2020 trade package #18: Chronicles of Fuji

I'm back with another same-day trade package post! It helps that it's a PWE but my new scanning process in which I no longer save individual scans for player collections also speeds things up.

When I last got cards from Fuji it was February and the world was very, very different. He sent me an absolutely ridiculous mailer stuffed with hits, many of which I needed and some of which I was able to include in subsequent trades. Flash forward to today's PWE, one that caught me totally by surprise because it didn't even come up on my Informed Delivery. Under the radar!

Fuji did an amazing job of pushing the limits of a PWE by stuffing in a nice number of cards along with some solid backing that gave everything plenty of support, meaning it made it to my mailbox in the same condition in which he sent it.

Here's what the west coast blogging legend sent me this time:

To kick things off, Mark was nice enough to point out that card #1, a Jim Abbott '92 Upper Deck issue, is the dreaded Gold Hologram version. I say "dreaded" in terms of trying to chase them down, otherwise I'm happy to have one!

The one player in today's post still with Detroit is Miggy, who's seen on 2008 UD Timeline and 2015 Topps Highlight of the Year cards. Boy that 2012 triple crown season was crazy!

The Georgia Peach looks terrific on another great vintage UD design, 2001's Hall of Famers. Miggy and Verlander (2008 Upper Deck X) will join him and Pudge (2005 Absolute Memorabilia Retail) in the Hall someday.

Fuji hit both my current and former blog namesakes as the recently retired Granderson pops up on a 2008 UD First Edition Starquest insert. And his former teammate (briefly in 2009) Rick Porcello closes out the scan on a 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom Perforated parallel. I'm glad that those cards that seem like they should be condition sensitive don't seem to get damaged very easily!

We'll start the other group off with a five spot of 2006-09 Bowman Gold parallels of some former prospects. I don't recall Blue, who seems to have made it as high as AAA in 2007. Dominican pitcher Figaro (awesome name!) appeared in 52 games over two seasons each with Detroit and Milwaukee. Green had even less of a career than Blue (ha!) after being a 2008 third-round pick. Maples also made it to AAA Toledo but never cracked the big league roster. Finally, OF Wilkin Ramirez got cups of coffee with the Tigers, Braves, and Twins in the odd-numbered years between 2009-2013.

And for the dessert portion of this post, Fuji included three 1970s Hostess cards of former Tigers. Hooray for food issue oddballs! LeFlore (1977) is well known among Tigers fans thanks to his six solid seasons in Detroit. Ruhle (1976) did alright for himself as a 17th-round pick for his home-state team, spending four years in Motown before putting in seven more with the team I'd say he's more known for, the Astros. And Thompson (1978) split a surprising number of his stats fairly equally between the Tigers and Pirates. This trio has the textbook hand cut-out Hostess look and I'm happy to be adding them to my small vintage oddball team collection.

Fuji, thanks again for the fun surprise PWE and great new cards! I'm not exactly sure when I'll be returning fire but I do have a good little stack put together for you, and as a teacher I bet you'll appreciate that there's a lot of A's!