Johnny on the (Trading) Spot

As I'm new to the blogging community, I've reached out to a few people about trades.  I may not have the same quality or quantity of cards as some of the trades I see being completed on the blogs around me, but I have found some cards on people's want lists.  I found a few set needs and binder guys that John at Johnny's Trading Spot had listed, so we arranged a trade.

I didn't collect a whole lot of baseball as a kid.  I've always been more of a football guy.  I've been on a baseball tear since I got back into the hobby, though, but one side effect is that my collection tends to be newer cards.  One of the nice things about not having the largest baseball collection is that when people want to unload their "junk," most of it is new to me.  This was the case as I received a nice package from John this week, most of it filled with 90s goodness of All-Star MVPs, Rookies of the Year, and World Series MVPs.  I may be the last collector on the interwebs to need these cards, but John found them a good home here.

Let's start out with the All-Star MVPs, which, aside from the Cubs, is the focus of my baseball collection.

 

All of these Griffeys were needs for my collection.  I have no idea what the Playball card in the top left is, but it's cool oddball that I never even knew existed.  It may be my favorite Griffey of the bunch.

 

 Bo Jackson was another great All-Star Game MVP.  Love the sticker with Eric Davis.  Am I the only who had forgotten completely, or never really known, that Bo was an Angel?  I have no memory of this at all, so the card was a shock to me.

Continuing with the All-Star MVPs, Fred McGriff and Tim Raines both fit the bill.  I love the spectrum of
teams represented by the Crime Dog here.

Cal and Ichiro are two of my favorites to collect because they were both All-Star MVPs and Rookies of the Year.  They'll bridge the gap here as we take a look at the ROYs.

Two more oddballs, from the 1992 7/11 Citgo set.  I apparently didn't frequent the right gas stations as a 10 year old, as I had never seen this set before.

 

Mark McGwire isn't my favorite guy to collect, because of the whole PED issue and the fact that much of his heyday was spent as a Cardinal.  But he does fit in the ROY category.  If I'm going to have cards of him in my collection, they're best his Oakland cards because that was when he won the award and those days came before everything that made me dislike the player.  Rafael Furcal won the award with Atlanta in 2000 and this my first card of him with the Braves.

 

The Braves collector came through with this Braves Rookie of the Year.  Check out that Shades card.  Yikes!  That is an almost frightening subset.  In all these cards, we have the first card that wasn't a need for me: the 1991 Score.  Everything else you have seen is brand-new to me.

The last PC theme that John hit was World Series heroes.  Here are a pair of cards from teams north of the border, though Pedro did his World Series heroics with Boston later in his career.

 

John hit me with another Braves player who fits into my PC.  I collect Andruw Jones cards solely because of the birthday he shares with my son--which is on Saturday, by the way.  Make sure you all send Andruw your best wishes...

Someday my son will receive my Andruw Jones PC for his birthday.  I really want him to learn some 90s hip-hop jive off the back of this card.  Definitely one of the most interesting card backs I've seen.  It sounds like when your teacher tried to drop the latest slang in an effort not to be lame, but proved himself lame in the process.  Trust me; as a teacher, I know what this sounds like.

We'll wrap the trade with this Vlad Guerrero promo card.  Not a PC guy, but a promo oddball is always welcomed.

Thanks, John, for the generous trade package.  My meager collection feels like it got a shot in the arm, if not a Mark McGwire-type shot.