Two Timely Trunks of Thoughtfulness

I haven't gotten around to trading a whole lot recently, so the vast majority of my packages found on my doorstep have been purchases of some sort.  This changed last week when I received two awesome packages in the mail from fellow bloggers.

The first came courtesy Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown after participating in his Big Fun Game.  I had an early round draft pick in his game and ended up taking one of Gavin's collecting babies in a Topps Retired auto of Jesse Orosco.  

My scanner clearly doesn't do too well with these heavy plastic encasements.  More importantly (and more exciting for me), I got another of Gavin's famed customs!  This one is an ode to the Simpsons, a show that hit its prime while I was still pretty young.  My parents never allowed me to watch it claiming it was "utter nonsense".  They're probably right... it is a show full of utter nonsense, but it also clearly works as the show has been around for 28 years now!

Gavin also included a whole bunch of extras with many a Brave and some Tony Gwynn's, but I wanted to highlight the above extra he included.  I'm pretty sure this package arrived on July 2nd and this card was tailor made for a Fourth of July blog post... I completely missed the boat on that one.

Thanks for hosting the game Gavin!  I greatly appreciate your generosity.

~~~

I also recently participated in a group break hosted by Chris over at Nachos Grande.  I obviously took the Bravos and also ended up with the Rays as a randomized team.  You'll find no Rays cards in this recap... even though I got quite a few, there weren't any cards that particularly stood out to me.

The break included two boxes of Archives, a box of of Diamond Kings, a box of Topps Bunt, along with a bunch of extras and throw ins.  I particularly enjoyed seeing a few 2009 Upper Deck cards from a set I really never touched.

The Bunt box yielded the full Braves base team set (I think you're pretty much guaranteed the base set in a single box) plus this one really sweet blue parallel of Freddie.  I went golfing the other day and someone told me I swing my driver exactly like Freddie Freeman swings a baseball bat.  I loved it.

The two Archives boxes landed me a decent number of base cards with a couple dupes.  I never checked if I actually received the full team set or not.  Above are the two Braves inserts Chris pulled for me and I was quite happy with both of these.  I enjoy that the Glavine tall boy insert features a bit younger version of the loopy lefty.

I think these were the only two Braves cards I received from Diamond Kings... not that I'm complaining.  These are apparently both variations of Dansby Swanson and one of them is even framed.  Yay!  The cards are okay I suppose, but the Diamond Kings box was certainly not the reason I joined this break.

Overall, short of getting a hit, I thought I did fairly decent in this group break.  Getting five inserts/parallels across the break is pretty much as best as you can do in my book.  Chris also claimed he would fill a flat rate mailer with a whole bunch of extras and he made good on that promise plus some.  I received a box full of Braves and Rays from throughout the last two decades.  There was a whole lot of everything from Junk Wax, to 2012 Bowman, to just some randoms from the early 2000's.  It was great!

What was really great though was this surprise autograph of Terry Pendleton that showed up in the box.  This card really made me ecstatic as Pendleton has been a mainstay of the Braves organization for as long as I can remember serving as hitting coach, base coach, bench coach... basically all the behind the scenes positions.  He is clearly highly respected as he's survived two managerial changes along with some changes at the executive level as well.

Thanks so much for the generosity Chris!  I can't say I've ever even seen a certified autograph of Pendleton, let alone owned one!