Finally, a reason to use Twitter

I've yet to come up with a good reason as to why I have a Twitter account.

I really only use it for baseball and baseball card related stuff, and even then it makes me wanna tear my hair out most of the time. A guy can only stomach so many bad baseball takes and pictures of people cleaning out retail card shelves. Most of the time it's a platform for seediness. This isn't news to anyone who has Twitter, of course, but for me it's in this weird gray area of a thing I have no reason using, but one I use anyway.

Up until recently, I've always been skeptical of trading cards on Twitter. Not so much because I'm worried I'll get ripped off or anything, but mostly because it feels so impersonal. I barely use my Twitter account, and for someone to wanna set up a trade with me based on my cobweb-filled profile just seems a bit odd. That, however, changed recently when Twitterer(?) @Raiderjoe reached out to me because he wanted to trade. I was, as usual, a bit passive about the whole thing until I received a message from him saying something like: I've gone through my stuff and I've got about 800 cards picked out for you so far.

Wait a minute: 800 CARDS?!

It was at that exact moment that I decided to start taking Twitter trading way more seriously.

A large flat-rate box showed up on my doorstep a few days later, packed with just about everything you could imagine. One of the first hard-hitters I found was the '77 White Sox team card at the top of the post -- a former Dime Box Dozen need and an iconic piece of baseball history since it's the only team card ever to show dudes wearing shorts. How did I not already have this card?!

Other quirky finds soon followed -- 'fros, odd airbrush jobs, and science teacher Mark Lee doing an impersonation of a big-league ballplayer.

Other generally fun vintage randoms I'd never seen before -- that Blue Moon Odom has to be one of the few cards with a water tower on it.

Twitter isn't exactly a haven for mini-collecting, since most of what I seem to see are guys who oddly all "collect" Trout, Acuna, etc., etc.

Given that, I was all the more grateful to find a bunch of new themed hits in here  -- including a few obscure minor league singles I could've easily gone a lifetime without discovering.

In this battle of throwbacks, it's a four-way tie for first.

Always love getting new cards for the big player collections.

It became apparent early on that this wasn't just a random grouping of 800 cards -- this was stuff that was carefully chosen for me to enjoy, and I spent a whole glorious evening sifting and sorting through everything.

I'd bet good money that Bo Jackson was featured on more of these weird Broder oddballs of the '80s and '90s than any other single player, and these two help prove my case.

I really don't know a whole lot about the Senior League aside from the cards it spawned -- though it warms my heart to know Lowell Palmer was still wearing his famous shades in the late '80s.

There wasn't much latest-and-greatest stuff in here, but the few I did find packed a punch.

(Ralph Kiner really needs more baseball cards.)

A nod to the horizontals.

And now for something completely different: a card shaped like a crown, and a business card for a card shop in Cooperstown.

I've never been to the Hall of Fame, and I want to go for obvious reasons -- but admittedly part of my desire to make the trip one day is to check out the gobs and gobs of card shops I imagine lining the city's streets.

Admittedly, trading with me is like throwing paint against a wall -- it'll go all over the place, but some of it'll stick.

If you send me enough cards, you're bound to hit something I like -- I somehow didn't already have that Lenny Randle, and Ryan Langerhans is on the long list of Obscure Guys I Collect.

Weird stuff from the '90s -- not sure why that Silhouettes card freaks me out, but it does.

Question: where can you find an older Bucky Dent, a younger Kevin Millar, a pitcher in catcher's gear, and a giant bison head on a normal human body?

Answer: the minor leagues, of course!

Maybe I'm giving Twitter a bad rap.

Maybe it's not the inferno I usually make it out to be. When you dig beneath the rough surface, you might just find some quality entertainment, and good dialogue between collectors. And some of them are even willing to send you gigantic boxes of baseball cards. A place like that can't be all bad, can it?

I guess not...but show me another guy filling his shopping cart with retail blasters, and I'll probably right back on the verge of deleting my account.