2023 trade package #28: the Collector

Welcome back, everybody! I hope you all had an outstanding Christmas like I did. And now I'm back to show off more presents in the form of trade packages that I received in the last couple months of 2023.

We've at least made it into November now, though I'll still be covering 2023 pickups in January. Oh well!

Tonight's envelope was a PWE that came from Chris, the Collector. He and I have been sending cards back and forth for about seven years now and the fact that we're both on TCDb also makes things a bit easier since we can find more specific needs for each other. Here's what he sent this time:

Funny story about the '96 Finest Bonds and Clark: I sent Chris a big old package of stuff a few weeks ago including some complete sets, and one of those was one of my dupe Finest Series II bronze sets. I believe Chris kept the cards he wanted or needed and put the rest on his trade list. I noticed the two above, which are the last two I needed for one last extra S2 bronze set, and basically got them back from him. Nice!

Mike's son Daz didn't end up working out in Detroit after being acquired in the deal for Justin Verlander, but I can't blame the Tigers (or anyone else) for assuming he'd pay off his potential. His '22 Heritage High Number card is one of several Tigers I own from that set.

Meadows is another guy that came over in a lopsided trade and unfortunately his Tigers career was all too brief things to injuries and anxiety, but I continue to wish him well as he potentially works his way back to playing. His '22 Stadium Club Chrome card looks outstanding, as you'd expect from that brand.

Kudos to Chris for remembering that I collect cards of Dean Palmer, like the above '95 Pacific. I suppose, though, that he can just look at my TCDb ranking of members who collect Dean-o and see that I'm quickly approaching the top spot.

Finally, "hockeydude" lived up to his username by sending me a pair of ex-Wolverine icers from 1993-94 Donruss. That season was Jeff Norton's first with the recent expansion Sharks after six with the Isles, the team that drafted him. His career would span all the way through 2001-02, so, not bad! Meanwhile, Stewart, a native of someone I know's hometown of Kitchener, Ontario, would make his NHL debut after three college seasons in which he showed steady improvement. That makes the card you see above his Donruss RC, which I'm glad to own now.

Chris, thanks again for these cards, plus the couple shipments you sent this month that I'll cover at some point! I'm glad you had such a successful year of trading on the DB and that I could be part of that fun!

Back soon with another trade recap.

TCDB trade roundup: I've got my mind set on you

I'm back today with a roundup of eight TCDB trades from the past few months. While I don't feel like every post in this series needs to have a theme, I decided to pick one for this post anyway: deals that brought me at least one card for any of the baseball sets I'm working on. Of course, I love to make bigger trades when I can, so these deals also include a number of my teams and player collections, so this'll still be a fun mix of new stuff.

There's a ton to look at, so let's get to it! I uploaded the scans in the order they appeared in my drafts folder, which were named alphabetically by member name, so these aren't in chronological order, which I figure doesn't really matter.

First up is Orioles fan Aschroyer. I swapped a few cards of his team for these:

The set wantlist card in question here is in the #6 spot: Benji Gil's '95 Finest base. I was happy to tack on some Topps-branded Minor League cards of former Wolverines Brewer, Criswell, Franklin, and Nwogu. And because his end of the deal included a Manny Machado RC I didn't care about, I was able to snag a jumbo relic swatch (my first) of Jake Cronenworth from last year's Select. Dig that pinstripe!

Another O's fan, doublee919, had been after a couple Ripken inserts I had listed, and we came to a pretty fair four-for one swap:

The first two are base cards from '94 SP and '99 Topps Opening Day, with an especially nice photo on the latter from back when Topps wasn't mailing it in. The '96 Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders card was a fun inclusion from a 90s inserts standpoint. And the set card for me is #3 of the 10-card 2632 insert Topps released in 2015. I now have eight of those and just need #s 6 and 9. And I'm glad they didn't make 2,632 of them!

Floridian FSCGrad777 (who would have thought) originally reached out to me on Twitter, I believe, and we were able to put together a trade I know I was stoked about. I ended up with the following 15 cards in return for just five:

Blomgren and Hajjar are Michigan guys, of course. The Gwynn (Epix!), Larkin (Silver!), and Maddux (Staremasters! #d /1500) were pure "90s inserts rule" picks and there's nothing more that needs to be said other than I love them. Evans was a fun throwback that made for a good throw-in. And the Palmer I believe was a bonus as well.

Even more Palmers, including a Refractor and Atomic Refractor? Yes please! Ripken's a '97 Finest Silver just like his NL counterpart above. Tettleton's '96 Finest Refractor scan actually does it justice, which is great. And the very last card, Andres Galarraga's base from the same product, is the one that lowered the number on another wantlist.

I hit up member George Hayes primarily for a little set help as he happened to be one of the few folks on the site who could move the needle on one of my longest set-builds, and a few others too:

Abbott's a '96 Pinnacle Starburst Artist's Proof because hell yeah! (And '90s inserts rule!) Greenberg and McLain look great in the classy '94 Ted Williams product. Palmer's '94 UD Electric Diamond parallel is another notch in his belt. And then we have four set wants. Servais is from '95 Donruss, down to just one card needed for Series 1. The big gets were Olerud and Gonzalez out of '97 Score Hobby Reserve, specifically the cards with the "HR-" prefix on the numbers on the back. I've been working on replacing the incorrect versions I unknowingly had for years and now I'm back down to two, I believe. And Piazza's card is one I didn't realize counted toward a full set of '98 UD--an SP of him from his brief (five games and eight days) tenure with the Marlins that year before the Dodgers star got flipped to the Mets. So consider that one done. Again.

My deal with Washington state member nwcardsupplies hinged mostly on set wants so it's perfect for this recap. Colin was great to work with and very patient when I realized after we agreed to our deal that my inventory was off and I was missing one of his cards. I was able to buy another copy on eBay and send it his way since there's no way I want a bad reputation on a site that's so amazing for traders. Here's what I ended up with:

Scan 1 of 2 is mostly set wants out of 1994 and '95 Finest, '95 Donruss, and '97 Score Hobby Reserve again (though unfortunately I didn't ask him to check the numbering on the latter and it ended up being the wrong version. Life goes on.) Maddux's '95 Donruss appearance here technically doesn't go towards the set but his PC instead since I'm currently only chasing Series 1 and he's the first card found in the second series.

Scan the second opens with five more cards destined for set storage. The first is the start of my chase of '95 Skybox E-Motion's Cal Ripken Jr. Timeless set, and next to it is another from 2015 Topps's 2632-themed chase set. Then we switch over to another Junior, Griffey, and three of his 2016 Topps The Kid inserts. My pursuit of that set now stands at 16 of 30, so not bad.

The others here are sweet PC cards of a couple favorites. Barry's is a '98 Score Showcase parallel while the late Tony Phillips appears on a '96 Fleer Update Tiffany parallel and '98 Score Angels team set Platinum variation.

My transaction with Puma1125 is the biggest swap you'll see in this post as I sent him 85 cards towards his '95 Score wantlist and got a solid 36 back that I wanted:

This one brought back a great mix of years, brands, and players. A couple of old Evans cards from his pre-Tigers days, a post-Detroit Granderson, two of Griffey (showing off that sweet swing), two more of Gwynn (I love me some 90s Score parallels, as this post makes obvious), and a couple more of ace closer Hernandez.

Herndon and Lemon were '84 Tigers favorites (and beyond), of course. I keep sneaking in new Larkins wherever I can, even low-end stuff like Classic. And Maddux continues making a good number of appearances in trades I'm showing off this evening.

Peaches and Stanley are also Tigers favorites from the past. The two Ripken inserts were a win for me, especially the '97 Topps All-Stars card from one of my favorite Topps products of all time. I managed to pair up Tram (1982 Topps Squirt) and Lou ('87 OPC Stickers) for a double-play in this scan. And then we have four of the five set wants from this deal: Jim Thome from '94 Finest and then a trio for my own set build of '95 Score Series 1 (which is now complete!).

The final set card (and baseball fodder here) is Donnie Baseball's '96 Score subset appearance, the last one I needed for the last of my extra sets that are for trade. As you can see I was also able to tack on some fun football PC additions like Anderson's Michigan uni Classic issue, some '93 Topps Gold, and a 2008 Cleveland team set issue of Braylon.

My deal with RJeng is another that involved a mistake I had to correct as I'd mis-IDed one of the cards I'd sent him and had to find a replacement on eBay once again. It all worked out, though, and my side included these:

Another '95 Finest base, this time of former Pirate Esteban Loaiza, is the lone set card. The injured Mize is seen on yet another RC for his collection, in this case '21 Bowman Chrome. Larkin's cameo here is courtesy of Topps' 2021 Double Headers insert I've mentioned before, and it reprints his first Topps card (not necessarily RC) on the front and final base appearance on the back:

For all my squawking about too many reprint sets this is one to which I'll give a thumbs up. Fellow 90s star Gwynn is last up with a Denny's hologram from '94 when they were made by Upper Deck. Sweet!

Colorado resident twprkj was the other half of tonight's final deal, another one that involved a bit of a screw-up. We agreed on a three-for-four deal where I got the larger end, and unfortunately the most valuable item in the PWE I sent his way, a ~$5 basketball RC, got absolutely mangled. He was actually content to just take the loss but I told him I'd handle it, and after a bit I was able to nab another copy of that card on eBay and send it his way along with a couple bonus cards--in a BMWT, just to be safe.

Here's what he sent me:

'95 Finest figured in the first and last trades in this post, go figure, and why not '90s slugger Jeff Bagwell? Pinnacle's 2013 Swing for the Fences acetate (or acetate-adjacent) inserts look amazing and I knew I needed to have one. You won't see Ryan LaMarre pop up on here too often since I've nabbed most of his easier to get cards, but here's one I didn't own: his 2016 Ginter SP RC. And speaking of Ginter, here's another trade where I found a way to up my Larkin collection thanks to a 2020 Chrome mini. He also threw in that Detroit olde English "D" sticker which looks awesome. I'm not sure if it's from any licensed baseball product or just a standalone thing but I'm happy to have it either way.

After I took care of the issue mentioned above, Eric expressed his appreciation a couple times in messages to me, then sent me the following wants, which proved that there were no hard feelings and that he's a good dude:

The Henne card is (I believe) a base offering from Panini's 2014 Rookies & Stars Longevity product (and not the Longevity parallel of the Rookies & Stars product. So confusing!) It's been long enough (pun intended) since former Dolphins #1 overall pick Jake Long suited up for St. Louis that I initially associated the Rams team card from 2015 Topps with current CB David Long, even though he wasn't even in college at that point! And the biggest surprise was a jersey relic of WR Amara Darboh from 2017 Panini out of an insert called Squires Jerseys. I didn't have this one yet so it's relic #14 and hit #43 of the former Wolverine, but given his Darboh collection is also one of the best on the site, I wasn't remotely surprised that the TCDB images of the card were provided by Jeff.

I've still got quite a few trades to cover, some large and some small, so you should expect a few more posts like this coming up reasonably soon, though likely without a theme, at least an intentional one. In the meantime, I hope some of you take this post as a sign to get trading on TCDB!

2022 trade package #17: the Diamond King

You all know I love trading, possibly as my favorite part of the hobby. Pair that up with shows and you've got a one-two punch of collecting fun!

A few weeks ago I posted my recap of July's show and that included the usual array of trade bait. One of those items was a '91 Topps Desert Shield of Twins P Scott Erickson that I scored for just a buck. Not long after, Kevin, who blogs as the Diamond King, let me know he wanted to make a deal for it. Great!

I looked through his posts from earlier this year to get an idea of what I might like for it and found something that would be perfect: Derek Jeter's bronze base card from 1996 Finest. It would be the last one I needed to complete the 220-card bronze part of the set (I'm not chasing the rarer Silvers and Golds), and was something I couldn't find a reasonable deal for online, buying or trading. So that was perfect!

Here's everything Kevin sent my way:

I would have been perfectly happy with just the Jeter but Kevin was nice enough to include a few Verlanders I know about and some other cards that were nice surprises! Of the Verlanders (four many!) my favorite is easily the 2015 Elite Inspirations parallel. It's shiny, die-cut, and numbered (/65) so what's not to love? The others are parallels as well: 2017 Topps Gallery's Canvas, 2019 Topps Fire's Flamethrowers Gold Minted, and 2020 Donruss's Highlights Rapture. Seriously, Panini and Topps have so many color/pattern variations I can't keep them all straight! These are some great looking cards, though.

And from basketball we continue the parallel them. Three point machine Duncan Robinson can be seen on 2019-20 Hoops Premium Stock's regular Prizms version, which I believe is sometimes referred to as "Silver" if not just "Prizms." And recent HOFer Chris Webber shares his 1999-00 Finest Double Feature insert with former three-year teammate Jason "White Chocolate" Williams. These cards could be Refractor-ized either in full or on either side, and in this case you might be able to tell that Williams' side gets the coveted bending of light, but I think it's a cool Webber card either way.

Kevin, many thanks for reaching out to make this deal, finishing my '96 Finest (bronze) set, and sending me some other great stuff with it! It looks like this was just our second trade since I've been blogging, and first since June of 2013, so I hope we don't wait so long to make the next one!

Up next is another blogger trade I'm excited to show off with a very cool surprise hidden inside.

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!