Pearl Jam Again! But Moving On...

So, I went to the Pearl Jam show at Fenway Park again last night.  I just couldn't help myself.  I had such a good time on Friday evening that there was no way I was passing up an opportunity to see my all-time favorite band in my favorite MLB ballpark.  It was another beautiful night and another great experience, however since this is a blog about sports cards and not music I'll spare you the details.

It did seem like a good segue into this trade post with reader, collector, and friend of the blog Trey though.  That's because he sent me the great O-Pee-Chee card you see above, featuring the place where I partied way too hard on this long weekend (Rhode Island still celebrates "Victory Over Japan Day", if you can believe that).  It's also fitting because the last time Trey sent me a card, it was also a Fenway Park card.

This time the Fenway Park card was just one small part of a very nice assortment of cards.

As far as my Red Sox collection goes, Trey really laid into my 2002 Topps flagship want list.

Interesting looking back on these teams from just before they broke "the curse".

Rod Beck is probably my favorite out of this batch.  This is actually just my second card featuring Beck with Boston.

Just three more of these on my radar now, I'll have to knock this one out soon.  Amazingly I received a great PWE just this past week that contained a couple of the Traded cards from this same set, what are the odds of that?

Trey also hooked me up with a pair of cards I needed for my 2011 Gypsy Queen set.  This one has been stagnant for a while so it was nice to get a little boost here.

Without a doubt though, the star of the show was a handful of Topps Retired Legends parallels from 2011.  I've mentioned it here countless times, and posted quite a few of these on the blog.  I was stunned at Trey's generosity as he included at least one card of every possible variation in this package.  This Jim Palmer is a standard Diamond Anniversary parallel.

But I received some of the Cognac versions as well.  I have less than 10 cards of Rogers Hornsby in my collection, this one is now easily my favorite.

Wow.  Just...wow.  Very recently I posted a Koufax from the 2011 Update set, and now I've got this one to pair with it.  This card really had me smiling.

Rounding out the Cognac parallels was speedster Rickey Henderson.  The Green and Gold of the A's uniforms really meshes well with this particular parallel, does it not?

Last, but certainly not least, my choice for card of the package, a brand new Nolan Ryan!  I had the Cognac version of this card, but not this base version.  These actually seem to be more desirable for collectors and are in my experience a bit tougher to track down than their sparkly counterparts.  Quite an exclamation point on what was one impressive stack of cards.

Trey, this was incredibly generous of you, I am grateful that you take the time to read my blog and I truly appreciate this amazing array of cardboard.