Johnny's Trading Spot Sox (and Buybacks)!

Now that I've completed coverage of the large package of Red Sox from Billy Kingsley, I can move on to some of the other trade packages that have been backed up in queue.  Today's Red Sox cards (and buybacks) come courtesy of John Miller from Johnny's Trading Spot.

John actually sent two packages recently, the first one contained a single random card accompanied by a few dozen Red Sox cards...

In the interest of keeping this post at a reasonable length I'm not going to show every single card.  For example, I received a whopping 20 needs towards a 1993 Fleer Ultra team set!

I picked my favorite three to share with you, but rest assured there were indeed 17 others with them.  I needed every single one of them, too.  I'm just a card or two away from a full team set now.

Man, I loved the foil ribbon ROOKIE cards in those early Fleer Ultra sets across all sports back in the day.  Still do.

Amazingly, I did not have this '89 Fleer Jody Reed.  It's always nice to fill in a junk wax hole via a trade or random package like this.

Next up, John did some serious damage to my 2004 Donruss team set.  I had just one Red Sox card from this release prior to receiving this package, but now I've got a handful more.

These are great because 2004 is obviously a very significant season in the history of the franchise.

Nice to have the team that broke the curse immortalized on cardboard.

I actually really like the design for this set too.  Sort of the best of both worlds between a border and a full-bleed photograph.

This was probably the period where I was attending the most games in person that I have at any point in my life so far.  Lots of fond memories of cheering these guys on.

As I continue the long and laborious process of getting my cards digitally organized on The Trading Card Database, Nomar Garciaparra is one of just five baseball players that I currently have at least 100 recorded cards of on the site to date.  That number will of course go up significantly as I continue to make progress.

Nice landscape shot here on Pedro's card.

We'll close out the 2004 Donruss run with a couple of lesser-known role player types in Todd Walker...

...and the Dirt Dog, Trot Nixon.

Next up, a run of 2005 Topps cards.  Not just any 2005 Topps cards though, if you look in the upper left corner you'll see a foil '1st Edition' stamp.

I wasn't collecting cards in 2005 at all, so I was completely unaware that this set even existed.  From what I can tell, this was a completely separate release rather than a parallel that was available in the flagship set.

Great photograph on this Gabe Kapler.  I like the wide cropping, and the 3-D effect of the photo.

Speaking of nice photographs, great Yankee Stadium backdrop here on this card of a young Bronson Arroyo.  One of the few athletes to make an appearance in concert among my treasured collection of Pearl Jam bootlegs!

Look at that knuckler!  Beautiful!

Been landing quite a few Trot Nixon cards of late it seems, but I certainly don't mind.  He was an under-rated favorite of mine for years.

Again, a pretty decent portion of an overall team set there! 

The final Red Sox card in the package was this very small Tris Speaker Cracker Jack reprint.  I've got a handful of original Cracker Jacks, and they're among my most prized baseball cards, period.  I'll likely never own this one though, as it goes for insane amounts of money whenever a copy crops up.  Happy to have a mini-sized reprint as a placeholder.

The amazing thing is that all of those Red Sox cards were thrown in just because John, as he indicated in his note, "couldn't send just one card".

So, what was the one card that caused John to drop me a package in the mail to begin with?

1991 Topps Traded #53T - Pete Harnisch

A buyback, of course!  I knew this was one I hadn't yet acquired either.  Pete Harnisch had a solid season in 1991.  He made 33 starts for the Astros that season, and finished with a very lean 2.70 ERA.  He actually led the league in hits-per-nine-innings, and was named an All-Star for the one and only time in his career.  There's just one problem with this buyback, however.  It's a Traded card, so...

...it's ineligible for the franken-set.  Will come in handy if I ever attempt a 132-card "Traded/Update" franken-set though, which is certainly a possibility.

This one may not have made the binder but that's alright, because a few short weeks later John sent a greeting card my way that had two singles taped to the inside within a penny sleeve.

1988 Topps #592 - Dale Sveum

The first was this Dale Sveum buyback, from the 2017 "Rediscover Topps" promotion.  A good example of the inset player photo overlapping the team name, which the '88 release is famous for.  The best thing about this one is that John apparently took the time to look over my franken-set inventory before sending it, because at #592 this is a new number for the project!  Welcome to the binder, Dale Sveum.

1966 Topps #340 - Dean Chance

The other buyback that John sent along in that latest delivery was this 1966 Dean Chance.  A cool buyback given that Dean had won a Cy Young Award just a couple of seasons prior to this card's production.  Once again though, the best thing about this one is that it represents a card number that was missing from the binder previously.  Chance is in by default, and I'm two cards closer to franken-set completion after this great pair!

Best of all, this buyback completes a brand new page in the binder as well!  No HOFers here, but that's a colorful and aesthetically pleasing page nonetheless!

John, thanks so much for all of the great cardboard, and for providing a huge boost to my Buyback Franken-set!  It's been tough going getting new numbers for that project recently, so killing two at once like this feels great.  I'm now officially at 83% complete in this long-running project!

Franken-set Progress: 658/792 (83%)
1990 Topps Buyback Set: 121/792 (15%)
"Rejected" Buybacks: 655
Total Buybacks in Collection: 1,434