A Round of Applause for The Diamond King

....because he was kind enough to send me a stellar batch of cards in a trade that I will post for you here today. He's one of those guys who just flat-out "gives away" stuff on Twitter, as long as you email him which pictured card it is you're interested in. I did that with a vintage-looking Frank Robinson he was offering up; we got to talkin' on the emails; and then we executed a new trade.

The Diamond King of Vancouver, WA - the other Vancouver - went right off of my teams/players/sets wantlist and found what he could. While this is, of course, my favorite thing to receive in a trade - the stuff I'm actively collecting - I'm so enamored with the PWE trade that honestly, anything that's not early 90s Donruss that shows up in the mail is totally exciting. Xmas every day, baby. I'm actually buying stuff on eBay that I can use to round out some trades from my end, as I'm still new enough to this whole thing that I just don't have a garage-full of trade boxes ready to be plucked (though I already have enough that my wife's starting to ask me to move it all out of sight....a good sign! Ready to trade en masse!)

You'll notice a 2011 Brandon Belt Bowman "Platinum Ascension" rookie card up top. Those of you who don't live in the SF Bay Area may be unfamiliar with how much oxygen "the Belt Wars" have sucked up over the last nine years. Is he an undervalued OBP stud? Is he the weak link of the team? Should we trade him? Is he the core guy on the roster? The Belt wars. For what's it worth, for me he's an above-league average first baseman who seems to flail at all the wrong times. I like him. Now I have his Bowman Platinum Ascension rookie card.

Was also very happy to get some lovely Ichiro cards I'd never seen before:

As well as a few SF Giants prospects who didn't totally pan out. Well, Tommy Joseph panned out - he's the guy we traded to the Phillies to get Hunter Pence...! And Connor Gillaspie had some amazing, lifetime-memory hits in the 2016 postseason. Gary Brown, you got anything left? Come back and show us.

Finally, here are two guys who did end up panning out for the San Francisco Giants baseball club. Thanks again, Diamond King...!