2020 trade package #15: $30 a Week Habit

Today's trade is kind of a funny one because most of my deals with my fellow bloggers are blind trades, occasionally involving a card or two I've picked out. Not so today as I show off a bunch of great stuff I chose from the TCDB trade list of cool Floridian Robert of $30 a Week Habit.

I was browsing the site looking for a single card to finish up a set for Doug when I noticed that Robert (TCDB ID rmitchell6700) had one available. I happened to have an envelope for him that was just about ready so I asked him if I could get it from him, and of course he said sure, and suggested seeing if he had anything else that I wanted.

He had anything else I wanted, some 67 cards in total, all of which he generously sent my way:

(Mostly former) Tigers part 1: Boyd and Demeritte are still around, and we may actually get to see them play this year! Evans' third Topps appearance, from 1973, is my 60th of the '84 champ, and a great vintage addition to boot. And I didn't realize this until now, but there's a whole lot of Topps Heritage going on in this scan! Inge is bookended by two of my favorite Tigers OF--who were traded for each other--in Granderson and AJax. The latter even appears in three of his seven career uniforms.

More former Tigers. Kell's face is always a nice one to see in a trade envelope. I double-dipped on Nokes' 1990 Leaf cards, the second of which reflects a June trade to the Yankees that brought Lance McCullers (the elder) to Detroit in his sunset season. UD's OPC version included an interesting angle showing of Magglio's batting stance. And Parrish, who recently celebrated his birthday, also reps '90 Leaf and a new team himself as '89 was his first year with the Angels after a couple with the Phils.

I also came up with five many Verlanders, another former Tiger, and two of them are even Detroit cards. There's plenty of shiny to go around but my favorite is the '19 Donruss Career Stat Line parallel, numbered /204 for his win total through 2018. In case you're interested, Verlander won 183 as a Tiger, good for seventh in the franchise's history. Stat Line has always been a cool insert and I'm glad to see it continue in the latest releases.

The vertical cards repping Griffey, Gwynn, and Maddux added up to a perfect nine, so why not show them off together? There's a couple more examples of '90 Leaf--I'm up to 21 on the strength of guys I collect--and Mr. Padre and Mad Dog each get a Topps reprint of some kind. That second Griffey card interests me the most, though, as it's from '98 Collector's Choice, which is a set I know plenty about, but I'd never seen it!

Here's some horizontal cards of a couple guys we've already seen and a few we haven't. Two more inserts up the total to four many Grandersons, including a Gold /2012, and Junior adds a pair of his own giving me five new cards of him today. Earlier we had the late Mr. Padre and now we have Mr. Tiger thanks to a pair of Kaline inserts. Jack Morris gets one appearance courtesy of a five-player '82 Topps base--he was part of a four-player tie for wins in the AL in the shortened '81 season with 14. And a Sisler/Ichiro pairing makes sense since the latter topped the former's single-season hits record.

If you thought something was missing you were right: the highlight of this envelope was a crazy TEN new cards of the Iron Man. It's mostly a nice bunch of inserts, led by another one of those '07 Ultra Iron Man cards I needed, and a pair of Topps cards from an insert highlighting his streak. But the biggest get for me here is the 2015 Topps First Home Run medallion, a fun manurelic Robert was generous enough to include after reasoning that I would enjoy it (I will!). Cal hit the first of 431 bombs on April 5, 1982, opening day of his first full season, which would end with him winning the league's ROY award. A 1,000-card milestone post won't be long now!

A Mo Hurst insert was a fun find to rep the football collection, and then it was on to hockey. I'm not remotely surprised that I found so many of the guys I collect in Robert's trade bait since he's such a big collector of the sport. Hockey Mikes Cammalleri, Comrie, and Knuble all cameo, plus there's a rare appearance by Danny Felsner, and even a new Dylan Larkin insert, which I just realized scanned way darker than it should have.

And we'll finish this post with the rest of the hockey. I think I've said this a few times but Moss is one of a number of Wolverine icers born in my hometown of Livonia, and his college career from 2001-05 coincided with my time at the school. Muckalt doesn't pop up too often here so I was glad to find a shiny new insert of his. And I even added another Marty Turco jersey relic for good measure, this one from 2002-03 Pacific Quest for the Cup. That's the 39th hit in his collection, and he continues to lap the rest.

Many thanks again to Robert, a good guy of the blogging and trading communities, who exemplifies one of my favorite words, generosity, in deals like this. I'm exited to add all these great cards to my collections while advertising both his trading acumen and TCDB account, which you should totally hit up to make a deal of your own!