Talking Trades: (W)Roster Jenga with the Burbs

Back toward the beginning of the year when I was first getting back into collecting, I discovered Tony's blog Wrigley Roster Jenga (keep wanting to type Wroster), I wreached out to him about a card he needed, Donn Roach as a Cub.

This is where it all began

I had purchased the I-Cubs set on ebay in hopes of getting some in-person autos of some players, and to grab the pre-callup cards for Bryant, Russell and others, and this card fit into his Cubs All-Time Roster Collection.  Looking at my 2015 book, I'm missing a card for Donnie Roach, since he did make a (not good) appearance with Chicago.

His initial offering (there have been a couple) was full of guys I mentioned I was starting PCs for, as well as replacements for the Cubgrades I sent him:

He clearly did not disappoint!  My budding collection was off to a great start!  The three down the left were replacements for I-Cubs I sent him, cult hero John backer at the bottom, the Professor, the good Soriano, Kid K, A-Ram, and the Harry Carey impersonator.

You'll also notice at the bottom a manu-relic to commemorate Buster Posey's debut, one of the first additions to my non-Cubs PC list.

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A few weeks later I had more for his various All-Time Roster lists, so another mailing went out, and another came back!  This is after I decided to pursue a similar venture, in making a Cubs All-Time collection, so he decided to attack it with authority.

The Jose Reyes shot creeps me out for some reason, and I'm also wondering what's on Todd Zeile's mind here.  I for one, love spring training shots, and the Brendan Harris is just excellent, in my opinion.  Excellent shot from the backfields.  Also, I fear for the poor woman Dave Geilsel is eyeballing in that '82 Donruss shot.

This group reaches back a bit further (with the exception of The Hawk) to fill a few holes from vintage teams.  Ernie and the aforementioned Awesome Dawson make their way into their respective binders, whereas the rest slot into their respective years with their team sets.  It was all I could do to restrain myself from sticking Sutter to the front of a binder.

The final grouping gives me my first "cards" of Moises Alou in a Cubs uniform, Joe Pepitone wondering when he can get to his stash, current Athletic and short time big league Cub Arismendy Alcantara, a young J-Hey, a pre-photoshop era Scott Downs Expos card, and a few Cubs before they were Cubs, in Michael Tucker, Ryan Freel, and Red Murray, whom all spent a season or less with the Cubs.

Tony, thanks again for the dents to my lists!

Collection Chronicles: All-Time Cubs

Last month I completed my first online card trade with Tony Burbs, the proprietor of Wrigley Roster Jenga.  Since then I have been adding to my Cubs collection, and have decided to start my own Cubs All-Time collection, inspired by Tony.

I have spoken to him about this and he is cool with me copying his idea.

What I ask is this:  If you plan to contribute to my collection, please check his FIRST.  If he needs it, send it his way, if not, I'll gladly accept.  I don't want to take away from his progress, and would hate to receive something that he needs, so please take this into consideration.

You can find my list here (Onedrive XLSX file).  Blue means Cubs, Orange means I have them for another team.  Again, kinda like Tony's, as there aren't many ways to make it different without making it confusing.  Numbers in the far right column are solely for conditional formatting rules to work, and are no indication of the number of cards I have for each player.

Greetings and Salutations

First and foremost, thanks to Tony Burbs, Tim B., The Lost Collector, Dimebox Nick and defgav for getting me hooked on online card trading through blogs, trades and contests.  Without those welcoming gents, you wouldn't be reading this.

A little background:  I'm a husband, father of two, working a full-time job and [finally] working on my bachelors.  (This means I won't have anywhere near the time allowed to post more than a couple times a week, if even that).  I served in the Marines for 8 years, traveling around southeast Asia and the west Pacific.

Last year, a friend of mine took me to a couple Cubs games at Wrigley.  The first was against the Reds/Johnny Cueto, with the rock solid Jason Hammel starting, on June 12th (before his injury).  This was the only game dropped in the series (Starlin Castro however walked-off the next two).  It was a very chilly, misty day, we sat in the newly opened RF bleachers, and got this as the promotion that day:

They should've given blankets.  Didn't matter.  It was cold, rainy, Cubs lost 5-4 thanks to a couple errors, but I was hooked.  Hearing stories about Rizzo and Lester overcoming Cancer, among countless other stories, how could you not root for this team?  Oh, and hearing about some guy with dreamy eyes that rocked Spring Training, and didn't stop when called up to replace an injured Mike Olt at third base... I'm sure you've heard of him.

*Sparkle*

I couldn't wait for my next Cubs game, which came a month later.  My buddy kept telling me how great it is to see the Cubs & White Sox play each other, so we secured tickets for one of the games at Wrigley.  By the time we got the ticket though, all that was left was the VERY top row of the second deck, along the first base side.  Couldn't see LF at all, let alone the video boards.  Was irrelevant, because there weren't very many highlights for the Cubs since, oh yeah, these guys were pitching:

This one didn't end well for the Cubs either, as the Sox took a 2-0 lead in the top of the 1st that they would not relinquish, finishing with a score of 5-1.  Sale was, well, Sale, and it was the odd numbered month version of Lester.

Didn't matter, I was still hooked on the team, but should've gotten tickets for the following game when Big Jake was starting.  Oh well.

In the past I have been to a couple other baseball games, one at New Comisky when I was 12, I think, can't remember for the life of me who the Sox were playing, but didn't think anything of it at the time.

Same goes for a Padres game I caught back in 2001, during Boot Camp, of all things.  Didn't really pay attention to the game, was more concerned with getting a break from the craziness of boot camp, and stuffing my face with "Pogie Bait", ie. nachos and soda.  Background on this, a millionaire that as in the same battalion back in the day pays to send companies in that battalion to either Padres or Chargers games, when possible.

But now, thanks to the boys in blue from the north side, and my buddy Sean, I have Cubs fever.  Good part is I don't feel I came on as a bandwagoner, because of the timing.  Yes, I became a fan during the 97 win season that led them to the NLCS, but A) they lost both games I attended, and 2) iirc, they weren't in wildcard position yet, and had dropped 10 of the past 19 games.

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I grew up a Husker fan, played some little league, and collected [mostly baseball] cards from roughly 1988-1992, right in the heart of the "junk wax" era.  I finally took all that old wax out of storage to dig around looking for Cubs cards, which were fairly plentiful.  I didn't remember this, but I must've been a Blue Jays fan as a kid, as that was definitely the biggest stack out of all the teams.  I was happy to find a handful of Greg Maddux, Ryne Sandberg, Darryl Strawberry and Nolan Ryan cards, along with a few other HOF players, including this guy:

HOLY CRAP!! A Randy Johnson Rated Rookie!!  Mind you, I hadn't touched my cards in roughly 20 years, had heard a few names after getting back into baseball, and figured this might be worth something.

Well then.  From here, I started my research and learned of the "Junk Wax" era, and that these are virtually all worth piddly poo.  All good, unless I managed to dig up something that was worth thousands, I wasn't planning on selling anything.

I was in this originally just to collate the cards I had, then hook up some friends (again, not really knowing that they were commonly referred to as "junk").  Then I picked up a few flagship packs, some Fairfield packs, and really started having fun.  Then I found the trade blogs, saw that Tony Burbs needed 1 card that I had (Donn Roach minor league card), and it took off from there.

There will be a few posts regarding completed trades, a contest I won, and of course, some trade bait.

Otherwise, I'll post whenever I have time, share them on twitter @stetsonaw, and on Google+.