Trading with ARPSmith

On Tax Day, ARPSmith published a post showing off the envelope of randomness that I dropped on his door a few weeks earlier.  It's taken me a while to get around to posting about what he sent in return, but that time lag is not an indication that the cards he sent were bad in any way.  To the contrary.

One thing I feel very lucky to have received from several people are relic and autograph inserts.  I guess the upside to being the new Brewer collector on the block is that all the non-Brewer fans have a bunch of relics laying around that they couldn't get rid of before.  That's cool.  I'll take them.  To start with, let's look at some large wood:

It's bat wood, people.  Please.  Topps trimmed that square of wood down as far as they could, didn't they? Maybe the plump vegan ate the rest.

Serial numbered cards pop up with regularity as well.  Now, I can understand why this next one is a card that ARPS couldn't give away, but it is numbered 13 of 25:

Moving right along past Mr. Sheffield, we now combine both wood and serial numbers and get a Bill Hall Diamond King "Crowning Moment" relic numbered 21 of 50 on the back (not shown):

Satisfying the player collector in me are these five cards -- three of the Panini Hometown Heroes including my main man Robin Yount, a Topps Opening Day 3D Insert, and a 2013 Topps Chrome Refractor:

ARPSmith also sent some other great cards that scan like they are blocks of wood -- Metal cards from the late 1990s.  I liked them a lot, but they scan like a guy floating in a sea of blackness:

There were some other contributions to my Brewers collections in the envelope as well; the next one was probably the best of the lot to me, combining "oddball" with "little known Brewer":

Topps printed these ostensibly only for a local bread/bakery, Gardner's (which apparently is owned by Sara Lee), but I have seen them coming from and being located nearly everywhere around the country.  Perhaps Brouhard took these with him out to California when he moved back there after his career in baseball ended; since Brouhard has had a painting business in Camarillo, California, for the past 20-plus years, it seems like it worked out for him.

This exchange with ARPSmith certainly worked out for me.  Thanks -- let's do it again!