I interrupt this group break for some football!

I was so excited about the coming 2012 NFL season that I jumped head first into Topps' flapship football release earlier this month.  Dennis from Too Many Verlanders / Too Many Manninghams was equally excited and we decided to help each other out.  We were both building the base set and each of us were tackling different insert sets.  He bought a metric crap load of retail and I bought a hobby box and some retail.  In the end we were able to help each other out quite a bit.  After this trade I now only lack 22 base cards!

What's funny about this trade is that on Wednesday I got a big flat package from him.  I was scratching my head while standing at the mail box because I knew it didn't contain the cards we agreed upon trading for.  I took it inside the house and opened it up in the kitchen while my wife was making dinner (crock pot lasagna!).  Much to my surprise I pulled these out from in between 2 pieces of cardboard:

Wow!  I forgot all about these big 8x10 Donruss Studio cards!  I never bought any of the Studio football cards so I haven't really seen these before.  I like the extra Portrait Proof parallel.  Too bad my scanner cut off the holographic foil boarder around the big card.

Most of the cards I got in return were base cards I needed to fill in some holes, but earlier he had pulled this BCA Pink parallel.  BCA stands for Breast Cancer Awareness if you didn't know...that's why the cards are pink.  Now I know a lot of fans and collectors are already complaining about these in the football set and now they are complaining about them showing up in 2013 Topps baseball.  I may be in the minority here, but I really like these.  I like the flat sparkly pink border and the pink foil.  It helps they are #d to 399 as well.  Charles Johnson here is 284/399.

In addition to the Kerry Collins extras Dennis also sent some extra Carolina Panthers and some Atlanta Braves.  I mistakenly mixed them into my "to catalog" box before I had a chance to scan them.  I am continually blown away by certain bloggers generosity when it comes to trading.  A huge thanks to Dennis for such a fun trade!