https://onefranktanana.blogspot.com/

I am attempting a project inspired by the 2005-06 One Red Paperclip trade where Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald started with a single red paperclip and eventually through a series of ten trades in the span of a year swapped it for a house.

Starting with one autographed 1993 Topps Frank Tanana card, I want to see how far I can get.

I hold no delusions of my own skills in wheeling and dealing. I'm not expecting to get to Babe Ruth or Roberto Clemente, for example, in a year's span. Frankly, I'll be lucky if I don't end up trading the card for a bag of magic beans tomorrow. But I thought it might be fun to see how far I can get in the span of a year. Maybe I can work my way up to a Hall of Famer.

I am setting rules on this that I am only trading for cards. It will only be one-for-one deals. I'm not traveling to deliver the way he did (we're doing bubble mailer with USPS tracking here, folks). And it will only be in baseball. Maybe if it goes well I'll try it with hockey or football, even basketball or soccer.

I want to start off in the same way MacDonald did: I want to use something that contains almost no value in the autograph hobby in the same way a single red paperclip contains almost no value to the average person.

Now, I'm not saying Tanana has no value: the guy won 240 games and he struck out over 2700 batters in a career that spanned parts of three decades. Three-time All-Star, twice top five in Cy Young voting. Had he not been stuck on some terrible Angels and Rangers teams, he might have had a shot at the Hall of Fame. He's a great TTM signer and from all accounts a genuinely good guy.

But as a player who was good but not great and has been a reliable autograph signer for decades, his autographs are super easy to acquire. SportsCollectors.net lists over 2500 successes dating back to 1999 with five where he signed at least eight cards for the person mailing. You could TTM him tomorrow and have your card back in under a month. Right now, I think I have 16 different cards signed by him. Due to the fact I have two copies of his 1993 Topps card signed, I plan to use that one to start this off.

So, with that being said... Who wants to trade?