2016 COMC purchases: Gibby, Barry, and Tram

I'm back after a fun brief trip to Los Angeles last weekend and then another week and weekend of relaxing and being lazy.

Let's get back into the swing of things with some cards of three of my PC guys, all from my latest COMC package:

Kirk Gibson 2002 UD Piece of History MVP Club

Kirk Gibson 2003 Topps Tribute World Series (#141)

Kirk Gibson 2008 Donruss Threads Century Stars

Two of these three may feature Gibby with the Dodgers, but that's cool since a few sets occasionally remember 1988's game 1.  Card #1 from UD's fun Piece of History product highlights Kirk's 1988 regular season NL MVP award, which he won over the Mets' Darryl Strawberry by a decent number of points thanks to this stat line:  .290/.377/.483 with 25 HR, 76 RBI, 106 R, and 31 SB.

Number two hails from Topps' typically beautiful and high-end Tribute set, this one a World Series-themed product.  It features one of the game's most iconic shots of Gibby celebrating his famous homer.  I need to track down his earlier card from this set which includes him with the '84 Tigers.

Kirk appeared in a Throwback Threads Century Stars insert set in both 2005 and '08.  The back of the latter, which you see above, notes his 1984 game 5 two-homer performance, including one off another west coast ace reliever, Goose Gossage.

Barry Larkin 1996 Pinnacle First Rate

I tend to flip-flop between posting my Larkin cards here and on TMM because, while I love showing him off with the rest of my Wolverines, I know there's a much larger audience here that appreciates the HOF SS.  Speaking of folks who appreciate Larkin, Pinnacle did so with this dufex beauty back in 1996.  Barry certainly was first rate the previous year, winning the NL MVP, a fact that's surprisingly left off of the back, which notes that "...he ranked sixth in the league with a .319 BA in '95 and came in second with a career-high 51 stolen bases."

My 333rd Larkin is good enough to bring back the "90s inserts rule" tag, probably to nobody's surprise!

Alan Trammell 2001 Greats of the Game

Alan Trammell 2013 Pinnacle Awaiting the Call

Alan Trammell 2006 Greats of the Game Tigers Greats

Trammell is a bit of a combo-breaker as the other two guys today won regular season MVPs;  while Tram took home the award for his '84 World Series performance, he was flat-out robbed in 1987, posting a full 3.2 more bWAR than Toronto's George Bell.  He also belongs in the Hall of Fame, but that's an argument for another day.

As with Gibson I found three new cards for his PC, two of which are inserts.  First up his his base card for the beautifully understated Greats of the Game set Fleer produced in 2001.  If they ever put out a bad design for this set I haven't seen one.

Card #2 is one I avoided for a while since I'm as pissed as other Trammell fans that he's been disrespected by Hall voters.  But it's a cool looking set, even sans logos, and if the veterans' committee ever gets it right then it'll be a fun card to look back on.

Last up is Alan's entry from another Fleer Greats set, this one a 10-card insert covering Tigers Greats.  He's one of three guys in the set I PC, along with Bill Freehan and Gibson, and this is one of the eight cards I grabbed while making this purchase so I'd have the full set.  I'll be showing that off in a future post, likely my next one.

Stay tuned for that along with one or two other COMC-related posts, and if you're interested in seeing some of my other pickups please head over to TMM this evening.