6/20/26 card show report: meetup mania!

It took me until early August to post this but tonight I'm finally giving you a recap of the much-hyped June show and meetup!

It was another amazing one, as you can tell from this picture of me, John, Jeff, and Jason, plus Jason's wife Sam. I headed west to Kalamazoo, picked up John, and got us over to the Wings Event Center, a place that's hosted this show a number of times. This one was actually down in one of the ice rinks instead of the expo space, which was weird but ultimately fine.

When we got there we were able to meet up with everyone else, then we headed to the tables run by the Hollister family, some very nice folks Jeff knows well from previous shows when he and his cousin were also dealers. They were nice enough to take the above picture, and I spent plenty of time at their tables piling up some great cards.

This was almost like a mini National for me since I'm used to spending most of my time and money at one person's table thanks to my monthly show. There was a lot more variety to check out here, and Jason pointed me to a number of sellers who had stuff I could most definitely use. I think I bought stuff from around four or five dealers there, and I could have probably spent more time and money if I had any of either left!

Here's what my box looked like when I got home to give you an idea of just how much I picked up. That's one of those graded card boxes, and it works perfectly for me at my monthly show, but in this case it wasn't nearly enough to transport my haul! I spent $140 that Saturday in late June, making up for the small amount I'd thrown down a couple weeks prior, and I'm thrilled at some of the big items I found for myself and others. Most of the latter have already been sent out in trade packages, but tonight you get to see my goodies:

Not a ton of baseball stuff, but some good ones for sure. I think Jason might have picked up that Clark for me. He's been a bit of a spark for the Tigers post-trade deadline, which is very cool. That second Gwynn is numbered out of 2001, the Ripkens look great, and Pudge #1 is actually a sample version of a favorite 90s insert (they rule!) of mine, Great X-Pectations.

That Pepsi Palmer is a bit beat up but is something I'd never seen before--a 2000 collab with Upper Deck comprising 15 Tigers. And lastly for baseball, I think the Bondo bat is another card Jason scored for me. It's always funny getting bat relics of pitchers in the DH era, though at least we got to see some of these guys at the plate before both leagues succumbed to the designated hitter. Baseball-Reference says that Jeremy had 31 plate appearances over 15 games, and he was lucky enough to tally one hit in that time. He singled to lead off the top of the 5th against Jon Lieber and the Phillies on June 15, 2007, and a couple singles got him to third before a Gary Sheffield sac fly brought him home for his only career run scored.

The baseball stuff was nice, but football clearly won the day here in terms of my keepers. More specifically, I came home with tons of inserts, color, and RCs of Michigan gridiron stars--enough to need six scans to capture everything! I won't bore you with details, so feel free to just admire these if you feel like it.

I'm enjoying continuing to build out my Corum PC, and I've been surprised by how reasonably affordable Graham's cards are, but I guess that's what happens when you play defense.

When I said lots of color, I meant it! A good chunk of these came from the Hollisters' 3/$1 boxes. The cards were originally a buck each and for me they would have been overpriced at that level, but they worked fine when they were 67% off.

That Prestige Gold of Kwity Paye, numbered /99, was one of my favorite pickups of the show. Gold is a nice parallel color when you're wearing the maize & blue.

By luck this scan contains most of the numbered football cards I scored. Peterson's 2001 Chrome Refractor is limited to 999, Denard's Topps Platinum goes to 99, and Terrell's Pacific chase card is also SN999. I guess these three were dressed to the nines!

The last football scan includes a few more inserts before getting to the hits, including a '97 Pinnacle Inscriptions V2 card I already owned, allowing me to peel the protective coating off of this one.

To those I added a third auto of OT Trezelle Jenkins (third hit), a jersey relic of the A-Train (#55 overall), and football relic of Thomas's positional counterpart Tyrone Wheatley (#8).

My haul didn't quite end there, though, as I picked up this Pacific jersey relic of Wings legend Nick Lidstrom from the same seller that had the above relics (and some other nice cards I scored for trade packages). I think this one was something like $3-$4 so I was happy to add it to my small collection of Wings hits.

As you can tell I had a blast, not only because of my pickups, but especially because of the great time I had seeing Jeff, John, and Jason & Sam. It's a treat to hang out with all of them and I'm glad I've been able to do so a few times now! I don't know if we'll be able to do it again this year, or at least maybe not all of us, but if it can even become a yearly tradition I'd be over the moon. A big thank you again to everyone that made the trip, you're the best!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be back with next but I've still got plenty to cover, if not the attention span and energy to do so. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of my pickups, your recent show experiences, or anything else that makes you want to comment.

6/5/26 card show report: the appetizer

I'm back from a quick vacation down south (possibly more on that in a future post as it did involve a baseball game and related card purchase), and tonight I'll be posting my pickups from the first of the two shows I attended in June. This was the usual monthly one at Taylor Town Trade Center, whereas next time I'll recap the big meetup in Kalamazoo.

If May's $170 spending made up for the paltry $25 I threw down in April, June was a regression to the mean (which I made up for a couple weeks later!) as I exchanged a decent $53 for what you see below and more:

A new Grandy! Did you know I now own 300 of his cards, good for #1 on TCDb as the first to reach that milestone? 1000+ guys Gwynn, Larkin, and Maddux all came along for the ride on some fun inserts too.

No Griffey, but the other Junior at least rounds out the big PC guys, and my Pudge PC continued to skyrocket this year thanks to another trio here.

A Pistons THJ Refractor represents the lone basketball item, but I did make up for that a bit this month.

A couple nice looking Nicos kick off the football content, including a die-cut Select parallel and insert from Topps Chrome, a product you'll see a good amount of tonight. I also came away with a couple new cards of national champ RB Blake "The Great" Corum, one of which sports Donruss's Rated Rookie logo that I value above Topps's All-Star Rookie cup.

This football scan brings a great mix of color, some of which was from Panini brands, but most of which hails from Topps Chrome. The Peppers Red Ice looks great with the Giants' unis, but the Oluwatimi is the card I'm most excited for here because the transfer C who led the OL for the 2022 Big Ten champs doesn't appear on much cardboard.

Hey, how about six total cards of GOAT DB Charles Woodson to wrap up the non-hits? The Heisman-winner is four cards away from becoming football player #3 to join the 400-club in my collection, and not that far behind leaders Brian Griese (431) and Jim Harbaugh (400 even).

I managed to snag a few fun hits as well without breaking the bank. The Select jersey of "Gift from the football gods" DL Mason Graham represents his debut in my hits collection, which is pretty exciting. Meanwhile, the Pink Prizm (but red jersey swatch) of transfer (out) QB Joe Milton III is, appropriately enough, #3. And last up, not only did I land a second relic of #1 WR Roman Wilson, I also lucked into finding a beautiful Prestige auto of Graham's fellow national champ. It's foil, it's Prestige, and it's a Michigan uni card, so I love it...even if it uses a photo from before he switched to the #1 jersey!

Ordinarily that would be it, but I wasn't spending a ton and noticed some interesting oddball stuff on one of my usual seller's tables. In the end, I decided adding $10 to my total was worth it for this:

Does anyone else who grew up during the 80s or who collects the decade recognize the name "Topps Gallery of Champions"? If you do, then you already know what to expect:

This is the 1988 set of 12 mini aluminum "cards" representing some of the award-winners from 1987. The set, also available in bronze and silver at much higher prices, replicates each player's 1988 Topps card.

Hopefully you can get a decent idea from these images, but I've also included the checklist here:

As you can see, each player is represented only once, even if they won multiple awards (Dawson, McGwire, and Bedrosian). Of course the big draw for me was Tony Gwynn, but I also thought it was fun picking up such an oddball item in its complete, boxed form.

Of course Topps wanted you to buy the more expensive versions too, for about $134 and $484 delivered--and that was in 1980s dollars! Those prices equate to about $378 and $1366 today. Whoa!

Nope, I'm totally good with the $10 I spent for the 12-piece aluminum set, thank you very much.

It was another good Taylor show, but as I said in my last post covering the trade package Jeff brought along, the Kalamazoo meetup a couple weeks later was an absolute blast, and I'll plan on covering that next, so stay tuned!

2026 trade package #14: My Sports Obsession

It sure does make your day that much nicer when you're already excited to go to a card show and then you get to meet up with a bunch of friends too! I'll cover more about the show in particular in an upcoming post, but today I'm covering cards that were gifted to me by one of those very cool people.

Here's a look at all of us at the 6/20 show in Kalamazoo. I'm on the left, followed by John, Jeff, and Samantha, who's now married to Jason from TCDb (congrats to them!), followed by the Army/Reds fan himself.

Jeff, whom I think everyone reading this knows from My Sports Obsession, brought me a box packed with stuff he knew I'd love, and as always, he was correct. My fellow all things Michigan/Barry Larkin/Cal Ripken Jr. collector does an amazing job of sorting through cards for a local shop, getting to keep some as payment, and sending me some of the spoils, because he's cool like that.

Here's a look at all the goodies he brought with him:

Lots of good Tigers, especially Miggy, Cobb, and 2026 All-Star Riley Greene. Once again I'm reminded that Topps' Flagship cards look quite nice compared to their actual flagship output. Elliott is one of a few Michigan Baseball PCs Jeff and I have in common, and thanks to him I now have six cards of the 2022 A's second-rounder who's still in their system. Oh, and Riley with just the 'stache looks hilarious!

This scan is a nice one for my Mr. Padre collection. Pacific Prism Invincible remains undefeated thanks to cards like that, and of course I love 90s stuff like Pinnacle Mint. The more recent cards from Topps Gold Label, Platinum Anniversary, and Archives look quite nice too. And I don't get to add to my collection of UM guy Tommy Henry (the pride of Portage Northern!) as much as I'd like, so I appreciate Jeff sending me the Bowman Draft Chrome card above.

Rich Hill may be retired but thankfully I get to enjoy a card of his final MLB team, the Royals, who were #14 for Dick Mountain. I love seeing Kaline and Kell together again. I think Barry Larkin would have to be the player with the second largest combined total between our collections, second only to Ripken. Yep, I just looked, and by about 700 cards! Barry's the fifth player I've gotten over the 1K mark, along with the Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken big four. Verlander's next with 730+, and Miggy hasn't even hit 600 yet, so I would imagine my blog's namesake will be next to hit the mark. Anyway, this is a great assortment of cards of the former UM/Reds SS.

And Maddux has just a five-card lead on Larkin, with 1020 as of this post. The 90s SPx card plus a recent Stadium Club are very nice highlights of great additions to his PC. A Topps High Tek of former Tiger J.D. Martinez was a fun throw-in here. As for the Iron Man, Jeff hit me with a Leaf base from 40 years ago (wait, '86 was that long ago?!) and last year's Stadium Club. Stewart didn't work out, but Skubal sure did!

Sure, Tarik's likely to be traded in the next few weeks, and that's probably the right move given that his free agent asking price was going to be exorbitant and the cheap-ass owners wouldn't have paid him half that anyway. It was nice when the team was able to keep a home-grown superstar ace like Verlander for longer, but those days are good and done. At least I have some really nice cards of Skubal's to enjoy, like the bunch Jeff sent here that give me a solid 82 of the repeat Cy Young-winner. And speaking of Verlander, he ends this scan...

...and ends the vertical orientation baseball stuff with another six-pack. The soon-to-be-retired legend adds eight to his collection thanks to Jeff, and those made a good dent towards the 750 mark. I really can't have too many cards of his, and I enjoy a good number of the brands/designs you see here, especially Stadium Club and Archives.

And finally for baseball, some horizontals plus an oddball. 2000 has to be the classiest look for Pacific's Aurora brand. Mad Dog goes back for one more appearance thanks to '23 Archives. Then we have a couple Tigers team cards: '79 Topps, the year before Sparky would take over, plus 2006 Heritage, showing off the team a year before they'd shock everyone by racing to the World Series. Lastly, the lenticular card is from '87 Sportflics, and the back of this one lists the team's leaders in average, HRs, and RBI each year from 1977-86.

Now we have a few basketball scans, mostly thanks to Jeff's ONIT Timeless subscription. Also, this is apparently when scanning went off the rails for me, but to be fair, I did have a cold at the time and probably just didn't check to see how these came out. No disrespect intended to the pictured athletes!

Anyway, this first group puts me at 10 of the 14 cards in the Timeless set covering the 2025-26 women's team. Jeff also included a Compass insert of Te'Yala Delfosse.

Additionally he gifted me more of the men's team set. There are 16 cards of the eventual champs, and I now lay claim to 13 of them, needing star first-rounder Aday Mara along with Malick Kordel and Ricky Liburd. The other big names are here and in the next scan, including Most Outstanding tournament player Elliot Cadeau, #9 overall pick Morez Johnson Jr., and #11 selection Yaxel Lendeborg. It was pretty cool seeing Johnson, Lendeborg, and Mara go #9, 11, and 12 overall a few weeks ago!

Besides the base cards, he included a Johnson insert called Stained Glass, plus a Classic Game Card of Juwan Howard from 1994, and a Bowman Chrome U of star women's player Syla Swords.

Jeff has given me a whole bunch of basketball and football ONIT Timeless cards so I'm glad I was able to give the '25 ONIT team set I bought for him on Facebook when I saw him at this show. Just like that set, the Timeless version is 79 cards in size, and he's given me 27 of them, including a rare-ish appearance of Justice Haynes with the Wolverines (he's since moved on to Georgia Tech after his brilliant '25 campaign was shortened due to injury). Also included: a Black Compass insert of DB Rod Moore, numbered to just 25. There are apparently 10 in this set so it's crazy he pulled two of one card limited to 25 copies!

The final ONIT card was a regular Compass insert of this year's QB with limitless potential (if he can put it all together), Bryce Underwood. That's just my third of the true sophomore who could show leaps in development thanks to a new head coach and an actual QB coach. Joining him in the top row is a great pair of shiny inserts of two recent UM stars in Nico Collins and Blake Corum. 

Johnson is a quality CB who did make an instant impact for the Cardinals, and also shouldn't have green anywhere near his cards! My 9th card of TE Sean McKeon is his Crown Royale entry from 2020 Panini Chronicles. Mullings' card hails from the college-friendly Bowman Chrome U, which happily didn't have to edit out uniforms. And my latest Michigan card of GOAT DB Charles Woodson is a 2025 Panini Prizm Draft Silver Prizm, which looks fantastic and puts him just 5 cards away from the 400 mark.

And last but not least is a surprising hockey item, since Jeff and I don't usually deal in that sport. I certainly do appreciate it, though, since I'm working on a project to track down certain cards of Michigan alumni across sports and non-sports. That makes the '93-'94 Upper Deck RC of Kevin Hilton extra valuable to me, as it knocks one guy off the list. The Trenton, MI born C put up some very good offensive numbers in four seasons in Ann Arbor (1992-93 through 95-96) and was on the under-20 World Junior Championship roster as well for the last two of those seasons.

Again, I want to extend a huge thanks to Jeff for making the trip all the way up to Kalamazoo from his Indiana home, hanging around and talking cards for a bit, and of course, for bringing me this big stack of great new stuff! He's one of my oldest blogging buddies (not literally, Jeff!) and I'm thankful to know people like him in this hobby, not to mention live near enough to get to meet up once in a while!

I think the two June show recaps will follow this post but we'll see what I feel like. Until then, I'm going to enjoy putting away a whole bunch of new stuff!

2026 trade package #13: Baseball Cards Come to Life

How about some late evening Independence Day posting to catch up a bit?

One of my favorite combo bloggers/TCDbers is Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life. I especially enjoy his posts on the '85 Wendy's/Coke and '88 Domino's Tigers cards, for obvious reasons. Well, after I sent him a '67 Topps Poster he asked about after I made it and others available in a show recap, in June he was nice enough to surprise me with a PWE of needs that just so happens to include one of those Wendy's cards, plus others I was excited to get. Check 'em out:

I seriously can never have too many Grandersons, and when one of my next few TCDb trades arrives, I'll hit the 300-card mark, which is pretty cool. For that I can thank many kind traders like Bo, who sent me the 2008 UD StarQuest insert you see above. Next, Mr. Padre is from the 1989 Score 100 Superstars boxed set, one of many such fun items from that decade. And then we have the aforementioned Wendy's/Coke card, which stars Tigers OF and '84 champ Chet Lemon. That's just my second from the 22-card set (to go with the header/checklist), and there are 12 more cards of players I actively collect among the 20 I'm missing if I don't decide to chase the set.

HOF P Greg Maddux gets the second row to himself thanks to a very nice trio. I was a very active collector in the mid-to-late 90s so I'm very familiar with the designs of the first two sets: 1997 Leaf and Score. While I don't own complete sets of either, I have quite a few cards from both, and I really appreciate their designs, Leaf in particular. And then the third card is Mad Dog's entry in 2002 Fleer Hot Prospects, a product that I believe ran from its debut that year until 2004's Draft Edition. It's another design that I'm cool with, but that's pretty typical for me when it comes to Fleer from that era.

Speaking of Fleer and HOFers, the last baseball item is a gorgeous Ripken from 2003 Flair Greats. This is another flat-out beautiful design in my eyes, plus I love the 80s photo of young Cal surrounded by a very classy look.

Bo didn't stop at baseball and instead included a Michigan Football pair. Hailing from 2020 Leaf Draft's Red parallel are QB Shea Patterson and one of his best WRs, Donovan Peoples-Jones. The enshittified current Leaf iteration has its faults, but I do love seeing my college's football team represented on cards (even if they have to Photoshop the uniforms) and adding new items to my collection, so I really appreciate Bo including these as well.

Bo, thanks again for this fun surprise envelope of some PC needs! Please keep up the great Domino's and "Burgers or Gum?" series as well as the rest of your excellent blog writing, and I'll keep working on finding stuff you can use in your own collections.

Next up should be the other trade package I received in June, one that was a bit bigger but at least required zero postage for the person who gave it to me.

5-2-26 card show report: now THAT's more like it!

I've got July's monthly show coming up tomorrow so it's about time I covered the one from May!

I haven't had much interest in blogging lately, partly thanks to coming back from June show #2--a fantastic meetup with friends, more to come on that--with a ton of cards but also a cold. Also, I got a Switch 2 and Donkey Kong Bananza is amazing. Oh, and I picked up a pair of fun Facebook lots last weekend that have kept me busy.

But I need to cover these at some point, and with the calendar flipping to July, I think now's the time.

So I headed back to Taylor on Saturday, May 2 (instead of my usual Friday), coming off an April where I dropped just $25. However, this time I really made up for it! I spent a whopping $140 at my favorite seller's tables, scoring a lot of nicer mid- and high-end stuff for myself and friends, in addition to paying $30 for an item that will be going out in a trade package. That adds up to my biggest show spending this year, and it was at that point the only time I eclipsed $100 (until Kalamazoo a couple weekends ago).

You'll have to stay tuned to some other blogs to see some of the items I grabbed for others, but here are my keepers for this show:

Baseball. The single non-hit was a '95 Ultra All-Star Gold Medallion of Ripken. I like that Fleer paralleled some of their inserts back then (with a single parallel, Fanatics and Panini!), and this was an easy add. The Pudge relics were fun additions to my collection of the HOF catcher, hailing from an Upper Deck Legends product I bought a decent amount of, plus Donruss's 2005 Leather & Lumber product. I'm pretty sure that the relic combo you see above is a bat plus batting glove. That's a reasonable guess based on the feel of the material, but for whatever reason, Donruss didn't differentiate the serial numbering for the batting glove and fielding glove plus bat combos--they're both SN25. Either way, cool card! While I was at it I grabbed a Tork Heritage bat relic for what I think came out to $4 (one of five cards I got for $20). It's probably a bit of an overpay for a guy who may not be long for the team, but why not?

I found some fun, cheap basketball color in the cheaper boxes, not that I can recall the prices here (likelier 5/$1 than dimes). There's just so many parallels of cards these days that it's pretty likely I need these when I find them, and at worst I can put them up for trade.

Football also got to join in the rainbow fun a few weeks before pride month. Some of these look especially nice, including Nico's and Gary's color match-ish parallels, plus Schoonmaker with a college photo.

A couple more cheapies open the last football scan. Former Cowboy Mazi's blue looks great there, and I was happy to snag another RC of national champ WR1 Roman Wilson.

When it came to the hits, I was quite pleased too. Corum's Contenders relic is somewhat plain, but it's a nice blue Rams swatch, and I think I paid $2 or less for it to make it Blake relic #3. I was especially excited to find a new Henne hit since it's been a while. Donruss' 2008 Gridiron Gear product produced endless variations of relics and autos for the players featured, and I lucked out with what I think I've correctly IDed as a Next Generation Jerseys Combos Prime card, numbered /50. Chad still holds a dominant football collection lead with his new total of 147, 59 of which are relics like this one.

And then there's my most unorthodox card of the day: Ty Wheatley's appearance in 2001 Fleer Hot Prospects' TD Fever insert. The tiny relic included is a piece of goal post cover. It's a bit weird, but it counts! Ty was no stranger to the end zone, going for 40 rush scores and six more through the air in college, plus a nearly identical 40 and 7 with the Giants and Raiders. This was a fun pickup to mark his seventh overall hit, four of which are now relics.

I now have two more shows to cover from last month in addition to July's that I'll be attending tomorrow, but first I'm planning on recapping two trade packages I received in June, one of which was delivered to me at that second show. Stay tuned!

2026 trade package #12: Sport Card Collectors

I've got a second June show to get to tomorrow, which will be another fun blogger/TCDb meetup, so before then why don't I catch up on my mail from May?

The other blogger trade package I received last month was another gem from PWE specialist Matt of Sport Card Collectors. He sent me an envelope filled with quality Tigers during a month where the team was anything but. They went 6-22 including losing streaks of five and eight games with a single winning streak of two. Fortunately things have been a bit better in June with some returns from injuries and better play overall, and they've gone 8-6 plus they have a small lead as I write this.

Anyway, as always, I appreciate receiving cards of my Tigers PC guys no matter how the team is playing. So let's have a look at what Matt sent this time:

Miggy's a great way to start and most certainly always welcome in any envelopes that find their way to my mailbox from generous traders. The '25 Panini Select Orange Flash Prizm is an excellent looking color match of the future HOFer, and the '26 Heritage TBtC subset issue is a fun reminder of Cabrera hitting his 500th homer five years ago. Carp's Silver Portrait from last year's Ginter is a good reminder of how much the team's missed his presence in the lineup and usual production this season. Prince's Select parallel is a great looking insert of the younger Fielder during his time in Detroit. Riley indeed made history last season against the Angels on May 2 when he hit a leadoff solo shot and then three-run bomb in the 9th to become the first player to homer twice in the 9th inning.

Switching over to the mound, Melton, seen on a Rainbow Foil parallel from this year's Topps, has been a stabilizing force for the rotation in four starts: three wins and what should have been a fourth blown by the 'pen. Olson (Heritage Red Border parallel) is still on the shelf for this season but will hopefully come back healthy next year. And of course Skubal's the name on everyone's radar with the Tigers floundering and the trade deadline a few weeks away. Those two Topps inserts will remain with his collection that I'll be keeping whether or not he gets traded. It's funny to me that the '91 Topps design the first card honors came out five years before the ace was born.

Speaking of Tigers aces and injured guys, JV's return to Detroit's rotation continues to get pushed back, and given his age it's hard to say how much he'll be able to offer if and when he's healthy enough to pitch. That said, it's still very cool to have him back in a Tigers uniform. It just looks weird seeing him as a Giant on cards like the '25 Chrome Prizm Refractor and Ginter Mini A&G Back above, so I'll be glad when Topps makes a couple of him wearing the Olde English "D."

Then we have promising prospect Jackson Jobe, and really, how many guys in this post aren't injured right now? The '25 Stadium Club Concentration insert you see above is actually my 24th card of the former #3 overall pick, and it's funny how your collection of a top prospect can grow quickly without you realizing it!

Last up is another '26 Heritage parallel, a Dark Green, with quite the pairing. Skubal and fellow star Skenes led their leagues in ERA in 2025, with Paul's minuscule 1.97 topping Tarik's still excellent 2.21. Both won their league's Cy Young Award (Skubal's second) despite the Tigers' ace winning just 13 games and the young Pirates ace going 10-10, proving that that's not the only category voters consider. It's great that the game has a couple young arms like theirs to match up with some explosive bats in this era.

And as I finish writing this, the Tigers held on to beat the White Sox 4-3. Sorry, Jeff, but don't worry, I won't gloat about it when I see you tomorrow since your team's record is still much better.

I'll give Matt credit for bringing the team luck tonight while I was writing up his trade recap. Thanks again as always, my northeastern friend, and I'll keep piling up some stuff to send back your way whenever it makes sense!

I'll be back soon, though surely not tomorrow with a long drive to and from the show. My next post will likely cover the May show, and then I have a single June trade package to get to before what will be two more show recaps, along with one eBay pickup and a whole bunch of TCDb deals whenever I feel like getting to those.

2026 trade package #11: njwv

I don't do much collecting-related stuff on social media these days, and I'd say most of the little activity there I have is posting links to my latest posts here. That said, I do follow a number of collecting buddies and others in the hobby on Bluesky. After all, it's fun to see what other folks collect and think about cards, their favorite players, and other subjects, whether or not they also blog.

One account I follow who posts quite often is Nick Vossbrink, who also blogs over at njwv. He doesn't limit his subjects to collecting at all, choosing to write about sports in general (mainly baseball and soccer), photography, and museums, so there's a nice mix there.

I happened to catch a Bluesky post or reply where he expressed interest in the 1990 Score baseball set, possibly due to the famous Bo Jackson card therein, but it was a few months ago, so I can't remember. Anyway, I let him know that I had an extra--I've long had at least two hand-built sets in my collection, and I might have had more way back--and would be happy to try to make a deal with him for it.

We took our time going back and forth but were able to figure out something we were both happy with. In the end he sent me this as my first May trade:

A Riley Greene 2023 Topps Oversized Box Topper. These Costco-exclusive giants are 5 3/4" x 8" and of course this one parallels Greene's '23 Topps RC. I wasn't looking to nickel and dime Nick for value in return for shipping a junk wax set that included a couple notable cards, so I felt like this was a fair offer from him. Riley has followed up his All-Star campaigns in 2024-25 with what has the makings of another very nice season. In a year marred by some bats playing below expectations and others beset by injuries, Greene joins catcher Dillon Dingler and rookie IF Kevin McGonigle as the leaders of the offense. So I'll happily slot this into my album with similar oversized items.

But that wasn't all! Nick asked if I'd be interested in receiving any of his customs, and of course I said "sure!" I love seeing what the creatively inclined can do when it comes to producing their own cards.

The first two in this group borrow from the '81 Topps design and celebrate Miguel Cabrera during his 2023 swan song where he enjoyed retirement ceremonies from the Tigers' opponents. He received a Packers-style cheese hat from the Brewers and a cowboy hat from the Astros, and I love what Nick did with both the photos and design elements, especially incorporating the hats.

As for the second design, I believe that's an existing one I've seen but can't place (but should know), but I'd love for anyone to enlighten/correct me in the comments. Regardless, it looks very nice in its simplicity, and the player choice was outstanding too. The horizontal shots of Fidrych's iconic pairing with Big Bird, Kaline at the plate, and McLain staring down another batter are all well executed, paired with outlined inset images of the subjects.

And it's not like he limited his effort to the fronts, as you can see on these backs filled with stats and a couple brief write-ups.

Nick, thanks again for a great first trade! I hope you enjoy your Score set and that you keep writing, no matter what topic interests you whenever you post.

I'm thinking I'll be back reasonably soon with my other may trade package before showing off some other goodies. Stay cool!