Rocket Rookie in the Mail!

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a reader named Jeff. I don't believe Jeff operates a blog or anything that I can link to here, but he had a whole bunch of Red Sox cards that were looking for a new home that he wanted to send over.  I dug up some Upper Deck Young Guns and Canvas cards that he had an interest in, and a trade was born.

Probably the most significant card in the lot was this 1985 Topps Roger Clemens RC!  I can't believe it took me so long to finally end up with one of these, and I truly appreciate Jeff's generosity in sending it to me.

Receiving this card alone in a PWE would have been significant, but Jeff (like so many people in this hobby) was so generous that he sent me all of the Red Sox he had that I needed just because...

This is how the package looked when it arrived on my doorstep, an 800-count box of goods!

As you can see, it was mostly stuffed full as well.  This has to be one the single largest lots of cards I've ever received in a trade.  Over the past couple of weeks I came to the realization that if I tried to follow my standard procedure of scanning, cropping, inventorying and posting each and every card I'd be at it for weeks or months.  Given the number of trade/thank you posts that I've had piling up to get to, I decided to scan in just a few highlights for now...

To go along with the legit Clemens rookie, I also received this 50th Anniversary reprint.

I doubt Jeff would have guessed this, but one of my absolute favorite cards in the box was this 2009 Topps 206 mini of The Great Bambino.

Inside the box I was pleased to find a pair of 1994 Upper Deck Electric Diamond parallels.

These came at one-per-pack, and are the perfect cards for a parallel junkie like me to get in a package.

I'm only showing one of them here, but Jeff did some major damage (to the tune of 30-40 cards) to my 2001 Fleer Red Sox 100th Anniversary set.  With these in hand I'm definitely making it a goal to finish off this set in 2015.

Back to parallels, how about some of the oldest parallels I know of, early '90s Topps Gold!

I really dig the 2005 Bowman Heritage set, which draws its inspiration from the '51 Bowman cards.

I'm just a couple of cards away from killing off this team set now.

Got my very first look at 2003 Topps Opening Day as well.

From 2004 Topps, a nice shot of Tim Wakefield delivering his knuckler...

...and something I miss dearly in most sets these days, manager cards!

Manny Ramirez and Derek Lowe represent my first 2001 Upper Deck Red Sox.  Standard Upper Deck fare, minimal design and excellent, full-bleed photographs.

Fleer did a nice job with the team cards in their 2000 Fleer Tradition set.  For the most part, this card looks like it could have come out of the '50s or '60s.

I will never get tired of picking up new cards that showcase Jose Canseco's brief stint with Boston in the mid-'90s!

This one was a definite highlight for me.  I don't run across 2001 Topps Heritage very often, and it seems like about 75% of the Red Sox on the checklist were short-printed as well (just like this one!).

I had quite a few 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings Sox before receiving this box, but this was the first I'd seen of these Framed Red parallels.  They are very similar to the framed parallels from Masterpieces and Gypsy Queen a few years ago now.

In closing (for now), a couple of Mahogany parallels from the aforementioned 2005 Bowman Heritage set.

Just awesome!  Jeff, thank you so much for the amazing amount of generosity you showed in shipping this many cards blindly to a stranger.  I hope my return package gave you even a fraction of the amount of joy that this one brought me.  I hope to post some more of the contents of this box once I get caught up on my other trade posts.

On that note, I owe an apology to Tony, Tim B. and a few others.  I hope to have all of my thank you posts published by the end of this week.  I hope nobody is offended at the amount of time it's taking me to given them proper thanks, I've just never been so busy on the trade front in all my years of operating the blog!