A Pre-War swap with Tony from Off Hiatus - part 1 Oddball Rules

I recently contacted Tony from the great blog, Off Hiatus Baseball Cards about acquiring a 1993 Hostess Frank Thomas that he had up for grabs. I had been reading his blog for a while, but this was the first time I'd reached out to propose a trade. He was more than willing to make a swap. As an aside, I continue to be amazed at how generous our fellow collectors are. This is a sentiment that would be reinforced once again when I opened the package that Tony sent my way. I don't ever expect much beyond the card or cards that I specifically message folks about, but we all add what we can to fill out a trade package. Tony sent me so much great stuff that I'm going to break it down into tow posts.this one will focus on the oddball stuff.

I've seen posts all over the blogosphere highlighting packages from Tony and I've always really enjoyed seeing the oddball stuff that has ended up in new collections. Like so many others I had read about, I was overwhelmed with a ton of oddball goodness!

Yankees stickers from various years start things off. These were such a blast from my collecting past. I remember having these and sticking them to everything when I was younger. I had these on notebooks, my card storage boxes, and even the walls in my room(my parents weren't thrilled with the latter). Ahhh, the good ol' days!

Let's continue with the sticker theme. I like that these are more like mini cards and I love the clean, minimalist design. Though I haven't bought packs of the sticker collection over the past few seasons I have picked up some of these 'cards'. I'm disappointed to hear that the 2015 version has reverted to the flimsy, paperback style of old.

I'm not a fan of the Steve Sax years, but this is my first Holsum disc. I really dig the Topps Coin of Elston Howard even if it does present a display/storage issue.

Here are a few 1980's Topps minis. I liked the way these were done back in the day. The designs were similar to the corresponding Topps set, but not a shrunken exact copy like they have been the past few seasons.

There's the Frank Thomas that started it all. I'm slowly working on that Hostess set(I mean really slowly). It's always nice to get a new Deion and the package was heavy on Donnie Baseball(which is a great thing).

In recent days, I've seen a bunch of these Talking Baseball cards popping up in packages from Tony, so I was thrilled to find one of the former captain in front of me. Yankees and Kelloggs, 'nuff said! This would have been a great bunch of oddball, but there's even more!

The box bottom cards are very cool, but Tony must have consulted a crystal ball before sending this trade package. For a few weeks prior to receiving this, I had these Leaf stand-ups on my eBay watch list. I have to review the checklist, but if think this may be the entire Yankees team in one trade! 

That completes part one of this great trade, but there's more. Still to come are Yankee legends, serial numbered and regular parallels, relics, and the first card from my Cardboard Wishlist to be crossed off by a fellow blogger. 

Thanks for an incredible trade package Tony. I wish you luck in your war with JBF, and hope that you survive to trade another day!