MY 200TH TCDB TRADE

If you collect baseball cards, you should be aware of the Trading Card Database. You can find it at https://www.tradingcarddb.com/. I created an account there a few years ago, but was using a different site to manage my trades. Then, I went on a baseball card hiatus. In November 2019, I pulled all my cards out, organized them and got back on Trading Card DB.

If you haven't been to TCDB, it's awesome. It's relatively easy to enter your cards - the ones you have, the ones you want and the ones you are willing to trade (or sell). It's also pretty easy to find trading partners.

Suffice to say, it's more for bulk collectors - team collectors, set collectors and player collectors. And it's not just for baseball either. Football, basketball, hockey, non-sport etc are well represented. It probably isn't the place you are going to go to if you are looking to sell some high-value, slabbed cards or trade cards worth thousands. It is, however, an awesome place to get rid of doubles and duplicates and find fills for your card wantlists.

This morning, I completed my 200th trade on TCDB. These trades have taken my Mets Team Collection from just around 2500 cards to well over 8000 individual cards.

My 200th trade was with a trader named Scrubeenie from Fort Worth, TX. This was the 3rd time we traded. In this trade I sent along 10 cards from the 1981 Drake's Big Hitters set and a Bobby Parnell Topps Heritage I had as a duplicate.

In return, I got back the following:

1993 Select - Aces #8 Dwight Gooden

1997 Finest #68 Mark Clark

1999 Topps Gold Label Class 1 #77 John Olerud

2003 Topps #577 Tom Glavine

2010 Bowman #154 Jason Bay

2016 Topps Allen & Ginter #98 Michael Conforto RC

 2016 Topps Allen & Ginter #224 Gary Carter

 2017 Topps Allen & Ginter #14 Robert Gsellman RC

2017 Topps Allen & Ginter - Sport Fish & Fishing Lures #SFL-6 Largemouth Bass

2019 Topps Utz #84 Michael Conforto

Anyway, that's about all there is. I'm happy with that trade. That is all that counts. My next goal is 10,000 individual Mets cards. I'm sure, with the help of the TCDB community, that I will get there.

TARGET ALONSO TIN

Amidst all this Social Distancing and WuFlu hysteria, I had to run out yesterday to pick up some nicotine patches. I pretty much had 3 options: CVS (1 mile away), WalMart (3 miles away) and Target (5 miles away). Well, CVS doesn't carry baseball cards - so that's out. I've been to WalMart this week and it's getting uglier there by the day. So, I figured I'd hit Target. The fact that I hadn't yet picked up one of the Topps 2020 Series 1 Pete Alonso Tins yet had absolutely nothing to do with my decision.

Well, I got the Alonso Tin. But, Target was all out of Nicotine Patches. I guess, like me, many of the smokers of the world have decided that this KungFlu scare is a good time to quit. So, I had to go to CVS anyway. And they still didn't have any baseball cards there!

Here's the tin (they don't come with the Dave Kingman discs). The were 14.99 at Target.

The tin itself is pretty cool. I'll have to figure out what I want to keep in it.

So, what comes in this tin? Each retail tin contains 75 cards, including 5 retail-only Turkey Red 2020 cards, 1 Turkey Red 2020 Chrome, 1 1985 Topps Baseball insert and one Decade's Best Chrome, which are exclusive to these tins.

I could see the Decade's Best Chromes being tough to compile down the line. There are 100 of them on the checklist.

So, what did I pull? Well, the 1st question really is: What Mets did I pull?

#48 Jeff McNeil base and #152 Zack Wheeler base. I have them both already, so into the trade pile they go.

What else did I get out of the tin? Well, the Decade's Best Chrome was the DBC-72 Randy Johnson (Diamondbacks), the Turkey Red Chrome was TRC-86 Charlie Morton (Rays), the Turkey Reds were 10 Murphy (A's), 29 Arenado (Rockies), 35 Altuve (Astros), 54 Rosario (Twins)  and 59 Torres (Yankees). Also, I pulled a Tatis Jr. 1985 35th Anniversary (85-84), Decade's Best 1960's Twins (DB-26) and a Mike Trout Rainbow Foil Parallel (1). 2 Vlad Guerrero  Jr. Player Highlights (VGJ-5 and VGJ-19) and 61 Base Cards round out the cards.

Nothing Super Duper I guess, but I like the tin nonetheless.

COMPLETED METS TEAM SET - 1979 TOPPS

Here is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series. Completed Mets Team Sets from my collection. The 1979 Topps Set is one of my favorites. Mostly because I collected it as a boy. It also has some of my favorite Mets in it: Apodaca, Koosman, Stearns, Hodges, Youngblood, Swan.

This was back in the easy days of collecting: no parallels, no SP variations, no retail exclusives etc etc. Just the base set and the 29 cards that make up the Mets portion of it. Here they are: