Mickey Tettleton, 1988 Score Rookie & Traded #31T

Orange is not a color that's frequently used in baseball card designs. For obvious reasons, I'm always eager to get my hands on cards with border colors that complement the Orioles' orange and black uniforms. You probably won't find many other collectors who give the stamp of approval to 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best, for instance. Topps has had orange-bordered refractor parallels in its Chrome products since 2008, and yet I don't have a single orange refractor of an O's player. But sometimes all you have to do is ask nicely, so I went a-beggin' when I saw that Night Owl had pulled pumpkin-hued Nick Markakis and Mark Reynolds shinies from 2011 Topps Chrome. Out of the kindness of his heart, Greg sent both cards, along with some other chromy Birds of recent vintage.

On Friday afternoon, I rode up to the family cottage with my father to close up for the year. On my way out the door, I saw Greg's bubble envelope waiting for me in the mailbox. So I grabbed it and checked out the goods while sitting shotgun en route to northeastern PA. Do you want to guess where those cards are now?

Yep, they're safely stored back in that envelope...220 miles away, sitting on a shelf in the living room of the cottage. I will not see these cards again until May 2012. That's what happens when you try to pack up in the morning.

Joe Orsulak, 1988 Score Rookie & Traded #41T

I spent a couple hours this evening opening a package from Andy of Traded Sets fame. A few weeks back, I was home sick from work when he posted a Photoshopped image: a mosaic-type composite image taken from several 1988 Topps cards. By scouring his old '88 Topps blog, I was able to identify all 24 cards that were used to compile the Frankencard within a couple of hours. Since I was the first person to get them all right, I won a prize that is simply staggering: the complete factory sets of 1989 Topps Major League Debut and 1988 Score Rookie & Traded (including the pictured glorious Joe Orsulak card, complete with Spring Training batboy in short-shorts), as well as a box stuffed with a few hundred 2008 and 2009 Topps and Upper Deck cards. Even the few doubles were a very welcome sight, the better to restock my trading pile.

The box that Andy set was assembled with great care. Each small box of cards was enveloped in bubble wrap and wound tight with packing tape, then those boxes were placed in a larger box full of packing peanuts. The larger box was also covered top, sides, and bottom with packing tape. Nothing was happening to those cards in transit. I've alluded to my profound lack of motor skills in the past. Let me just say that if I had thought to videotape the painstaking ordeal that I made out of opening the package, it would have been an instant hit on YouTube.

Now I need to sort, catalog, and store these cards, along with recent deliveries from Greg the Night Owl and readers Jeffrey, Matt, and Alan. Then there are the stacks of cards piled on my dresser, and computer desk, and in my den...

Feel free to grab me by the shoulders and shake vigorously. It probably won't do any good.