It Begins (And a TCDB Trade)

So I have said a few times that I intended to start building up a collection of Ceddanne Rafaela cards.  This is where that truly begins.  I started picking up lots off of Ebay to add quickly to my numbers and cover some of the lower-end stuff.

I want to highlight a few cards.  The Stadium Club Chrome features Rafaela in the yellow City Connect uniform.  He had one of his biggest games in that uniform when he homered twice and drove in seven runs in 2024.  Then we have the Finest Rookies Design variation, the 25th Anniversary 1999 Bowman Refractor and the My 1st Bowman card which features Ceddanne holding his 2022 Bowman card.

Here are some more.  The major card I want to highlight is the International Impact card which features Rafaela with Ozzie Albies, two players from the island of Curacao.  Curacao has produced 17 Major League players thus far, including Andruw Jones, Kenley Jansen, Jurickson Profar and Andrelton Simmons.  The other cards are a bunch of base cards, important to my collection, but not really needed to go into detail.

Finally, I wanted to include a TCDB trade, just to try to catch up eventually.  This trade included a bunch of MLB Showdown cards.

1.  Trot Nixon.  Nixon is still one of my favorite underrated players in Red Sox history, and one of the few players for whom I own a jersey.  

2.  Manny Ramirez.  This is one of the strategy cards.  Some of the players depicted are easier to identify than others.

3.  Derek Lowe.  It is possible I already had this card, my records are not super clear.

4.  Mo Vaughn.  Easily my favorite card of the trade.  I still love adding Mo Vaughn cards to my collection.