Random Act of Kindness and a Trip to the Card Shop

Last week brought in a few more Cubs maildays including a random act of kindness (RAK) from @gdubscards. I visited my local card shop, Jim's Card Corner, on Saturday. Then, on Sunday I set up a table at a card show in Madison, Wisconsin.

A plain white envelope (PWE) arrived from Tommy in Ohio. We have done multiple PWE trades the past year. Several weeks ago I posted an oddball Roger Maris card I found while sorting. He expressed interest in a PWE trade for it, and I set it aside. Since my card room is a disaster some cards tend to get lost. This Maris card was a case of getting lost in my disaster zone. Finally, as I started another clean up process it was found. Tommy sent a couple Bowman Prospects cards of Thomas Hatch and Alex Lange. Neither are with the Cubs organization anymore as they were dealt away in 2019. Hatch is with the Toronto Blue Jays organization and Lange is with the Detroit Tigers.

Pete from the No Hustle Sports sent a stack of about 80 Cubs baseball cards. This is our second trade. Some classic Cubs were in this package including: Andre Dawson, Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, Rafael Palmeiro, and Rick Sutcliffe.

Courtney in Ohio is my regular Washington Nationals trade partner. Since I am holding back on buying a bunch of boxes in 2020 I haven't picked up too many 2020 Topps Series 1 Cubs cards...until now. I needed the base cards of both Jon Lester and Albert Almora.

While I highly dislike Topps continuing to rehash former baseball set designs...I do still enjoy getting Cubs cards on those designs that feature different images. Like this Ryne Sandberg on the 1985 Topps design.

Hey, look at this trio! In my review of 2020 Topps Series 1, I raved about the return of Turkey Red. They are inserts and look great...and that was before I laid eyes on any of the Cubs cards. Courtney sent Javier Baez, Kris Bryant, and Willson Contreras.

A couple weeks ago I received a tweet from @GDubsCards that I was the recipient of a RAK. He outdid himself with a Cubs package that included a Sammy Sosa bobblehead, Alfonso Soriano autographed card, a Cubs fabric logo sticker, and a bunch of cards.

Before I set up at the card show I began to run really low on penny sleeves. Typically, I buy them in bulk, but organizing my quarter boxes had me using up a few thousand penny sleeves.

So, I headed to the card shop in town to buy a 3,200 count box and 2,000 penny sleeves. And...of course I had to look through some cards. I discovered at a recent card show he has dime boxes, but they are not on display. That was good, because I didn't want to spend all afternoon digging through boxes of cards. Wait...yes, I did, but it would not have been a good idea.

He did have a few quarter boxes out, so I flipped through a few rows to see if there were any cards for trades, or any Cubs I needed. I did find a 2015 Topps Heritage purple refractor Starlin Castro and a 2012 Topps Heritage Minors black border Zeke DeVoss numbered 35/96. I really like the DeVoss because I was working for the Peoria Chiefs in 2012 when he was playing.