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!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 1: quick summary and set wants

It's been a few days since I got my COVID vaccine, and after about 24 hours worth of side effects I'm feeling great again, not to mention happy that this likely means I'll be able to return to my favorite monthly card show in a few weeks. It's been 13 months since I could go to a show, but fortunately I've been able to keep things going thanks to some of my favorite online sellers. Back in January I gave Baseballcardstore.ca a trial run and declared it a success. Then in early March I gave Cardbarrel another shot for the first time since they'd rebranded from JustCommons, and that went well too.

Shortly after that, having crosschecked prices and availability with Cardbarrel, I put together my latest Sportlots order. This one was another doozy at 650+ cards spread out over 14 sellers. A small percentage of those were set aside for three trade packages, leaving me with more than 600 new cards for my various collections.

I grabbed some set wants but mostly focused on player collections, especially guys that I've been focusing on more recently: Dean Palmer, Tony Phillips, Ted Simmons, and Mickey Tettleton. But I still managed to put together nice stacks of guys like Barry Larkin and other Michigan Baseball PCs (Dick Mountain represent!) along with Al Kaline and some of my Tigers favorites.

There's a lot of stuff to cover and I'll figure out how I'll be posting it as I go, but you can look forward to a bunch of different players, sets, and designs, and even a mix of sizes and formats. I grabbed a ton of stickers plus minis, oversized items, some coins, and other weird stuff. When you PC as many guys as I do you're gonna benefit from lots of variety.

You won't see a ton of variety in this post as I'll be briefly recapping the numbers on this purchase and then beginning the series with cards from my set wants, but no worries, there'll be plenty to gawk at soon! (And if numbers bore you, please feel free to skip down to the cards immediately--I won't judge you!)

Quick summary:

This time my purchase consisted of:

• Approximately 660 cards (estimated due to some the sellers were missing)
• 14 sellers
• $14.21 in seller shipping costs (where the sellers send the cards to Sportlots to be shipped to me when I'm ready)
• $9.46 in Box shipping, for a savings of over $50 compared to direct shipping
• One direct shipment from a seller who offered free premium shipping
• Four missing cards from shipped packages (all successfully refunded) and four more that couldn't be found before shipment (also refunded)
• Roughly $149 total spent in cards and shipping

Today's cards:

Today we'll be looking at the cards I received for sets I'm working on. While I have very few I'm still chasing, I had five I was able to attack here, four or which I finished up:

We'll open things up today with the only card I didn't get more than one of from my 1988 Pacific Legends box break last year. Late Ball Four author and former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton finishes up a second complete set of this fun low-end fan favorites-type product, and I'll happily make it available in trade to anyone who's interested! I'll also credit this card as the biggest reason I started this latest Sportlots purchase.

Nine years later Score released what I believe were hobby-only premium versions of its Series I and II base sets. Series I's version was called Premium Stock and fronts were gray instead of white while Series II was called Hobby Reserve and went back to the white fronts. Both series' cards were thicker than the regular base and had gold foil stamps up front with the "Premium Stock" or "Hobby Reserve" name. I bought some boxes of both and eventually completed each series...or so I thought.

As I was scanning in a bunch of my Hobby Reserve cards on TCDB I realized that a number of mine were of a variation that had different card numbering than most of the set, which is numbered "HR###" (as seen on the back of Swfit's card). Not one to let that stand, I sought out the "correct" versions I needed, which were helpfully labeled on Sportlots, and I landed the five you see above, all at fairly reasonable prices. Hopefully I'll track down the final five I need so I can re-cross that off my list!

Last up in this scan is a pair of cards from roughly the same point in time. My brother and I collected some basketball for a bit in our younger days so I have a few complete and in-progress sets from the sport. It's been long enough that I can't recall if we bought a box or just some packs of 1997-98 Upper Deck UD3, one of the manufacturer's short-lived but cooler products. Either way, I was apparently only two cards short, with both guys actually being former Pistons. If you weren't aware of UD3, especially its debut version in multiple sports, I highly recommend you check it out!

The other two sets needed enough cards to try to squeeze each pile into its own scan. First is the 1990 version of the Pacific Legends product you just saw. This is a set I've mentioned a few times since Fuji so generously gifted me an excellent starter lot back in January. I found three of the cards I needed for better prices at Cardbarrel and snagged the rest on Sportlots, meaning I only had to pay a couple bucks to sew up another very cool set. It's another who's-who of fan favorites and icons, and I may just have to show the whole thing off in its own post soon!

Last up is 1993 Pinnacle Series I. A huge chunk of this set was part of one of my bigger Facebook Marketplace purchases last year around this time, and it seemed like a reasonable task to try to complete it. One or two TCDB trades got me closer, and between the four cards I grabbed from Cardbarrel and this bunch here I can now call it complete. You can see this is a pretty good group of stars but I got all of them for the minimum $0.18 except for the Griffey, which I had to re-order (still free using a refund/loot!) as the first seller I bought it from couldn't find it. It was fun adding new cards of both Juniors to their PCs as well as to a set I was completing. While I vastly prefer Pinnacle's design from 1994 on, this is a cool early/mid-90s set to have in the old collection.

That's it for today but after I happily get all of these set cards put away I'll work on figuring out what you'll get to see next. Stay tuned for lots of different players on multiple designs, oddball stuff, stickers, and more!