2024 trade package #14: Cards Over Coffee

As it turns out I have just one trade package from July to post, making catching up a bit easier (though I do have quite a few from August and September). Tonight you get to see the latest PWE sent to me by Matt of multiple blogs but most recently Cards Over Coffee.

Matt treats me to these envelopes a few times a year and I can always count on some cool Tigers and Wolverines (if not stuff that hits other PCs). That was most definitely the case here:

It was sad to see Miggy hang up his cleats after last season, but there's no doubt that having a roster spot plus the DH position open for guys like Riley Greene and Kerry Carpenter aided in Detroit's stunning second-half turnaround this season. Honestly, it felt more like 1987 than '88, the year the design of those Topps inserts honors.

Manning, meanwhile, had a 2024 season he'd surely like to forget, going 0-1 in just five starts while not faring much better at AAA Toledo. He's only a few years removed from being a top 50 prospect but time may be running out for him to claim a spot in the rotation.

Lastly, Tork also didn't exactly have a season to remember like his 31 HR 2023 campaign, but considering how poorly he started, leading to his own demotion, the fact that he crawled his way back is a positive sign. He still needs to show a lot more in 2025 to earn a role on what appears to be an up-and-coming team, but for now he'll continue to appear on shiny inserts (like Refractors!) while proudly wearing the olde English "D."

If the timing of this post--a couple days after the Tigers were bounced from the playoffs--seems a bit inauspicious, it's nothing compared to the stunning turn of events for the player and team featured on the first few cards here. Aidan Hutchinson was such a massive piece on a defense trying to claw its way from embarrassment to competency, and his gruesome broken leg halts what looked to be a historic season for player and team. Here's hoping he comes back stronger than ever for the '25-'26 season, and in the meantime I hope the Lions don't miss his intimidating presence too much.

Matt obviously decided that one Wolverine great wasn't enough, so he added four nice looking cards of GOAT DB Charles Woodson. I really like that both of his franchises are represented here: the Raiders, with whom he began and finished his career, plus the team that allowed him to add a Super Bowl to his NCAA title trophy and other college/pro accomplishments: the Packers. If the nine-time Pro-Bowler didn't deserve first ballot admission to Canton, who else would? He's indeed a living legend and it's great to see him back in the Big House when doing his job for Fox.

Matt, thanks as always for another great PWE! I've got a pretty nice stack going for you and just need to decide when to pull the trigger on sending it your way. I can promise you at least one card that's seasonally appropriate given the rapidly declining temperature here in the northern part of the country.

I should be back soon with what I expect will be a recap of July's show, so stay tuned for that while watching what's rapidly become an MLB postseason featuring uninteresting/unlikable teams. Who the hell am I supposed to root for now?!

2024 Facebook Marketplace purchase: garage SOLD!

My card room is a mess and I also dragged my feet putting together this post because I kept looking at both, thinking of the amount of work that needed to be done, and went off and did something else. Did I chip away at each a bit at a time to make things easier on myself? HA! Nope, but I finally lowered my standards enough to snap some bad pictures (no scans here!) so I can finally cover my last June pickup (here in early October).

So briefly, a family posted a garage sale in a city not far from me on Facebook, and the amount of card stuff piqued my interest. I couldn't make it out there the first day but the following day I got there mid- or late-morning. The husband saw me eyeballing the card stuff (fortunately a good amount of what I saw in the photos was still there), and told me he'd be happy to take $100 for everything left. I don't think I even pretended to think it over before I said "Yep, let's do it."

The guy helped me fill up my car, and let me tell you, it was a HAUL. As usual I had a blast sorting through everything, and most anything of interest to some of my most common trading buddies has been mailed out. But in this post I'll show you some of my keepers and also leftover stuff to give you a small taste of what I took home here. I'll be leaving a lot out because it was that or pretty much never get to this, and it was holding up the rest of my posting. So here we go.

First, my keepers:

A bit of baseball.

A basketball trio. Campy!

A football foursome.

Lots of Wings, especially the Russian Five.

There was a box of cut up vintage baseball stuff for $10, which I was going to grab regardless of whether or not I took everything home. I'm not counting any of these in my collection because they're so incomplete, but I'm extremely happy to have playing days cards of the likes of Carlton, Clemente, Koufax, and others.

A couple large HOFers I happen to collect.

There were a bunch of factory sets in the lot, and here's two I kept for myself: 1990 Sportflics and 1992 Donruss. That's my first Sportflics complete set, though I do own Pinnacle's 1996 Sportflix (not to be confused with these). The '92 Donruss box has the shrink-wrap removed but the cards themselves are still in their bricks.

See? Also, the Sportflics cards include a bunch of trivia holograms.

Here's some other sets I kept. The discs are particularly fun 80s oddballs, and in one or two cases I believe I own full sets represented here that I'm upgrading to boxed form.

Have you ever seen all 20 Topps Screenplays from 1997? Now you have! This was one of the main draws for me and I was thrilled they were still available.

All of them include the tin, informational disc, packing foam, and cards, and some of the cards (like the Gwynn above) still have the protective peel on them. I may give these their own post in the future, and either way I'll probably peel all of them to enjoy them that way.

Here's a couple near sets. The '92 US Playing Card Co. Tigers Playing Cards set is missing only PC guy Mickey Tettleton (King of Hearts) and Scott Livingstone (3 of Spades). The '21 Topps 1952 Redux set came with a near set of '21 Topps Series 1 that you'll see below, and it was short just Dylan Carlson's card (#T52-33), which I'll likely procure in the near future, and then I'll probably keep the set.

There were a couple tubs of magazines and similar items and these were my keepers. The Legends Sports Memorabilia issues were extremely cool since they included sheets of cards and postcards you could collect. I tore a bunch of them up trying to get those items out safely and then cut them by hand, relatively poorly (as those of you who received some of these from me already know--sorry!). More on those shortly. You'll see more examples of the magazines below, but besides those, sticker books, and Becketts, there were some Topps magazines and I pulled cards (individual and panels) from those as well.

Here's a look inside the two Topps sticker books and the two Legends Sports mags from above.

These are the Legends Sports and Topps magazine sheets I'm keeping intact.

Here are the postcard sheets and individual postcards I opted to hold onto.

I also scored a fun mix of individual (if poorly cut) cards of some of my favorites.

This Cal Ripken Jr. streak newspaper, nicely preserved, was a fun find! Meanwhile the mini pennant is one of a bunch also found in the lot, and some of you were lucky enough to get one of one or more of you favorite teams.

As for stuff I'm less likely to keep and more likely to trade or get rid of somehow:

More factory sets! I left the price stickers on some of these for some reason. The four Topps sets on the left are all pretty much unopened (slightly torn shrink-wrap in some cases), and are from 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1992. I may decide to keep the factory sets I don't have (all but '91) and ditch the hand-collated sets I have, we'll see.

Meanwhile, the 2006 set was opened but it did include the bonus pack of five rookie inserts (the first five in the set, so nobody good). 2008 didn't include any bonuses and a note indicated it was missing Paul Konerko's base card for some reason, which I've since acquired. Lastly, '21 Topps Series 1 was missing a total of four cards; I had two from previous pickups and landed the other two in a recent trade. That's the box that came with the '52 Redux insert set missing a single card. Yeah, I'd pay $3 for that!

Here's the rest of the low-condition vintage stuff, which, as I mentioned, was all of $10 if I bought it by itself. I gave a few of these out but may be willing to donate more depending on interest.

There were a few of this Topps Mini set, and I kept one for myself and included a few in trade packages, but I still have four left.

A box that said "vintage basketball" on it included a mix of 1981-82 Topps cards, with a lot of dupes.

Speaking of vintage, how about some cool old hockey cards?

Here's some other small complete or near complete sets from the lot.

I was able to consolidate the remaining magazines down to one tub after keeping what I wanted, sending some out in trades, and sacrificing some for their card/postcard content. Leftovers include some Sports Illustrateds, Becketts, Legends Sports, and more.

This small stack of Legends Sports mags mostly still have their card sheets and/or postcards intact.

But like I said, I did cut a lot of them up and ended up with some leftover card sheets, postcards, and individual cards.

Here's the baseball mini pennants I didn't send out, plus the tiny selection of football (with way too many outdated Washington flags!) plus a Joe Montana Starting Lineup.

One of the most useful items that came as part of the deal was this beat-up but still fine to use sorting tray. Cool!

Items not pictured include a few albums with empty pages, a random sheet or two of stamps, a few comic books that weren't really notable, and I believe a couple other boxes of random cards.

This is about the best I can do covering enough of what I came home with to give you an idea, but regardless, it was a blast as always and I came away happy that I basically bought out the card portion of the guy's garage sale for $100.

I hope those of you that received some of these items enjoy them as much as I did digging them out for you!

I believe next time I'm back (hopefully much sooner this time) I'll be back to covering trades from July until I catch up on those, then you'll see other pickups from the month.

Until then, EAT 'EM UP, TIGERS!

5/31/24 card show report: May the June be with you

Hi, friends! I've had a pretty busy September largely thanks to work (with the calendar indicating it's time for the new semester) and a bunch of non-blogging card stuff. The latter has mainly included my monthly show, yet another fun Facebook pickup, and some marathon packaging and shipping sessions that should result in some happy traders!

Speaking of shows, I did get out to Taylor for the June event, though the first day of three-day show was actually the 31st of May. Whatever, I'm still counting it as June for posting purposes.

Anyway, I spent $95, though it's been more than three months so I don't remember what the breakdown was. I didn't come home with any unassigned trade bait so let's just take a quick look at my keepers:

The baseball stuff begins with a six-pack of future HOFer Miggy, and technically he appears on one more card you'll see below. The first five cards being Marlins issues made me curious what the team breakdown is of my Cabrera collection. It looks like that works out to 62 Florida cards and 431 with Detroit. Not bad!

A stray Cobb then gives way to two many Grandersons! I still don't have nearly enough of him, just 276, which is less than half my Verlander count and not even in the top 10 of my MLB PCs.

Check out that oddball Griffey! Inge and AJax are a couple other Tigers favorites I was happy to see here. Jobe just got called up to AAA and could be in the mix for a rotation spot next year. I captured Maddux on three of his four MLB clubs (only the Dodgers are left out here) over four cards. Magglio's another guy I'm happy to snag cards of if I see them, even if they're White Sox issues.

Cal continues his PC dominance with three newbies up here and two more you'll see in the next scan, and I'm easily swayed by shininess. Leaf's Passing Through Time subset was a fun feature of mid-2000s Leaf (as in the REAL Leaf, not the sketchy imposter these days) and I have Pudge's 2003 and 2005 versions, the latter of which you see above. You could hardly call Skubal "Up & Coming" at this point as he's got a great shot at the AL Cy Young this season. And Torkelson's thankfully looked a bit better since returning from the minors.

Mickey Cochrane is yet another Tiger who's often seen wearing another team's uniform on cards, but that's never stopped me. Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken all make encore appearances, as does Miggy on a Topps Opening Day insert. And the first of the day's three big pickups is a cool bat card of Alan Trammell, which is my seventh relic (out of 12 hits) of the HOF SS. I own the full 10-card set of Fleer's 2006 Greats of the Game Tigers Greats insert, and now I have my third of the nine Memorabilia versions (Bill Freehan and Kirk Gibson are the others). Hopefully I can track down the rest at some point.

The basketball side of things is sparse as usual but I did track down a pair of numbered Jamal Crawfords to go with my second signature of ex-Wolverine/Piston Isaiah Livers. The shininess plus Rated Rookie logo made it a must-get combo for me, and I think I paid just $5 (likely less with my discount) for the autograph, which is numbered /99.

We'll close things out tonight with a perfect nine-card page of football. Funchess's Stained Glass Prizm insert looks quite cool, even if it doesn't live up to the acetate versions from previous decades. Haskins' green Prizm parallel reminds me that he got picked up by his former coach Jim Harbaugh's Chargers. I was surprised to find the three-spot of Ojabo cards you see above, two of which definitely have a Ravens purple theme going on, though my favorite is naturally the Legacy card of him with the Wolverines. By the way, he picked up a sack in week 1 against KC. A shiny pair of Schoonmakers reminds me that I read the TE might get some playing time this weekend against the Saints. GOAT CB Woodson can be seen on a poorly-scanned Silver parallel from 2023 Panini Mosaic that makes it hard to tell it's got the usual Refractor-ish finish.

And last up is my final big pickup of the show: a 2022 Score Signatures autograph of stud Texans WR Nico Collins. I'd say I landed my fifth auto (nine hits total) of the breakout receiver at a good time--a few months before the start of the season--because he could be on his way to an even better campaign after accumulating almost 1300 yards on 80 receptions with 8 TDs last season. Last week at Indy he went scoreless but did pop for six catches for a whopping 117 yards! Go figure his team ditched their dead weight at QB for the one competent ex-Buckeye QB in the league.

And that's it for this show. I'm thinking my next post will be a look at my big June Facebook purchase, though I'll have to decide how much I want to photograph/scan/write about since it was a LOT. Either way, I hope to have that up soon.

2024 trade package #13: Topps Cards That Never Were

Happy September, y'all! We're quickly approaching fall, which means college football is back, and the defending national champion Wolverines opened up their 2024 season with a win this past weekend. And somehow the Tigers haven't even been eliminated yet. So it's a great month for sports around here.

Both of those teams and more popped up in the latest trade package I received from fellow Tigers fan Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were back in June. In fact, "more" is a good description for this absolutely stuffed package full of players I collect:

Hey, how about Rich "Dick Mountain" Hill joining the Red Sox to pitch in his 20th MLB season at the age of 44? Jeremy sent me three Topps parallels picturing Hill with three different teams, though none of them are the Sox, a team he's pitched for in four stints (in parts of six seasons). His fellow ex-Wolverine Barry Larkin is another of the school's most well known alumni, and he did indeed dominate at times over his HOF career. Dean Palmer is probably not as common of a PC outside of fans of Detroit, Texas, and maybe KC, so I appreciate folks like Jeremy including him when sending me cards. Meanwhile, Cal's my biggest player collection by far with nearly 1300 cards, like the Topps offerings you see above--my favorite being the die-cut--and a couple more below.

This doesn't happen too often but I prefer the Topps insert to the Panini/Donruss one in this case, both because of the design and photo choice. Tork's had a nice few weeks back with the big team and actually homered off of Rich Hill today! And I can never have too many Verlanders, like my first 2024 issue of him from Bowman.

Jeremy also included lots of basketball stuff. That begins with a three-pack of Hoops-related cards, including the Winter version. Former coach Juwan Howard is next with a pair of college issues, but these are just two of a larger bunch from the package.

If those Howard cards don't scream "1990s" I don't know what does! Meanwhile, LeVert is a top-10 guy in my basketball collection and one of just seven with 50+ cards. Like THJ he got in on the Hoops action too.

Though they don't all look it, all of LeVert's cards are different because they're either regular or Winter versions, or parallels with small color foil differences. Caris gives way to Glen Rice, my top basketball guy with over 200, currently the only member of that club. A single Duncan Robinson has him tied for third in my collection of players with that last name (according to TCDb) behind David and Rumeal, and tied with Glenn. Jalen Rose is another Fab Fiver to get some love here thanks to eight total cards, three of which you see here.

That many different cards means we get to see Rose on a number of teams and designs, which is always great. And that's also true of his Fab Five teammate Chris Webber, #2 in my collection and nearing 200 (Howard and Rose are 3 and 4, the only others above 100). He was the most popular player in this mailer with 27 cards by my count!

Lots of Webber means lots more 90s stuff, and these definitely take me back to my teenage years. Out of all of these, the Upper Deck base feels a lot more timeless to me than the other designs that are more a product of their time (though still fun).

As we approach the end of the 90s and get into the aughts we get into some designs that appeal more to me. UD3 was a very cool product in multiple sports, Ultra was a perennial favorite, UD continued a streak of quality, Bowman's Best was superior to its recent baseball efforts, and even Topps Tipoff looked solid. Fleer's Premium was pretty nice as well, but the weird Topps Chrome design here feels like a rare miss.

Here's the last of the Webbers including a cool UD trio from later in his Sacramento tenure, then a couple horizontal issues from Ultra nd Stadium Club. The Award Winner card refers of course to his '93-'94 Rookie of the Year nod in a close vote against Penny Hardaway, another guy who went on to a very nice career.

And we'll finish up with football. Jeremy hit a whole bunch of names here too, which I loved. Brooks and Cooper are kind of deeper cuts for folks that aren't fans of the program like I am, but Brady, Calloway, Carter, Edwards, Henne, and Hutch are all pretty well known, I'd say, especially the GOAT and the biggest reason the Lions have returned to respectability. (By the way, this isn't the last time you'll see Aidan in this post!)

If you thought that first scan had a lot of talent then feast your eyes on this one. Kenn was a five-time Pro Bowler at LT for the Falcons. Long was a fantastic LT in his own right, and a former #1 overall pick. Owens spent nine years in the league at linebacker as a Rams first-rounder. Wheatley's storied Michigan career led to 10 NFL seasons--not bad for a running back! Fearsome LB/DE LaMarr Woodley won a ring with the Steelers. And Woodson is simply an all-time great in both the college and pro games. The Select insert that includes Hutch and Nico is especially cool as it features talent from all aspects of the game: offense, defense, and special teams.

The last I have of the football stuff is these horizontal cards. All guys were mentioned above except new Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh. The Brady/Woodson insert is fun given their notable playoff history that will forever link the '97 champion teammates.

Jeremy, thanks again for this huge amount of great cards that'll benefit many of my collections! I have some interesting stuff set aside for you and may be shipping them out within the next week or two depending on how things go.

As for posting over here, I think next up will be another show recap, or I may get to eBay or Facebook Marketplace purchases, whatever I feel like. Until then, eat 'em up, Tigers, and GO BLUE!