The TCDB Michigan Box part 1: basketball

Although my Cardbarrel order arrived today I knew it was going to be delayed a bit from its original ETA so I finally got to work on something I'd been putting off for a bit.

As some of you may remember, last May I completed a TCDB deal with fellow Wolverines collector Chris (cjjt) in which I flipped him some dupe Michigan Football hits and maybe a few other things for a 5000-count monster box of his UM football and basketball extras. The not-quite-full box added 1600+ football cards to my collection and more than 350 basketball items to boot! Plus I came into possession to a bunch of extras I could use as traders, some of which have long since made their way to mailboxes around the country. In short, it was a huge boon to my collection and a blast making my largest TCDB deal by far.

So this past weekend I finally decided to start making a bit of progress on covering the contents. This evening, in honor of the UM basketball team going dancing as a #1 seed(!), albeit with a key injury or two, here's a quick look at the basketball content:

I took this shot to give you an idea of the sizes of the stacks for all 23 guys represented here. Glen Rice's pile (124 cards) led the way by far, with Juwan Howard (46), Loy Vaught (39), Jalen Rose and Terry Mills (26), and Chris Webber (25), the next highest. Gary Grant (18) and Rumeal Robinson (14) were the other two to hit double-digits.

In this scan and the next two I decided to grab one card to represent each player in the bunch, and in all but five cases (where I only received a single new card of a player) I had a choice, so I often opted for Michigan uniform cards where I could. Bullock, Burke, Calip, and Hughes were four of the five single-card guys, and I can't say Calip's name was familiar to me. The long-tenured Crawford added four new cards, Green got six, and Higgins five. Given the wide range of years represented here you won't be surprised that I got to enjoy a huge variety of brands and designs!

Here we have Jimmy King (2 cards), Mills, and Rose from some college-themed sets. McCormick (three), Riley (four), and Tarpley and Taylor (eight each) are guys I hadn't mentioned yet. I was absolutely spoiled with choice for Rice (don't worry, you'll see more soon) but had to go with the E-X Century card here. Flair and UD's Black Diamond were a couple brands I was happy to see plenty of, especially the version graced by Taylor.

Rudy T.! I had a pair to pick from for him and skipped the boring junk wax item for an SP Authentic base featuring a cool college shot. Traylor's Focus base was one of three to choose from, and since I like the baseball and football iterations of that design, why not go with that? Vaught's Flair insert was a natural choice for me, a basketball-appropriate set called Hardwood Leaders. Wade's another guy I wasn't familiar with and the Wild Card you see above (more familiar to me on the football side of things) was it. And of Webber's nice stack I thought the mid-90s Ultra insert pairing him up with a Lion was fun.

As I said a good amount of the stuff was somewhat boring base from the early 90s so I didn't have any desire to show off everything (and therefore need to resort to my terrible card photography skills), but still managed to come up with some very cool items to highlight. Take this nine-spot of Sporting News coach of the year Juwan Howard. Because he had 46 cards to choose from I easily came up with a page worth, starring some fun inserts and interesting base from products such as Topps Finest and Chrome plus UD's Black Diamond and SPx.

And then there's '89 champ Rice and his 124 cards, meaning I couldn't stick to just nine! Chris had each player sorted by brand and then year, which was weird for me as I was flipping through everything to determine what was new, and that's why you see things sort of grouped that way here. It's kind of fun seeing a trio of Bowman's Best designs with a three-peat, though, or a couple Flair Showcases bringing the shininess.

Look at the Topps and Upper Deck greatness on display here! The former includes Stadium Club, Finest times three, and Gallery while the latter brings it with SP, flagship, Black Diamond, and Encore. And I didn't even include the E-X Century card you already saw! The 1997 and '98 Upper Deck flagship baseball products are among my favorites and the hoops version lives up to the hype with interesting game-dated photos.

These four guys combined for 116 new cards, fewer than Rice by himself, but I didn't want to give them the short end of the stick. Rose leads the way with another Stadium Club look I've always appreciated plus the usually cool Ultimate Victory. Platinum's throwback designs can be fun but not as much as Taylor's resting dunk face. Mystique was another shiny brand I liked to collect, as was Topps Chrome in its older iterations, and here Vaught brings his own intense dunk face. Lastly, I threw in a retro Webber (one of several from that set) and a very representative 90s insert.

As a result of all this craziness Rice became the leader in my basketball PC with 187 cards, making him the second to hit the century mark after Webber, now at 136. Howard (84), Rose (63), and Vaught (53) all eclipsed the 50-card mark, and I count 11 players with at least 20 items. Not bad at all!

And now I can enjoy putting them away before moving on to my Cardbarrel cards, then possibly returning with the massive football side of this deal, which will probably take several posts. Until then, good luck to my Wolverines in the NCAA tournament!