Gavin Is A Talented Man

A while back, I commented on one of Gavin's posts over at Baseball Card Breakdown. He was sharing the contents of a Box of '17 Archives he opened, and I let him know that I was interested in a Rougned Odor parallel he pulled.

Fast forward to last week. I arrived back to my place after taking a last minute, two week journey to Omaha and South Dakota (where my Alma Mater is) to spend time with friends and visit the College World Series. I opened my mailbox and found two thick bubble mailers, the first of which was from Gavin. 

He sent me the card I requested...

These are classified as "peach" parallels, evidently. When companies get to the point that they no longer use common colors, I think we may need to have a conversation about going overboard on the parallel cruise. I would have been happy if that was all that was in the package. But there was more!

Along with several team set needs, Gavin also included some PC wants. For example, he sent this Prism Juan Gone:

Interesting side note: when these cards were released, they came in three-card packs. These were the "base" set cards; however, to protect the "prism" part of the card, inserts from a set call "Gems of the Diamond" were placed on both sides of the "base" card. This led to the insert set being larger than the base set. Weird.

Gavin also included this beautiful Rusty Greer Gold Label. I wish the current Gold Label product was as beautiful as this one. 

This Ivan Rodriguez Upper Deck Legendary Lumber relic also found its way into the package. It's my understanding that this is an actual piece from a game-used bat, but I don't understand their need to place stitching on the "ball." Regardless, it's a Pudge relic that I didn't have before, so I am grateful!

Lastly, Gavin included a couple of customs. The first hit my main PC:

Matt Harrison! How awesome is that?! My first custom for the PC!

The second was one that I had seen before on his blog, and it gave a great smile:

This sketch card was featured on BCB back in March when Gavin recapped a couple of packages from Night Owl and myself. I remember reading the post and then getting a pretty good laugh from the sketch. Now I know how Jerry Koosman feels...but I won't complain. I'm honored to be on a card with the certain first-ballot hall-of-famer. Gavin, I can't thank you enough. This may be my favorite card in my collection.

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone has a great weekend!