2025 trade package #3: Nachos Grande

Not too long after I received that PWE from Chris, "The Collector," that I just wrote about, I was treated to an envelope from another Chris that's east of me: Mr. Reed of Nachos Grande. I've known him as a great blogger and quality trade partner for years now and was happy to include him in my most recent Christmas Card mailings, helping him complete his run of Reds Topps Lineage relics.

He was nice enough to return the favor the following month with a package that screamed "Nachos Grande" to me as it was chock full of items I associate with his collecting habits:

That foil Cobb actually hails from the same 2011 Topps Lineage product I just mentioned and it's one of several parallels you could find in the set, not to mention a card I didn't previously have on hand.

Then we get into the Ginter stuff, which is definitely a Nachos Grande staple. I had all of the ones you see here on my TCDb wantlist including 2020 base of Cobb, Fielder, Gwynn, and Tram, a 2020 Mini of Mr. Tiger Al Kaline, and a 2011 of former blog namesake Curtis Granderson. As it turns out, Fielder and Tram are both SPs in the 2020 product so it was extra nice of Chris to include them. They give me four former Tigers that were short-printed, along with Jack Morris and Sparky Anderson. I could also add Magglio Ordonez and Jim Bunning to my wants but haven't decided to do that yet.

And as if those weren't enough, Chris also helped me out with a dupe of a guy we both PC, Barry Larkin. I appreciate any extras he can send my way since he's managed to write up individual posts for more Larkins than I currently even own! #980 in my collection is the '21 Donruss Red and White Stripes parallel you see above, #d 1801/2021. That marks my fifth parallel of his Retro '87 base appearance along with the base card itself in what would likely be a years long search for the product's rainbow. While I miss the MLB logos I do like the design, including the throwback to the 1987 set.

Chris, thanks again for thinking of me and sending these great new additions my way. I'll keep working on trying to find some new Larkins for you to try to get more of your doubles into my collection.

And once again I'll be back soon as I have three more blogger trades from January to cover, not to mention a huge one from February, and three monthly shows to recap. Until then, enjoy some Spring Training ball as we head into warmer weather and a new season!

A Memorial for Oscar Martinez

Hi friends,

Because this is a time sensitive thing I wanted to get it posted before moving on to my next trade package.

This past weekend I received the following sent to me by a family member or friend of Oscar Martinez:

As many of you know, Oscar was many things including a card collector, and he sadly passed away unexpectedly in early January. I eulogized him here.

While I'm not sure who the sender of this notice was, I really appreciate that they took the time and effort to get it to my mailbox. I'm glad to know that he'll be getting a nice sendoff in a couple weeks, and naturally multiple things on this flyer made me smile. There's a great picture of a smiling Oscar, of course, but I love the references to his love of poker, the Rolling Stones, the Dodgers, and music and sports in general. Whoever arranged this memorial clearly knew the man well because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is exactly what he'd want.

Although I won't be heading out to California for this, I hope any of you in the area that are now aware of it happening can make it. As for me, while I don't think I have any way of contacting his family and friends relatively quickly, I may mail them a note asking if there are any causes folks like us can donate to in his name since that seems like it would be a nice gesture.

Once again, here's to Oscar, and may he rest in peace in an eternal Dodger blue and white sky.

2025 trade package #2: the Collector

Today's the first day of March and it sees me returning with another trade envelope from January, the second I received this year.

I was very happy to see a PWE from longtime blog friend Chris ("The Collector") who'd largely gone MIA since shutting down his blog. The cards themselves were nice but in general I was a bit relieved that he was still around. I won't share his brief note or my speculation on what's happening in his world and just say that I'm grateful for the cards and wish him and his family the best.

Here's the contents:

The lone baseball item as Spring Training is kicking into full gear was this '24 A&G Gold Border Mini of former/current Tigers P Jack Flaherty. He was, of course, sent to the Dodgers to help them bring him another ring, and in the time between when Chris mailed this PWE and today when I'm writing this post, Flaherty returned to the team that helped him rebuild some value last year. Given some of the potential question marks in terms of the starters it's nice to have a proven guy like him to go with Tarik Skubal and some of the other young arms.

At the time he sent this both of these sports more associated with winter were still in action, and of course one of them will still be active for a couple months to come. On the football side of things, Brady and Woodson are two of the greatest players to come out of Michigan, not to mention play their positions in the NFL. Since Brady left New England for Tampa it's actually a bit funny to see older cards of him with the Pats. I'd say his record and that of Bill Belichick post-split pretty much tell the story of which of the two was more responsible for their remarkably dynasty.

Last up is hockey, which is still in full swing in terms of both the NHL and NCAA. The Red Wings have bounced back in a big way since firing a very ineffective head coach, and they're actually participating in an outdoor game in Ohio as I write this. A crazy eight former Wolverine icers can be found on the two rosters and six of them should be on the ice tonight. I don't think any of the Wings represented on these cards are still with the franchise, but Michigan alum Kyle Connor is still putting up huge points numbers with the Jets, and he may even crack 40 goals for the second time in his productive career.

Once again, thank you for the envelope and cards, Chris, and for indirectly letting me know that you're hanging in there. Again, I wish you and your family nothing but the best and want to remind you that you have lots of friends in the hobby if you ever need support.

Back soon with another January trade recap!

2025 trade package #1: Baseball Cards Come to Life

When it came to the first blogger trade cards I received in 2025, it was a case of last in, first out. Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life was the sender of the last envelopes I received late in December and then the first that hit my mailbox this past January. As it turns out, there was a reason for this: the January envelope should have been delivered with the earlier ones, but it decided to go off on its own adventure.

That didn't bother me, though, since I still ended up with some very cool cards that pretty much held up the same themes as the post-Christmas ones: vintage, oddball, and Tigers. Oh, and also, Bo identified everything as a want from my TCDb lists. I highly, highly recommend getting yourself organized there for many reasons including this one.

Here's the contents:

"Big Daddy"'s last Studio card as a Tiger was in the fantastic '96 set with one of my favorite designs. Fryman was gone from Detroit before appearing on the Absolute card you see, but those look terrific and I collect him in any uniform anyway.

The run of vintage Lolich cards was especially nice for me as it brought four news from '73, '76 (x2) and '76 Traded. By the way, Lolich has since been surpassed in strikeouts by a lefty by Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, CC Sabathia, and Clayton Kershaw. Also, he was flipped to the Mets in December of '75 in a deal that brought "Le Grand Orange" Rusty Staub to Motown.

Speaking of outstanding pitchers, Bo filled a couple Maddux needs with his '93 Fleer Final Edition and '94 Fleer Sunoco cards. And Mad Dog's fellow 80s/90s HOFer Jack Morris came along for the ride with Fleer boxed set issues from 1988: Exciting Stars and Record Setters (first card of next scan). I love that there are still so many of those 80s oddballs for me to chase that include my many PCs.

Gwynn and Griffey didn't make the trip this time but Junior Ripken sure did thanks to cards from '91 Classic and a '94 Donruss checklist. I can't remember for sure but I may have had one of the Classic games/trivia sets that included those cards at one point.

A couple other MLB HOFers close out the baseball content. The first is a '76 Topps NL batting leaders card that includes PC guy Ted Simmons in the #2 spot with #s 1 and 3 held by Bill Madlock and Manny Sanguillen. 1975 was the first of four seasons Madlock won the batting title, and his .354 clip beat an also excellent .332 that was a career best for Simba. Meanwhile, Tram joined HOF teammate Morris from the '88 Fleer Exciting Stars set after an insane '87 season in which he was jobbed out of the AL MVP by enough voters that preferred George Bell.

Former Wolverine Jim Smith is all by himself in terms of the football content this time, though combined with the other envelopes Bo sent he would have been one of four. The '79 Topps card you see above of the WR who played six seasons with the Steelers was essentially last regular issue I needed for his collection which is now short just some oddball-ish stuff. Very cool of Bo to find that and send it my way.

Bo, thanks again for the slightly delayed additional Christmas cards! You know I'll be keeping an eye out for cool stuff for you at upcoming shows, especially any help I can give you for your vintage set builds.

I'll be back with more January trades soon, but in the meantime, it's nice to be done with 2024 and finally covering 2025 pickups!

2024 COMC purchases: Nine from November

With the finish line now in sight I'm even more motivated to get this post done and call 2024 a wrap! Here's a look at the cards I bought for myself during COMC's Black Friday sale:

First up is hit #1 of another UM WR to wear #8 (besides another guy in this post), Ronnie Bell. The receiver/returner outplayed his practically anonymous recruiting rankings and was a key contributor as the Wolverines marched back to respectability under Jim Harbaugh. The Bowman's Best University card pictures him with the Wolverines (instead of the 49ers who'd eventually draft and then release him) and that's a great start for his hits collection! Sure, it's a sticker auto and he signed with his initials, but at least he added an inscription with his jersey number.

The day's other "first" is my second hit but first signature of LB Devin Bush II, a three-year Wolverine who did some nice work in 2017 and 2018 in Ann Arbor. The Steelers took him in the first round in 2019 and he's since bounced to Seattle and Cleveland, but was good enough to appear in an autograph insert (#d /299) in 2020 Panini Legacy.

In spot #3 is the other WR #8, the sure-handed Jason Avant, who was able to rescue the planted Michigan flag in Columbus this past season after Buckeye Jack Sawyer threw his hissy fit once his OSU team lost to Michigan again. Avant never won a Super Bowl with the Eagles but did have a solid 10-year career mostly spent with them, and I was thrilled to add another Triple Threads jersey/auto of his from his 2006 rookie year. The one you see above is the Sepia version /75 and is hit #66 of #8.

Next, RB Chris Evans appears to be out of the league at this point, but that wasn't going to stop me from picking up a third Michigan uni autograph of his. I may have passed on other brands but usually tend to like the simplicity of Score's rookie autos, so I had no problem ponying up a couple bucks for this one.

Sure, we've already had Devin, but what about second Devin? I paid less than $6.50 total for the cool pair starring former Panthers WR Funchess and I think that was a steal. The card on the left is a 2015 Panini Black Gold Sizeable Signatures Rookie Jerseys prime version, and I'm thinking you'll agree that it lives up to its "sizeable" and "prime" descriptors with ease. The other is a 2015 Panini National Convention VIP manupatch auto, which isn't the kind of thing I'd pay a premium for, but I do like seeing athletes sign things other than stickers. Funch moves up to 34 hits thanks to the pair.

I'll move down one spot horizontally to discuss the next card, a Jake Long 2008 Topps Triple Threads Sepia parallel. This one came with three really nice multi-color Dolphins swatches to go along with his signature (and numbering /75, like the Avant above). It's a great looking card to add to a collection that now stands at a very nice 98 hits, though he remains in third place behind our next two players.

Forever #1 guy Chad Henne continues to outpace the rest by a mile with his 146th hit, which happens to be one of the higher-end items in his collection. The 12th 1/1 I've landed for him, the card you see above is his 2008 Finest Yellow Plate (the non-auto version). It set me back a reasonable $14 which I don't mind paying for a top PC guy like Henne, whose hit collection isn't too far off of that from all-sports leader Rich Hill. As always, I'm a fan of when manufacturers do the border thing with their plates to make it obvious which color you have, especially in this case where the back is otherwise normal.

And last but not least is former blog namesake guy Mario Manningham. The 2008 Leaf Certified Materials auto you see above (#d /100) is everything I love about 2000s-era cards of some of my favorites, but it may be the most significant from this post for an entirely different reason: it puts Super Mario at exactly 100 hits, making him just the second player behind Henne in the football collection (and third overall including Rich Hill) to reach that mark! It actually wasn't 100% intentional as I would have been happy for Jake Long (again, 98) or Braylon Edwards (95) to make it first, but I only found one of the former I liked and none of the latter this time. So it looks like I get to celebrate Too Many Manninghams as my 2024 year of collecting comes to a close! (The football hits collection also surpassed the 1700-mark before the calendar turned, basketball went over 150, and hockey moved up to 350, with baseball very close to 450.)

Once again, thanks to everyone for making 2024 a great year of trading, blogging, reading, comments, shows, and more! I'm looking forward to treating you to recaps of the cards I've picked up since 2025 started including (at this point) seven blogger-related trade packages, two shows, and four TCDb deals. Look for a post covering the first blogger trade of January soon!

2024 Facebook Marketplace purchases: a few Facebook finds

As I near the end of my 2024 pickups so I can move on to this year's stuff, here's a quick look at my last three Facebook Marketplace purchases from last year. It's been long enough that I think a few of the items got mixed in with each other, but those details aren't as important as just showing off the goods.

So in mid-August I made two stops in one day, which was pretty cool. Trip #1 was to a garage sale that was thankfully largely inside a garage on a day when it decided to be pretty rainy! I saw an intriguing bunch of sports stuff for sale and made my way over. Here's most of what I picked up for an even $40:

I'm not sure if this matted 12x16 piece was a stadium giveaway or from something else but I thought it looked extremely cool. The top photo includes lots of team greats, all of whom are among my favorites in the history of the franchise, plus it notes the Tigers' four World Series titles to-date. The bottom is made to look like an envelope with a cancelled Tigers stamp, and it celebrates Miggy's 2012/13 consecutive MVP wins. I'll get this framed and put up at some point.

This stained glass piece doesn't specifically say it's Tigers-related but that's the feeling it gives me anyway. It was just $0.50 and I ended up sending it to Paul.

Y'all know I trade with at least one Blue Jays fan so I spent $3 on this baggie full of Toronto postcards. I still have a ton left with larger quantities of Juan Guzman and Pat Hentgen, slightly fewer of Ed Sprague and Devon White, and a smaller stack of Al Leiters. If anyone would like one or more of these please let me know and I'll see what I can do

Here's the first of a few boxes of cards. There was easily more than $2 worth of '24 Heritage in this box and I've already put some of them to use in trades. I kept a couple for myself and still have over 100 of them available to help anyone who can use them (but no SPs).

This was a fun box to flip through since I love Sportflics! I don't think there were any I needed in the box, but for $3 I got some cards from the first four years of that product to include in trade packages.

This $2 box of '94 Stadium Club ended up being a bit of a bust since the vast majority were in bad condition (foil issues), which is a shame since there was a good number of the Golden Rainbow parallels to be found. I may separate the few good ones out but otherwise don't mind taking the loss of $2.

Once again I'd argue that I got more than $7 worth here. There were plenty of dupes but since these were new enough at the time I threw them up on TCDb where they remain available, and I'm sure I've used some in deals already. If you can use some non-SP base help, I have almost 400 total cards up for grabs.

And last but not least, the lone single I grabbed was this cool 2022 Absolute dual jersey of Mize and Skubal numbered /99. I think the cost was a bit more than $10 but I didn't hate the overpay, even for a relic, because I'm enjoying getting nicer stuff of Skubal, plus the swatches aren't your usual plain white napkins.

With that sale in my rear-view mirror I once again headed in the direction of Brighton to buy a four-row box of cards from the same guy that sold me this shoebox back in April. I talked him down to $60 for the box and happily flipped through it once I got home.

It's entirely possible that there were some keepers in here for me that mixed in with the images for the last purchase below, but either way, once again I easily got my money's worth in entertainment and trade bait. These were pretty much all baseball and football--my bread & butter--and were mainly from the past few years, filling in some holes in my trade bait.

I don't have anything specific to show off at this point but anything I didn't keep for myself or send out in a trade package likely ended up on my TCDb tradelist.

Finally, early in September I noted a guy selling some cards that lives not too far from my mom's place, and for the initial asking price he was offering a bunch of prospect autographs (generally busts from the 90s-2010s), so we made a plan to meet up at his house to look things over.

He ended up being very fair to work with and in the end I bought home this stuff for $120:

Quite a few of these cards were either autographs (as mentioned) or bulk RCs, though like I said, many were scrubs at this point. But for the cost of one or two of my show trips I got a lot of value!

Here's how things shook out in terms of baseball. The first row and a half are prospects, especially 2000s Bowman/Chrome and Topps Traded, plus Bowman Sterling and others. The rest of row 2 plus row 3 are generally other base, some in decently sized groups. Row 4 I believe is all inserts, with a big, big portion being Bowman Gold parallels, but there were some other fun ones as well. And everything in the last row is an autograph or jersey, with more of the former than the latter.

A chunk of these went out in trade packages and I think I traded a few on TCDb as well, but I still have a good amount on that site's tradelist. I'd say the most "significant" card I pulled was this one:

It's been a while since Castillo could be considered a prospect, but an autograph #d /5 isn't something you pull out of a bulk box every day!

Here's a look at the football stuff (with a stray hockey card or two):

These are broken down in rows as following: base RCs, 90s base (mostly Stadium Club and Zenith from 1997, I think), inserts (lots of parallels!), and hits. The group of autos was smaller but still quite useful to me.

And here are the singles I ended up keeping for myself, again with the caveat that I might have mixed in pickups from purchase number 2 above:

Lots of shininess and big names! I especially love the 90s stuff like the Press Proof of Fielder and the Griffeys.

More shiny, numbered, and big PC guys. The Refractor theme was strong in this box and I loved it.

A few more baseball including Two Many Verlanders and a HOF battery of horizontals.

1997 Zenith treated me very well in terms of needed Wolverines but I was surprised by how many nice Brady cards were available too.

Both '97 Zenith and Stadium Club look fantastic, and that A-Train insert (#d /1000 on the back) was the cherry on top.

Obviously Facebook can be very hit or miss when it comes to card deals (or anything else, really), but that makes me appreciate these successes even more. I'll be back at it this year seeing what I can score on the site in between shows, eBay purchases, and blogger & TCDb trades.

But before I get to the new year's collecting, I need to recap my 2024 COMC Black Friday pickups. Stay tuned for those!

2024 eBay purchases: Six more from 24

I'm still slowly plugging away at the piles of 2024 stuff left to cover and after this post should have something like two to go (I think).

This one shouldn't take me too long to recap as it features just six cards, though they're all eBay purchases from last June through December and are pretty decently significant. I'll try not to get too wordy!

Win #1 was the most costly and I nabbed it back in early June:

My second certified auto of Sweet Lou hails from 2019 Donruss Optic and is the Red parallel that's limited to a scant seven copies! This one uses an action photo of Whitaker about to make some good contact, and while it lacks any MLB logos I do like the shot. It's also a fun throwback to the 1985 design used the year after Detroit last won it all, so that's a nice bonus.

Lou doesn't appear in a ton of autograph sets and of course this particular card is fairly rare, so I didn't mind spending a bit under $60 to get it. My favorite in my collection is still his 2001 Topps Archives rookie reprint auto, but I'm thrilled to add a second like this one to it. I also picked up a JSA-certified 1983 Fleer auto (apparently from 2011 Leaf Ink) a while ago to give me sort of a third signature.

This one is definitely sweet!

A few weeks later I scored another pricey high-end signature card, and if I recall correctly, Greg was the one that let me know it was available, so if that was the case, thank you to him for the assist.

Bill Freehan's autographs have naturally gone up in price a bit due to his passing a few years ago, although I would say not egregiously so. In any case, I wasn't shocked that this dual signature card of him and fellow Wolverine/Tiger Rick Leach wasn't super cheap since I'm assuming TK Legacy, one of my favorite products as the manufacturer focuses on individual colleges, was likely distributed regionally. I don't recall if I saw this one up for sale before, or at least at a price I could handle, but at this point in my life, a bit under $50 was money I was willing to spend.

Naturally I love it because Freehan's one of my Michigan favorites--he went on to play for the Tigers and is a franchise great there too--and Leach is also a pretty significant Wolverine. But the focus on the college careers of both players is especially cool, as is their link which the back goes into. What it also doesn't mention is that both also played football for the Wolverines. Leach's gridiron career is more notable than Freehan's since he was a touted QB, but Bill was a notable two-sport athlete as well.

Not only is this my 14th signature of Freehan, but as a bonus it's also my first certified signature of Leach, who joins the baseball hits collection as member #40!

Roughly a month later I threw in a low max bid on a basketball card and was surprised to win it:

You all know I love my cheap plates so I was glad to win this one of former Wolverine Nik Stauskas for a mere $6.50 ($4.25 bid plus $2.25 in tax and shipping). "Sauce Castillo"'s RCs were released in 2014-15 so this cyan plate was used to create his rookie in that year's National Treasures product. I believe these plates were actually inserted into a subsequent product like a later National Treasures offering, but we still have them listed under 2014-15 NT on TCDb so I'll leave it categorized as such for now.

Believe it or not this is my SIXTH plate of Stauskas, which isn't something that happened intentionally, and it's hilarious to me that half of my hits of his are of the 1/1 variety while I only just recently picked up an autograph.

At the end of August I continued the printing plate theme with a return to baseball:

As usual here's my disclaimer that the subject of this card is pitcher Matt Miller who was drafted by the Brewers, not the Rockies/Indians P from Mississippi or the Texas Tech lefty who appeared in a few games in the early 2000s for the Tigers. The one I collect was born in South Carolina, went to high school in Indiana, and of course played for Michigan.

It looks like this Miller was only in organized ball between 2010, his draft season, and 2014, all while in the Brewers org. He pitched parts of the 2011 and 2012 seasons with the pictured Wisconsin Timber Rattlers (who doesn't love minor league team nicknames?) and appeared on 31 total cards catalogued on TCDb, with a mix of minor league issues joining regular issues from 2010 Elite Extra and 2011 Topps Heritage Minors and Pro Debut. Oddly enough I now own the yellow plates from both of the latter, and my only needs include his for minor league issues plus the remaining seven 1/1s from the Topps products. As rare as it is to find cards of his I need, $10.60 wasn't an unreasonable price for this.

Once again just a couple weeks later I added one more plate to my collection courtesy of eBay:

I think I may have mentioned my proclivity for collecting Rich Hill around here before! Now I can make the crazy claim that I own more 1/1s of Dick Mountain than I do combined hits of any one other player in my baseball collection (Zach Putnam has 35 to his name)!

This is my first of his from the 2020 flagship set to go along with the same year's Chrome Update and an On-Demand Mini Silver 1/1 parallel. The lefty dwarfs all others in that collection with 152 hits, literally representing more than 1/3 of the 447-card total. It's a mountain of Hills! (That definitely sounds better in my head than a mountain of Dicks.) Sometimes it's not easy staying at the top and I definitely had to fight off a few other bids to land this one for a bit more than $16.

My final personal eBay purchase wouldn't be until early December, and the subject of the card (at least one of them) remained the same:

The "Chirography" name had been around for almost a decade as part of Upper Deck's SP Authentic product when this dual signature starring Hill and fellow lefty pitching prospect Sean Marshall was made in 2006. I believe I own nearly 100 cards that include Rich's autograph so you could say I've studied his handwriting quite a bit in my hobby career.

Out of that grouping, I have a few signature cards he shares with others but this is my first that includes his former teammate Marshall, who was drafted a year later than Hill in 2003. He lasted nine years in the Majors, pitching six in Chicago and three more with the Reds, mostly as a bullpen guy from mid-career on. Marshall's now 42 and has been out of the game since 2014 while Hill has a chance at 45 (in March) to pitch in his 21st season. Crazy! I hope he gets a shot at more than the four games he pitched for Boston last season and gets to go out on his terms when he's ready.

Once again, hooray for more cards that I can put away! I think my last two '24 posts should be a few more Facebook Marketplace buys and then my late-year COMC haul. Then I'll be glad to get reporting on 2025 trades, shows and more.