Oakland Raiders: A Thin Line Between Love and Hate

While the title comes from a movie, it fits life for me, to a T.

You see, while growing up in South Dakota, I've learned to not only live with Bronco fans....but love how they tend to pull Raiders cards.

Case in point, is the law of odds. If you bought a pack of cards in the late 80s, you got usually 15 cards, and a piece of gum that would kill your teeth.

Now, you could buy a whole box, and then try to complete the set, but there always seemed to be a half dozen or so that you'd miss.

That's where trading would come in handy. You would pack up the 60-70 doubles into a box, and then go approach a local dealer, or, another group of friends, and settle down to the art of the deal.

Mind you, this was before the days when 8-year-olds would whip out a Beckett, and say, let's see how much these are worth. Heck, back then, Beckett didn't even exist for football.

Well, word got out quickly, that I was looking for Raiders cards. Obviously, word would preceed, that I didn't need any from the 1987 set, so I started finding out other collectors had a lot of older issues. Some, it was amazing for me, were going back 10-12 years....some, older than I was.

As these trades would go on, and the market started to flood with oddball stuff, like parallel issues, numbered items, and now, Jersey and autographed issues, some of the same rules still applied.

Some people, will be looking for only certain players. My major trading group, consists of Colts Man (properly named); Percy, who would collect anything from the Tigers or Rams; Bronco Man, for obvious reasons; and Packer Girl.

Pretty simply, it made working with your doubled items that much more simpler.

One particular case, that arose from this situation, was known as the Terrell Helmet Trade.

In a number of different trades I'd made recently, I picked up a nice mini helmet with an autograph of one Terrell Davis Auto, picked up at an Arrowhead Chiefs game, a number of years ago. Why would a Raider Fan pick up such a helmet?

Collateral, it would seem.

Within a week, the rumor mill spit out that Bronco Man had gotten his hands on a box of Playoff, and within, was a mini helmet of Otis Sistrunk. Now, to a majority of fans, they would say, all together now, Who?

But to a Raider fan, this was one of the geniuses, in the middle lands of Raider fame. He was a three-position player, played only seven years, but also was in the Super Bowl.

So, within a month, the two helmets switched places.

And, for all purposes, I'd bet both helmets won't leave their owners until they die.

But that is the way, that you learn to operate the trading markets. You may not like their teams....but you can find some good gold out of those deals when you swap like an 8-year-old kid.

And no, I'm not interested in trading my Jim Otto Rookie Card either.