Trade With All Trade Bait

To me one of the most enjoyable things about the blogosphere is trading with other bloggers. I subscribe to a decent amount of blogs and try to read as much of them as I can. One of the blogs I subscribe to is "All Trade Bait, All The Time", or as he also calls it, "ATBATT".
He put up a collection of 9 San Francisco Giant cards, which quite honestly don't do very much for me. Apparently, they don't do much for anyone else either, because he sweetened the pot almost immediately by offering up another lot of 9 cards. All San Francisco Giants.

But this time is was different.

One of the cards was this.

A 1977 Topps Ed Halicki.

Now am I an Ed Halicki player collector?

Not to my knowledge.

As you may or may not know, 1977 was the first year that I started collecting. I'm nowhere near completing that set, and of the cards that I have, most of them look like this...

Or this...

Or even worse, THIS!

I'm sure that I'm preaching to the choir when I say this, but whenever I see cards from the late 70's, all I can think about was when I was a kid and how I would have my cards all over the floor and just read them endlessly. I knew every player on every team, and could tell you something about them.

I even was so confident in my baseball knowledge back then that I dared an older and bigger kid to see if he could stump me.

He chose Manny Sanguillen.

I couldn't believe he had picked someone so easy. I looked him straight in the eye and said,

"Catcher, Pittsburgh Pirates."

Then he threw a crab apple at me.

I remember that day vividly. I also remember vividly how much a crab apple hurts when it hits you.

So when I saw that 1977 Ed Halicki, the other 17 cards just didn't matter. Even if they were all Giants.

So I took a look at his lists to see what he collcected and happened to notice this.

I had picked up a bunch of these many years ago. I cannot remember where or how I got them. (Sometimes I think I should rename this blog "The I Don't Remember How I Got These Card Collector") What I do know is that thanks to a recent auction purchase that my future father-in-law made for me, I now had a lot of dupes.

Not only that, thanks to his blog, I now knew what the set was called!

There is absolutely no identifying information on this card other than "Baseball's All-Time Greats". I suppose I could have researched it online, but I never did. I thought it was an early 1990's release as was usually the case regarding oddball sets such as this. But it turns out it is the 1987 Hygrades All-Time Baseball set.

So I emailed Oscar at ATBATT and told him I'd be interested in those Giants and had some of the Hygrades set that I could send him. I stressed that I WAS NOT a Giants collector, but since I am a set collector, I must begrudgingly acquire Giants cards as well.

So in addition to the 1977 Halicki, I also received,

2011 Topps Tim Lincecum (Topps 60 insert)

2011 Topps Lineage Brandon Belt (Rookies Subset)

1987 Topps Harry Spilman

1995 Donruss Barry Bonds

1992 Donruss Will Clark (AS)

1994 Upper Deck Matt Williams FT

2011 Topps Buster Posey 60YOT

2011 Topps Allen & Ginter Brandon Belt

2012 Topps Heritage Pablo Sandoval

2011 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Jake Dunning

2011 Topps Lineage Willie McCovey

1991 Conlon Collection Bill Terry

1991 Conlon Collection Hughie Critz

1994 Topps Matt Williams/Wade Boggs AS

1991 Upper Deck Barry Bonds

1995 Score Matt Williams HI

2011 Topps Lineage Johnny Mize

In return, I sent him over 50 of the Hygrades set. You can read about his end of the trade here.

Thanks for the cards Oscar! Most of these cards I need for sets I haven't finished.

If I find anymore of those Hygrades you need, I'll be sure to send them up your way.