Veal: It's What's For Dinner

D.Hoff at Coot Veal and the Vealtones posts trade bait from time to time. His job as a professor keeps him pretty busy, so sometimes a few weeks pass between his posts. But, when he does post, his trade bait can pack a punch.

A few weeks ago, I had a spare moment and took a look at his site. And, I took the bait.  I saw a card that I really, really wanted:

A real live Eddie Mathews relic card.  I'm quite sad, actually, that this card exists, because it means that Upper Deck apparently/allegedly bought an article that someone "certified to [Upper Deck] as having been used in an official Major League Baseball game."  Considering the card came out in 2006, this certified swatch of fabric that got annihilated into small pieces allegedly would have had to have been at least 32 years old when it was cut up -- and that assumes that the swatch came from Mathews's final season as a manager -- 1974 with the Atlanta Braves.  

That card was definitely the highlight of the package from D.Hoff.  It was the Veal Osso Bucco of the package, if you will.  

Now, that was not the only highlight of the trade package that came my way.  D.Hoff sent a ton of cards.  For instance, how about a great oddball card of Paul Molitor and his dog?

I bet little Boomer wouldn't have minded getting a few Milk Bones when daddy was cooking up something for himself...maybe some Veal Chops?

D.Hoff also threw in some juicy autographs for me.  I wanted this one, from the 2012 Great Upper Deck Sticker Dump set, because it's a Yovani Gallardo stickergraph for my Gallardo collection:

Stickergraphs go well with obnoxious, overexposed Scottish chefs cooking veal escalope with caponata. Okay, to be fair, this clip comes from that overexposed chef's show The F Word, which was much more watchable than the choreographed drivel that is Masterchef: America or Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares:

A serial numbered gem or two also came to me from D.Hoff.  Actually, there were many serial numbered gems, but let's look at a card that Ryan Braun shares with Ryan Zimmerman:

This card actually became more correct since its release. At the time, it was just two guys named Ryan who could hit pretty well and played in the National League.  Now, it's two guys named Ryan who sometimes hit well when they aren't fighting injuries and who claimed at one point in their respective careers to be third basemen but now have been put in the outfield for their own -- and the team's -- good.

I'm sure that some folks would disagree with me, but cooking veal seems to be akin to this card in a strange way. It takes a lot longer than people might expect to get the results you want or even predict, but a good veal marengo from the crock pot can be well worth the wait.

Okay, let's do a bit of a scan dump here.  I only had time to scan a few of the cards, honestly, but they really were all excellent cards and most of them (maybe all -- I haven't checked for sure) were needed for my collection:

Again, this is just a sampler of the great cards that D.Hoff sent my way.  The total number of cards was probably close to 75 to 100, I'd estimate.  There's everything from a card that the Chop Keeper profiled earlier this year -- the Slumpbuster 1989 Hillshire Farms/Kahn's Cooperstown Collection with the weirdly drawn face and feet of Eddie Mathews -- to 1959 Andy Pafko to a 2015 Topps Ryan Braun Career High Insert to a few Gold cards from 5 to 10 years ago to a Lucroy Chrome Heritage card.  

These cards have me licking my chops!

D.Hoff -- thanks for the great cards you sent my way, and I hope you could use and are enjoying the cards I sent to you!