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!

5/3 and 5/11/24 show reports: May the shows be with you

This past May was another two-show month for me--technically three if you count the first day of the June Taylor show being on Friday, the 31st of the year's fifth month.

First, as usual, I headed east to Taylor and dropped $80 mostly on some nice trade bait for packages that have since been sent out. I did snag a small handful to offer up here:

I'm pretty sure both jerseys were a buck and I'm relatively short on baseball trade bait compared to football, so I thought the jerseys repping the Texas teams were worth it. Claim 'em in the comments if you want 'em!

And now here are my May Taylor keepers, largely from the cheapo boxes like I like them:

Nothing crazy, just some of my usual favorites. Cronenworth is a natural when it comes to blue inserts. I was happy to find a high-end Larkin base for what I believe was either a quarter or a time. Three new Maddux cards? Not too shabby! A pair of fellow HOF pitcher Jack Morris was a nice find. And lastly there's one of two Ripkens I dug out this time.

That '96 Score Ripken you see above is specially numbered "2131" and had been on my wantlist for quite a while so I was happy to come up with it. A trio of Pudge closes out the baseball stuff.

When it comes to collecting basketball-playing Kobes, Bufkin's definitely my guy, and the lone basketball entrant here. But I did find a cool trio of non-UCLA cards of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet, including my first relic of him, making him member #252 of the football collection.

Here's some great looking football inserts including one of recent alum Ronnie Bell along with cool QB chase cards of Elvis Grbac and Jim Harbaugh. The former gets the Dufex treatment while the latter feels more like a Donruss insert to me than Pinnacle, though it looks great either way.

And here's the last of the football including dumbass LT Taylor Lewan and talented d-man Kwity Paye on parallels, a couple Absolute Retail RCs, and two more of GOAT DB Charles Woodson.

That was it for Taylor but I wasn't done for the month just yet!

Eight days later I made the 90-ish minute drive west to Kalamazoo so I could meet up with some great hobby friends. I knew Jeff and Kevin (Sluggo) would be at that big show selling, plus Jason from TCDb and John planned on attending as well. I got there in the early afternoon and met up with the Sluggo's guys, catching up with them first. Jason appeared a little later, and then John. As always it was great to catch up with everyone.

Here's a pic John got of the two of us, and clearly only one of us knows where to look when taking a picture. Anyway, I spent a total of $100 at this show between four or five sellers, I believe. Kevin gave me another outstanding deal and I snagged some quality stuff from a few others I may look for again the next time I head that way.

Once again most of my purchases were destined for mailers, but my combined haul looked like this:

Give me new Gwynns any day, horizontal or vertical. Haskins was let go by the Titans but just joined the Chargers and reunited with coach Jim Harbaugh. Higdon was another successful college back, just not in the NFL. Ruiz is one of a few recent talented centers the program has produced. And I found what ended up being my fifth auto of DB David Long Jr. (not to be confused with the LB from WVU) who was released by the Giants and doesn't appear to have joined their practice squad or another team just yet.

I also found this nice little six pack of Michigan Hockey guys in a dime box, of all things, which was a surprise given the star power here. Beniers just got paid big time by the Kraken and Fantilli, as I've mentioned a couple times, won the Hobey Baker after an outstanding '22-'23 campaign.

Many thanks again to Jeff and Kevin plus Jason and John for another quality show meet-up, and I hope we get to do it again soon, though not in September as that conflicts with Michigan Football's big matchup with Texas.

In the meantime I'll continue to play catchup as I now get to move on to June with still a TON of great pickups to cover.

2024 trade package #12: Chronicles of Fuji

He might not be a Matt, but the sender of my final trade package of May was a Mark: Fuji of the Chronicles of Fuji. And just like the others he sent me some very cool stuff back when the (K-12) school year wasn't quite done yet, which is funny since I've since received another package from him, getting here just before the bell rings on another year of hard work for a very dedicated teacher.

Here's what Fuji sent my way this time:

Gladden and Gullickson hail from Leaf's excellent looking Black Gold parallel which, for the millionth time, should have been the base set look that year. Gladden's best know as a two-time World Series winner with the Twins after starting his career with the Giants, but he spent his final two years in Motown. Gullickson played out the last years (four) of his 14-season career in Detroit and somehow won 20 games in '91.

The next cards I'll group together look like 2019 Topps base issues of Miggy, Castellanos, and JV, but they're actually from a set produced to promote the Clear Travel service, billed as a shortcut through airport security. As Mark noted in his post about them, the fronts are the same but the backs of the 100 cards featuring numbering in the format of "CP-#." Score another win for Fuji's beloved flea market purchases!

And the last group in this scan comprises hits. First up is a two-color patch of former Detroit pitcher Jeremy Bonderman, a guy who saw action on some of the best and worst teams in franchise history in the 2000s. It's got some Tigers orange on it and the offering from 2008 SPx is numbered to 50, marking my 6th hit (all relics) of the Washington native. Next up is a 2019 Topps Chrome auto of one-time prospect Dawel Lugo, an infielder who came over in the universally panned trade of J.D. Martinez to the Diamondbacks in 2017. His signature may be mostly his initials but I like the big loopy autograph all the same, plus the card is a reminder I saw him play for Lansing, Toronto's A-ball team at the time, in 2015. And last up is the only Michigan alum in this post in the form of former Yankees prospect Michael O'Neill (the whiny Paul's nephew). The three-year Wolverine appears to have been out of affiliated ball since 2019 but made a nice number of card appearances while he could, like this 2013 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks Prospect Signatures Prizms auto (man, that's a mouthful!). I remain the #1 collector of this particular O'Neill on TCDb.

And getting his own scan, to end today's post we have an oversized card of damn-well-better-be-elected HOFer Lou Whitaker. "Sweet" Lou comes to us from Donruss's 1986 All-Stars set where each card measures in at 3x5. 1985 marked his third of five straight All-Star nods and he went 0-2 in that game as the AL's starting 2B in a 6-1 loss to the elder league.

Fuji, thanks so much for sending these all the way back in May, and for the subsequent package I'll show off as soon as I can! I hope the new school year treats you well, and before long I'll be treating you to a fun response to what you sent here.

And everyone who follows can look forward to a May show recap post coming up next.

2024 trade package #11: Sport Card Collectors

Hi, friends! Do you like reading recaps of trade packages I received from a longtime blogging/Twitter buddy named Matt in May of this year? If so, you'll be excited about tonight's post being the second in a row to meet those requirements. This time it was Matt of Sport Card Collectors (and several other blogs). He tends to treat me to a PWE or two a few times each year, and that's exactly what he did a few months ago.

Here's what I pulled out of that PWE:

Javy's heating up enough to be considered an MLB star if only for a few recent games, but that's better than nothing! Since leaving Detroit, Jeimer's had a decent 2023 with the Nats, then an overall rough performance after being traded back to the Cubs. He sure looks cool in Detroit duds on a Topps Chrome Sepia Refractor, though. Who will Dick Mountain be pitching for late in the season? I hope we find out soon, but for now I'm excited about getting a card I actually needed of him from 2019 Topps Rainbow Foil. Update: he's back with the Red Sox!

Does Kaline belong in an inserted called Perennial All-Stars? He appeared in one (or both, where applicable) midsummer classics each season between 1955-1967, plus '71 and '74 so, uh, yeah, I'd say so! Tork's Pink Topps Chrome parallel is a reminder that he's still working his way back to the bigs with some nice power numbers and not much else at AAA Toledo. In better news for me, though, the baseball group ends with three many Verlanders! Oddly enough, all three of his MLB teams are represented here which is quite cool. Does he still have at least one more no-hitter left in him?

On the football side of things Matt came up with two Michigan uni cards and a couple more featuring two of the most prominent Wolverines to have starred in the NFL over the past 30 years. Interestingly enough, all four play defense too! DT Mo Hurst Jr. got a little play with Cleveland, his third NFL franchise, last year after missing 2022 due to injury, and we'll see if he sticks on their roster or elsewhere. Hutch is one of the most valuable defenders to come out of Ann Arbor and definitely lives up to his card's Elite billing with 21.0 sacks, 3 forced fumbles, 4 fumble recoveries, and 4(!) interceptions over his first two seasons. Mazi could use some positive momentum after Dallas selected him in last year's first round only to see him play relatively disappointingly, but hope springs eternal with a new season nigh. And lastly, Woodson is simply one of the top five best Wolverines to suit up in the NFL, which explains why you still see him in sets like 2023 Score (and its Red parallel) almost a decade after he retired.

Matt, thanks once again for one of your signature PWEs that always hit multiple PCs when you send them my way! I have a little stack going for you and I'm sure it won't be much longer before I'm hitting you back.

Up next I have one more trade package recap (from literally the other side of the country) and then a show post should finish out the month of May.

2024 trade package #10: Bob Walk the Plank

It's always a treat when I get cards from Matt of Bob Walk the Plank since we send stuff back and forth maybe once or twice a year, but there's always a higher-end aspect to it. Back in May he treated me to quite the birthday present with these:

Current/future star Riley Greene is a nice looking Museum Collection parallel numbered to just 50. Both Griffeys are from that decade or so in the late 90s/early 2000s when everything was numbered. His Topps Stars goes to 9799 while the gorgeous team color parallel from Leaf Certified Materials is much rarer, /200!

Hill ('23 Chrome Update Orange) is even more limited at just 25 copies, plus that color could be considered a team parallel too. I've mentioned that Miller was quite useful to the Tigers as trade bait, and his 2007 UD Masterpieces card is quite the looker. I have a crazy 83 cards of Casey Mize right now, and one of the rarest of those is the '22 Select Cracked Ice you see above, which is limited to 25 copies just like the Hill (don't worry, Gavin, neither is a 12/25!).

Neither of those is the rarest card of the bunch, though, thanks to a '22 Topps Mini Red of my favorite recent Tigers catcher, Jake Rogers, that's numbered 2/5. Wow! Speaking of "wow," how about another 2007 UD Masterpieces RC of a former Tigers pitcher, this time future HOFer Max Scherzer? That's a beautiful card of the three time Cy Young winner and owner of two World Series rings. Last up is another Red parallel that's not quite as rare as the others in this scan--299 copies--of former RP Joel Zumaya, whose legacy is looking iffy due to being connected to some very troubling allegations about former player and TV guy Craig Monroe.

And here you'll see the contents of the package I was the most excited about. First up is no big deal, just a Miguel Cabrera autograph from 2005 Upper Deck Pros & Prospects. I don't think I can emphasize just how generous Matt is--though I encourage you to look through all my trade packages from him here, containing flat-out amazing cards of current and future HOFers like Kaline, Verlander, Larkin, and others--but maybe this will help: this is my fourth signature of Miggy, and aside from the one I pulled from a pack myself, the other three have come from my collecting doppelgänger in West Virginia. Seriously, my hat's off to him.

Continuing the goodness, next up is a bat relic of a guy I just mentioned above: Barry Larkin. I'm as sick as everyone else of seeing the boring 80s designs beaten to death by Topps, but I'll always be happy about a new hit of a favorite player, such as #25 of the Wolverines SS that became a Reds star!

And for something even more timely, not only is it amazing that Tarik Skubal is the front-runner for the AL Cy Young on another tire fire of a "rebuilding" team, but Matt managed to score a '22 Chrome Refractor auto (numbered /499) of his on Twitter for under $20 and have it delivered to me. What a great card to have of a guy who'll presumably be around for a bit more after the team thankfully didn't give him up for another underwhelming prospect package (see: Flaherty, Jack) at the deadline.

On the football side of things, a pair of Tom Brady cards serves as an appetizer to the main course: a brand new Chad Henne autograph, which is something I haven't been able to add for quite a while. The 2009 Gridrion Kings card you see above (#d /50) is my 144th hit of one of my favorite UM QBs, putting him six behind collection leader Rich Hill. That number is bonkers and I'm grateful for folks like Matt who've helped build that collection.

And finally tonight, this surprise quintet is a fun way of wrapping things up. Representing the Pistons, Lions, Wolverines, and Red Wings are a great mix of Starting Lineup cards showing off several different designs. Hill and Osgood are examples of partnerships with Topps and Fleer, respectively, while Batch, Griese, and Woodson have designs I'm much more familiar with when it comes to those collectible figures and their cards. As for the title-winning Wolverines pair, Griese's from the 2000 product while Woodson's from the '98 Extended Series released during his rookie season.

That's another Bob Walk the Plank package in the books and man was it a great one! I'm fortunate to trade with some very generous folks and Matt is most definitely among the best when it comes to high-end dealing. I appreciate it as always and am working on a return worthy of this to send back to Morgantown as soon as I can. Thanks, Matt!

I believe I have two more May trade packages to get to followed by some show recaps and then it'll be on to June. Stay cool, enjoy the Olympics, and join me in looking forward to the college football season in just a few weeks!

2024 trade package #9: My Sports Obsession

My next big old box o' cards in May came from buddy of the blog Jeff of My Sports Obsession. It's been long enough that I'm not 100% certain but I think he gave it to me when we met up at the Kalamazoo show that month (spoiler alert for an upcoming post!). Jeff, please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Either way, it was absolutely stuffed with goodies, many of which I'm sure he generously set aside for me while sorting through boxes and boxes of stuff for his awesome side gig. Here's the goods:

Could you really have a set called "Classics" without a guy like Sparky? No, no you couldn't. Jeff's been one of the biggest contributors to my collection of Baez. And this time he made a HUGE contribution to my stack of Miggy cards with 18, or two full scans' worth! These five are a nice start but I prefer some of the ones below.

Diamond Kings and Gallery are brands that always look really nice as far as I'm concerned, and I was happy to get the Gallery parallel as well. I was also happy to see that Topps used one of my favorite designs, 2001's, for Archives. Miggy and Pujols were indeed the active HR leaders at the time that card was made, and with cheater Nelson Cruz having also retired after 2023, Giancarlo Stanton is your current #1 (420 at the time of posting this) and only player over 400, with Trout (378) and Goldschmidt (357) behind him.

I'm sure some of my fellow Midwesterners are begging for the snow we tend to get around the holidays, but I say let the heat stay as long as possible! Check out Cobb's crazy grip on that Archives base. Cronenworth and Elliott, both Michigan Baseball alumni, are among the PCs in this post that Jeff and I share and I'm always thankful when he's able to help me out. Meanwhile, Griffey's one of my biggest player collections, yet he found a way to gift me a nice bunch I needed.

It'll never not feel weird that Junior wore a White Sox jersey for 41 games in 2008, but at least order was restored when he finished his career in Seattle after that. Mr. Padre is another guy that got a nice bump from this stack, and plenty of those were interesting as well, starting with a wax box card and including a Fleer box set issue plus Stadium Club's even better Chrome version.

Archives, Gallery, SC Chrome again, and even a Pinnacle throwback? Sign me up! It's getting pretty late for Dick Mountain to join a team in time to chase the playoffs but you never know. Barry's another shared PC guy and I'd been wanting that cool Stadium Club base of him walking his dogs for a while. Now I don't have to track it down myself. Maddux looks professorly on a Chrome Ginter card and very distinguished on another Gallery appearance.

The suddenly depleted Tigers rotation could certainly use a healthy Mize right now. Jeff did a nice job sending me a Pudge pair where he's pictured as a Tiger on each. Turnbull's a dingus but the various black/orange Topps parallels do work well with the team's colors. And did Jeff send me too many Verlanders? Maybe not, but he did send me 22 many Verlanders!

Most of them depict him as an Astro (with a few Mets thrown in to show off) which makes sense since we're coming up on the seventh anniversary of the deal that sent him to his first ring with Houston, not to mention the Tigers to their perpetual mediocrity. Anyway, look at how shiny some of these are! There's a few excellent brands in there too.

A quintet of Verlanders (hey, a Tigers card!) close out the "regular" standard orientation stuff while a mini Baez joins two horizontals that start the x-axis run (including yet another excellent Stadium Club photo). But first, we have what's easily the biggest card in the bunch: my first autograph of my fellow Michigan alum and not-so-fellow HOFer Ted Simmons! This was a huge surprise to me as I'd been wanting an auto of Simba for quite a while but had yet to pull the trigger. Bonus points for it being on another Archives card honoring the 2001 Topps design, plus his signature is impeccable. Wow! This makes him the 39th Michigan Baseball guy in my hits collection for the sport. If I recall correctly, Jeff had picked that up for me at the show earlier that day, though again, I could totally be making that up.

And after all that goodness there's still some baseball left, of the horizontal variety. Topps and Stadium Club give us a couple more looks at Miggy finishing his classic swing. Griffey and Gwynn each get cool Archives base appearances, plus Tony's Denny's hologram has me feeling nostalgia for the 90s (but not Denny's--BARF!). And there you see the last three of the 22 many Verlanders.

One page of basketball cards made the trip as well. A pair of Jett Howards bookends his dad. Poole's first season in Washington was decent. Franz and his brother Mo have Germany undefeated thus far in Paris with the quarterfinals coming up on Tuesday. And Webber is yet another guy Jeff and I can help each other out with as he has a ton of cards out there.

Lastly, your National Champion Wolverines were well represented in this box, requiring three scans to cover all of them. I'll eventually land cards of Bell as a Niner but I'm happy to keep piling up college cards as well. I don't like Brady personally but do respect his college and NFL success. Star WR Nico's Red Cracked Ice card looks amazing, and bonus points for being a college uni photo! Blake "The Great" and "The Don" formed a championship duo in the backfield and I'm champing at the bit to add more of both of them as well. Grbac's a 90s insert and that's always a plus in my book. And Buckeye-killer Haskins is another of quite a few Michigan uni cards you'll see in these scans.

I wasn't kidding--look at all of these! There's a lot of defensive talent in this scan, too, between Hawkins, Hurst, Hutch, and Paye. Denard's actually a Ginter card but he was enough of a sensation to cross over into the product that occasionally dabbles in baseball. Schoonmaker is another Harbaugh era TE success story.

Mazi, Turner, and Thomas would have fit well with the above scan as they also starred on the defensive side of the ball. I'm still short on cards of transfer RB Charbonnet but I'm holding onto cards of him with UCLA even though I don't count them towards my UM collection. And finally, what a great way to end things with champion QB/RB duo Corum and McCarthy? I guess Jeff took "Go Blue" seriously this time!

Jeff, thanks again for this generous stack of cards that hit so many of my PCs, especially the surprise addition of the Simmons! I've got a pretty nice pile to get to you at some point plus a few other items to go with the cards, and I'll have to figure out if I'll be shipping everything to you or seeing you at an upcoming show (speaking of which, everyone should make sure they're following Sluggo's Sports Cards). And here's to another great season of Michigan Football coming up in just a few weeks. GO BLUE!

2024 trade package #8: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

Let's get roaring into May while completely ignoring that the calendar as I'm writing this shows that tomorrow is the last day of July!

The first trade package I received that month came from the most prolific of all of my trade partners: Doug of Sports Cards From the Dollar Store. This envelope was definitely different than the norm in terms of dimensions and weight for reasons I wouldn't be able to guess until I'd ripped it open.

The cardboard content was uncharacteristically sparse, though plenty familiar as it starred three players from my favorite MLB team. Miggy's from a Topps on-demand product from 2023 called Game Within the Game, one of 10 art cards done by Paul Jennis. At 1,612 copies printed it's on the higher end of rarity, which is cool by itself, plus the card looks great.

"Whiffin'" Willi Castro left Detroit after the 2022 season and naturally became a quality player for the Twins, putting up 2.7 bWAR last year while getting on pace to equal or exceed that number as a 2024 All-Star. You see him here on a Topps UK base from 2022.

I did use the word "familiar" above when referring to the team these three cards share, though that didn't necessarily refer to the players. Rucker didn't ring a bell but I did find him on the lower end of Fangraphs' top Tigers prospects. He's a 3B taken in 2023's 4th round out of high school and therefore a reasonable choice for Panini's Elite Extra Edition product, like the 2023 base you see above.

That was it for cards but not the package itself, not by a longshot. No, friends, I was treated to not one, not two, but four beautiful autographed 8x10s of some excellent Michigan Hockey alumni.

Michigan sports blog MGoBlog recently put together a two-part series on the top 20 careers of Wolverine NHLers (part 1, part 2, and you should totally check these out if you love Michigan Hockey) and two of the four guys here made the cut, fairly impressive given the large quantity of quality Michigan icers to play in the league. I'll borrow a bit from those posts for those three guys and give my own thoughts on the fourth:

Andrew Cogliano: Ok, so I have to admit that of the four photos, this one stumped me for a bit because the auto wasn't a gimmie and the player's name doesn't appear anywhere. Eventually I compared the signature to cards I have and came up with LW Andrew Cogliano, a guy I tend to associate with teams other than the Oilers. His UM career started the the school year after I graduated--2005--but I still got to see him play in-person a bit.

Per the aforementioned Top 20 posts, 

"The recently retired Cogliano was the inspiration for this piece, a player who had a hell of a run as a middle six winger for a bunch of teams. That's not what he's most remembered for in the NHL, though. That would be his remarkable iron man ways, as Cogliano at one time owned the longest consecutive games played streak in the NHL at over 800 games. He did not miss a single game his first 10 seasons in the NHL and remained remarkably well conditioned into his mid-30s."

"He started out in Edmonton but found a home in Anaheim, a fixture of the Ducks' really good teams in the mid-2010s in the middle six of the lineup. A well liked guy everyone would have a spot on their team for, that allowed older Cogliano to make deep runs in the playoffs with Dallas (2020) and Colorado (2022), the latter winning him a Stanley Cup."

Also of note, this is my second 8x10 signature of Cogs courtesy of Doug, who previously sent me one back in November of 2019, the 33rd time I'd shown off cards from him here!

John Madden: Not the meathead NFL coach/announcer but the guy who won a pair of cups with the Devils and another with the Hawks, Madden was a four-year C in the mid-90s for some very successful NCAA teams including the 1995-96 champs.

Per the Top-20 list,

"By his second season in the NHL, Madden had built a reputation as a top tier penalty killer and go-to matchup center for the always-stingy Devils, winning the 2000-01 Selke Trophy for the best defensive forward in the NHL. Madden was able to put himself in contention for such an award by not just being a great defensive player and a scrappy, fierce forechecker, but because he provided some valuable depth scoring too."

"Madden won two Cups in NJ and then departed for Chicago in 2009-10, then age 36, and won a third ring with the Blackhawks as a gritty veteran 4th line center. Madden's unusual, versatile career and distinction as one of the top defensive centers in the NHL lands him here."

EDIT: Jon Merrill: Thanks to Chris for pointing out that I got the wrong Jon/John from the Devils! Merrill's name has popped up quite a bit here especially thanks to Doug but briefly, the D from nearby Brighton was a three-year Wolverine at the stat of the 2010s and was a second round pick by New Jersey. This past NHL season was his 11th and he's suited up for a total of five teams including Detroit briefly in 2020-21. I don't see him surpassing anyone on this list but a double-digit year NHL career is nothing to sniff at!

Al Montoya: Montoya's the odd man out here as he understandably didn't make the list, though said list includes only one goalie (Marty Turco), and that's in line with the alumni the Wolverines have produced at the position. To be clear, that's 100% based on his not-terribly-exciting pro career of 168 games (136 starts) over nine seasons with six clubs. You wouldn't have guessed that back in the mid-2000s, though, when he was a highly rated hot-shot freshman. His first year coincided with my sophomore year and first with season tickets, and he'd go on to win 86 games over his three seasons, highlighted by a charge to the Frozen Four in his first year on campus. While he didn't live up to his billing as the 6th overall pick in 2004, he was a blast to watch guarding the goal for some excellent teams while I was a student.

Brendan Morrison: Morrison is my favorite of this quartet despite the fact that he played at Michigan the same years as Madden and therefore before I was ever on campus, and even though he never hoisted the Cup. That said, he was arguably the biggest superstar in this group during his college years having won that NCAA championship I mentioned in Madden's blurb plus winning the Hobey Baker Award, a.k.a. hockey's version of the Heisman. New Jersey had drafted him in 1993's second round and he'd spend parts of three seasons with them before eight solid years with the Canucks. A few other destinations followed and over the course of his 14-year career he'd pot exactly 200 goals and 401 assists.

His Top-20 write-up mentions,

"Morrison was never going to be able match the heights he achieved in college in the vastly more talented NHL, where his skill level was not overwhelming in any way, but Morrison still cobbled together a successful career."

I'd say 14 years in the league after that kind of college career is pretty solid.

Many thanks to Doug for this amazing group of signatures that adds to a growing collection of of Michigan Hockey autos not just on cardboard but on some eye-popping pictures too! Your generosity never ceases to amaze me and I appreciate you finding these for me. Rest assured I'm taking my responsibility of maintaining diplomatic relations seriously and working on a return for you.

Everyone else can look forward to another blogger trade package next time!