TCDB trade roundup: all set

What do I have for you tonight? Try five more TCDB trades, all with one thing in common: they included cards toward my set wantlists. Here's what you get to see tonight:

First up is Canadian Tigers fan rmpaq5. Ryan's another guy who handles a lot of the site's inaccuracy reports meaning I'd talked to him a good amount before finally proposing a deal back in February. In a roughly 50-for-60 swap (in which I got the larger pile), I traded a bunch of unwanted Tigers, including a few hits, for some set help, some Tigers and PC guys of my own, and a few hits as well that ended up in trade packages.

Here's what I scored:

Tigers young, old, and in between! Shiny (Refractors)!, vintage (Stormin' Norman!), and Canadian (O-Pee-Chee!). Avila and Clark are guys I don't put much effort into collecting but I wasn't going to pass up the chance to add a couple Refractors, even with them pictured with other teams. And how great is the photo on that Cash?

Those Fryman inserts looked fun enough that I didn't want to pass them up. Three many Grandersons is better than two, and while I'm not really a fan of Topps post-2010 or so, that Cloth Sticker was a fun throw-in. There's plenty of holes in my Griffey collection and it'll be a long time before I even run out of junk wax-era stuff to chase, much less enjoyable 90s inserts.

While the Gwynn in the first scan was more of a throw-in the insert up top here is a winner for sure. Check out '84 Tiger Herndon OPC-style from way back in '77. Inge is the only one of that trio of Tigers rookies that accomplished anything. AJax is always a favorite around here. Two more Barry cards, nice! And three (of four) Madduxes to add to his collection as well including versions of both of his '05 Diamond Kings appearances.

Poor Mize, I hope he comes back from TJ surgery triumphantly but I know the odds are long. You can always count on Canadians to have some pretty cool harder-to-find oddballs like Morris's card. The two Palmers you see above are part of a trio of Dean-o. '84 Tigers C Parrish's 1980 card is actually a Topps need, not OPC. Former Michigan Law student Rickey will go towards the Michigan Baseball collection. And we have a couple Ripken inserts including another for Topps' 2,632 insert.

Tram! The '81 OPC was a card I knew I needed but I'm not sure how I didn't have the '96 Circa. And here you see four many Verlanders, though there's one more below. The Bowman Heritage Mahogany parallel is from his rookie year and is a nice get while the others--die-cut, Refractor, and Refractor--are super cool too.

Miggy joins Dean-O, a new Sabo (weird orientation for the Silver Signature!), and another JV Refractor. Then we have a couple more Canadian oddballs of '84 Tigers Gibby and Morris: 1987 Stuart Bakery's Super Stars. Cool! And finally, Panini Stickers of Morris that I believe were nice throw-ins by Ryan.

And last up we have the baseball wantlist help. Of the six '94 Finest cards I'm of course most excited to add the Tettleton to his PC in a two-birds-with-one-stone deal. I believe Alomar was needed for my own '94 Ultra set build, though possibly the second Series II set I'm building to trade. And then there's two each from '95 Donruss and Score.

Many thanks to Ryan for being an asset to the site both as a member making database edits and as a trader. It's very rare for me to send cards to Canada in something larger than a PWE (besides to Doug, of course!) because of the cost, but it was definitely worth it here. The Ontario native appears to have trading disabled for now but keep an eye on his profile because you, like around 350 other people, won't be disappointed if you trade with him!

Next up is another Canadian member who also hails from Ontario, actually. Randy, who goes by Galtview, agreed to work with me on what became a seven-for-seven trade where I yet again gave up a few unneeded items from the Facebook haul for this interesting mix:

The main draw for me here was the two 1988 Domino's Tigers cards from the set that celebrates the '68 Tigers. I very likely had a complete set (or two with my brother) of these as a kid but I think some went missing, were damaged, got used for IP/TTM autos, or other(???). In this case Kaline's actually a variation (I already had the care of him hitting) while Lolich's card was indeed used for an IP auto. I have 26 of the 28 cards and am missing the "Pizza Buck Coupon" and title card (plus a couple errors or corrected cards for the master set).

The rest here just made the deal sweeter: a food issue Larkin and '96 Score sample too, a sweet almost metallic Pinnacle boxed set Ripken, and another Dean-o in the form of an exchange card insert from 1994.

Randy was great to work with and he apparently thought I was as well as we recently completed our second deal, one I'll be showing off in the near future. He gets my recommendation for a reliable PWE trader!

Next we have another one of the site's nicer members that I really appreciate. Mike (aint56cool) has gone through a lot the last few years recovering from cancer and other health issues plus losing his wife to the disease. I finally had a good chance to trade with him after finding he had around 30-35 cards that would knock down my wantlists a bit. The only problem: I didn't match anything on his own wantlist. So I asked if he'd be willing to put in the time to go through my tradelist and see if there was anything he could use. Cool guy that he is, he did so, mostly grabbing some stuff he could use as different trade bait, the best of which was a Panini Instant Aaron Rodgers that came with some others I bought a couple years ago.

Thanks to Mike I got these in the mail early last month:

The non-wantlist portion includes a Collect-a-Books of Mr. Padre, an '86 Sportflics of Guillermo Hernandez, a die-cut Dean-o, a Collector's Choice team set card of Tony Phillips, and my first card of former Michigan baseballer Paul Wenson. Wenson was in Ann Arbor in the mid-80s, went undrafted, and signed with the Tigers, then was out of baseball after reaching AAA in '89. The '89 ProCards issue you see above is one of just five he has to his name.

There were enough set wants that I just got lazy and went the photo route. Nine '94 Finest took another good bite out of that set. Three Ultras from the same year include HOFers Puckett and the Big Unit. You see four different '96 Finest base above but I needed two each of a pair, one of which was Roberts, meaning I intentionally got Bipped! Of the eight Flair cards from that year, six go towards the Silver variant while two are Gold. And the rest are all '97 Donruss, and I'm putting that together from a stack that came pretty close to being complete out of the Facebook collection. I'm still a big fan of that year's base and especially inserts to this day!

Many thanks to Mike for taking the time to manually look at my trade bait to make this deal happen without the aid of trade matching, which I'll admit makes things way easier. He's received over 400 positive feedback comments and I'm happily one of those so I hope some of you get the urge to try to work out something with him as well.

Next up is a repeat trade partner in nkandy11. He popped back up in my transactions hoping to nab some more of my Mariners, in this case eight from '96 Fleer. In return for those, a throw-in '94 Topps Gold, and a nice '97 Donruss A-Rod/Nomar insert, I'm the proud new owner of the following, plus a trio of fun football inserts I've already sent to Doug:

Of all the people who love Pacific's numbered parallels I'm certainly one of them! While I prefer actual foil stamping for the numbering instead of the digital printing, I've always kind of liked how they had the numbers up front. Here you see Travis Fryman in his post-Tigers career with Cleveland on a 2000 Pacific Platinum Blue parallel. I think I'd say Pacific never did its base designs better than 2000-2001.

The set wants portion here is actually all basketball, in this case 1999-00 Topps. My brother and I busted a good amount of boxes back then and even ventured into that sport a bit, and I still have a few sets that have long gone uncompleted. Knocking these three off leaves me 10 short of the set, nine RCs and one more team USA card, with none of them appearing to be rare. I'm always glad not to spend on the sport I care about the least so this was great.

Last up are two UM Football cards I matched up for: WR Chris Calloway ('97 Upper Deck) and TE Jay Riemersma (2000 Metal). It's funny to me that the UD card is from '97 since I've always associated that design with the 1998 baseball product.

As with the first deal, trade #2 went quite well and I wouldn't be surprised if I was sending more cards to Seattle before long.

Last up tonight is the result of another Canadian PWE trade that I was happy with. Tassacafix, a.k.a. Philippe of Quebec, is a fan of his former home team the Expos, and he found seven cards on my tradelist that he could use. In return I ended up with the following:

Dingler and Manning are 2021 Heritage Minors base cards that I was grad to land of a couple guys who, assuming health (no sure bet with Manning) could get some good playing time for a franchise mired in a perpetual "rebuild." Gwynn and Maddux are early/mid-90s throw-ins to fill the many holes in their collections. Tram looks great on his 2021 Topps Archives base. Morris' '93 Pinnacle card depicts him with two of the three franchises with whom he won a ring. And last up is former Expo (among nine total teams) Jeff Fassero representing the set wants portion with his '95 Donruss Series 1 base, which now sits at just four cards needed.

Philippe was great to work with and like others on the site represented his country well. If you've got some spare Expos on your tradelist don't be surprised if you see a trade offer from him come your way!

I'll be glad to get all of these put away, especially the cards that go in sets, and then I'll be back at it with a dwindling number of trades to cover (though a couple more are in the works!), but I also have a new eBay purchase to cover, and maybe even more surprises. Until then, stay cool, enjoy the weather, and FIRE AVILA!