The Trade Game

[Dave The Dastardly]

I'LL GIVE YOU ONE HARMON KILLEBREW FOR...

 

 

 

 

 

 

All this potential trade talk that seems to haunt TD this time of year takes me back to a time when kids walked around with a rubber-band wrapped stack of baseball cards in their front shirt pockets in the hopes of “one-upping” one of their chums in a one-sided swap… should the occasion arise.

 

Of course nobody carried their best cards around with them, those were tucked away in an old shoe box stored in their mothers’ attics, safe for all eternities, unless brought out for a hot game of dice baseball with a crosstown rival.

 

The shiftier kids would often place a medium-value card face up on their “trade” stack with all their dubs, trips and quads of lesser value cards beneath it in the hopes of making a sight-unseen stack-for-stack trade. All so the unwary trader could be bamboozled into thinking he was getting a stack of quality cards because Rocky Colavito was shown on top only to discover after the swap that he’d just acquired four cards of some flash-in-the-pan already sent down back to the minors, three of some other unknown player and an assortment of other ne’er-do-wells in exchange for his Nellie Fox/Luis Aparicio tandem and Mickey Mantle’s rookie card.

 

Reputations were made, and sullied, by such trades.

 

Some kids traded cards just to be trading cards with no thought of how their trades were going to affect their team’s line-up come dice-baseball season and others wouldn’t consummate a trade until analyzing and comparing the lifetime stats listed on the back of the cards involved. No way were you going to swap an outfielder with a lifetime .303 batting average for some dufus hitting a measly .279. On the other hand there was always the chance the .279 guy just might have a breakout year… especially if his card wasn’t bent, folded, stapled or mutilated and still carried the intoxicating odor of bubble gum.

 

Of course that was all before free agency, analytics and video games. Back when kids always rode around town with a baseball glove impaled on their bike’s handlebars, their favorite baseball bat stuck in the saddle baskets over the rear wheel and maybe their 16th duplicate card of Whitey Ford clothes-pinned to the bike frame so the wheel spokes would snap the edge as you tore down the street, the constant flapping noise announcing to all other kids within earshot that you were available for a pick-up game of street ball, work-up, five-hundred… or if nothing else, just making a trade.

 

I wonder how many of those card-carrying kids became front office guys for a professional baseball team and if they’re still toting around potential trades in their front shirt pocket… on their smart phone... a bubble gum scent sprayer in hand...

[bustedstuff88]

So glad I kept all my cards from over the years....I am fondest of my assortment of T206 Tobacco cards

[Richie the Rally Goat]

I grew up in the era of free agency, but still always had a stack of dubs in a rubber band tucked in my back pack ready for a trade.

 

My uncle gave me my first lesson in economics on a terribly lopsided trade where I got a nobody with a flash in the pan.300 BA and he got my Cal Ripken rookie card, that he returned gift wrapped in my birthday card along with a fresh pack of 86 Topps.

 

I sold the vast bulk of my collection with my most valuable cards (including Cal) in the late 90s only holding on to my sentimental Twins cards.

 

In a Falvey interview, he said something to the effect that led me to believe he could have a stack of baseball cards on him right then and there.

[goulik]

I carried my Fran Tarkenton record breaker card in my back pocket because whoever you had in your back pocket was who you were when you hit the field. I ran into Tarkenton and he signed it with a felt tip pen because it was so Ratty. Still my favorite card. Just above my Puckett Rookie and Ozzie Smith Rookie. Got them all stored with my Mork and Mindy cards and Close Encounters of the Third Kind cards.