Relics & Ornaments

I've got a giant stack of card-related mail staring me in the face that all came in while I was away on vacation.  Before I get to any of that though, I've still got to catch up on the packages that showed up before I even left!

To that end, how about a nice PWE from Brian over at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary.  Remember Kevin Youkilis?  It's been over two years now since Youk last played in an MLB game.  Random bar room fact; Kevin is married to Tom Brady's sister!

Over 4,300 Red Sox cards now, and this is my very first from 1998 Bowman.  Go figure.

Here's a nice '54 Topps rip-off of Butch Huskey, from Fleer Tradition.  Not the biggest fan of this set, but as a team collector I must have all the Red Sox.

Here's where the PWE starts getting really great.  Shiny baseball cards do it for me every time, and the Diamond Anniversary parallels of 2011 are some of the shiniest cards I've ever seen.  I've got a lot of these parallels from the flagship set, but comparably few from Topps Lineage, so this was a pleasant surprise.

A nice Rocket from 1988 Topps UK Minis...

Even if I someday complete my 1953 Topps set, this is a card I'll never own the original of, because it doesn't exist.  When Topps re-released the '53 set as an "Archives" product in 1991, they included some "cards that never were" from the original set, like Ted Williams here.  I think I had a copy of this one as a kid, but if so it's long lost.  Happy to add this one to my collection again (even if it looks nothing like a '53 Topps card should).

I've blogged numerous times about how colored parallels are a collecting guilty pleasure of mine, so I was excited to find this Will Middlebrooks in this delivery.  From last year's Bowman set, this orange parallel is serial numbered to /250 copies.  I actually had this in my cart on COMC to make an offer on at some point, nice to delete that card out thanks to Brian's generosity!

Brian even managed to fit a relic card into this PWE, and a brand spankin' new one at that!  This Big Papi card is from this year's Topps flagship release.  Great stuff.

All of these cards were cool, but none of them hold a candle to my personal favorite card from the package:

From the 2000 Pacific release, this is a Nomar Garciaparra ornament insert!  How cool is that?  This thing is everything a gaudy card from 15 years ago should be.  Shiny, random, die-cut, loud, and you can hang it from your tree around the holidays...I love it!  Easily one of the more random Red Sox cards in my collection, and I'm honored that Brian thought to send it to me when he pulled it from a pack.

Thanks for another awesome batch of cardboard Brian!  I've nearly got enough Twins to get another PWE off to you, definitely sometime in the next couple of weeks.  Up next in the trade package queue will be Mark Hoyle, Jeff from 2x3 Heroes, and a mega delivery from Hackenbush which I've been scanning and cataloging for weeks now.

If you're waiting for a thank you post, please bear with me as I deal with the very fortunate problem if being buried in incoming cardboard!