2026 trade package #9: Topps Cards That Never Were

My next April trade package came courtesy of Jeremy from Topps Cards That Never Were. He's primarily a fan of a couple teams: the Rays and Tigers. His Rays are currently sitting atop the American League with 34 wins. Meanwhile, the Tigers are...not. They're tied in dead last with the Angels, whom they're somehow leading in tonight's game as I write this. To describe the quality of this year's team as "cheeks" is probably being kind.

That's frustrating as a fan, but then again it's not entirely new to me. I was born in 1983 and between then and last season they made the playoffs just nine times, winning one title in three tries (in '84, of course). Other than that, they've finished below .500 in 24 of those 43 seasons, losing 100+ games five times. in 2002 and '03 they earned a combined 98-225 record. And they're well on their way to another one of those seasons that feels like it time traveled straight from the 90s. These guys SUCK.

But that hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for collecting cards of Tigers new and old. Because of that, I'm thankful to Jeremy for the Tigers-centric mailer he treated me to last month, one that also included some other fun items for my collections:

Baez is one of a few Tigers who've been on the shelf for a good part of this season, though the streaky IF/OF wasn't playing well before going on the IL, and his All-Star '25 campaign looks like another random positive season for the enigmatic "El Mago." Bondo was part of Detroit's historically terrible 2003 campaign but I'd still take him over Jack Flaherty right now. In his prime Miggy would have led this team to maybe a few more wins, but it's largely a AAAA roster right now, and things will need to change for the record to improve significantly. I don't know that OF prospect Roberto Campos will be part of that growth, but top-10 CF prospect Max Clark, the 3rd overall pick in 2023, has the makings of a potential star, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do whenever he gets called up.

Former Wolverine Jake Cronenworth is one of the non-Tigers who made the trip up north to my mailbox. The former Ray appeared four times thanks to a pair of Topps Rainbow Foils, a Padres team set card, and a Heritage parallel. The foils look great, but especially appreciate the team card because those are sometimes harder to find than they should be.

Heading back to the past for a moment, we have a cool pair of former 1B/DH types. Darrell Evans' '85 OPC contains his stats from the 1984 World Series season, while my newest card of Cecil "Big Daddy" Fielder is from last year's Panini Prizm set.

Then we're back to a current guy in Riley Greene, who has a tendency to be a bit streaky, but has been one of the top three or four hitters on this year's team. The Archives card is a nice throwback to the 2005 Topps set, one with a design I appreciate a bit more in throwback form.

The late Hernandez takes us back to that same '85 OPC set as Evans above, and man was he a beast in 1984. Jobe, Jung, and Keith are all current Tigers, though the pitcher's still recovering from injury, Jung's spent most of the season in AAA, and Keith's scuffling a bit trying to repeat his solid past two seasons.

Larkin is another ex-Wolverine in this package and I love his Purple Holo Donruss card.

Speaking of parallels, former Tigers IF Scott Livingstone features on a Stadium Club Golden Rainbow insert from 1994. He played his first 3+ seasons in Detroit before being one of many Tigers flipped to the Padres in that decade. Utility guy Zach McKinstry is unfortunately hitting about as well as Livingstone did back then after an All-Star 2025. Montero's been one of the not-as-bad rotation options this year, though that's not saying a lot. And 2024 11th overall pick Bryce Rainer, a SS, is another very intriguing prospect that I hope gets called up in the next couple years in place of washed up FA signings.

It's nice to see three instances of ace P Tarik Skubal here as he chases his 3rd straight AL Cy Young, though between injuries and the team's lost season, it feels less likely that he'll win, and if so, he may not do so with the Tigers. I'll just enjoy his talents as long as he's here. Sweeney hasn't been with the big club since a rough '25 season. And JV's return hasn't been what fans had hoped as he's appeared in a single game: a loss in which he allowed 5 ER in 3.2 innings. At 43, his chances of getting to 300 wins are on life support. But if he can come back and pitch a bit more, it'll be a nice enough story. The trio of cards Jeremy sent of him look great, including an All-Star throwback.

One last scan concludes my recap of the goods, though I should note that I only scanned what was new to me. I'm mentioning that to give Jeremy credit for even more generosity as I'm showing off about half of what he actually sent.

A couple recent Tigers team cards close out the baseball content. When it came to basketball, a couple Fab-Fivers were natural fodder for this package. Jimmy King stars on a Signature Rookies issue that pictures him with this year's national champs, while HOFer Chris Webber appears on a shiny foil Hoops insert celebrating 1993-94's top rookies. His inclusion makes sense since he was the league's ROY over Penny Hardaway and Jamal Mashburn.

In terms of football, Jeremy sent me a nice bunch of Charles Woodsons (speaking of HOFers), several of which were rookie year cards like the above '98 UD Choice. That's a subset card while his RC (which I do own) can be found earlier in the set. That was joined by what I'd consider the most exciting card in the package: a TTM/IP-signed 1999 Bowman of school legend RB Tim Biakabutuka. This was an exciting card to pull out of the stack and I already expressed my thanks to Jeremy for sending it back up to Ann Arbor.

Jeremy, thanks once again for thinking of me with this latest envelope--I obviously enjoyed all of these new PC additions! I'm not sure when I'll be sending a stack back your way, but I will say I'm at least working on it.

I'll try to be back soon once again with my final April trade package, one that had a distinct Canadian flavo(u)r!