A Lot on My Plate

A few years ago, I was contacted by another Bay Area sports fan who happened to be cleaning out his garage and wanted to know if I'd be interested in a bunch of free sports memorabilia.  Well I'm not insane.  Of course I was interested.  If you are too... you can check out the treasure trove of goodies for yourself: here and here.

Fast forward to 2016 and Bruce was back in his garage gathering up more memorabilia to generously donate to my personal collection as well as things for my classroom.  There are five boxes in total:

The front two boxes are filled with newspapers from key Bay Area sporting events over the past few decades, while the other three boxes are filled with media guides, books, and a bunch of random awesomeness.

I haven't had enough time to sift through everything, but I picked out a few of the cool items I saw when Bruce walked me through his stuff:

#1:  1979 Oakland A's Media Guide

As soon as I saw this... I was stoked.  Obviously The Swingin' A's logo caught my attention, but I also quickly realized that this was from Rickey Henderson's rookie season.  This is a really nice addition to my Oakland Athletics collection.


#2:  Le Chandail de Hockey

This is a beautifully illustrated children's book that's written in French.  Translated into English, the title of the book is The Hockey Sweater.  There's a cool summary of the story located on Wikipedia.

#3:  Mother's Cookies Trading Cards

I grew up collecting both Oakland A's and San Francisco Giants Mother's Cookies trading cards, so when Bruce pointed these out... I was briefly taken back to my childhood.  As soon as I have some time to dig through the boxes, I'm sure I'll target these outstanding oddballs first.


#4:  A Bunch of Radical Randomness

Pins, buttons, ticket stubs, trading cards, baseballs, coins, and even an awesome wrist watch.  There's so much stuff here that when he showed me this pile... I told him it's like "Christmas in February".

Unlike when I was a kid and I tore through my presents as fast as I could on Christmas morning... I'm going to take my sweet time with Bruce's generous donation... kinda like when you're trying to savor an expensive piece of chocolate.

Part of my decision to take things slow has to do with another generous donation to my collection.  Only this time, it arrived from a fellow blogger:  Ryan over at This Card is Cool.  Last week, I came home from my trip to Las Vegas and discovered a huge box packed with a variety of items:

I honestly have no idea where to begin... but Ryan has offered to answer any questions I may have about these unique and interesting items from across the Pacific.  It's unfair and honestly impossible to summarize everything in one post, so be prepared to see this stuff scattered in random posts here and there.

I might as well also address the stack of packages from fellow Super Traders that is starting to grow in my office:

I've already tackled Brian's PWE yesterday.  Next up with be the founder himself:  Wes over at Jaybarkerfan's Junk.  After that I'll do a write up on Adam's package.  He's the author of Infield Fly Rule.

As you can see... I have a lot of stuff sitting on my plate... which isn't such a bad thing.  Thank you so much Bruce, Ryan, Brian, Wes, and Adam.

Bruce... let me know when you're available to grab dinner.  Ryan... if you're still in California... hit me up and I'll take you to a Sharks game or something.  Brian... got your package ready to ship early next week.  And Wes and Adam... stay tuned.  I need to pull some stuff out and build you some care packages.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!