TCDB trade: FiresNBeers

Tonight's post is the first in a series of unknown size that will cover around 30 (and still growing!) trades I've made on TCDB over the past few months. A few of the larger deals will probably get their own posts while I'll group smaller ones together so it doesn't take forever to get through these.

First up is FiresNBeers, a.k.a. Brian from Wisconsin. Brian's one of my favorite people on the site and someone I talk to pretty often because we both do some work maintaining it by handling inaccuracy reports (IRs) for missing checklists, wrong images/other info, etc. There's a group of dedicated folks who put in a ton of effort to make sure TCDB is as useful and accurate as it is and Brian is one of those people.

That's one of the reasons I decided to send him a nice trade package of stuff from his wantlists at some point last year, largely to say thanks. A bit later, he was the one to whom I sent a Robin Yount relic I found at a show in return for a Paul Goldschmidt manurelic I sent to Daniel, and he was generous enough to let me pick some stuff from his trade list as well.

The items below comprise everything he sent me, including the cards I picked plus a few surprises:

Not too surprisingly, Brian is a big Brewers fan, and over his years of collecting he's compiled quite a few Milwaukee police team sets. Above are some of the cards I picked out, with some bonuses he added. Basically the photos stay the same for a given year with only the various suburbs' names changing. 

I was interested in scoring cards of two former UM alumni, Jim Paciorek and HOFer Ted Simmons. Jim has just two MLB cards to his name--1987 Fleer and its Glossy version--so oddballs like these help grow my collection of the brother of the more well known Tom. All of his cards here are from 1987.

Simmons, meanwhile, never played baseball for UM but attended school here so he fits the parameters of my collection. Brian had cards of him from each year of 1982-85, 12 cards in total. Pretty cool!

I'll just have to figure out how I want to store these as they're larger than standard trading cards and therefore won't fit will in my 5000-count player collection boxes.

Most of the rest of what you'll see tonight consists of '84 Tigers, other well known former Tigers from during my fandom, and a few other PCs. Here Bergman and Evans represent the wire-to-wire champs of 1984 on pre-Tigers issues. MLBPA prez Clark's late 90s offerings are shiny and cool. Philly/Detroit legend Cochrane won two rings with the A's and one with the Tigers (1935) and was also the manager for the latter (as well as their pennant-winning club the year before). Big Daddy oddballs are always fun. And you can't have too many Grandersons, especially when they have awesome photos like this one.

Henneman joins Fielder as one of the better early 90s Tigers of my youth and one of the best at the closer position. Hernandez was a standout himself in the role in '84, winning the AL Cy and MVP awards, and I scored two pre-Detroit cards of him plus one of '84 OF Herndon. I've been growing my Inge collection a bit since he joined Michigan's coaching staff. And Jackson was sometimes the next best thing to Granderson, so I ended up with four cards (one more below) of him, including a Finest Refractor as the last card of this scan.

Parrish and a sticker of Morris represent the last of the '84 champs here while bookending the rest of the baseball stuff, and the sticker is a good reminder that Jack was a Series hero for another team as well! Simmons gets two more oddball appearances and I have to say that the 1992 Carlson Travel '82 World Series card really pops. The Brew Crew didn't take home the win that year but you can't exactly blame Simba who put up 2 HR and 3 RBI in the loss to the Cards. Cobb, seen here in miniature form, never won a ring himself despite three trips to the Fall Classic, losing to the Cubs twice (1907 and '08) and Pirates ('09).

Brian also had a good selection of football to choose from so I grabbed 10 cards of 10 different players, starting with the three above: WR Derrick Alexander, RB Tim Biakabutuka, and OL John "Jumbo" Elliott.

And here's the rest of the football stuff: QB Elvis Grbac, LB David Harris, WR/KR Desmond Howard, DL Maurice Hurst, OT Jon Runyan (senior!), RB Derrick Walker, and TE Jerame Tuman.

I owe a big thanks to Brian for all this great stuff, not to mention all the times he's made my life easier on TCDB, and I'll be trying to score some new stuff for him at future shows. If you're on the site and haven't traded with him, he comes highly recommended from me so go send him a proposal!