Friday, May 17, 2013

Trade Me (Almost) Anything: Atlanta Braves

Hey everybody,

The Dodgers begin a road trip today out east and kick it off with 3 games against the Braves. 

Those of you who have been following this series of trade bait know that I've been offering up blocks of cards grouped by teams expecting to ship off the whole enchilada to anyone who wants them.

However, after reading Bert's review from a Swing And A Pop Up , I got to thinking, while this concept might be a pretty good treat for team collectors, I didn't really consider set or player collectors might not want ALL those cards.

So I just want to let everyone know that if you want only one or two cards from the post, simply mention it and I'll be happy to send out singles. Speaking of cards, here come the Braves...

How about a Glavine RC?

Here's a blue mirror Lineage parallel.

The real Home Run King.

Hey old time Braves fans.  Remember this guy?

A couple of great youngsters on this one.




Yet even more good early stuff. 


THANKS for reading everybody!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I Swung - And Up Popped A Trade

Hey everybody,

Clayton Kershaw dominated once again last night.

Kershaw is definitely the real deal.  You just know the team's gonna win when he takes the mound.  I was born too late to see Koufax pitch, but I've been lucky enough to see some of the other great Dodger dominators such as Don Sutton, Orel Hershiser, Fernando, Ramon Martinez, and Hideo Nomo; now, Kershaw.  It's a beautiful thing when guys like this pitch for your team.

A couple of posts ago, I started the "Trade Me (Almost) Anything" series, and the first post dominated like Kershaw.  That post helped introduce me to a new trade partner, Bert, and his blog, Swing And A Pop Up That might not seem like dominating stuff, but that was just the beginning.

Bert checked into what I collect and he noticed I was chasing the 1987 Hygrade Baseball's All-Time Greats set. 

* WHAM!! *  In one fell swoop of blogo-generosity and coolness, Bert absolutely crushed those set needs by sending me a  hy-stack of those Hygrades.


IMHO this is a an overlooked and undervalued set.  Perhaps it's not undervalued in a monetary way because the card stock is not very thick and printing standards seemed to vary as some card runs seem to have washed out colors.  That's OK to me because the positives of the set far outweigh those small negs.

There are 103 cards in the set and the checklist reads like the walls of the Hall of Fame.


There are the usual suspects, sure...


But there are also plenty of guys that I would never get a chance to get a card of, due to their cards being overpriced, simply not available, or being ignored while Topps prints tribute cards of the same 6 or 7 players over and over.  Bert's generosity and this set helped me to get cards of guys like Three-Finger Brown, Dizzy Dean and Pie Traynor, just to name a few.

Here's what the backs look like:


Here's one more great...



THANKS for a dominating trade, Bert!