2019 trade package #13: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

If you don't follow me on Twitter, you might not be aware that I sent out a round of nine trade packages this morning.  Sometimes I just prefer shipping them out to writing up posts for the ones that have made it to me.  But I do love getting stuff entered into my collection and put away, so there's a bit of motivation for this evening's post.

Friend/buddy/pal/guy of the blog Doug (Sports Cards From the Dollar Store, as if you didn't know since I've put up more than 80 trade posts from him between my two blogs) hit me with excellent envelopes this month and last, so it's about damn time I catch up with his Canadian kindness.  May's mailer included the following:

The stuff I would have featured just on TMV before I decided to halt TMM (e.g. Detroit teams and baseball PCs) has a decidedly Michigan spin to it today.  Former Wolverine Rich Hill--whose college team is headed to Omaha for the first time since '84!--leads off with the only baseball content on the day.  His 2019 Heritage base knocks a need off my list and is the first of this year's cards to join that PC.

Everything else is Red Wings, which is fun since I recently read the somewhat poorly-written but informative and entertaining book about the Russian Five.  None of them are seen here, but Hull and McCarty both won Cups in Detroit:  Hull got his second title in 2001-02, his first in a three-year stint in Hockeytown, and McCarty enjoyed all four of the Wings' recent runs.

Next, Dylan Larkin is a great representative of the new and improved Too Many Verlanders as the Wolverwing fits both the Detroit and Michigan sides of my collection.  I could have included him with his former teammates below but thought he looked good with the rest of the Wings up here.  The pair of 2018-19 UD cards (flagship and Trilogy) bump his total up to 22.  More, please!

Basketball was much more prevalent this time than usual, and that proved to be timely when my alma mater hired Juwan Howard, star of five cards in this scan, as their next basketball coach.  There's lots of excitement around here thanks to the program's resurgence and recent success, and I'm looking forward to what he brings to the program.  My favorites sent by Doug are the two SPx cards, numbered to 10,000 and 3,390.

More basketball.  Rice and Vaught are fun additions here as they were both '89 national champs, and Rose and Webber were Fab Five teammates with Howard, who seems determined to heal the wounds of the 90s scandal and bring everyone back together, which would be amazing for everyone involved.

The basketball section concludes with this awesome trio of hits.  Burke's Court Kings jersey may be my first exposure to the basketball version of Diamond Kings, and it's certainly a positive one as hit #3 of the college star.  Sauce Castillo looks terrific in a Blue parallel of a Fabric of the Game jersey card (hit #7), a name that has a great history in memorabilia cards.  And the showstopper is a stunning 2014-15 Panini Gala Cinematic Signatures auto that pairs THJ's signature with a slide-like inset piece.  This is my first autograph of his and what a card to lead with!  It's rare for me to declare a basketball card the best in the package, but there's no beating this one.  Wow!

The football portion was only slightly larger than the baseball selection today, pairing a couple 90s Pro Set base cards of another current coach, Jim Harbaugh, and five-time Pro Bowl OT Mike Kenn, with my second card of recent Michigan DB Channing Stribling out of Topps' product covering the doomed AAF.  I hope he finds another opportunity after making an impact for the Wolverines.

And now we get to the traditionally copious amount of hockey stuff, most of which was new to me, though I don't recall how much because I entered these on TCDB a while ago.  Cammalleri is somehow the only Hockey Mike in the group but that leaves plenty of variety to enjoy, such as more recent players like Compher and Copp.  Cogliano and Johnson are well-known faces when it comes to Doug's envelopes to me.

A few older guys in Jones, Madden, Norton, and Ortmeyer (the last of whom I got to watch while I was in college) give way to the start of a nice Max Pacioretty run.  The two shiny cards that end this scan, one of which is a Rainbow insert, give way to...

...yet another flashy OPC issue, plus a second showing him with his current club in Las Vegas.  Trouba and Werenski are two more guys I consider "recent" and both of them also appear fairly often when Doug sends me stuff, especially the former.  And I'm always excited to land a new card for my hockey PC-leading collection, Marty Turco, such as this OPC Retro insert from about a decade(!) ago.

The icers also got in on the hit parade with this trio of signatures.  I never miss an opportunity to celebrate the pride of Flower Mound, Texas, Chris Brown.  Doug's gifted me a number of his hits (I currently have 10) and even more of well-traveled D-man Jack Johnson (14), owner of a fantastic signature.  Last up is an older player who doesn't get much love in terms of hits as they weren't a thing for most of his career:  David Roberts.  The back of what became autograph #2 of the winger, a Be a Player card from '96-'97, notes that he graduated from Michigan with a degree in English, so he's obviously got very good judgment.

That's it this time, and what a lot of "it" it was!  Thanks again, Doug, and I look forward to hitting you back fairly soon with a small package with some nice surprises in it--maybe even before I get around to posting the envelope you sent to me this month.