Catching Up on Maildays

Getting back to work on Tuesday after a holiday weekend, I was happy to see a number of packages in my post office box.

The first trade package brought me two cards off of my wantlist:  

The first is a Rusney Castillo card from last year's High Tek set which is autographed.  This is my second autograph of Castillo, who unfortunately has proven to be a pretty expensive bust at this time.  And he is running out of time to make an impact.  With Andrew Benintendi ready to play in the Majors full-time, Castillo may have to be traded to see daily action, but his contract likely precludes that.  The second card is an Archives insert of David Ortiz, who we will see multiple times in the coming scans.

The next package contained multiple cards from my wantlist, including the #3 card on my most wanted list.

This is the first of three scans from the package and contains some nice stuff, including the aforementioned #3 card which is the 2011 Topps Heritage SP that contains headshots of Red Sox rookie outfielders Daniel Nava and Ryan Kalish.  Nava had a nice career for a few years and was a major contributor on the 2013 World Championship team.  Kalish looked promising in his first season and led the team in stolen bases in 2010.  Unfortunately, injuries wrecked his career.  I also really like the Future Stars cards although Mookie Betts is a major star right now.

This is the second scan and contains a bunch of random refractors from this year's Chrome.  The last card is the Diamond King card of David Price from Donruss Optic, a rip-off of Chrome.  Price has turned things on of late and looks like the high-priced free agent that Boston signed.  I always liked the Diamond Kings subset, even with no MLB license.

This is the final scan with a few base cards from Donruss Optic, as well as a parallel of the Price Diamond King.

The next trade contained a bunch of low-end inserts, and increased my David Ortiz collection quite a bit.  He is getting close to 600 in my collection.

I really like the Curt Schilling card, a rare Polo Grounds insert from Throwback Threads.  This was one of the mind-boggling parallel sets released by Donruss the last few years of their MLB license.  The two Dustin Pedroia cards are actually different, though they do not appear to be so from the front.  A change in color on the front would be helpful.

Here is the second scan from that package.  We have a card celebrating Ortiz's walk-off home run in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS, one of the greatest Red Sox moments of all time.  The Mike Napoli is the variation of the regular base Gypsy Queen card that year.  Those were hard to keep track of.  I'm not thrilled by the Ted Williams card.  If I had known there was no picture, I likely would not have targeted that card.  On the other hand, I love the Tris Speaker card.  Speaker is one of the great players of the early 20th century and unfortunately does not get nearly the hobby love he deserves.

And this is the last scan, although the last card was actually in a different package.  I love these Bowman inserts showing sons of former Major Leaguers with their fathers.  Tate Matheny is the son of former Cardinals catcher and current Cardinals manager Mike Matheny.  Tate has had a decent year but is too old for his current level.  It is hard to tell how good he could be.  He profiles as a fourth outfielder.