John Kruk, Darryl Strawberry and Stadium Club

Recently completed a trade with Kin (Twitter) who needs no introduction. He sent me a righteous stack--two stacks, actually--of 2018 Stadium Club cards for the set on which I am working.

And tucked in the middle of the them were some Darryl Strawberry and John Kruk cards. Two of the Kruk's were awesome new additions to my collection.

1993 Pacific Spanish, Card #238 (bottom right card)
2005 Upper Deck Classics, Card #117 (first row, second to last)

I can honestly say that I had ever seen them before! I love the Pacific card because it shows the ball perfectly belt hit, Kruk's eyes on it.  Great shot. The Upper Deck card...  I'll be honest, it's kind of a creepy, skeevy photo.

In addition to Kin's 2018 Stadium Club cards, I got additional help for my set from Matt (Once a Cub; Twitter) and Greg (aka Night Owl; Twitter).

Matt's cards are on the left and I totally tried to be "meta" with the image showing a photo of the cards on my keyboard on the computer while also taking a picture of the cards on the keyboard. Totally worked. Right? And Greg's cards are on the right. Greg included a 1993 Post card of John Kruk. Sweet! The Sandberg and the Trout were generous. I like how pensive & philosophical Trout is.

Thank you Kin, Matt, and Greg! Your generosity is very much appreciated. I'll hit y'all back with cards in the near future I hope.

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2018 Topps Insert Darryl Strawberry

Got this sweet card back in May with a host of others that for various reasons I never blogged about. This is Darryl Strawberry's ever-so-sweet 2018 Topps flagship insert card.

I'm of two minds on this kind of thing. I like the re-use of the design for players that were playing at the time with new images. For example, here is Strawberry's 1983 Topps Traded card:

I know, it's scrumptious, too.

But, I'm less satisfied or pleased or whatever with current players on the older design. Does that make sense? Am I just weird? A hypocrite? I

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Community Fun

My first trade with Jon of Community Gum couldn't have been a nicer, easier trade I don't think. I sent him a couple of 2018 Stadium Club cards and in return the haul you see below.

Like an idiot I filed all the cards away before scanning of photographing everything, but this is an overview just after I opened the package...

1992 Topps
10 cards towards my set including Ken Griffey, Jr.

John Kruk
1995 Finest Refractor, Card #319
2013 Gypsy Queen, Card #66

That 1995 Finest is my second Kruk card in a White Sox uniform.

Darryl Strawberry
1988 Score Box Cards, Card, #17
1988 Series 1 Red Stars, Card #1
1988 Topps Stickers, Card #96 (with #41 George Brett)
1989 Baseball Card Magazine '59 Topps Replicas, Card #26   
1989 Classic Travel, Card #8
1989 Classic Travel, Card #108
1989 Pacific Cards & Comics Baseball's Best Three, Card #10
1990 Classic Blue, Card #33
1990 Fleer Baseball MVP's, Card #37
1990 Score 100 Superstars, Card #15
1991 Classic II, Card #NNO (with John Olerud / Dwight Gooden / Jose Canseco - Toronto Blue Jays / New York Mets / Oakland Athletics)

I did scan one of the cards as it was missing an image on Trading Card database:

Jon -- you simply knocked it out of the park with this. By bringing me 10 cards closer to my 1992 Topps set is super awesome; and then the 15 completely new John Kruk and Darryl Strawberry cards really was unparalleled. Thank you so very very very much.

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Wiz Kid

Mark M of the excellent Baseball Beyond Batting Average podcast and his son recently started shedding years worth of baseball cards on Twitter. I was the lucky claimant of the Washington Nationals cards and in the box, Mark included a few bonus pieces. No, I'm not going to show the 200+ cards he sent, I'm mean but not that cruel, but I though I'd show off the few cards...

The first is this magnificent 1991 Nobody Beats the Wiz card.

Now, that is exciting.

Also, Mark graciously took the time to peruse my Strawberry needs list and found two other cards missing from my collection: 1991 Donruss Grand Slammers and 1992 Classic. The latter was accidentally completely missing from my list.

Mark included three unopened packs of cards for 1987 Donruss, 1990 Fleer, and 1992 Stadium Club Series 1.

While all the above are totally awesome... the pièce de résistance was another custom hand-drawn card. This time, John Kruk's 1989 Topps Traded card.

One word, two syllables:  STUNNING.

Mark I am much obliged to you and  your son for your kindness. Thank you so much!

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Nationals Strawberry Day from A Cracked Bat

There's really no reason to muck this blog post up with a lot of words. So I'll just say Julie of A Cracked Bat fame is amazing.

Some nice Nationals cards up there from Jayson Werth to Daniel Murphy. I don't know much about Frandsen. And Jonathan Papelsmear looks like he's farting. And the four Strawberry's are superb.

We need to take a bigger, closer look at this Topps Stand-Ups "card"...

And now what about that 2018 Stadium Club!  To date I've opened 23 packs or so and haven't pulled one myself. So, Julie is a Saint and an Angel for snagging me one through her baseball mojo voodoo witchcraft magic.

Sweetness.

Thank YOU Julie, again and again. And again some more.

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2018 Stadium Club Inserts Up For Grabs

Ok, so as some of you know I'm working on building a set of the 2018 Stadium Club baseball cards. Check out my NEEDS here. I'm really only interested in the actual base cards, not the parallels, not the inserts, etc. So, this is a post to offer to you, the fine reader of this blog, the parallels and inserts.

This is how it's going to work: First come, first served. If you want a card, leave a comment. Normally I 'moderate' the comments to keep on top of fake stuff, but I'll turn that off so that others can see immediately if a card has been claimed. If a card has been claimed, as soon as I humanly can I will strike it through.

Red Parallels:
1 Sandy Alcantara - Miami Marlins RC
36 Gerrit Cole - Houston Astros
59 Yonder Alonso - Cleveland Indians
78 Yoenis Cespedes - New York Mets
155 Francisco Mejia - Cleveland Indians RC
173 Anthony Banda - Tampa Bay Rays RC
189 Lewis Brinson - Miami Marlins
249 Nomar Mazara - Texas Rangers
252 Felix Hernandez - Seattle Mariners
253 Aaron Nola - Philadelphia Phillies

Black parallel:
190 Ian Happ - Chicago Cubs

Black and white:
32 Carlos Correa - Houston Astros

Sepia parallel:
9 Zack Godley - Arizona Diamondbacks

Chrome:
SSC-101 Jack Flaherty - St. Louis Cardinals
SSC-208 Greg Maddux - Atlanta Braves

Members Only:
100 Cam Gallagher - Kansas City Royals

Base Autograph:
SCA-NG Niko Goodrum - Detroit Tigers

Never Compromise:
NC-AB Andrew Benintendi - Boston Red Sox
NC-FT Frank Thomas - Chicago White Sox
NC-MMC Mark McGwire - St. Louis Cardinals
NC-NS Noah Syndergaard - New York Mets
NC-SO Shohei Ohtani - Los Angeles Angels

Power Zone:
PZ-MM Manny Machado - Baltimore Orioles
PZ-NA Nolan Arenado - Colorado Rockies
PZ-PG Paul Goldschmidt - Arizona Diamondbacks

Special Forces:
SF-BH Bryce Harper - Washington Nationals
SF-CB Cody Bellinger - Los Angeles Dodgers
SF-CC Carlos Correa - Houston Astros
SF-JA Jose Altuve - Houston Astros
SF-JVO Joey Votto - Cincinnati Reds

Thank you for your interest in taking my cards!

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Random Act of Kruk

Robert M of $30 A Week Habit sent me just one card but I'm not sure I've ever gotten such a fine one as this in the mail. But it's hard to say which is the best card I've ever gotten and it's unfair to even try. What is fair is that it's fairly impossible as they are all so very welcome. This one is my second signed John Kruk card (the first one was sent to me by Mark Mosley, who draws baseball cards and is co-host with Andy of the Baseball Beyond Batting Average Podcast, which I highly recommend listening to). 

Robert sent me this on-card autograph and it is sweet. Robert said it was a #RAK which I had to look up as I'm not totally hashtag literate. Turns out it means "Random Act of Kruk". It was even featured on Kruk's uniform in his iconic 1987 Topps card: 

Back to Robert's card... I'm not usually a fan of the Gypsy Queen cards (or, for that matter, the Allen & Ginter thing), but this one for me is an exception and it's most welcome in my John Kruk box.

BOOM!

Thank you so very much Robert!

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