2023 trade package #16: Baseball Card Breakdown

I may not post very often these days, but I do still keep up appearances, and having been around the card blogging scene for coming up on 13 years, I've traded with a lot of great people. One huge benefit of that longevity is great relationships with many of those trade partners who are still around. As much as I've been enjoying making deals on TCDb, there's nothing like the mutual trust I've built with some of my favorites over the past decade-plus.

One such person, who's deservedly well known and liked in this sphere is Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown. It looks like he hit the 10-year mark back in June, and a bit more than a year after he started up BCB we made our first trade (fittingly for this post, I received a Topps Retired Signature autograph!). This evening's post makes 12 deals I'll have reported on on this here blog, so needless to say, the history's there to make me feel plenty comfortable to keep working with him.

Well, I'd been checking out his trade bait page (seriously, give it a look!) now and then, and a couple  of his better items caught my eye. I reached out to him on Twitter to find out what he wanted for them. As it turns out, he showed off what he picked out in his June post celebrating 10 years of Baseball Card Breakdown. Long story short, he sent me links to a couple of his most wanted ("wishful thinking") items on COMC: a '57 Topps of Gil Hodges and '72 Topps Steve Garvey. The prices for those were so reasonable that I was happy to throw in a '78 Topps Trammell/Molitor RC I also snagged there. I was only too happy to do that knowing that Gavin made a very fair offer, he wouldn't flake on me, and would get my end of the deal to me safely, which he certainly did:

I should clarify that I only asked for the first two cards, which we'll discuss in a minute, but first, big thanks to Gavin for generously including Bill Freehan's 2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Gold Refractor. Not only is it a beautiful looking card of one of my favorite underrated collections, but it's limited to just 25 copies! Or should be, at least--these were supposed to be numbered /25 on the back but both the copy Gavin sent me and the image on TCDb lack said stamp, making me think it's an issue across the entire run of this parallel. Anyway, as throw-ins go, this one was great!

Now on to the biggest items:

Both of tonight's new autographs hail from one of Gavin's favorite products: Topps' Retired Signature Edition. As you can see above, they came in taped one-touches, but that didn't stop me from removing them to get better scans. As these images show, that set featured retired fan favorites (and not just HOFers) on chrome-style cards using that year's flagship design, but with white replacing the blue borders and other design elements. I'm a fan of vintage photos on newer designs so I think these came out great.

First up is my third signature of a guy I'll forever associate with the '84 Tigers, '88 World Series history be damned (we had him first...and last!). Gavin had two such cards of Kirk Gibson and I opted for this one, where the end of his autograph kind of keeps running to the edge of the card. It features a great pair of photos of a young Gibby, and he had a pretty interesting way of signing his name back then, so it's a winning combo, not unlike his pair of game 5 homers in the 1984 Fall Classic.

And of course we get full career stats on the back, plus a hologram for authenticity purposes.

I'm very excited to add this one to his collection, especially since of the two other autographs I have of him, only one is still in good shape--Gibby's card from the following year's product, which I naturally acquired from Gavin; the other is a 2001 Topps Archives rookie reprint auto of his that came to me faded and has only gotten worse as time has gone on. I'll replace it at some point, but I still count it for now.

So the Gibson alone would be exciting enough, but the next card made the deal even sweeter, and definitely earned Gavin his side of the trade:

HOF corner infielder George Kell appeared in at least parts of seven seasons with the Tigers, his longest tenure with any franchise, and those 800+ games were played pretty much during his prime. Though you'll sometimes see him pictured with Boston or Baltimore (and rarely, Philly and the White Sox), I'll always consider him a Tiger based on the above, plus his run as a very enjoyable play-by-play guy with fellow star Al Kaline.

What you see here is my first on-card signature of Kell, replacing the 2010 Panini Century cut auto I've had of him for a while as his best card. The Arkansas native would have been about 81 when this was signed and he obviously did an excellent job with a very legible autograph. He obviously took his time which, at his age and considering the the number of cards he had to sign is admirable. And as with Gibson's card above, naturally I love the photos of George in his younger days.

Here's the back of his card as well, highlighting some especially good years in Motown, especially 1949, when the AL batting champ led both leagues; 1950, when he paced both circuits in hits and doubles; and 1951, when his numbers in both of those stats were enough to lead his own league.

I took a quick look at my collection and these two join cards I already owned of fellow Tigers Darrell Evans and Lance Parrish, plus Michigan guy Jim Abbott, out of the very cool 2003 product. In all, I count 13 cards in my collection that came out of the set's 2003-05 run, with Alan Trammell, Bill Freehan x2), Denny McLain, and Earl Weaver joining everyone mentioned above, plus secondary signatures for Evans, Abbott, and Gibby.

Many thanks once again to Gavin for having such nice trade bait available and making a more-than-fair deal that got a few nice cards in his hands for the stunning pair above, plus the generously included Freehan insert. I'll be glad to continue trading with him as long as we both keep at it and I know I can do so with confidence thanks to trades like this one.

Coming up next, I may take a quick break from blogger trades to catch up on the piles of TCDb trades, two shows' worth of cards, and an eBay pickup, just to mix things up a bit. We'll see. Anyway, I've got lots more cards to cover so if you like show & tell posts--and I hope you do since that's about 99% of what I do these days--you're in for lots more to look at!