Mailday Roundup: August Pickups

"Mailday." A term that we use daily in this hobby and probably take for granted. The US Postal service is crucial to exchanging cards. USPS isn't perfect, and we have all have our gripes - but 51 cents seems like a small price to pay to swap some cardboard across several hundred (or several thousand) miles. Here's to hoping that political greed won't interfere with our hobby.

Thankfully I haven't experienced any drastic changes in my USPS service yet. My latest big purchase arrived in a timely manner...

I'm excited to announce that I was able to add a second superfractor to my collection last week:

Bryan Reynolds - 2020 Topps Finest The Man Insert Superfractor #1/1

The love for "The Man" inserts in 2020 Topps Finest has been well documented, and with good reason. I was especially pleased to see that my favorite player, Bryan Reynolds, was lucky enough to be featured in the set. I keep my eyes peeled on eBay for most things Reynolds-related, using several saved searches and checking daily. This card went up on a .99 cent auction and I made sure to be there when the bidding closed. I won it for what I think is a reasonable price. Not cheap, but it could have been my only chance to own this card. It still cost me less than a hobby box of Topps Chrome, and I'd certainly rather have this than some mystery cards.

Due to the colorful artwork on this card, you're not seeing much of the superfactor-y chrome finish. It's only really evident in the space by his name and by the Topps Finest logo. The bigger standout to me is the color of the text at the top. The base cards fill in the text at the top with a pink/magenta color. This isn't my card, but here's what I mean:

Bryan Reynolds - 2020 Topps Finest The Man Insert 

Nothing wrong with the base cards, they're sweet too, but I'll take the white on the superfractor all day.  And of course, there's a 1/1 stamp on the back!

The seller threw in some extras which was really cool of him to do. Aside from the 2016 Bowman Draft, I didn't have any of these, so I netted 4 new Reynolds cards for my collection in this deal. 

Bryan Reynolds - 2017 Bowman Chrome - Prospects Gold #/50

Another eBay pickup for the gold collection. This was Reynold's last card in a Giants uniform before being traded. With these additions, I'm up to 31 unique Bryan Reynolds cards.

Thanks to a generous Free Stuff Friday from Kerry at Cards on Cards, I was able to grab these two inserts in a PWE. Speaking of, Kerry, I owe you another PWE - I'll get one out soon. 

I still root for and collect Tyler Glasnow, and due to some early success in Tampa, he's showing up on quite a few baseball cards. 

Lonzo Ball sure isn't playing like a #2 overall pick, and any spotlight that may still be on him will quickly shift to his younger brother. Lonzo's only 22 and I think he's got a pretty ideal situation in New Orleans. Only time will tell if he'll pan out, but thanks to Kerry I'm lucky to have a Lonzo rookie in my collection.

Robert from $30 a week habit and I pulled off our first TCDB trade last week, and it was a good one. I've been a huge champion of TCDB on here - and I'm telling you - if you're not on there, you should be. If it were not for the trade tool on the website, I don't think this trade would have happened. Although Robert didn't have too many Pirates that I needed, he had lots of great cards on his For Trade list, and I was able to build up a nice little stack of eight cards and we made it happen.

The highlights are above. Robert was kind enough to part with a rookie card of the hottest young rookie the game. Not to say I stiffed him - I sent him some pretty nice cards too. 

Believe it or not, I'm more pumped about the Eduardo Escobar rookie. Gold border and serial numbered #/2012. To me, Escobar is one of the most underrated players in the game. He 's not young (31) and he's not flashy, but he had 35 HR and 118 RBI last year. Those were all career highs by a long shot, so hopefully it wasn't a flukey year. 

Thanks for the cards, Robert!

All in all, it was another great week of visits to the mailbox. As much as some of us will declare otherwise, it's in our nature to enjoy gifts and surprises - and it's certianly in our nature to enjoy giving to others. Opening up the mailbox to find a PWE will always be a fun little feeling. I won't take it for granted.