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That kind of year

I traded top loaders for cards. It was that kind of year.
 
I didn't hesitate to do it either. It made perfect sense. There are a lot of things that we've done in 2020 that made perfect sense that would seem ridiculous in any other year. Need I bring up bird brains and toilet paper?
 
So, yes, I was happy to trade cards for top loaders.
 
I've rarely needed top loaders, team bags or penny sleeves. Thanks to all the trades I've made through the blog for a dozen years, I've always enjoyed a healthy stockpile of all of them. I am certain I will never want for penny sleeves for the rest of my life and that loved ones will be finding them five years after I'm gone.
 
I thought I was well off with top loaders, too. I don't store many cards in top loaders, save for autographs and relics. But then I decided to house my growing collection of Kellogg's cards in top loaders because that seems the best way to keep them. That sucked up my supply right quick.
 
And then I started hearing that people were hoarding top loaders and those semi-rigid things that I dislike. What? Really? Yeah, collectors were saying they were going for way too much money. I didn't bother to check this out for myself but I was starting to get concerned as someone who suddenly needed them.
 
I even took almost all of my relics out of top loaders and stuffed the relics in boxes as it's where they deserve to be anyway. That was long overdue.
 
However, many relics require much thicker top loaders and they're too open for things like Kellogg's cards from the '70s. So I was still short.
 
So when Steve on Twitter had some top loaders available, I jumped immediately. All I needed to do was roust up a few card extras from the '70s in exchange!
 
In very 2020 fashion as we were arranging the deal, we discussed our brushes with covid in our own circles, wished each other the best ("be safe" and all that) and then waited to see what the mail system did with our packages. My portion hasn't gone out yet, so Steve's still got that part to handle, but I'm very happy now that my top loaders arrived!

They will take care of the rest of my '78 Kellogg's needs and probably my '82 Kellogg's set. (I'll still have to look up those top loader prices -- I'm pretty sure they've gone down now -- for future Kellogg's quests).
 
Steve also added a few mailers. I have no pressing need for those as I'm still working off my 2019 Christmas mailer haul, but they'll come in handy eventually. 

OK, since this post has featured almost no cards, just plain, utilitarian plastic (actually quite appropriate for the traditionally austere feeling of early January), I have a smattering of cards to show from Adam of Infield Fly Rule.

He pulled a wonderful blue parallel from his box of 2019 Big League and that looked so good with all the Dodger blue in the photo that I just had to have it.
 
Adam also threw in a couple of Buffalo dudes. The football card at the top of the post I have already in my Bills collection but it works for my 1979 Topps football set quest, which I will be tackling in earnest in 2021!
 

The other Buffalo dude is a future Brush With Greatness topic, former Sabres goalie Tom Barrasso. Yeah, yeah, I know the younger folks know him as Penguin. But I associate him with the Sabres. It was a pretty boring meeting with the net minder, but I'll make it interesting for ya.
 
So that's my first post for 2021. Top loaders. We can only go up from here.

Comments

Unknown said…
Nice Merv Krakau card. Haven't seen that card before.
Interesting! I, unlike you, definitely use top loaders. And those thick ones are gold!! I have plenty of the standard thickness, but am always on the lookout for the thicker ones.
shoeboxlegends said…
Can't say I've ever traded cards for toploaders, but why not!
bryan was here said…
That's funny, I actually had a shoebox full of top loaders a few years ago. Ended up dropping them off in the recycling bin. I never use them so I might have to hold on to them for future endeavours.

Can't wait to see the piece on Barrasso. He was always one of my favourite Penguins back in their Stanley Cup days from the early 90s.
The LCS in my area has a limit on how many packs of top loaders you can buy per day.
Bo said…
I don't use toploaders and I have literally hundreds in a box I was going to trade them to my street vendor buddy right before the pandemic started. Happy to trade them for cards but maybe not right away as I'm generally only doing PWEs right now.
Billy Kingsley said…
I've made two trades this year where I sent out toploaders and got cards back. One of them is going in the mail Monday or Tuesday, I think it's great. I usually end up throwing them away when they get filled with dust.
Nick said…
I have a few large boxes full of toploaders in my closet right now, which are enough for several lifetimes since I almost never use them. A cards-for-toploaders swap sounds pretty good right now.

(Also, wanted to mention, two different PWEs you sent me showed up in my mailbox...on the same day! Not sure if that was coincidence or serendipity, but either way, thank you!)
Nachos Grande said…
I've got a big ol' cardboard box filled with toploaders of all various sizes and shapes (and, admittedly, conditions). I tend to send trades that either require a PWE (and thus a portion of a 9-pocket page) or a larger trade (which uses one or more of those team bags). Cards for toploaders, sounds good to me.
I take hundreds to my buddy Bob, rather I used too. Last time I seen him I took him some along with several hundred 300-800 count boxes. Which I had been doing since I've been clearing out those boxes, he told me to stop, so last trash day they went in there.
bbcardz said…
I have a decent stack of top loaders from trades sitting on my desk. Instead of sending plain white envelopes, I like to use photo mailers with top loaders tucked inside side by side. I've received a couple of mangled PWEs with mangled cards inside recently, so I feel better using photo mailers. But I have not yet had occasion to trade cards for top loaders.
Fuji said…
I actually saw a Craigslist post a few months ago where someone was looking to trade cards for supplies. I can imagine there are a lot of collectors starting to run low on their supply inventory after not being able to find regular priced supplies since last March.

I truly hope this supply shortage ends soon. I lucked out and went to my local distributer sometime in the 2nd half of 2019 and stocked up on top loaders, slider boxes, and 9-pocket pages. But I am running low on 400ct. boxes and penny sleeves.
Adam Kaningher said…
Glad I could send that Dodger card to a good home. Also glad it got there reasonably quickly. I'm still seeing two-week old postmarks.

Strange times we live in when toploaders cost more than the cards that go in them. Normalcy is still a ways off.
cardboardhogs said…
There is a great future in top loaders. Think about it. Will you think about it?

i couldn't not reframe that quote from the graduate.

apparently i've been sitting on a gold mine of top loaders. i have about three 3-row shoe boxes of used ones that can be sold in the secondary market...what a world man, what a world.

Also, if Merv Krakau isn't related to Harvey Keitel then i don't believe in anything anymore...