Trade Review: Reds for some Yankees

In the last few weeks, I've completed a couple minor trades...over the internet! Imagine that. The last trade that I did was probably with a stack of cards at friend's sleepover. Derek Jeter for Hideo Nomo in 1996 or along the likes. Anyhow, I've got some cards of players people collect, so I'm glad to help out their collections if I can.

The only personal collection I really have is Tino Martinez and there aren't a lot out there that I don't have. So in order to make myself a more diverse trading partner, I'll usually just ask for a few newer Yankee cards in return. This is twofold. One, the Yanks are my favorite team and I like having their cards. Two, I really haven't collected much in ten or twelve years, so it's an educational thing for me to see what kind of sets I missed while I was gone. And there is A LOT I missed.

I made a trade with a fellow collector over at http://www.baseball-fever.com/, a site I use to chronicle my TTM success and also chat with other autograph and card fans in general. This collector was looking to do a team trade - you send him X amount of Reds cards, he sends you X amount of your team. Pretty cool idea. The only problem is that 99% of my collection is back in my childhood home, three hours away. I managed to dig up about 8-10 reds cards...nothing high end, but a few cool cards, including a Barry Larkin mini-poster from the 1998 Fleer Sports Illustrated set. The Reds fan was nice enough to still do a trade despite the low number of cards that I was offering.

Although I only sent a handful of Reds, I received 34 Yankee cards in return! How cool is that?! There were a bunch of recent Topps cards, a few Topps Heritage, a 1978 Topps ALCS card, and a cool oddball from a Sunoco/Coke set of Roger Maris and Catfish Hunter. I felt bad that I didn't send more cards, as this was a very generous trade.

My favorite card out of the lot was a 2009 Goudey Jason Giambi. Although it says "Athletics" as his team (since he was signed that off-season), the card is hilarious and captures Giambi's personality. He is basically a cartoon character in this card due to the ld style artwork, but the image features something that was a lot of fun during a forgettable 2008 season - his MUSTACHE. Something about the card just made me laugh.

I want to thank this collector for a great trade and giving me such a positive trading experience for the first time in years. It made my day. I'll definitely pay it forward and over-deliver in an upcoming trade. I have a few more trades on the way, and I'll review those once I get them.