2018 Sportlots purchases: too many Verlandersons

After lots of scanning and more I'm finally ready to start showing off the goods from my latest bunch of Sportlots purchases.  This group totaled around 950 cards (including trade bait for others) for a bit over $200 when including shipping.  I managed to hit the vast majority of my PCs from baseball, football, and hockey, and even added my first card to one of them.  You can look forward to a lot of fun stuff ahead in many, many purchase showoff posts on both blogs (my bread and butter at this point, let's be honest).

Today I decided to kick things off by featuring both of this here blog's namesakes because it's fun to post them together, plus their combined number of cards was manageable.

Let's begin with the blog's original title guy, Curtis Granderson.  In the past I hadn't really included him in my Sportlots searches but this time the light bulb when on and I was able to add a solid bunch to his collection:

Though I'm open to acquiring cards of Granderson on other teams I went 100% Tigers here.  That includes a 2008 Topps brand pair of Finest and Chrome.  I don't think Finest has put out designs as good as some of those from the 90s, but the '08 is still solid.  A cool postage stamp-style 2009 SP Legendary Cuts rounds out the vertical cards here, and it's fun to see a modern PC guy from that product for a change!

Continuing on the rest of this scan is all UD all the time.  First we jump back to 2008 again with SP Legendary Cuts once more, and another very cool design, then on to SPx, a die-cut set that calls back to the original '96 offering.  Then we go ahead one year to '09 and UD's flagship product.  These are two of Grandy's three appearances in that base set:  a fantastic shot of him sliding back to first plus a team checklist card that also features Miggy and the next player in today's post.

I also grabbed six of Curtis' cards I needed from Topps' 2007 Generation Now insert.  I've mentioned and/or showed this one off numerous times so I think by now you all know there's one card of each of his 31 doubles in 2006.  While I wasn't going to chase these if the price didn't make sense, I found this group at or near the site minimum of $0.18 so I happily knocked them off my list.  At this point I still need:  522 526 527 528 534 537 542 547 548 549.  I'll do a showoff post when I acquire all of them, of course.

Next up, naturally, is current namesake (if not current Tiger ::sad face::) Justin Verlander:

In terms of what I added for my PCs this time, some of it came down to brand name recognition and some was design; I even looked up a bunch of stuff on COMC to get an idea of how much I liked it before adding it.  So I would say the Topps bunch of 2007 Bowman Chrome/Finest/Topps Chrome and 2008 Topps Chrome falls more into the former category, though they each have something going for them.

Card #3 is a 2007 Fleer Year in Review insert that was fun to add since most of what you get on Sportlots at or near minimum price is base.  I love adding stuff that highlights JV's amazing 2006 AL ROY campaign.

As for the rest of the scan, it includes one of Verlander's appearances in 2007 Topps Co-Signers, an Upper Deck base from the same year (with more to come in a minute), and Heritage cards from '07 and '08, with the latter being a Black Back parallel.

This scan starts of strongly with one of my favorite photos on a card (in this case a 2008 UD base) showing Justin having signed a newspaper celebrating his first no-hitter, the one he tossed against Milwaukee in 2007.  That's joined in vertical solidarity by a 2009 UD base and 2011 Playoff Contenders issue, one that makes me appreciate football's version.

Switching to the other axis we'll start with a 2007 SP Rookie Edition offering that gives way to two more flagship base cards from the same year to go with the one above.  Then jumping ahead to 2008 there's a fun SP Authentic Marquee Matchups insert that pairs JV with retired star Vladimir Guerrero.  After that, Verlander joins Granderson in the 2008 SP Legendary Cuts set and on the previously seen team checklist from '09 Upper Deck.

That's not quite all, though, as I found the last nine cards of his I needed from that Generation Now set.  Of course his was easier to finish since it was only 17 cards, one for each of his wins in 2006.  At some point, probably after I'm done posting the rest of my Sportlots pickups, I'll devote a post to showing these off front and back.

These 27 new additions put Verlander's collection over the 300-card milestone to 309, so happy mini-milestone to that bunch!

That's all for today and I'm not sure who you'll be seeing next, but I'll at least try not to keep you waiting.  I'll likely be alternating posts with TMM depending on how I want to schedule things so keep and eye out of there as well!