Highly objective trade

Brian, from the new blog Highly subjective and completely arbitrary wasted no time immersing into the community and finding his tone and his stride. I quickly contacted him to set up a trade, even though I didn't have much Twins-wise, but it's always fun to add new trading partners to the ol' handbook.

Brian is my type of collector (now now, let's not get all excited, my heart belongs also to other traders (you know who you are)), and we seem to share many similar views about the hobby (yes, I guess that means that my type is someone who thinks like me. I like me a lot). And after shipping something like a couple team bags of Twins, he hit me bag full throttle with twice as many, plus a couple of unopened packs. You win round one, Brian, but I'll be back for more. Yup, you guessed it, there'll be a second date.

First pack : 17 cards of 88 Score. My second one after the one sent by Julie. At that rate, I'll have a complete set by the end of the year.

Second pack : Conlon cards ! I love those. I didn't own a single one before that, which is strange, since I've always pondered trying to complete the set. Ok, maybe only one of the series.Seems like a great way to learn more about the players.

Now, for the Blue Jays goodness :

80's junk needs ! I have very few early Donruss, strangely. I understand that those very first sets were riddled with errors, misprints and terrible photographs. The card stock isn't that great either. Which is what makes it indispensable. That Jorge Bell on the bottom right is an oddball. An 86 wax box card numbered...hold on...lettered A. Anyone know more about those ?

I already had those, but you can never, NEVER go wrong with holograms and Black gold cards.

Speaking of Alomar, how about throwing out your own brother ? I only had the gold parallel of that card, so yay.

Mid-90s !

More mid-90s ! So much foil, it's almost blinding. I love all of those, especially the Delgado silver parallel and the electric diamond (yes, I'm one of the few who really like 94 UD). The Crash the game insert was a hell of a great idea. Carter went 3 for 4 on August 9 1995. But didn't hit a HR. Too bad, I would've redeemed it otherwise.

Stepping away from the 90s. This makes me sad. That Mondesi is very, very shiny.

New old cards !

Good thing those first two are parallels, or I would've thought each card was from the same set and year.

Finally, Brian also included that sweet Elite auto. Ok, turns out Jackson never played for the Blue Jays (he was included in that trade to the Brewers to get Overbay), but who cares, it's a nice, low numbered shiny card.

There were twice as many cards, sorry I didn't scan them all, but a bunch of great Blue Jays, a Griffey and even a few Knicks rounded out the package. Thanks a lot for all that, Brian, I had a blast sorting them out. As a matter of fact, I think one of those is my 5 000 th different Blue Jays card. I'll know once I enter them in my spreadsheet.

This is so exciting !