Largest Trade Hauls In Nearly 4,000 Cubs Cards
Many of my bulk team trades involve a medium flat rate box. Pretty simple to fill these boxes and I haven't found too many collectors that have around 4,000 Cubs cards to quickly throw in a large flat rate box. Until now.
Rick from Dover, New Hampshire reached out via email a few weeks ago expressing interest in some large trades. In return, I'll send him Montreal Expos and New England Patriots cards.
The large flat rate box arrived a couple weeks ago weighing just over 18 pounds and held 3,704 Cubs cards.
This large flat rate box was unlike any I've seen. A trip to my normal post office found none of these boxes. This particular box is a rectangle while the average large flat rate box is square. Rectangular boxes are much easier to fit storage boxes inside as the square boxes are not wide enough.
A couple days later I went to the much larger city post office and thought for sure these boxes were inside. They were not. From the post office parking lot I shot an email over to Rick inquiring how he found these flat rate boxes. He said originally they were in his local post office, but have since disappeared so he ordered them from the USPS website. That night I logged on and put my order in (they are free and come in 25 count bundles - so if anyone has about 4,000 Cubs to trade, I had plenty of boxes to fill your team needs). It took over a week for the boxes to arrive so I'm behind on this post. After arriving on my doorstep Friday, I was able to fulfill the trade and shipped out Rick's cards yesterday.
I used the same storage boxes that Rick sent, so it gave me an opportunity to go through the Cubs a second time for blogging purposes. The first card that stood out was a young (he's still young) Anthony Rizzo from 2014 Bowman. I was in attendance in the 8th row behind third base when Rizzo hit his first Home Run as a Chicago Cub in 2012 (his 2nd career home run - the first came as a San Diego Padre.
A young phenom about a decade earlier was Corey Patterson. He was a can't miss 5-tool prospect. Those tools proved not very sharp at the big league level, though he did have a better career than many other Cubs prospects before him.
Two Mark Prior cards that are new to my collection. The future was so bright in the early 2000's.
While Prior lived up to the hype before injuries set in, Juan Cruz didn't have the career many had hoped out of him. I now have plenty of 2001 Bowman Cruz rookies.
I saw a young Cruz as a top prospect with the Lansing Lugnuts in 2000. My friend Seth was not so high on Juan, and when he had a poor outing at the game we attended against the Quad City River Bandits he continued to chide me. Cruz signed my ticket stub from that game. Probably should have opted for a blue ink pen instead of the thick sharpie.
A forgotten Cub Chris Stynes. This was a neat design. The trading places was due to the fact Stynes had come to Chicago from the Boston Red Sox.
Topps Gallery is a beautiful set. Always loved Gallery. I especially enjoy lesser known players, like Jose Hernandez, on Gallery.
And I have a pair of Jose's game used cleats that he signed.
The 1990 Swell Baseball Greats was product I ripped packs of as a youth. It's almost a forgotten set to me until I see a card and then it brings back waves of memories from spending 50-cents at the IGA grocery store on these packs. Strange that Robin Roberts was included as a Cub in this set. He played 18 seasons of Major League Baseball with just one with the Cubs. That came in his final year of his career, 1966.
Here's a cool 1995 Topps Cubs Rookies cards. It was a short-lived "On Deck" rookie from Topps. Doug Glanville did well for himself playing Major League Baseball. Darron Cox not so much.
I'm becoming more and more a fan of different sized cards. Sure I prefer standard size, but I'm coming around to the minis. But I still despise 1989 Bowman.
Thanks for the bulk trade, Rick. Looking forward to future deals!