7/3/26 card show report: just a bit in July

July was once again a two-show month for me, but unlike June, both were my usual monthly gig in Taylor thanks to a quirk of the calendar. Tonight I'm covering the actual July show, which I attended the day before Independence Day.

I ended up spending "just" $75, a decent amount, and fortunately more than the previous month at the same venue, though based on my keepers a good chunk of that cost went towards trade package fodder, so I don't have a ton to show off here. That's fine by me since it means less work!

The baseball content was limited to just two players. Pitcher Tommy Henry, the pride of Portage Northern High School, got card #19 added to his collection: a 2019 Bowman Draft Sapphire Edition base. Yep, we've got way too many products again these days, but in a much worse way than in the 90s when there were at least multiple quality manufacturers. Anyway, I don't get to add to his collection too often--this is only the third card of him I've landed this year--so it was a fun pull out of one of the boxes I perused.

Meanwhile, the summer of Pudge continues. I've added a bunch of his cards this year via multiple sources, and now I have almost 450 of the HOF C and former Tiger. The best card here leads off: 1995 Flair's Hot Gloves. This beauty of a chase card uses a Gold Glove motif to highlight some of the best in the game, and as always, the 13-time winner of that award had to be included.

That's joined by 1998 UD's hobby version of its 10th Anniversary Preview insert which threw it back to the OG '89 set that has become iconic; '99 Upper Deck's Textbook Excellence, a set that again wisely includes the catching legend; 2000 Upper Deck's Pennant Driven, starring a guy who won two flags (including 2006 with Detroit) and one ring (with the '03 Marlins); and an insert called 1941 Series from 2003 Upper Deck's Play Ball product that calls back to a legendary set.

My personal purchases were so limited that I didn't even come home with any football items for myself this time, but I did match baseball's count with a half dozen basketball inserts featuring a trio of ex-Wolverines. LeVert was a Piston last year but was moved to Milwaukee in a July deal that involved six teams. Here's how it looks on basketball-reference:

Well ok, then! Anyway, that '23-'24 Silver Prizm from Panini Prizm is his 75th card, good for 6th place in my basketball collection. The slightly younger Jordan Poole is next, and he owns the #8 spot in that PC with exactly 70, partially thanks to this colorful quartet which includes Panini Prizm Ice and Silver Prizms, plus Panini Select Blue Cracked Ice and Green/White/Purple Prizms. And lastly, older Wagner bro Mo lags behind the crowd with just 28 cards, paling in comparison to his star sibling Franz, who claims 72 cards among Michigan Basketball guys I collect. At least the Reactive Yellow Mosaic from '24-'25 Panini Mosaic looks very cool, and paired with Orlando's team colors almost gets a maize & blue tribute!

That was it for July show #1 but the good news is that I was able to enjoy some fireworks at the end of the month with August's show rolled around. I'll likely catch up on one or two other posts before I cover that, but I think some of you might enjoy it. Until then, may your remaining summer days be enjoyable as the sunshine and temperatures fade almost as fast as the Tigers, leading us right into college football season!

2026 Facebook Marketplace purchases: half-year haul

It took a bit but in June I was finally able to grab a couple random card lots on Facebook Marketplace, one of my favorite things to do for the combination of entertainment value and potential for my collection plus trade bait. Although I technically made my first Facebook purchase back in March, these two buys were the first miscellaneous lots I was able to secure in 2026.

First, on Saturday, the 27th, I headed to a city not too far from my mom's house, and I spent $50 on a trio of not-quite-full 5000-card monster boxes. This was a fun one since the sports, years, and brands varied wildly. I'd say the majority was baseball, followed by football, with other stuff like basketball, hockey, and non-sports lagging behind. Although a decent chunk of stuff in the boxes was junk wax (and/or junk quality), I was very pleased with the amount of 90s and 2000s stacks.

Some of those have made it to my TCDb inventory or will do so soon, and others have been included in trade packages. And then of course there are my keepers, which you'll get to see right here:

Former Tiger (and MLBPA prez) Tony Clark was one of the most well represented players in the group with enough cards to fill out more than one scan. This one gives you a good idea of the makeup of a number of the bigger stacks. The Pinnacle Inside and Topps inserts look excellent and will make nice additions to his PC.

Clark, Fielder, and Fryman certainly weren't surprises in these boxes given the era, but the Heritage parallel of All-Star C Dillon Dingler definitely shocked me, though obviously in a good way!

Guillen was one of those random astute pickups the Tigers made in the 2000s to get back to respectability, and his 2004-2008 seasons in Detroit made him a guy I'm still happy to collect. While I didn't land any new Tigers cards, I did end up with six of him with his original club, the Mariners, including a few Pacific items. 

You saw a random Griffey insert above, and Gwynn, Larkin, and Maddux all appear in this one at least once, which made my 90s collector heart happy. Meanwhile, Magglio is another guy the Tigers picked up who helped them win more than they had in a long time, then retired as a fan favorite. Once again, anything I found of him was with his original team, the White Sox, which is totally fine. And that includes more Pacific goodness!

A random Parrish as a Pirate? Why not? He can join the club with Gibby and his two appearances with Pittsburgh ('92 Pinnacle and Stadium Club). Ripken completes the big four (or five, if you include Larkin) group with another nice Pacific pairing. And then we have a solid run of Pudge, who's seen his total in my collection climb quite a bit recently.

That includes a Pinnacle Inside Stand-Up Guys insert that he shares with former teammates Rusty Greer, Will Clark, and Juan Gonzalez. And no, I don't currently have the second card in the pair. Speaking of Juan Gone, Former Tigers P Justin Thompson, who was dealt to Texas in the ill-fated trade for that malcontent whiner, also got a nice little bump to his collection. I was very happy to see a pair of Score Showcase parallels of him, even if he isn't one of my top Tigers to collect.

Here's a bit of miscellany before I get to the horizontally oriented cards. Jim Abbott (plus Griffey, in one case) pops up in Comic Ball form, Gibby's big Series HR led to a Big Topps card, and Big Daddy gets the odd-est-ball card, a disc from 1994 Innovative Confections.

Last up from baseball, everybody here already made an appearance earlier, but this scan does give us a look at a few products we hadn't already seen.

Last up from this purchase is a football trio. WRs Chris Calloway and Nico Collins appear courtesy of Stadium Club and Panini Illusions, and QB/coach Jim Harbaugh is one of three Colts on a Collector's Choice team card.

As always this was a blast to flip through and I'm still working through what I want to keep for trade bait vs. dumping back into a lot I'll ultimately sell on the same site to free up some space.

Next, as in the very next day, a Sunday, I meet a woman at a nearby store to pick up a mostly recent football lot for which she was asking just $20. I can always use newer trade bait from that sport plus there's lots of newer Wolverines to collect, and the sample images looked promising. If anything, the real deal exceeded my expectations, including a couple relics, WAY more inserts than I figured, and some solid RCs too.

Though my keepers pile was fairly small, it was quite nice, plus the aforementioned stuff has already proved useful in my TCDb trading. Those keepers were the following:

Scan one of two includes a new Blake Corum base from Topps Chrome followed by some colorful parallels (and two RCs) of stud Browns DT Mason Graham.

Meanwhile, the second group is only slightly more diverse, comprising three players instead of two. Graham's college partner-in-mayhem, DT Kenneth Grant, joins Corum from Topps Chrome, and his trio includes a RC and two parallels, one of which is the very cool Football Leather Refractor. Young Bears (or whatever they'll be called when they're in Indiana) star TE Colston Loveland adds another RC to his pile, this one out of Mosaic. And RB Kalel Mullings also gets a colorful '25 parallel pair thanks to Donruss Optic and the same Football Refractor as Grant.

Like I said, I was happy to get back to nabbing a couple of these lots because they're so much fun when I can find them. And I'm happy to say that I was able to pick up more cards through FBM the following month, though that recap will have to wait a bit until I catch up on a couple other things.

Until then, may the weather remain as hot as the Tigers as we get tantalizingly close to college football season!

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!

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!

4/3/26 card show report: $25, no foolin'

Well this should be a pretty quick one, even if it took me too long as usual to get to.

I headed over to my usual monthly show in early April only to find that my favorite seller hadn't had much time to sort stuff into his sale boxes, meaning there wasn't much new for me to flip through. I ended up spending a year-low $25 because I'm not the type to throw down cash just for the sake of it. And it worked out well because I certainly made up for it this month. More on that in a few posts.

Anyway, that $25 was easily split between 100 dime cards and a trio for which he wanted $15. Here's a look at the loot:

The juniors Griffey and Ripken came from the dime boxes and those cards hail from last year's Topps Archives. Griffey's is from the '64 Topps portion while Cal's is done up in the style of the then-20-year-old '05 Topps set; '96's design can also be found in this product.

And then we come to the day's biggest pickups that account for the three-for-$15 portion: a trio of beautiful 90s Pacific die-cut inserts of Ivan Rodriguez! I noticed these in the guy's showcase and happily accepted the price. In order, above you can see 1999 Pacific Crown Collection's In the Cage followed by 1999 and 2000 Paramount's Fielder's Choice.

Both of these insert sets are among my favorites from the decade--one whose chase cards obviously rule--and are part of the fantastic history of the Pacific brand. The In the Cage cards simulated batting cages, though other versions also replicated foul poles in more examples of the manufacturer's ingenuity. Better yet are the glove-themed Fielder's Choice die-cuts, which are not only cut to conform to the shape of a fielder's most important equipment, but even simulate the webbing! Pudge is a natural fit in these sets as won 13 gold gloves, good for first place among catchers and three better than second-place star Johnny Bench.

The Cage card is my first from that set while the '99 glove joins Greg Maddux and the 2000 card gets added to the Ripken and Gwynn I previously snagged. I can't wait to add more of these, especially if I can find them at these outstanding prices.

We'll finish up with some basketball and football dime cards. Bufkin, LeVert, Robinson, and Wagner are all examples of some colorful inserts of hoopers I was glad to snag for 10 cents each. LeVert's Pistons are actually battling his former team, the Cavs, as I write this, and that's because they managed to overcome a big deficit against Mo's Magic.

As for football stuff, I turned up last year's Score base of former Packer/new Cowboy Rashan Gary to go with a pair of '25 base of national champion QB JJ McCarthy out of Donruss and Panini's Mosaic.

This could have been a bit of a downer of a show but I was able to turn that around with some "90s inserts rule!" goodness, plus I didn't regret having a bigger budget available this month, so once again, it was a good show.

I'm anticipating that my next three posts will be blogger trade packages, followed by the May show recap, a May trade, and my first TCDb deals of the year. I certainly have plenty to recap, even if I'm slow and lazy about doing so. I'll try to get motivated to at least show off the trades soon to thank the senders for their generosity.

2026 Facebook Marketplace purchase: on it with ONIT

Sometimes I take so long to post about something that it manages to become relevant again. Such is the case with my first Facebook Marketplace purchase of the year.

Back in March I found someone nearby offering a big random lot of cards from ONIT's 2025 Michigan Football team cards. As it turns out, these differ from the ones Jeff previously sent me, which look like this. The ones I'm posting about this evening are kind of the "regular" team set version while Jeff's monthly box cards are a slightly different version called "Timeless." And there's a few others besides that. Welcome to the world of NIL cards.

Anyway, I contacted the seller, and after a bit of back-and-forth, he determined that he could put together two complete 79-card sets, and wanted $25 each. That sounded reasonable to me, so I grabbed one for me and the other for Jeff.

So how are these cards relevant right now? Well, the NFL draft concluded on Saturday and some of the Wolverines who were selected can be found in this set representing the 2025 team. (Also, spring practice just ended and there was plenty of local talk about the team. But, yeah, mostly the draft.)

I scanned all of the cards for the corrected TCDb checklist (after we cleared up the "Timeless" product confusion) so I figured I'd show them off here, even if only a few of my readers might be interested. If not, maybe I'll see you in the next post!

Anyway, the guy gave me each set in one of the boxes, so I have that to show off first:

I'm not sure how much these boxes were, but I know the seller did decently well on the autographs in his case. With a number of other inserts available too, I wonder if two boxes would be enough to guarantee a set.

Unless I'm mistaken, the four players seen here are S Rod Moore up top followed by (L to R) QB Davis Warren, WR Semaj Morgan, and QB Bryce Underwood.

And now, on to the cards themselves. I'll drop a few notes under some of the front scans, but I'll let the images speak for themselves in terms of the design.

This is a pretty strong group starting with big LT prospect Babalola, wunderkind (with a lot of work to do!) QB Underwood (making his collection debut), and third-string back Kuzdzal, who acquitted himself very well when duty called last season.

Some of these guys will be playing in Ann Arbor next year, but one who won't is former walk-on QB Davis Warren, who somehow beat OSU 13-10 a couple seasons ago, and that was actually less impressive than his biggest accomplishment: overcoming leukemia. He headed out west to Stanford with the Bryce Underwood era in full effect, and I can guarantee everyone's rooting for Warren to succeed.

This group is one of the more newsworthy relative to the other scans. EDGE Derrick Moore was the first Wolverine selected in this draft, and better yet, he's staying at home with the Lions, who took him #44 overall (2nd round). K Zvada couldn't repeat his outstanding 2024 season but signed as a UDFA with the Giants. QB-turned-WR McCulley came over from Indiana and didn't have as big of an impact as it seemed he might, but he was decent enough to sign with Miami after the draft. And Hausmann's story, which included him stepping away from the team near the end of the season, is now known, and worth a read as it touches on mental illness and the pressures athletes face.

There are a few likely '26 contributors here but nobody I'll bore you with in terms of details.

QB Jaydn Davis unfortunately didn't pan out, but I join my fellow Michigan fans in wishing him well as he transfers to East Tennessee State. Meanwhile, LB Jaishawn Barham, who joined the Wolverines for two seasons after a pair with Maryland, was Michigan guy #3 taken in the draft, #92 overall to the Cowboys (3rd round). 

This is another pretty good group. LB Jimmy Rolder was the fourth Wolverine taken in the draft at #118 overall (4th round) by...the Lions again! The team's leading tackler could maybe help a team with lots of needs on defense. RB Jordan Marshall is a guy lots of fans were looking forward to seeing last year, and he lived up to the hype with 10 rushing TDs and 900+ yards, limited only by some late injuries. He formed an outstanding tandem with Bama transfer Justice Haynes, who popped for 10 scores of his own and a crazy 7.1 Y/A on just 121 rushes in seven games. The injury bug got him too, unfortunately, and that stalled what may have been a Heisman-caliber campaign. Justice is off to Georgia Tech for the '26 season and I wish him happy trails.

Hey, we've got a couple more draft picks here! TE Marlin Klein's decision to leave early seemed strange but he did decently well for himself, getting taken by the Texans at #59 overall (2nd round), surprisingly high, and before some other well-regarded players at the position. Still, he was Wolverine #2 selected, and will surely form a fearsome matchup along with ex-Michigan star Nico Collins. We also have "TE" Max Bredeson, who was pretty much a FB, and a very successful one at that. His blocking was top-notch and he was often found in the endzone ahead of his RBs as they piled up TDs. Max was the fifth Wolverine selected in this draft at #159 overall (5th round) by the Vikings, which means he'll happily join ex-teammate JJ McCarthy.

Another few guys to discuss here. Ka'Apana is unfortunately already out for the season due to injury. DT Benny was the sixth and final Michigan guy selected this time, going to the Wolverine-friendly Ravens at #250 overall (7th round). S Rod Moore, one of the cover guys, will hopefully be back to health during the next season as a key part of the defense, and one who made some big plays for the '23 champs. And WR Morgan (another cover guy) transferred to UCLA after showing some flashes of brilliance overshadowed by frustrating drops. I still hope he lives up to his potential there and gets his shot at the NFL.

In this last group I can note that EDGE TJ Guy also signed as a UDFA, and he'll be joining Benny above, plus former DC Jesse Minter, Baltimore's new HC. Speaking of HCs, the less said about former guy Sherrone at this point the better.

The seller also included a copy of a header-type card, one that mirrors the front of the box. I decided to keep it (and scan it) as that makes this a nice even 80.

With all that said, congrats to the 2026 draftees (and UDFAs), and here's to the success of the '26 team in a few short months. GO BLUE!

I believe I'll be back next with my April show cards, then we'll see how long it takes me to cover two trade packages before my May show recap, with the event happening this Friday.