Trade with Napkin Doon and Baseball Cards Rule... Site Updates

I set up a couple of trades during the week and got the cards in... in the scan below, the top three cards come from Napkin Doon. The Oswalt and Pettitte were featured on his trade bait post and I was able to get them both, along with some additional Astros like the SWEEEEET Biggio card shown, for the Josh Hamilton bat relic I pulled from Gypsy Queen. Very nice cards! Thanks Napkin! The bottom card is a Cracker Jack Berkman relic from Ben over at BaseballCardsRule that I got in exchange for the Oswalt jersey card I pulled from the group break Ovation box. I already had that relic card, so getting it in the break made it a duplicate and was able to trade it to a fellow Astros blogger. Thanks Ben!

At this point I now have almost 2 full 8-pocket pages of Berkman relics and a full page of Oswalt relics. I think I may go ahead and shut down acquiring any more of these two players' relics; although I am still open to trading for either of these guys' autographs, of which I have ZERO. Also, I'm done with Carlos Lee. No offense to anyone except him, but I have no desire for any more of his cards, no matter how nice, shiny or full of relics and autos they are. He's an albatross of a contract and the bane of my collecting existence.

I also picked up another 1/1 card recently... as you can see below... this is my second 1/1 Richard Nixon card from Masterpieces. Jeff from I Am Joe Collector pulled another 1/1 of Nixon in his latest case, and I would have LOVED to add it as well to my collection, but alas I don't think it's in my price range. If anyone wants to buy it, and let me trade for it from you I'd be more than willing!!!! He has the Red Border 1/1 currently, and now I own the Blue Border 1/1 and the Artist Proof 1/1.

I also got in my cards from Nachos Grande's Gypsy Queen Group Break. He offered up his final four unclaimed teams: Astros, Royals, Blue Jays and Angels at a discount so I went for it. I got a few cards I needed for my overall set, including an SP. I also got a Hunter Pence bronze border! Astro and Bronze, gotta love it! Thanks for the great break Chris!

I did a little bit of organizing as well today and yesterday, cleaning out 2007 Bowman Heritage from the "need list section" and from the corresponding binder. I just don't think I was going to get the rest of that set through trade and I'm not quite motivated to buy the remaining cards, so unless someone happens upon the want list by searching the blog, I'm not going to worry about completing it at this point.

I also have decided to only collect the Kimball Mini's inserts from 2011 Topps and have reduced my want list to only those cards. That will also free up a lot of inserts FOR TRADE, so keep an eye out for my 2011 Topps available spreadsheet to come soon.

Finally, I have added a separate area in the side bar that links to my AVAILABLE FOR TRADE cards. I started using Google Docs spreadsheets and I LOVE them. Easy to use, update on the fly and share live. Currently I only need to add my 2011 Topps cards which are available. I should be able to get those up today or tomorrow. I will be getting more and more of these spreadsheets up as time goes along and I get organized a bit.

Also, a quick reminder about my current contest running on the blog! You know this will be pimped on pretty much every post from now until the contest concludes, so the faster you all help me, the less you'll have to read about it! Hahaha!

Have a great weekend and Mother's Day!