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It's almost here!

 The holidays. I personally view them (blog-wise) as a trade-off: fewer posts=bad, Christmas retail blasters=good! That's all okay though; 2013 spring training is but a few short months away, R.A. Dickey is out of the NL East (thanks, Toronto), and trade packages still abound.

Not so recently, but then, not so long ago, Jack of  Pursuit of Jacoby and Pursuit of Red Sox and Pursuit of  80's(ness) persuaded me into a team trade. These are always good, I thought, and replied that I would be interested. After receiving his cards, I amassed a package of Red Sox (his team) to send to Great Britain.

Tangent time: OK, so one of my sincerely beloved relatives, at whose house Christmas was spent, owned a Sega Genesis video game console. Got that? So, one of the games we played on it was "Road Rash" a violent-sounding game involving motorcycles racing (and sometimes shooting at) each other in races in different countries around the world. One race site of the several available was the U.K., which, as I remember, had some sort of bagpipe background music on it, and seemed to be in the Irish countryside, as there was lots of farmland and chickens in the cartoony backdrop. It was relatively fun, though, except for the part where you got knocked off your bike and had to run across the finish line.

Now, then. The cards from Jack:

Did I say cards? I meant stamps. I have a thing for stamps, and asked Jack for some UK stamps. Not only did he overlook any strangeness in said request, (this is a baseball card blog trade, after all) he fulfilled it very well with this book of stamps commemorating the Summer Olympic Games. If postage really isn't your thing though, feel free to re-read our favorite Cardboard Junkie's take on stamp collecting.

MLB Showdown cards! With which, you can totally tell that the All-Star Game has been played in Milwaukee in some year. That Marlin player looking over Andruw Jones's shoulder looks a) slightly suspect, as if he as something to hide, and b) like he isn't quite pulling off the Fu Manchu.

Black Bordered? Chipper Jones? Mm-hm. Gold bordered cards are also nice. If you receive another copy of the same serial-numbered card (e.g. two gold-borders), do you keep it?

If you haven't picked up on it yet, though, all these cards have marks through from the scan-not on-card. J. R. Graham is not much of a heralded player, I don't think. He got a weird airbrushing job to say the least.

2008 TriStar Projections Tommy Hanson. An interesting design here, but considering that there are fewer cards that are autographed than not, why have all that blank space? Comes off as a classy card though.

What company did TriStar again?

This card has another interesting design. The Braves logo is sort of floating, and Mike has been cropped at some point on all of his limbs. How does he maintain that mullet with only one gloved hand?

2003 Donruss Estrallas Gary Sheffield: They just seem like a set Pacific has already done. These cards are written up in complete Spanish, with the exception of player and team names. This set has grown on me since getting some of the cards in, yes, trade packages.

I like grouping Chipper Jones and Murph cards together. The Kaybee card was new, and kind of oddball, and the Stadium Club has a pretty sweet ballpark shot.

The Braves uniform choices have made some news in recent days for their new batting practice caps. Personally, I think the "Homer" mascot looks much more, well, offensive. Seriously, from the humongous cap bill to the turtleneck-under-uniform to the mustache...thing, he doesn't exactly make one want to have a picture taken with him. At all.

Oh, and a Heyward. Toppstown inserts strike again!

Mark two Gary Sheffield cards that impressed me from this trade package. This is a 2003 Fleer Platinum MLB Scouting Report folder deal. Numbered /400, this is #166. I like the Attributes being "Thunder," "Lightning," and "Frightening."

Thanks Jack for the trade! Sorry it took forever to get this up in a post!