A Bangin' Trade Package

Historically, I've not been a huge fan of A&G. It's not that I dislike it, but I've just never really bought much of it from year to year. This year, I bought more retail product than usual for some reason, and I'll always pick up a discounted blaster from a previous year if I can find it. Turns out, it's a good thing that those are my Ginter habits because they helped me make a great trade with Matt from Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits. A while back, Matt contacted me about some cards he had that he thought I'd find exciting. Since I'm always up for a new trading partner, I started pulling cards from his posted want lists and prepped a first package to send to him. He had received what I sent and was prepping a return package during the peak of this year's Ginter sharing frenzy. I happened to make a comment about a few of the hits from his case and he was generous enough to include them. I knew I owed him, so I sent a bunch of additional set needs to him to thank him for the bangin' trade package.

We start with PC minis! I'm particularly partial to the two from 2015. I dig the look of the black border Rendon and I'm on the verge of adding Carlos Rodon to my list of players I collect. He's an NC State guy and I was fortunate enough to see him pitch for the US against Cuba, a game which he dominated.

Very cool that two of them were A&G backs. It's interesting to see the differences between the 2014 and 2015 side by side.

The follow up to the nice start brought me an International parallel of Altuve, a Michael Taylor Chrome prospect, and an awesome Sale refractor. As good as this stuff was, the best was yet to come.

A trio of Ginter relics really started the process of knocking my socks off. I really enjoyed getting to see Matt Moore in person as a member of the Durham Bulls again this season. That's something I'll hopefully have the chance to repeat next year with Alex Cobb. I guess that's a collector's silver lining to them needing significant rehab time due to their respective TJ surgeries. The Desmond bat is a perfect complement to the jersey relic that 'Bubble Gum Jeff' sent me a while back. The Lakey Peterson wetsuit relic was the first one that I had commented about. It was great to see it included in this first trade, but it was not my favorite card of the entire package. That distinction belongs to this one:

This is my first Rodon autograph. That it is a framed mini is just a bonus. I've hunted multiple Rodon autos throughout the first part of the 2015 collecting season and haven't been fortunate enough to land any of them. I was thrilled to have the chance to trade for one and even more excited to actually stare at it in person. Thanks for an incredible first trade Matt, I hope it's not our last.