What A Week

Oof. This was supposed to be a fairly relaxed week - just your normal family-visiting, get the decorations down from the attic, eat too much turkey and all the pies Thanksgiving week.

The only hurdle I really had to clear going into the week was wrapping up some loose ends from the massive system switch we (meaning me) pulled off Friday afternoon. Long story short, we dropped a complex quoting system we used a fraction of, and the trio of order/invoicing/payments packages we used got combined into one package. That mean downloading all of the related data, uninstalling the packages, running an upgrade, and re-importing the data. Everything went swimmingly.

Well, until Monday. When our reps actually started using the system. Then everything went to hell.

I'll spare you the gory details, but I've worked far longer and endured far more stress than I planned this week. So it was nice to see a few trade packages in my mailbox on Monday evening, along with my latest haul from a Nachos Grande group break. I'm perpetually playing catch-up, so let's try and stay out ahead of these latest packages. This one's quick: a four-card package from Shawn, aka SShifflett at TCDB. I sent him a couple dozen cards from 2018 Series 2, and netted a few nice cards from Big League, including these two AL leaders cards featuring two Astros apiece. I was a little surprised to see Maybin listed as an Astro here on the stolen base leaders, but I'll take it.

Shawn also provided me with the latest Jeff Bagwell card to grace my collection - that is, until I opened the other packages that showed up on Monday. But for a brief moment, this 2018 Big League card was my most recent Bagwell acquisition. I can dig this, even if it is in the worst color scheme of the franchise - at least he's show in the road grays. Plus this set is just so fun - I can't help but like it.

The final card in the package was my favorite, though. I scooped up my latest Dock Ellis card in this trade as well, his 1979 Topps issue. This brings me one step closer to finishing out his Topps run - I'm still missing his '69, '70, and '73 cards, and the '76 Traded. Somehow Dock still only has 65 cards listed at TCDB, and while a few of those are post-2000 low-numbered issues, most of them are very gettable. I've got 11 of them now, and if I wanted to make this a more active chase I'm sure I could get the bulk of his pre-2000 stuff finished fairly easily.

Thanks for the trade, Shawn. You made a miserable Monday just a bit brighter.