2023 trade package #31: the Collector

Happy new year, friends! The calendar has flipped over to another year but in terms of cards I need to recap I'm still stuck in 2023 a bit longer. It's worth it to give credit to some traders that continued to send me great stuff through the end of the year, though.

Tonight's subject is Chris, the Collector. Chris actually sent me a couple envelopes in December and this was the larger of the pair. Here's what arrived in this one:

Sparky's looking mighty fine in Tiffany form! Baez, Miggy, and Greene (plus Tork in the next scan) are all from '23 Topps Archives, and I got at least one of each of the 1956, 1965, and 2003 card designs. The second Cabrera is an insert from that product: 1957 Hit Stars. The Gibby cards were both new to me: a 1990 Starting Lineup rookie year version (so he's shown with the Tigers, not the Dodgers), and 1993 Pacific Spanish's Jugadores Calientes (Hot Players) prism insert. Grandy is from the beautiful Topps Tribute set, in this case 2013's version. And Topps can't keep up with the number of times Hill changes teams so they should just airbrush his jersey and go with "???" for the team.

Here's a bit more baseball plus a basketball pair. Fan favorite Chet Lemon comes from '87 Donruss Opening Day. Ripken is from UD's strange Ionix product released in 2000. Remember when Scherzer pitched for the Tigers? There he is on a 2014 Topps Blue parallel. There's the Tork I previously mentioned, part of the 1956 design portion. And how about that super cool Brandon Inge auto? Sticking with the 2023 Archives theme he's the first card alphabetically in the Fan Favorites Autographs insert, a yearly favorite that mixes current stars with past team guys like Jayson Werth, Jesse Orosco, Devon White, and Chili Davis. Very cool of Topps to include him here on the 1964 design. That's just my second signature of his to go along from one made waaaaay back in 2000. Thanks, Chris!

The basketball portion pairs up Robert "Tractor" Traylor on a '98 SP Top Prospects card that was hard to scan with HOFer Chris Webber out of UD's 2003-04 Glass. I have Chris's Fab Five teammate Jalen Rose from the same set.

There was a bit of football and hockey to be had as well! AC's 1989 Starting Lineup card is one of few (if any) SLU cards I own and a very cool item to find in this envelope. I don't know if I'll ever have the corresponding figure but I appreciate owning the card. Grbac's '98 Bowman Chrome Refractor looks amazing as that insert often does. Oddly enough this envelope didn't include current blog namesake Justin Verlander but Chris did find something to represent my defunct second blog: a Mario Manningham 2011 Rookies & Stars Longevity parallel numbered to just 99. No, I still don't have enough of him! Former teammates Patterson and Peoples-Jones probably couldn't have predicted our Wolverines would be in the national title game this coming Monday and it still sounds strange when I think about it, but I can't wait! And Hutch was a big part of Michigan Football's turnaround, and now he's due a lot of credit for how much he's returned the Lions' D to respectability and helping the team to its first playoff berth in forever.

Chris wouldn't be TCDb's hockeydude if we didn't swap hockey cards once in a while, and here he threw in a 2023-24 UD base of Red Wing C Robby Fabbri. The former Blues draft pick arrived in Hockeytown in a 2019 trade and is now in his fifth season with the winged wheels. He's even looking likely to top his career high of 17 goals with 11 as of this post. Let's go, Red Wings!

Chris, thanks again for all of these great cards, not to mention being a fantastic trade partner and regular reader/commenter. I appreciate the effort and quality you put into envelopes like these and I'm looking forward to trading with you more in '24!

I think I now have six blogger-type trades from December left to cover in addition to that month's show, late year eBay purchases, and lots and lots of TCDb trades from throughout the year, so I'll keep at it as I work on catching up. First, though, should be show #1 of the year for me tomorrow (Saturday), and then Michigan's first shot at a national championship since 1997. GO BLUE!