Not All Giants For Dodgers Trades Are Bad

Aloha, everybody,

Current Dodgers front office suit and previous GM, Ned Colletti, came over to the Dodgers from the San Francisco Giants. 

As Dodgers GM, Colletti had a bad habit of acquiring former Giants. Those deals often stank. They stank enough to make a lot of Dodger fans wonder whether Colletti was in reality a spy from SF sent here to undermine the team from the inside. 

On the other hand, I often cite Jeff Kent as a good Giant to travel down the coast to join LA. Juan Uribe, once beloved in SF, even carved out a niche of his own here in LA. Thus, transactions between Nor Cal and So Cal can certainly work out well. Such was the case after I recently showed off a set of metal Willie Mays cards as trade bait. Of course, a Giants fan came a callin'. 

Arpsmith from Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession put in a claim, and soon enough, another Dodgers-Giants trade was on. The Say Hey Kid was on his way to the bay and some good ol' Dodgers were headed down to LA. 

Leading off the loot that came from Arpsmith are a couple of 2013 schedules featuring the former 1-2 punch of the Dodgers pitching rotation...

"Hay un nuevo blue" translates to "There's a new blue". Prophetic, as the new blue rotation for 2016 will be all Kershaw and no Grienke.

Here come some new blue additions for my collection, from Pinnacle...

Arpsmith knows I like me some vintage, so these Dodgers were the meat of the deal...

I already had a 1958 Demeter, but this one is a considerable upgrade. 

Notable: Demeter's photo always looked to me like one of those creepy ventriloquist mannequins. 

The Harris card below is primo vintage - and it chips one off of my 1960 Dodgers team wanted list...

 It's a very clean card, with sharp corners and a good amount of surface gloss. Nope, nothing chewy about these cards. 

Finally, the trade capper. A triple-autographed Heritage Dodger Stadium tribute card featuring Claude Osteen, Manny Mota, and the guy who's auto sealed the deal for me...Mr. Maury Wills...

 I recognize Mota's auto as I have a couple of other IP autos from him, and these are my first Osteen and Wills sigs. I love that Wills added his number "30". 

I was initially disappointed that Wills signed low, in the shadow of the light standards, but it turns out I was looking at things all wrong. I was looking at the card as three separate autographs.   

I think Wills may have signed low in order to not cover up the action on the baseball diamond. Now I see and appreciate the entirety of the card as one whole piece. This new perspective makes the it look even better to me.

THANKS for this great batch of cards, Arpsmith. It's another trade between west coast rivals that benefited all.

Aloha!

A G-reat C-ard tR-ade L-ate Post

 Hey everybody,

Here's a great batch of Dodger vintage that came my way via Jim, who runs the awesome Garvey, Cey, Russel, Lopes blog, among a few others.  Wanna spend some quality time reading about cool cards from the past?  Check into Jim's blog repertoire. 

Before you indulge in that, however, let's go 70's!!

Don't look now, Claude.  The ball's already in your mitt.

 

Bits of beautiful old-time Dodger Stadium lurking back there. 

"Who am I? I'm the guy with the baddest mustache on the team.  That's who I am."

"Ahem.  The guy with the baddest mustache would be me."

"Amateurs. You gotta grow it below the mouth line and combine it with California locks."

Fast forward to the 90's and Fernando gettin' funky wit it....

Finishing up with a cool Dodgers auto.  Any pack o' cards with a Dodger autograph is a great pack!

THANKS for the awesome additions, Jim! 

Down With 2013 Giants, and Arp With 2014 Dodgers

Hey everybody,

I completed a few trades at the close of 2013, and it's about time I give up some props to those awesome trade partners - whom I'm looking forward to making even more trades with in 2014.

First up is a perfect example of what makes our hobby so cool.  As we all know, the Dodgers and the Giants have one of the most storied - and violently heated - rivalries in sports. The bad blood between the teams goes all the way back to when the clubs were just a streetcar's ride apart in the old time boroughs of New York.  The hatred for the other team's uniforms continues to burn to this day, unfortunately leading to bloodshed between the fans more often than any hard collisions between the players out on the basepaths.

Which brings me back to our cool hobby.  Out here in the blogoworlds, Dodger and Giants fans read each other's blogs, Yankee and Red Sox die hards trade unwanted cards of their rivals to each other, and fans from other rivalries, old and new, comment on each other's blogs and even meet up in real life as friends.  Aint it grand?

I'm always able to pass off cards of the hated Giants to good ol' Arpsmith ,  and his unwanted Dodgers can always find a good home in my binders.  Although, now that I think of it, this trade was started by me actually shipping a Dodger card TO Arpsmith!

  He was collecting the Double Play set of game cards and I offered to send him an upgrade for his misprint Claude Osteen card.  Let's lead off with that clean but misprinted card that Arp sent to me...

 Arpsmith sent over some sweet extra cards as well. Naturally, being the cool Giants fan that he is, he sent over more Dodgers...

  You say Lou Brock?  You say Ricky H?   I say Maury Wills.  He's the guy that reinvented the game and made the stolen base a (once again) legitimate and dangerous offensive weapon.

The card was apparently part of some giveaway sets with messages about fire safety on the rear.  Check out Smokey the Bear's ever-lovin' mug under Mr. Wills.


What's better than a Hideo Nomo card that you never had before? 

BAAAAMMMM !!! Having its matching mini of course. 

Batting clean up is the man whom I dubbed El Jaguar last season...

I'm sure that baseball fans from San Diego to Oakland can appreciate the flag of the great Bear Republic gracing this hunka awesome cardboard.   What a glorious backdrop for A-Gon.

THANKS for the great trade, Arpsmith !

BTW, a reminder that you all have until Super Bowl kickoff to enter ATBATT's first contest of 2014.
See yesterday's post for details.