2020 COMC purchases: look at these 'graphs (and more!)

Time to finish up a look at my late-year purchases from COMC so I can close the book on cards I bought in 2020, a year that often felt as bad as a Nickelback song.

I decided to throw all of the football content in one post and just try not to get too verbose about it. That way I can get this stuff put away and move on to other incoming items and stuff I want to post about. I'm showing off 35 cards tonight and the vast majority include signatures, hence today's title and the meme above. Let's get down to business:

The other 34 cards fit nicely into two scans each of nine (vertical cards) and eight (horizontal), so I'll give the only non-hit its own spot here to start. Old Ty joins Amani Toomer (back-to-back in the set, in fact) in my collection of the amazing 2000 Bowman's Best Acetate parallel, which is so cool I scanned both sides for this post!

Ok, on to the (mostly) 'graphs! Many of the cards you'll see were excellent deals that fortified some of my better football PCs. Avant's from the era of shiny stickergraphs and is numbered /125. Breaston did play a couple seasons for the Chiefs, who could repeat as champs tomorrow evening. J-Booty's auto comes on an Optic card, making it shiny in a different way than Avant's. Taco (Michigan uni!) was drafted by Dallas but is now potentially in line for a ring as a bit player for the Chiefs. I continued to bolster Darboh's collection with the three autos you see here (and more in a bit), and Jeff and I have lots of those in common which I noticed while adding them on TCDB. Braylon's huge Browns swatch (/150) was a nice value. And I scored another, uh, signature? of Gary, who had a solid sophomore campaign with the Pack.

Now this is a top three I can get down with: a trio of college uni cards! Gentry's tiny John Hancock graces a Prizm card, Big Mo is one of those acetate cards from Leaf Trinity's Clear line, and I tracked down auto number two of former lineman Trezelle Jenkins. Then it's on to just four out of an absolute bounty of Jake Longs, including a quad jersey/auto, autograph, and not one but two plates (2008 Topps Mayo and 2010 Topps), the first I've acquired of the former #1 overall pick. It's been a while since I've posted a new pickup of former college star DL Mike Martin so why not celebrate his return with a beautiful UD Black signature (/199)? And I enjoy seeing former stars like Toomer get recognized after their careers in Panini's various products, like this Certified jersey (/49) of Amani "It's Not A" Toomer.

Not everything was autographed in this bunch but most was. One of the exceptions was a cool rookie year Avant jersey (/499) where the shininess of the card is better than the swatch. Leaf's cards are fantastic values for college collectors like this sick giant patch/auto of WR Jehu Chesson that cost me less than $3. The three other Darboh cards I found were jersey/autos, two of which came with nice pieces of what's becoming a familiar Seahawks jersey for me as a collector of his cards. Braylon's Topps "patch" isn't terribly impressive but was a cool find for under a buck, and the large jersey number relic card (/25) is even better. Panini's Contenders/Draft products are also outstanding for those pursuing cards of their favorite schools, and here I was glad to find my third signature of former DB David Long.

And the last grouping allows me to end the post with a bang. I was very pleased with my Long haul (pun intended), nine cards for about $33 that also included four jersey/autos and an auto/manupatch. The Gridiron Gear card is one of those where the signed swatch can be pulled out, similar to the Denard that follows the group, though I think in Shoelace's case the signed piece isn't from a jersey. I was thrilled to add another of A-Train's beautiful signatures to my collection. And we'll end on a non-auto, a dual relic of WR Marquise Walker, representing Tom Brady's Bucs in this post.

Once again I had a great time landing some amazing pieces for my collection at pretty nice prices, even if my trade bait purchasing was less than ideal this time around. Just a few quick collection notes: Long zoomed past Braylon thanks to his big day, with the OT hitting 97 to the WR's 93 (Manningham's in between at 95), and threatening to become the second member of my 100-hit club (Henne). Despite his cards being relatively recent, Darboh's already over the 40-mark to 41. And Avant gets to 65 hits, good for sixth overall. Michigan's former WRs feature heavily at the top of my collection with #s 3, 4, 6, 7, 11, 12, 14, 16, and 17.

With these finally able to be put away in their boxes I'm not sure where I'll go next: possibly my first Baseballcardstore.ca order, or perhaps an interesting purchase from a new vendor, not to mention an incoming trade envelope. If I manage to get myself to put up a Super Bowl-related post tomorrow I know which one it'll be, and I'm curious to see reactions to it.