How to Hold a Successful Trade Bait Draft

Are you thinking of holding a trade bait draft of your own? What gets me interested in signing up? Well, I'll tell you!

 Let's start with a nice selection of inserts from 10-15 years ago. I didn't collect from 1998 to 2003, and I still need plenty of cards for my type collection. This nice serial-numbered SPx card of Fred McGriff found an instant home in a box!

 Vintage Topps cards are a big draw. The blogging community seems to be moving in the direction of actual vintage, so any cards from before 1980 are popular. And I'll add any pre-1980 cards to my draft want list as I'm eventually going to build those sets.

 I like seeing more obscure insert cards from recent years. I didn't have any Heritage mini T206 tobacco cards until this Ichiro showed up in the draft. While obscure means harder-to-find, that also means tossing in things like Toys-R-Us/WalMart/Target/retail-only parallels and inserts. And while you might not have a bunch of those, including some inserts from recent non-flagship sets really help my collection as well. In fact, since I'm living in Japan, if I see a good selection of current-year inserts in a draft I know I can benefit from it. Plus, team and player collectors are always looking for more!

 Speaking of player and team collecting, if you have older cards from oddball sets of HOFers and award winners, I'm always looking for the players who never show up on cardboard. Plus, this is 1961 Fleer! Vintage is great, even if it isn't Topps.

 It seems that hits are an important part of drafts, and I welcome them into my collection. I look for autos and relics from sets I don't see often. This Daniel McCutchen autograph from 2010 Opening Day may not be very valuable, but it's also pretty difficult to find on my own. I put this card pretty high on my list. But it seems that I see way too many A&G relics.

 I'm not sure anyone else knew what this was. It's a 2004 Astros All-Star FanFest issue by Topps, and being a true oddball release (despite the Topps logo) I think I ranked this number 3 on my draft order.

If that FanFest card was number three, what were my first two picks?

 Mothers Cookies Vintage! Sure, it's got a crease across the front and it's technically a minor league card, but this hits the type collection trifecta: oddball, vintage, and tough to locate. Living in San Francisco, the general area where these were released, I never saw one. I wasn't looking, but not once did they pop up in a box of random vintage cards. I found plenty of Zeenuts singles in random vintage boxes, but no Mothers Cookies.

 So since there were two years available, I went after both years. And got them!

Last, while most people go after great hits and valuable cards to help their collection, I always try to find something fun for my last pick.

How about a black box Bill Ripken card? Sure, it's basically worthless, and I have a couple already, but I'll figure out something fun to do with this card.

All these cards came from The Diamond King's trade bait draft several months ago. They just arrived from California since I have my mail shipped to me only once every few months. I've been out of trade bait drafts lately, but I hope to jump back in to a few this summer. The price is right and I get some great cards. And if you follow the rules above I'll be a part of your draft too!