1988

The year was 1988. The baseball cards were ugly. Don't believe me, just look at this card included in the pack sent to me as part of the trade with Kevin.

Ugly Fleer cards weren't the only thing in 1988. In honor of this pack of cards lets take a trip back to the time machine, and see what else happened in 1988
.

The Iran - Iraq war comes to an end

Ben Johnson loses gold medal for 100m in Seoul Olympics after testing positive for anabolic steriods  

The Top four albums are

1. George Michael- Faith

2. Dirty Dancing Soundtrack

3. Michael Jackson- Bad

4. Guns-N-Roses- Appetite For Destruction

Los Angeles Dodgers defeat Oakland Athletics in World Series 4 games to 1

Jose Canseco for the American League, and Kirk Gibson for the National League are voted MVP.

Former Pittsburgh Pirates player Willie Stargell is only player voted in the Hall-Of-Fame

Last, but not least. Baseball cards came with decorations for your baseball card boxes.

Kevin, Thank you so much for reminding us what things were like in 1988.

A Memorable Trade

Today I just completed a trade that will affect any trade, and visit to card show or card shop for quite some time. The reason for this is something I've learned from doing this blog. Back in February I went to what was my first card show since the nineties. While I picked up a good batch of cards for my sets I picked up a group of 3 or 4 cards for just throwing into a trade as a surprise. One of those cards was a Tom Seaver card that I just thought looked cool. I know there are a couple bloggers that collect Mets, and a few other online traders that are also Met collectors. Not knowing who, or when it would make its way into an envelope I thought 'Why not?'

That day came this month when I had a trade going with Kevin from the online trading groups TradingBases. The trade sent Kevin the last '2013 Topps Calling Card', and two cards for his 2013 Heritage. This is when the thought hit me to add the Seaver as a toss in, and make it four cards. When the cards finally arrived Kevin sent me an e-mail that made it all worth it. Unknowingly, Seaver was the final card he needed for the set. This card I believe was from 2004, and what set it was from I couldn't tell you. As I said before, it just looked cool so I bought it.

On Monday Kevin's side of the trade arrived, and I can safely say I am just as excited if not more than Kevin was with his half. Starting off the package were some hits to the player wants.

Adding to the joy was six hits to the 2013 Topps set.

Finishing off the main part of this trade, Kevin hit two other sets I have been working on for awhile.

Included with the trade was another batch of fun, but I'm going to save that for Tuesday's post.

The Lost Files: Angels and Cougars

It looks like lately I haven't done any artelopes. For some reason they have been cast aside for the last month in exchange for trading. I'm not going to complain as I've added a ton of sweet items into all but one of my collections the last month. The one collection is business cards, and honestly the hobby I've had the longest. While I'd love to finish off my goal of one business card from every current baseball franchise. Accomplishing this goal has been put on the back burner to working on finishing up baseball sets.

The tides are turning though as I do still have some trades coming in, but I have spent some time preparing envelopes. They currently sit on the top of the computer desk waiting for either myself or the daughter to turn them from simple envelopes into artelopes. As I think about these sitting here waiting I got to thinking about two of the three artelopes I sent out just over a month ago with no return. From the post title you can see I only mention two of the three as the missing mention is for the Washington Nationals. It's not uncommon for the Nationals to take two or three months so I still have hope for them. These other two I have lost all hope, but want to share the artwork we put into them.

LOS ANGELES ANGELS OF ANAHEIM

spring training

At the time this was done the daughter was into drawing angel wings on things. She was putting them all over hearts, and anything else she thought needed angel wings. The Angels spring training schedules have Mike Trout so I thought I'd add one into the collection. Being I have started to collect Mike Trout, but not with the passion of my other players. He's kind of my on the fence player. I collect his cards when they find me, but at the prices people want for him I don't go searching them out.

This was sent towards the later end of spring training so I did have some doubt, and I guess they ended up being founded. Since doing this artelope the daughter has gotten over the angel wings phase, and moved on. Currently she is back into doing the whole making things out of duct tape again.

KANE COUNTY COUGARS

At first the daughter, and myself had a ton of doubt about what to do on this artelope. While the logo looks simple we had our doubts on if we were up to the challenge. With that in mind she handed this one to me. I came up with the idea of the entire front hoping to make it easier to draw. At the time I thought using colored pencils would go better so a quick trip to the store for a box was made. In the end it ended up better than I expected, but without the results I had hoped for. The Cougars are one of the teams that changed affiliates this season so they are on my updating the business card list. This means I'll give them another shot this season with hopefully better results.    

Beam Me Cards Scotty!!

Two days ago I got a surprise package from another member of the online trading group TradingBases. This awesome package came from Scott, and was the inspiration for the post title. I can't remember ever trading with Scott so this was a total out of nowhere group of cards. If I have traded with Scott it was years ago, and would be the reason I can't remember.

Somehow Scott must have been channeling my trade with Mike as he started the mailer with some 2004 Authentix.

Then Scott sent me back down 'Mascots Lane' with 8 hits to my 2012 Opening Day mascots set.

Getting this mailer made what was a bad day into an incredible day. Thank You so much Scott for turning that day around with some sweet cards.