2018 trade package #15: Baseball Card Breakdown

Buddy of the blog and custom king Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown was nice enough to send me my final trade package in June, and I'm happy to be showing it off kinda sorta reasonably soon after I received it!  This time the word "oddball" comes to mind--because of some of what Gavin sent, not because he's a weirdo.  I dunno, he seems pretty normal to me *goes back to staring at Gavin's animated .gifs for hours*

Here's what he sent this time:

Former Tigers prospects in Refractor (or thereabouts) form.  Boesch (2010 Topps Chrome) had some success in Detroit earlier in the decade before washing out.  Dirks (2011 Bowman Chrome Draft) was another potential slugger from around the same time that didn't work out in the end.  Kivett (2014 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks Prizms Powder Blue, #d /199) is a guy I had to look up because he only appeared in a few 2014 Panini brands.  He was a 2014 6th-rounder in the OF who appears to be in indy ball right now.  And Ramirez (2010 Bowman Chrome Prospects, #d /500) is another OF who barely played in the league.  So I guess the theme here is that Detroit sucks at drafting outfielders.  But at least these cards are shiny!

Thumbs up to Gavin for hitting one of my Michigan PCs, Clayton Richard, with a 2013 Gypsy Queen Mini.  His 2012 win total was anything but mini--in fact it was "many":  14, tied for his career high!

Now let's take a look at a couple more examples of Gavin's amazing customs:

This Barry Larkin looks like it came straight from '71 Topps, a set produced when the '95 NL MVP was just seven years old.  He chose an excellent shot of Barry catching some air-y while doubling up Eli Marrero, and that's levitation, holmes!  Like a true collector he paid the same amount of attention to the back with a great write-up and stats from Larkin's sunset season.

As if that weren't enough, Gavin went back and consolidated three cards into one much-improved version.  1978 Topps RCs of Paul Molitor/Alan Trammell and Lou Whitaker (with a non-existent Ozzie Smith from that year) get mashed up into one super card that would be the greatest collection of talent on a first-year if it existed.  Here's the original versions:

Gavin left Tram and Whitaker more or less intact but added Smith and a new (and better) photo of Molitor.  And yeah, he absolutely killed it.  Gavin, I may have to commission a custom from you sometime of the '78 Topps Tigers quartet of the two guys you used here plus Jack Morris and Lance Parrish.  That would be an insane item to get signed!  Anyway, thanks as always for thinking of me when sending these out, I love getting them.

Back to more standard stuff for a minute, in this case three many Verlanders!  The trio of 2017s starts with a Diamond Kings insert called Aurora, a canvas-y card with lots of color.  That's joined by another insert straight from Gavin's playbook, a Topps Chrome X-Fractor.  Last up is the thickest of the bunch, a Triple Threads Gold parallel (#42/99), the best (non-custom) card in the package.  These are all new to me and look great.

And now we'll finish on an oddball note.  I had plenty of trouble identifying the Larkin so for now I'm labeling it as a 1990 MLBPA Baseball Button.  My research seems to indicate those are much smaller so I may be off by a bit.  If anyone can correct me please let me know!

Those are joined by a Tigers pin of unknown origin, though I love that it features the old logo.  More familiar, though, are 1984 Fun Foods Pins of Kirk Gibson, Lance Parrish, and Trammell.  That's a damn fine group of '84 champs right there!

Gavin, thanks once again for this unexpected bounty of the familiar and the oddball.  Please keep on cranking out those high quality customs!  By the way, you should hopefully have a PWE on the way to your side of the country and in your mailbox soon.

For those of you wanting to see a bit more of my collection please head over to this evening's TMM post where I'm celebrating a huge milestone for my Michigan collections.