Mark Starts Me Towards 7,000

Having crossed the 6,000 unique Red Sox cards threshold, I guess the next logical thing to do is strive for 7,000, right?  Well, thanks to another envelope that arrived recently from my most frequent trading partner, Mark Kaz of This Way to the Clubhouse, I'm well on my way...

These Bowman State & Hometown parallels are a cool concept.  Especially in this case, since Shane is affectionately known as the "Flyin' Hawaiian".  This is now the fourth different version/parallel of the 2014 Bowman Victorino card that I've got, and I like this one best out of that group.
 

I received a nice bump to my 2002 Topps Red Sox team set only days before receiving this PWE, and then Mark hit me up with a pair from the Traded set.  My favorite of the two is this Alan Embree.  Relievers just don't get much love, so this is actually the first Embree Red Sox card in my entire collection.  I'm really pumped about this given that Alan was a major part of the curse-breaking 2004 team, appearing in nearly half of the team's games that year (71 appearances).  Just awesome.

Another first for my collection, Dustin Hermanson, who pitched in 12 total games for Boston.  Two Topps Traded cards, two brand new faces for my Red Sox collection, can't beat that!

I seem to be attracting these Wal-Mart black parallels lately, and I certainly don't mind.  I got another duo in this package, from the 2009 release.  First up is Justin Masterson, who was definitely better in his first stint with the team than in his second.

Also got this league leaders card.  I'm sure these bother some people, but I've always been a fan of the multi-player leaders cards.  I mean, without a card like this in my collection I could easily forget Daisuke Matsuzaka's monster 2008 season.  Maybe you've forgotten already?  In what was the best of his 8 MLB campaigns by a long shot, Dice-K went 18-3 with a sub-3.00 ERA that season.

There are three versions of this 2003 Bowman Heritage Jim Piersall card.  Mark sent me one of them earlier this year, and this makes two.  I'll have to make completing the trio a priority at some point here.

A very nice pair of cards from the 2001 Topps 50 Years reprint insert set.  Arguably the best card from the 1988 set, Wade Boggs...

...and from the '71 set, Yaz!  I've got the original version of both of these, cool to have them in reprint form as well.

To me, the most interesting card of the package though was this 2006 Topps Rookie Debut Jon Lester.  A very nice rookie year card of the southpaw who was a key component in Boston's last two World Series championships.  Lester pushed what was already a great PWE over the top, thank you Mark!  Sorry I've been slow on the return lately, gonna do my best to float some cards your way this week.

Next up in the stack here on my desk is a creative and jaw-dropping batch of cards that came my way as the result of winning a contest...