Orioles Victory Card Number Twenty (1987 Season Edition): Catching up with a trade Post

Baltimore Orioles Victory #20: 15-4 over the Seattle Mariners

1987 Ralston Purina Eddie Murray


With the sporting world on hold due to the novel coronavirus shutting down the world for a few months we here at The Hopeful Chase are going to our rain delay programming. For the last two seasons we've posted a baseball card following every Baltimore Orioles victory (I know, talk about the minimum commitment required). It's fun and keeps us writing about baseball and collecting. Rather than sit back and stare forlornly at the outside world we've decided to continue the series with a season from the past.  The season of choice - 1987. Please enjoy.

I am not great at keeping to a schedule. Just when I was caught back up with this series I abandoned it for a few days right in the middle of another Orioles winning streak. For the record, the Orioles 20th victory of 1987 happened on May 19th. I'm writing this on May 26th, so I'm only a week behind, which is better than I thought. I'm not going to lie, dates are a little hazy for me right now. That's a side effect from not working for almost two months.

We also decided on an impromptu trip down south this weekend. The walls of the apartment were closing in a bit and with travel restrictions easing up out west we decided to hit a state park during the holiday. The state just happened to be in Nevada. Hotel rates (I still get a discount despite being furloughed) were pretty outstanding so we hopped in the car and drove to Las Vegas.

It was kind of sad to be in the town and not have the chance to gamble (the casinos were still closed), but at the same time it was nice and relaxed. We wandered around Valley of Fire State Park for the better part of the day and enjoyed being in a different town for roughly 48 hours.

I'm not sure we could have socially distanced more if we tried. Aside from a few lizards we had the entire 8 mile trail to ourselves. I guess people didn't feel like wandering around in a canyon for four hours during their holiday weekend. 

Making the trip even better was that upon our return, I had a couple of non-machinable envelopes waiting in the mail. The trade machine is in full working order and I've been averaging two or three trades a week. 

In this case I worked out a deal with user rsemu in order to bump up my Eddie Murray collection by one. In exchange for a potpourri of base cards (including a couple of checklists), he sent back the wonderful Ralston Purina card above along with some other needs.

Whenever I see a Ralston Purina card it makes me think of Cookie Crisp cereal. I believe as a little kid that would have been the delicious, nutritious breakfast of choice when I wanted to pull some cards out of a box of sugar. I really wish Topps would get back into the cereal / baseball card partnership game again. It's been ages since I've seen a baseball card in a box (although I know there are some MLS cards on the back of certain boxes). 

As for the Murray card, that marks the 301st different Eddie Murray card I have recorded. According to TCDB that ranks me 8th among Murray collectors. Not bad, but moving up the list from here will take some time. I need another 45 different cards to get to 7th, and over 100 to get 5th. The top collector has 1,148 of the 4,540 cards in the database so I don't think I'm catching him this year. 

Personally, Murray is the player I have the most different cards of, which is good because I do label myself a Murray collector. In second place, at no surprise, Cal Ripken, Jr. What may be a surprise is that I've put no real effort into picking up his cards and I have 289 different Ripken cards.

This sweet Joe Orsulak 1989 Upper Deck was also part of the deal. Nothing beats seeing Joe standing around the batting cage waiting his turn. I only have about 55 of the inaugural Upper Deck cards in my collection (almost half of those are Orioles cards) at this point so it's always fun to see a new one come into my life. It really is a perfectly designed card. 

Most importantly he finished off my 1991 Upper Deck needs. The best card of the lost?

Upper Deck loved throwing these triple-exposure cards in their base sets and it broke up the routine of normal exposure cards. 

Now, I see it completed my set, but according to my records I have 799/800 of the base set. The one "missing" card - the Chipper Jones rookie card. Which really pisses me off because I know I have that card somewhere. I also know it's not where the bulk of my collection is because every time I stumble across it I think, "Wow, I should really put that with my other cards." 

Such is the joy of moving twice in two years. Things get jumbled up in different boxes. I have a vague idea of where it may be and I'll dig through the box tomorrow to see if it's there. I really hope it is because I know if I trade or buy another copy I'll immediately find the original. 

All in all, not a bad weekend considering the circumstances.

Orioles Victory Card Number Seven (1987 Season Edition): A Trade Post

Baltimore Orioles Victory Number 7: 16-3 over the Cleveland Indians

1993 Donruss Mike Mussina

With the sporting world on hold due to the novel coronavirus shutting down the world for a few months we here at The Hopeful Chase are going to our rain delay programming. For the last two seasons we've posted a baseball card following every Baltimore Orioles victory (I know, talk about the minimum commitment required). It's fun and keeps us writing about baseball and collecting. Rather than sit back and stare forlornly at the outside world we've decided to continue the series with a season from the past.  The season of choice - 1987. Please enjoy.

Oh man, thank God for the Cleveland Indians, huh?  The Orioles offense definitely righted their offense against five Cleveland pitchers (including future Oriole Doug Jones). Cal Ripken, Jr. busted out of a mini slump by going 3-5 with a home run and 4 RBI. Even newcomer Nelson Simmons (called up due to Lee Lacy going on the DL with a strained hamstring) went 1-3 and drove in a run. Ray Knight had another 3 hits and is hitting .513 on the season. Surely that's maintainable (spoiler: it wasn't).

Eric Bell picked up his second win as he worked into the sixth inning. He wasn't quite as sharp as his last outing, but he did pitch around 3 walks and 7 hits to limit the Indians to only 3 runs. Dave Schmidt picked up the old-fashioned save by shutting them out over the last 3.2 innings.

Who cares about all that. Today's post is about a card trade. Well, a lot of cards were traded. In fact with roughly 390 cards being exchanged it's the largest deal I've conducted on the Trading Card Database so far. 

User DukeyDevil proposed the deal in two parts and it required me to part with a bunch of 1994 Topps Archives (no problem, still have a bunch) dupes along with a bunch of hockey from the mid-90s that I was dumping. So, really the hardest thing for me was finding a way to ship them out (USPS small box flat rate turned out to be the best).

In exchange I picked up some 93' Donruss Orioles including the Mussina pictured above. Little known fact, the O's actually drafted Mussina in the 11th round of the 1987 draft but he ended up going to Stanford. I think that worked out for him.

There were also a ton of mid-90's Lightning cards (there are so many out there to collect!) including this 1995-96 Upper Deck Paul Ysebaert card. Look, he's happy. Kay Whitmore....not so much.

The bulk of the trade came in the form of 1993 Upper Deck. Again, it's one of those sets that I have on my "want list" that never seems to end. Even with over 100 cards coming in this trade, I'm still only at 61% complete, yet it takes up almost an entire row in one of my sorting boxes. Damn these early 90's sets that I have too many dupes of!

Trading is still going strong despite the quarantine rules in place in most states and the seemingly impending doom of the USPS. I have made one concession. With the exception of this trade I've pretty much limited myself to PWE trades. Does that make it tougher to achieve my goal of getting rid of an extra 2,020 cards this year? Yes, but it also keeps me from plunking down $4.00 a shot to mail out bubble mailers every day. 

And it's been pretty much a daily trip to the post office these days. For some reason we don't have an outgoing mail slot at our apartment complex, or, more likely, I'm too lazy to find it. The post office is only about two hundred yards away as the crow flies, but thanks to the way the apartments and streets are laid out here, it ends up being about a two block walk. Which isn't the worst thing in the world. It gets me out of the apartment for a few minutes at least.

With pre-printed stamps I don't have to talk to anyone of get within six feet of them so I'm not violating any social distance rules (yea me!). So I'll keep doing it as long as there are traders out there.

Thanks to DukeyDevil and everyone else that has sent cards to Utah over the last couple of months. It's kept me somewhat sane.

Trade Post! Upping the Lecavalier Collection

It's been a busy couple of weeks of trading as I try to get to my half-hearted goal of 100 trades on Trading Card Database by the end of the year. Some swapping of junk wax has netted me about 70 1991 Upper Deck cards, truly an underrated set, and a handful of other base needs.

In between baseball trades I did slide in a hockey trade with user SportsCardHunter in Ontario. In exchange for some duplicate Lightning cards I had listed he sent me a couple of Vincent Lecavalier cards.

According to TCDB they were the 272nd and 273rd unique Lecavalier cards that I have acquired. That's good enough for third among collectors at the site, but there is a bit of a gap between myself and the second place gentleman. According to their stats it also means I've acquired exactly 7.1% of the available Lecavalier cards they have listed. It may take awhile to get them all.

Here's the haul:

1999-2000 O-Pee-Chee

Look at him in all his rookie-year glory. The old-school uniform, the all-star patch, and most importantly the number 9 on his sweater. In his rookie year the now familiar number four was already occupied by Cory Cross. The defenseman would be traded after Lecavalier's first year and freed up the number and he went on to do great things with it.

The card itself is a direct parallel of the Topps base card from the year with the only difference being the logo on the top right corner on the front and on the bottom of the back of the card. 

2002-03 Upper Deck Vintage Green Back #88/199

Welcome to Parallel City! Honestly, I didn't even know this existed until I searched through SportsCardHunter's cards available for trade (his original offer was a generous supply of Lightning cards, but I wanted some Vinny!). I don't have the base, but I'm assuming the only differences are the serial number stamped on the front and well....the green back...hence the name.

As you can see Vinny is now wearing the four that would be retired in his honor and also has an "A" on his sweater. That's not unusual for a young player who was drafted to be the franchise's savior, but what is a bit odd is that Lecavalier had already worn the "C"  prior to this season. In March of 2000 he was named captain of the Lightning. At the time he was the youngest captain ever in NHL history (since then he's been surpassed by Sidney Crosby, Gabriel Landeskog, and Connor McDavid).

Due to a contract hold out, some public and private confrontations with head coach John Tortorella, the acquisition of Dave Andreychuk, and the realization that it was too much pressure, too early in his career Lecavalier had the "C" removed from his jersey. It wouldn't be until 2008 and the departures of Andreychuk and Tim Taylor, that the "C" would return. He would wear it until his contract was bought out in 2013.

Thanks for the trade, SportsCardHunter!

Some offseason blogging

A few days ago, Greg over at Night Owl Cards, an excellent blogger who I've traded with in the past published a post pointing out that it seems like there has been a general slow down in the trading card blog world. From people posting to people commenting things just seem to lack the frequency they did a few years ago.

He ponders a few reasons why and as I was reading, I realized that there was really no reason why I stopped posting here on a regular basis. I mean, there was a reason - I'm a lazy blogger, but there was no GOOD reason why I stopped posting. After all, I'm still writing regularly over at Raw Charge.

While my card purchases may have been down a bit, ok a lot, I haven't given up on the hobby. In fact, I've probably been more active trade-wise then I have been in a long time. A couple of months ago, my ancient version of The Card Collector finally gave up the ghost. I booted it up one morning and the file that housed my collection was gone.

Now, a smart person would have backed up the file from time to time, but what on this blog has ever led you to believe I'm a smart person?  So I finally decided to load everything into Trading Card Database. Up to this point I'd listed just my hockey stuff and anything after 2014 (the last update I had for The Card Collector). Now, it's going to be everything...eventually.

It's a slow process, but hopefully by next year everything will be in there. In the meantime, I'm kind of surprised at the amount of trade offers I've been picking up with some of the junk era sets I've loaded up already. It's almost at the point where I'll have to set a limit on shipping or else I'll be spending more at the post office then I would be at a card shop (shipping to Canada ain't cheap).

The good news is that I'm clearing out a lot of duplicates and picking up cards I actually want. So, it's my intention to get back into regular blogging by posting the occasional trade.

First up deal: I sent a bunch of 2009 Heritage to Ryan0625 in Minnesota in exchange for him knocking out a healthy chunk of my 2017 Topps Update needs and a handful of 2018 Archives.He sent a total of 45 cards and here are a few highlights:

Were there Baltimore Orioles cards?

Yes, although at first glance I didn't think there were.

After all Logan Verrett's Orioles career was brief. The Mets draft pick was selected in the 2014 Rule V pick by the Orioles. He never had the chance to make their roster and was claimed off of waivers by the Rangers in April 2015. Verrett lasted a handful of games for the Rangers in 2015 before being returned to the Mets.

The Orioles purchased Verrett in the winter of 2016 with cash considerations and made the opening day roster in 2017. He appeared in 4 games in 2017 picking up 2 wins despite a 4.22 ERA (6.53 FIP!) He was optioned to the minors in June of that year and never made it back up. He spent 2018 playing baseball in Korea.

Aww. Sad face. Manny Machado in an Orioles uniform.

The best card in the bunch:

When I put the 2017 Update set on my list of sets to complete I didn't realize that Bellinger's rookie was in there. After all, in 2017 it was all about Aaron Judge. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of Judge's in some hanger boxes and thought I was home free as far as semi-expensive cards. Then I saw Bellinger's card.

I wasn't sure exactly how I was going to pick it up since I didn't really want to buy it. I figured I'd leave it until the end and then figure things out. So it was kind of a surprise when it was included in the trade package.

It's nice having the last of the "big" money cards off of the want list.

Best player in the bunch:

It was a pretty easy call, even with a Wade Boggs Archives also included.

So there ya go. The first in hopefully a semi-regular series of trade posts.