I Get By (With A Little Help From My Friends) — Part 2

Three-way trades? How blasé. All the hipster card traders are dabbling in four-way trades now. Pretty successfully, too.

In the midst of some other trades, I got an email from Tony of Ike’s Cards asking about a trade. A (more-or-less) local trader to me — cool! The father-son trading duo had several Twins cards I needed, including a Thome relic and a Gassner auto card; problem is, Tony collects Cardinals cards, and Ike collects Markakis cards (among other PCs), and I was lacking inventory in both areas. Time to hit the rolodex.

In my trade with Red Sox Prospector, I realized one of the auto cards he was going to send me was one I already had, so I had it changed to a Cardinals auto card, a 2008 Topps Chrome Brian Barton, which he agreed to do. One down.

Next, I went to another Markakis collector, dgreen1899 at Drinking the Orange Kool-Aid, whom I had just traded with last month. He had two Markakis dupes, one of which met Ike’s approval, and I had a Hamels GU to trade for it. Two down.

dgreen1899 had several other Twins cards for me, and I already had some cards for him, plus I noticed that he needed the Peter Pan A&G mini, which I knew the LCS had. I might have overstocked my end of this swap, but whatever — we’ll even that out some day. As a note, one of the cards he threw in was a 2006 Bowman Heritage Chrome #53 Shannon Stewart card; interestingly, the back of it was #239 Rich Hill of the Cubs. I’ve heard of other errors like this from that set, but not this particular one. Also, yes, I have a moral obligation to scan and show any Lew Ford cards received in trade.

clockwise, from top left: 2003 Fleer Flair Greats #29 Rod Carew, how cool is it that his card # is his uniform #? and one of his beautiful drag bunts, too; 2003 Donruss Diamond Kings Bronze Foil #38 Jaques Jones; 2004 Topps Pristine #140 Matt Moses; 2004 Donruss Leaf #241 Lew Ford

Along with a slew of UD Documentary and UD Documentary Gold, I now had the slug of cards to mail off to Tony & Ike. And like all good trade packages, their package back to me arrived while I was on business in Omaha. Upon opening it when I got back, I found they had done a nice job of scouring my wantlists, and even threw in a 2006 Fleer Ultra rack pack with an Ultra Star Santana card showing on the back — nice!

clockwise, from top left: 2009 Signature Stars Impressions #IMP-MT Matt Tolbert (auto); 2011 Heritage Clubhouse Collection #CCR-JT Jim Thome (jersey); 2006 Ovation Rookies Gold #104 Dave Gassner [38/99] (auto); 2007 Sweet Spot Classic Memorabilia #CM-KH Kent Hrbek (jersey)

I had a couple s#’d Cardinals cards in their package; they had a couple s#’d Twins in mine. Here are a few others, too:

clockwise, from top left: 2006 Fleer Ultra Star #US-12 Johan Santana; 2004 Fleer Platinum #170 Matt LeCroy; 2007 Topps Turkey Red Chrome #159 Johan Santana [0530/1999]; 2006 Fleer Tradition Black and White #182 Joe Nathan; 2010 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Gold #BDPP37 Nate Roberts; 2006 Upper Deck Ovation #106 Francisco Liriano [281/999]

Thanks everyone for making this simple round-about trade work!