How do you trade these things? #2

One of my recent trades arrived in a very interesting package. It wasn't a PWE, but it wasn't in a two-bucks-and-change bubble mailer either:

I was receiving just a single card; it arrived inside that mailer packaged in a top-loader.

The first thing I learned from this package was that I could find 5"x7" bubble-padded mailers if I tried a little harder. The 6"x9" size is much more common.

But of course what catches your eye the most is the price — just 92 cents. Double the price of a PWE, but less than half the price of the usual layer of protective bubbles.

Eureka! I thought. All I need is those smaller envelopes and I could cut my trade costs in half.

I got some trades packaged up in 5"x7" mailers ready to go and off to the Post Office I went....

...and each one of them would be the regular $2.07, I was told. Not one to get dismayed by an 0-1 count, I tried again, this time bringing the 92 cent proof of this possibility with me....

...and was promptly charged 67 cents. "This should have arrived Postage Due", I was told. They tell you things at the Post Office, and you listen. It's a rather one-sided place.

I asked them how I could have received a package like that without Postage Due, and why all my packages cost $2.07. They said the package pictured above had postage applied by a private postage meter, probably in an office. They also informed that only "flexible" packages are eligible for a First Class rate that low. Any envelope/package with a top-loader in it does not count as "flexible." They could not explain why the above package should have cost $1.59 total when all my other card packages cost $2.07 all the time. I had a distinct impression they don't know these things either; they just do what the screen in front of them tells them to do.

They were nice enough to take the 67 cent charge off my bill for the day. Which was nice, but this is one more adventure at the post office that will eventually get me to read that Bukowski novel about the crazy place.

I would be perfectly pleased to pay 67 cents in postage due on a baseball card trade. I say that because I know the Post Office people are too lazy to attach 67 cents in postage due to an envelope delivered right to my house. That would be like, work, or something. I'm sure they would do that in a heartbeat for something sent to my P.O. Box, but I don't trust them to cram baseball card packages into my P.O. Box.

I just wish I had access to my own postage meter to cut my bubble mailing costs in half. I see that my dribble of eBay packages starting to arrive only sometimes reveal the price of the postage: $1.12.

I think the next time I have less than a half-dozen cards to send out, I will try one of these mailers:

A small problem there is that it cost $1.24, but that was as a single at a Big Box store. I'm sure they would be cheaper in bulk at an Office Supply-type Big Box store. I predict the postage will be some totally new figure I haven't yet experienced.

And now let's look at a pretty baseball card. Talking 'bout the Post Office and scanning envelopes is boring, but I thought y'all might wanna know what I found out.

This came from the Wal•Mart edition of a blaster box of 2007 Topps Updates & Highlights, which contained a set of these. I also have Magglio Ordonez and a Tim Lincecum, though 'The Freak' might be on his way out the door; those two cards are in other rarely reprinted styles. This one explains "The front of this collectible card is based on the 1933 Tattoo Orbit design." Topps rarely misses a chance to point out that their near 9 square inch pieces of glossy card stock are "collectible."

Tattoo Orbit. You can just hear the Topps editor making picks for players to match with old-timey sets....'and Sheffield tattoos one into orbit.'

I'm not much of a fan of Sheffield, so, yah, that one's up for trade if anyone wants it. I remember listening to the last few games of the 2007 season to possibly hear the call on his 500th Home Run, but then I listen to every Tigers game I can, particularly at the end of the season when the expanded roster players are getting some time in The Show and you can start daydreaming about next year's starting line-up. Sheffield didn't hit his 500th till the next year anyway, when he played his final season with the Mets.

So there you have it, maybe discovering two little-known sets of baseball cards for clicking on just one blog post that didn't look too exciting ahead of time. Now if I could only get the nice people down at the Post Office to hand out some 2-for-1 deals.

Let's trade ... empty binder pages?

Huhhh? Yep. I need a binder page. A special binder page. The one that holds these little guys:

But I only need one really. I like the little Kimball Champion cards, and I want to keep a page of them to enjoy. I'm not going to collect the rest of the set; I've got a little more than 1/3 of the whole 150. I know there are still some more in the pile of '11 Update I didn't finish sorting last night.

I will get a list together, and I know there is even one I want that I don't have - the Tigers version of Miguel Cabrera. There might be one or two more, and then 30 some Kimball Champions will be up on the block. Babe will stay with me though.

This one here, though, is up for grabs:

I picked just 3 to scan to jazz up a post about empty binder pages somehow. I like the umpire being in the center of the frame. A long while back on this blog, I had this little card in mind in a post about the spring training game this year where for various reasons the umpire crew got so short-handed they had to call balls and strikes from behind the pitcher's mound — 19th century style. I had thought it might be depicted in this set, but it just doesn't go that far back.

This one gets a little closer to my thought:

...but I know that is just your usual 2nd base umpire. Brett's card can go to your house if you'd like, all 3 of them (yo, super-collector!). The A's starting staff shouldn't be called a rotation; it always seems more like a merry-go-round to me and I hardly ever have a clue about any of their pitchers. That is a puzzle too convoluted even for my baseball cards to untangle.

And yeah, I would like to find just one of those special pages that hold these cards.

I can offer up something you might not expect....a whole 100 pack of 9 pocket pages. Sure, a crazy imbalanced trade. But I don't want the things. I bought them at a memorabilia store. They came in a black box, and I didn't look too closely at it as I put together a few purchases. They are from BCW, rather than Ultra-Pro.

But they aren't Ultra-Pro Platinums. I bought a couple packages of those this spring, and those are what I want to keep using. I'm not that picky about baseball cards, but I definitely am about the pages I put them in. The BCW pages I have are serviceable enough, but just aren't the best they can be. They don't seem to be perfectly flat to start out with, like the Platinums. So I hardly want to use them for things like this year's color parallels, that slowly curl if they are not in a tall stack of cards. However they aren't as flimsy as the ones for sale retail in the Big Box card aisle, the ones with the faux perforated edges.

I haven't been able to find Platinums for sale retail since March. The store I go to in the winter months only carries those I think, because they simply are the best. Why mess with less? Oh, yeah, $$$ of course. I don't plan to own dozens of binders, and I do like to look at my cards, and I think they will look better in the nice flat Platinums.

I have some set to arrive imminently, and then I can get back to shrinking the stacks of cards into their new homes with their strange non-numerical neighbors the way I put some sets of cards together.

So please drive a little faster Mr. Brown, or Mr. Fed, or Mr. DHL, or whoever brings me the Platinums. I think some of those stacks are starting to sway a little bit.