Peter Pan Delivers Some Cards... Oh Wait... That's Neverland.

These two cards showed up in the mail last week.  These purple beauties have put me as close to the halfway mark on this set as you can get.  I now own 31 of the 63 Ginter framed mini relics.  However, this was not all that came in this particular trade package.

Jeroen, of the blog The Dutch Card Guy also kindly included a few cards featuring players from his country's own soccer league, the Dutch Eredivisie.  I'm sorely looking forward to the release of this year's soccer cards and am very much hoping that they look halfway decent.  I haven't been thrilled with the design of many soccer products in the past (Topps, Panini, or otherwise), but increasing US interest in the sport may perhaps spark increased production quality of a collectible product.

This particular design isn't terrible, but I wouldn't say it's excellent either.  The card number in the bottom right-hand corner is really out of place, but otherwise, I could probably deal with this design.  I think one of the major problems with soccer cards is that finding unique and well focus photos can be a daunting task.  Many of the cards I've seen (aside from goalie cards) contain this very standard shot of a player simply dribbling the ball downfield.

Jeroen didn't stop with soccer though.  Oh no... he knew my interest in the Atlanta Braves pitching staff, and he himself happened to have a PC of none other than Mr. Tom Glavine.  He kindly sent me an absolutely stunning patch/auto of the great lefty numbered to 25!

I also received a handful of black minis for a project that I think I'm going to embark upon in the near future (read: when I get around to it).  I think I'm going to try and take the best player/world champion from any given card slot in the past 10 years of Ginter and try and collect the black mini version of those cards.  For example, slot #85 is almost guaranteed to be occupied by this year's Kris Bryant card.  I happen to have this card already so we're off to a great start!

Last, but certainly not least, Jeroen sent me one of his most prized cards.  Apparently he pulled this from a pack himself back in 2011 and to this day is "the best pull in [his] baseball card collecting history."  I am quite excited to be the new owner of this headline autograph for 2011 Allen & Ginter.

I present to you: Manny Paquiao