Trade Post: Hurricane Edition

Greetings from Mother Nature's war zone.  As I write this, Hurricane Sandy is less than 100 miles outside of Atlantic City, NJ.  Here in northern Delaware, we've been getting heavy rain and steadily-intensifying wind gusts since the early A.M.  

But, my thoughts and prayers truly go out to those folks who live on the N.J. barrier islands and in the Delaware beach communities.  Those places have already met disaster, with the worst of this event yet to come.  Millions and millions of dollars in damage.  Just complete heartbreak.

For any of you within the path of Sandy, all my best to you.  Remain safe!

******

Back to the business of blogging, let me first congratulate the Giants on another World Series title.  I have no ill will towards either team, so I would've been fine with the outcome in favor of San Fran or Detroit.  

And now we put baseball back onto the shelf til pitchers and catchers report in February.  Kinda sad, if you ask me.

BUT, the hobby blogs have no offseason!  So thankfully we continue to turn the wheel and keep the game of baseball vibrant even during the fall and winter months.

An important bit of business to handle today deals with my first-ever trade with Nick at Dime Boxes.  Great, great blog as most of you know.  Not only does he have a killer card collection, but he's a darn good writer. So hats off to Nick.

Anyhow, I recently contacted Nick to flip him a few cards for his 2012 Update pursuits plus some red, blue and gold parallels from this year's Topps set.

In return, I got a bunch of neat stuff.  How about some samples?

Like, lots of Vlad cards!

1998 Topps, #5

A nice big stack of cards ranging in years from 1998 through 2010 has upped my Guerrero player collection to 161 unique cards.  Without checking, I think that qualifies it as my largest player collection.  Couldn't have gotten there without lots of generous bloggers and readers out there.

1195 Topps Traded, #12T

This has become a pretty iconic card, has it not?  In their 1995 Traded set, Topps screwed up by ascribing a photo of Carlos Beltran to a card designated for Juan LeBron.  [Ed. Note: Must've been the mustache.]  I've seen this card a lot on eBay, etc., but now I have my own copy of it.  Very cool!

2002 Stadium Club, #16

SHINJO!  I became an instant Shinjo fan after watching him in his first Mets game.  He came to America with quite a reputation from his many All-Star years in Japan.  Flashy and photogenic -- the Japanese Jeter, so they said.  He never became a MLB star, but that hasn't faded his star.  I was recently told by a friend's fiance (who lived in Japan her whole life and recently moved to the U.S.) that Shinjo retains his icon status in Japan today.

1999 Pacific Prism, #95

Speaking of flashy, that pretty much sums up Rey Ordonez's approach in the field.  For my money, he's still one of the top-3 best defensive shortstops I've ever watched.  Unfortunately, my scanner was unimpressed and decided to capture an image of this super-shiny Prism card in the throes of a supernova.  

2000 Bowman's Best, #7

Along with Ordonez, Olerud was a piece of the 1999 Mets infield that Sports Illustrated featured as being one of the best defensive quartets ever.  Pictured in this Bowman's Best card as a Mariner, Olerud wasn't too shabby with the bat either (a .295 career hitter).

A trio of 2012 Heritage

All right!  Three more cards for my 2012  Heritage base set.  That leaves me just 19 cards short of completing that sucker.  Anyone out there who has some doubles laying around, give me a holler!  I'm itching to complete this thing.

And a quartet of 2011 Heritage

And, yes, I'm absolutely still working on the 2011 Heritage set, as well.  Just an awesome looking set.

Well, a big 'thank you' once again goes out to Nick for an enjoyable trading experience!

MK