Trade Post - Fantastic Catch, Reader Jim and Card Hobbyist

I have been a very bad blogger.  I have been pretty proud of myself the last few days as my desk is looking fairly organized and most of my incoming trades and purchases have been scanned.  I haven't quite put all the cards into their proper binder or box but they are organized by product (for my sets), player (for my player collections) and year (for my Giants).  I have been a little lax in posting, not meeting my one post per day goal but justified that by applauding myself for being somewhat organized.  My self congratulations stopped this morning when I checked my scan folder for the blog and saw that I have 17 trades that I have yet to post on.  This doesn't include the stack of cards I received in yesterday's mail or the 3 trades I have finalized in the last couple days.  Yes, I am 20 trades behind.

 Time to fix this and there is no time like the present.  My favorite part of blogging has been the trades.  There is nothing better about taking cards that really don't fit into my collection and trading them for cards that fit in quite nicely.  However my next favorite thing is reading about the trades I have made on other blogs - it is great to see the pleasure others find in the cards I send their way. Not sure if others feel the same but if they do, I am have not been holding up my end of the deal.

I thought I would share three oldest trades I have yet to post today. 

First up is a trade with Weston over at Fantastic Catch.  Weston and I have made a few trades and he is great at tracking down cards from my want list and dropping me a note to initiate a trade.

Weston traded me this very patriotic Brett Pill Rookie parallel (I love the American Flag cards!) and a Topps Update of former Giant Nate Schierholtz that completed this team set.  He also shot me two inserts that I quickly filed and forgot to scan. While there weren't too many cards in this trade, it was another great trade with Fantastic Catch. Thanks Weston!

Next up is a trade with Jim who is a reader of the blog.  He uses the log on of mrhaverkamp on the blogs and is also a Giants fan!!!  This is the first of two trades we made - the other will get its own post fairly soon. 

 Jim gave some help in completing my 2012 Allen and Ginter set.  Here are 7 base cards I needed.  In typical A&G fashion we get a mix of ballplayers and people from other areas of the sports world.  I was happy to knock these off the old want list and through some other trades I am now 2 SPs away from finishing this base set off!

Jim also included these 5 What's in a Name inserts.  I am farther away from finishing this one up still needing 23 cards but that is 77% done!  I really like this insert set, many of the card backs are pretty interesting and informative and the front design has grown on my featuring a mini card, the team logo and player name prominently featured.

The most exciting part of the trade for me was getting these 6 Hostess cards for my Giants collection.  I didn't have too many Hostess cards so this really filled a gap for me.  The Giants sure had some good players and personalities in the 70s.  Hard to believe they had Gary Matthews, Dave Kingman and George Foster early in their careers and got rid of them prior to them amounting to much.  Thanks for the great trade Jim. I am sure you are as excited as I am about the upcoming post season.  GO GIANTS!!!

The final trade I want to feature today is from the Card Hobbyist.  Patrick reached out to me with a big list of Ginter cards he had from my want list.  I am still amazed at how easy it has been to work towards completing sets in our blogging community.  In the past I have bought an extra box of certain cards to try and get close to my sets or get tradebait for the forums but trades like this really excite me about our community.  Patrick traded me a nice stack of Ginter base and inserts for a group of minis from the last couple years he needed for his mini sets. I decided to only collect the Giants minis so it was a perfect trade.

 Patrick sent me a big stack of base and these are some of my favorites.  This group includes a coach (and a jerk of a coach at that), a fisherman and an astronaut.  We also have 2 HOFers, a rookie, a nice action photo, a new Dodger in his old Red Sox uni (hitting .263 since the trade with only 2 HRs since his first AB) and a NL West Champion Giants.  Great collection of cards!

I also scored 5 What's in a Name inserts and one Baseball Sketch card.  I was very happy to pick up the Lynn Nolan and Rickey Nelson Henley cards in this trade.  I still need 2 sketch cards to finish that insert set.  Thanks Patrick for the major help on the Ginter set.

Thanks to all 3 of my trade partners.  I want you to know that the delay in getting this post up is in no way a reflection of not appreciating the trades.  After several months I am still trying to balance the buying, trading, scanning, posting and organizing of my cards - not to mention the work and family as well. I pledge to get caught up on trade posts in the next two weeks so keep the trade offers coming!