies TV crew.

 It's a really good looking card and I'm happy to have it in my collection. Thank you Ryan. And thank you Yankee1952. The quest continues! 

Trading to completion: Part 1

Hello, happy trading card fans! It's been awhile, eh? 

With a cross-country move, a new day job, and the other site taking up a considerable amount of time, there hasn't been much time or energy for writing about baseball cards. It's not unusual for me to go through stretches where cards take a backseat to life. The good news is that the interest usually comes back, especially if I can tie it into a quest.

Will this quest actually come to completion? Hopefully, mainly because I'd like to keep my streak of completing sets going. Most of the time that involves buying at least one hobby box and a ton of blasters or hanger packs and then ending up with hundreds of doubles that I try, but fail, to trade out or sell. 

So, this year, in my attempt to complete the 2024 Topps base set, I'll be trying to finish things off strictly through trades. A few weeks ago, when it was released, I headed out to the local Walmart to pick up a couple of packs and was able to get 88 unique base cards along with 12 duplicates. 

The original plan was to try and pick up all 350 cards through trades, but where is the fun in that? After all, ripping packs is half of the fun. Okay, it's more like 75% of the fun. Unfortunately, another overarching goal is to actually reduce the amount of space that the cards are taking up in the closet, so going down this road again and ending up with a couple of rows of dupes is not what I wanted to do. Also, saving money is pretty nifty. It's a lot cheaper to get 18-20 cards that I need for the price of postage than dropping $10 and ending up with more dupes than needs. 

So, I figured I could knock off a couple of goals at the same time. I could get rid of some duplicates, get cards I need, and save money if I acquired the remaining 262 cards through trades. After dilly-dallying for a few weeks, I finally got around to completing a trade through Trading Card Database and am proud to announce that the want list has been knocked off by two, that's right TWO, cards.

What we have here is Nathaniel Lowe (card #174) and Pete Alonso (card #20).

These two first-basemen combined to hit 63 home runs last year. Lowe might have had fewer bombs than the Polar Bear, but he lifted more championship trophies at the end of the season. The good news is that I was aware of both of these players before I received their cards. That won't be the case for some of the future acquisitions.  

There was a total of 7 cards in the deal, a couple of Orioles base cards and some 1985 Topps needs came along with the two 2024 cards. I sent 9 cards the other way so it was a net deduction of two cards. Woo-hoo!