TCDB trade: randylaw, part 3: everything else!

It's been a tough season for...well, all sports really, but in particular it's been a tough season for Michigan Football fans. Fortunately, card collecting doesn't have a season--it's all year, baby!--and it often helps lift my spirits.

So with that, welcome to the third and final post covering my large TCDB deal with randylaw!

Today's recap features a fun mix of stuff: classic Tigers, vintage, my core four PC guys, and Michigan sports:

I told you this would be a fun one, and we're just getting started! I called this section the "classic" Tigers for obvious reasons. Guys like Cobb, Cochrane, Fidrych, Greenberg (the hard-to-read insert), Horton, and Prince Hal are well known to folks beyond Tigers fans, and it was nice adding to my collections of each guy. I was particularly excited for the 1974 and '77 Hortons since I'm slowly trying to build up his run of stuff made during his career. I now have 10 of those from the 60s and 70s (plus an SSPC issue as well) so that's going nicely. Conlon (Hughie Jennings!) and Topps' earlier 90s Archives offerings also chip in here.

Here's one reason I was particularly excited for this trade: Randy had some solid vintage Tigers to choose from, and choose 'em I did! The six you see grouped together are my first examples from 1957 Topps, and they give me a nice start towards the 26-card team set. Hoeft is a guy I'm vaguely familiar with and of course Kuenn is the player most well known to me. These have been well loved, especially the Finigan, but of course that adds character and I wouldn't have it any other way! They're joined by a '61 Topps league leaders card that includes pitcher Frank Lary, and a '75 team checklist. Whomever owned the latter noted in red pen that they had all the team's cards except SS Tom Veryzer.

Naturally I took advantage and grabbed everything I needed of my "core four" guys: Griffey, Gwynn, Maddux, and Ripken. And naturally most of that was junk wax-era stuff, but that's ok, because they were all new for those collections! On the oddball front I had fun adding a couple Griffey UD Looney Toons holograms and another Holsum disc, this time of Gwynn. Those two players also appear on the most recent cards in these scans. By the way, the other player on Gwynn's Pinnacle Idols subset, for those like me who didn't recognize him, is Willie Davis of the Dodgers.

Everything else features a subject for my Michigan sports collections. Abbott joins Griffey from the previously mentioned hologram set. Appleton, born Pete Jablonowski, was a former Wolverines pitcher who spent 14 seasons in the bigs, appears here on a Conlon card, which is good since I probably can't easily afford his 1930s Goudey and Play Ball cards! The well known (especially around here) Gehringer joins Appleton with a Conlon issue. Though I scanned them backwards, I was glad to add a pair of Ted Simmons cards as I continue to grow his PC: '74 Topps and '89 Score. Knuble was a Wolverwing and Roberts also is a former Wolverines icer. Davis (and her partner Charlie White) and Shibutani (with her brother Alex) were Olympian Wolverines who medaled in ice dancing, including a gold for Davis in 2014.

And then there's the football, which proved to be nice to scan in its own group. The first four are 2017 Elite Draft Picks rookies (meaning college uni shots!) of Jake Butt, Amara Darboh, Jourdan Lewis, and Jabrill Peppers. WR Jehu Chesson was the other UM RC in the set and I already had that, so I'll just need to add the Tom Brady base at some point. There's plenty of stars like AC, Harbaugh, Thomas, and Toomer, and I even snuck in vintage cards of S Thom Darden and Curtis Greer (both '81 Topps). Swell cards of Bill Hewitt and Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch round out a fun group.

I hope at least a few of you found this three-part series interesting, and regardless, that you got a good idea of the potential there is in terms of TCDB trading. As I've said multiple times, Randy was awesome, and given his huge wantlist, I could definitely see trading with him again in the near future!

With these covered I would expect my next posts to be a trade package (a PWE) and small eBay purchase, so watch for those soon-ish.