2025 trade package #4: Chronicles of Fuji

It's the last day of March so of course I'm still covering trade envelopes I received back in January, but that's what happens when you slack on posting!

Last time you got to the contents of an envelope from a blogger who's also a teacher, and that's the case once again this evening. Tonight's cards arrived from all the way on the west coast courtesy of Mark of the Chronicles of Fuji. Fuji sent me a nice little surprise that was heavy on my favorite MLB team. They may have started the season 0-3 against the defending champs but I still think they'll be decent this year.

On to the cardboard (and more!):

Not only is the theme here "Detroit Tigers," but almost everything's an insert, and oddly enough, none of these guys are active Major Leaguers anymore, with Miggy being the most recent to have retired. Porcello last pitched in 2020 and Jackson hung 'em up after the 2018 campaign, the same sunset season for RP Jacob Turner, who ended his MLB tenure where he started it. Dmitri's bro Delmon Young is next with 2015 being his final MLB year, and Magglio's 15th and last was 2011. 2003 second round P Jay Sborz did make a single appearance with the big club in 2010, giving up five runs while recording a pair of outs, and that was the apparent end of his pro career.

This is a fun mix of inserts and players, with home run heroes Miggy and Magglio ranking above the rest, though AJax remains a favorite of mine.

Oh yeah, and then there's one more fun little bonus: that eBay gift card! Fuji was already generous enough to send me some cards, but then he went way above and beyond by gifting me $50 to spend at the source of some of my bigger pickups! To give you an idea of how seriously I'm taking that, I haven't spent it yet, and as a reminder, this envelope made it to me in January. I'm looking forward to picking up a heavy hitter or two to justify the great expense Fuji went to here, and whenever I do find the perfect fit(s), rest assured you'll see a post right here.

Fuji, once again, thanks so much for the great Tigers cards and the eBay credit, I really appreciate it! I don't have a lot set aside for you right now but I'll keep stocking up until I can hit you back.

 Meanwhile, stop me if you've heard this one before, but stay tuned for more trade recaps soon!

2023 trade packages #21: Scribbled Ink

Well once again it's been far too long since I've posted--we're in October now!--but here I am back with another trade package, and boy is this one a doozy.

Buddy of the blog Paul, who I believe is enjoying some recreational R&R right now, mailed me a couple sizeable packages back in August and I'll cover them together this evening. I'm curious to see if everyone else will be as blown away as I was!

Scan #1 is all cardboard/whatever they use nowadays. Paul's a dude for the three-card assist for my Cronenworth PC which has eclipsed the century mark since he fired these westward. Panini brands like Prizm and Mosaic were the stars of this one and I'm totally cool with that. Why not when another PC guy like Junior Griffey gets in on the fun with a pair of great shots at the plate? Hill's a rare non-Panini entry here but very much appreciated. I'm curious to see if Mize is part of the team's future next year on a roster that could very much use him back. Ripken was the most represented player this time at five cards, and the best in my eyes is the Gallery parallel you see here in spot #9.

Cal continues to dominate my baseball player collections (and all sports, in fact) with over 1200 cards thanks to generous packages like this one. JV's Astros are headed back to the postseason, and nothing against the dude himself but I hope his team falls to the winner of the Jays/Twins series. Woodson's blue (what else?) parallel was a fun football throw-in.

And then we have the biggest (literally) card of the envelope: a dual jersey booklet of two of my favorite Tigers of the past 20 years! It's weird to me that A-Jax retired a year sooner than Grandy, who debuted six years prior to Jackson, and then of course they were both involved in the three-team trade between the Tigers, D-Backs, and Yankees. And here they are together again! If this booklet looks familiar that's because I previously nabbed the slightly rarer Gold version:

I really appreciate Paul tracking this down on COMC and sending it my way!

That's it for the card portion of the two shipments (though they hardly deserve a "that's it) but Paul had bigger things up his sleeve.

I know Paul to be many things and one of those is an excellent photographer. He's taken some great looking photos, many of which I've seen, and one thing he likes to do is print out some favorites and get them signed. He did exactly that when Tigers pitching prospect Reese Olson and the organization's AA Erie SeaWolves visited Paul's nearby New Hampshire Fisher Cats late last year. He ended up with three very vibrant photos of the future (and now current) Tiger warming up, then sent those off to be signed. He kept one, sent one to John, and included one for me here as well.

As you can probably tell I slightly ruined the bottom of the photo trying to remove the blue painter's tape holding it to the cardboard it shipped in, but I figure I can either cut off that portion or cover it up with framing. The popping colors and cool baseball action can't be overridden by something that small anyway.

I really liked that he included not only the COA from the local-ish (to me at this point, not him!) signing, but a ticket from that game as well. That's a perfect compliment to a piece I'm glad to have. And I hope Paul continues pursuing his photographic hobby at other games.

So that leaves one more item, something that came in an oddly shaped box:

(5000-card monster box for scale)

Ok, so I knew in general what the item was by the shape, but not specifically what he'd paid a hefty amount to send me. That ended up being this:

Wow, that's a black beauty of a bat! Louisville Slugger is obviously one of the most well known makers of MLB lumber and this one is a stunner. But wait, that's that?...

Do my eyes deceive me or is that name up there one Dean Palmer, celebrated slugger of some 90s Tigers squads and a favorite of this guy right here? Hell yeah it is! And it's my first game-used memorabilia item as far as I'm aware. What an absolutely amazing item for my collection!

(Admire my knob)

While I decide how I want to display this, likely with at least one or two other bats that would be worthy to join it, I'll just celebrate how cool it is to have it and throw some big respect Paul's way for acquiring it (I believe along with something for his own collection) and going to the expense of shipping it 700+ miles from New Hampshire to Ann Arbor. WOW!

I owe Paul a huge thanks for some absolutely huge--both size and how impressive they are--items I had the pleasure of showing off tonight, and now I'm glad I found some quality stuff I could send his way the last time I hit him back, which I'll try to do again very soon. Thanks, Paul!

For the folks reading this, what's your favorite item Paul sent me this time?

I'll be back with lots more stuff to cover soon, and I may go a bit out of order so I can make some trade bait available in anticipation of sending out a pretty large stack of packages after this Friday's show. Stay tuned!

2023 eBay purchases: three Tigers and a Wolverine

I haven't felt like blogging much lately but I still have a lot to show off, so I decided I'd compromise and kind of half-ass it. Here's a quartet of cards I bought in May, July, and August:

First up is my second autograph of rising Tigers star Riley Greene. I previously received a nice minors auto of Greene from everyone's favorite Dollar Store customer, but I decided I wanted one of him in a Tigers uni, ideally before he really blew up. Mission completed with this 2020 Bowman's Best auto that mimics the design of the Franchise Favorites insert 20 years prior. The signature is on-card, the card itself is numbered /200, and it's got that trademark Refractor shine, so I was really happy with this purchase, which set me back a reasonable $35 delivered way back in May. Riley's since gone on a tear but may be out for the remainder of the year after hurting his elbow on an amazing diving catch.

Next, I got a bit antsy about picking up a nice Detroit uni signature of a potential future star, Colt Keith. Keith was Detroit's final pick (round 5) of the drastically reduced 2020 draft that featured Spencer Torkelson joining the team at #1 overall. A HS 3B, he's since torn it up in the minors, and it would be fantastic to see him join the small group of homegrown bats the team has recently developed and hasn't yet traded for peanuts (cough cough Isaac Paredes cough).

I'm not generally the prospecting type but considering some of the hype he's been getting this season, I decided not to wait until a potential 2024 promotion to land his signature. That came in the form of the '21 Topps Pro Debut auto you see above. Back in July that cost me a bit more than $31 shipped and the seller was nice enough to include a Bowman Draft base with it.

Here are the backs for those interested.

A few days later a bunch of auctions being run by one seller (who offered a nice combined shipping rate) were ending, and I snagged an excellent group of cards targeted for trades, one of which hasn't been sent off just yet (soon!). My lone keeper was this 2011 GQ Mini Framed Cyan plate of one of my favorite former Tigers, Austin Jackson. As always, GQ is not a product I remotely care about but framed cards generally get my approval, and that this is a plate (my first of the OF) is a big plus. I believe each auction I won finished at the starting bid of $4.50 or $5, and the total shipping was about the same, so in the end I really only paid around $6 for this, a definite steal!

My most recent win came in mid-August when I spied this 2016 Bowman Chrome Draft yellow plate of former UM pitcher Brett Adcock for about $8.50. A three-year Wolverine, he was taken by Houston in the 4th round in 2016, though it appears he was away from affiliated ball in 2020, spent 2021-22 in indy ball, and hasn't pitched this year.

Still, he's been part of my collection for a while, and Jeff's as well, which I'm aware of because I first found out about Brett's cards via an MSO post. Also, Jeff covered his recent birthday, August 28th. This is my 12th card of his and first "hit" of any kind. Aside from five minors issues in 2016-19, he's got 26 2016 Bowman/Chrome Draft cards to chase, and those that I'm lacking are numbered /150, /25 (x2), /5 (x2), and /1 (x9). That means I'm about one card away from having a hard time getting anything new of his.

Now that I can put these away I think I'll get back to some trade recaps before reporting on this past Friday's show.

2022 Sportlots purchases: 90s and 2000s Tigers PCs

I'm back this evening with the last of my Sportlots purchases from late last year. Yep, it only took me until ::checks:: mid-March to cover my 2022 purchases!

Anyway, as we just did this past weekend it's time to spring forward and look at some cards starring players that are younger than those in part 2. Tonight's subjects are Tigers and Tigers-related PCs from the 90s and 2000s (including a small number of 2010s):

Cecil is one of the players in this post that got a very nice bump to his collection with some 19 additions, giving me a pretty nice total of 225. Since I'm not supercollecting him (as in, I'll take what I can get but I'm not actively chasing everything) I put my focus on affordable but cool looking base and inserts. There's plenty of cool to go around here with Collect-a-Books, a hologram, Sportflics, fun inserts, and more. Fleer's EMotion product is a precursor to the bordered/framed cards you still see these days.

You'll see a bit more of Big Daddy down below but the '96 foursome up top is quite cool if you ask me. Yep, we're back in the days when I loooooved Topps' products!

Two Grandersons does not equal too many Grandersons, but they're always welcome in any quantity. I think the Unique Unis insert could have been less bland but I do like the recognition for Detroit's olde English "D." The shiny Lineage parallel was a fun add too, even if it's from his time with the Evil Empire.

BInge is a Tiger I've come to appreciate a bit more lately, but I think what spurred me to collect him a bit more recently was when he joined UM's baseball coaching staff for a short time. Two of his three additions are on display here from Diamond Kings and one of Topps' many parallels.

As for Dean-o I count a massive 30 new items for his collection giving me a TCDb-dominating 469 cards. I'm now more than halfway through the wantlist I put together on the site, where I've excluded a number of issues that don't really fit my collection. This group includes some fun 90s inserts such as a '97 Studio Silver Press Proof and Ultra Gold Medallion plus a '98 Finest No-Protector parallel. The Flair Showcase card is certainly a highlight in terms of base design quality.

There's even more 90s insert-age to see here, like four different versions of his Topps Stars card, numbered between 2299 and 9799 copies. The die-cut Paramount Team Checklist is also a beaut, and who wouldn't love to see Pacific back in the game in this time of bland, thoughtless designs?

There's a few more Palmer cards below but this scan gets us through the rest of his vertically oriented stuff. The die-cut Black Diamond Reciprocal parallel and Topps Gold insert were of particular interest to me, but it was also nice to track down a cheap copy of his '01 Topps Limited base as well.

Underappreciated spark-plug Tony Phillips gets a bit more love in a scan below but right here you see him with the Angels on his '98 Score Showcase parallel, an insert that brings me back to a fun era of chasing such cards.

This purchase also boosted my Mickey Tettleton collection a bit. I'm over half the number of Froot Loops' cards documented on TCDb and maintain a huge lead when it comes to him as well. This time it was all parallels of the slugging catcher, with a pair from Stadium Club, a Collector's Choice Silver Signature, and the '97 version of Score's Showcase, another personal favorite.

Then we have the remaining six Fielder cards, all of which are landscape style. The Leaf Power Brokers and Donruss Bomb Squad inserts, the latter pairing him up with NL counterpart Andres Galarraga, highlight his ability to mash dingers. Denny's provides his second hologram card of the post. '95 Pinnacle's Museum Collection is a top 10 all-time parallel for me. I nabbed one more Sportflix issue from '95 because I've always enjoyed that product. And why not a third Score parallel as well?

We can just about (but not quite) close things out with this scan. Inge gets one more addition in the form of an Emerald parallel, appropriately from his brief tenure in Oakland in 2012. I only scored one AJax this time but I made it count in the looks department since it's a Topps Chrome Refractor. Palmer gets a couple more interesting UD items and a '95 Pinnacle Museum Collection card of his own. I have 21 cards from that parallel and another four on my list! And Tony Phillips gets three more added to his total (257, again, a TCDb lead) thanks to Stadium Club parallels.

We're not quite done though because there's still this oversized item:

Palmer joins Barry Larkin as having one of these cards in my collection from 1994 Upper Deck All-Star Jumbos. While a chunk of the cards focused on one player, this one pairs up Dean-o with ex-Giant and new teammate for 1994 Will Clark. Palmer's fellow corner IF put up five straight All-Star seasons between 1988-92 in San Fran, and he'd make his final Midsummer Classic team in '94. Dean, for his part, put up 19 homers during that shortened campaign but wouldn't reach the All-Star game until 1998 with the Royals.

Hooray, I've finally covered all of these Sportlots additions! Next time I expect you'll be feasting your eyes on a very generous trade package from one of the coolest bloggers around, and then I'll get to my backlog of other stuff (eBay, a show, and TCDb trades, at least). Happy almost baseball season, y'all!

2022 COMC purchases: check out who's back!

It's 2023 but I still have some 2022 content to cover before getting to some great adds already this year.

Tonight you'll get to see the entirety of my first COMC order since late 2020. A number of factors, some pandemic-related, made the site a lot less attractive for a while as their processing speed for adding and shipping cards dipped below acceptable standards. After seeing that things were closer to normal late last year, I once again dove in during their big Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals.

About $160 later, I had a nice stack of cards for myself and some Christmas card packages to boot (some of which still need to go out once my oft-mentioned Sportlots box ships!). Here are the items I scored for my own collections:

Baseball part 1. God do I love me some 90s inserts, and few could compare to Upper Deck's Amazing Greats in 1997 and '98. Both versions look stunning, and the Maddux you see above is from the former. Its wood grain design and clear inset player image look great, plus I love the punny name of the insert. From the same year you also get a look at another GOAT insert technology: Pinnacle's Dufex. I nabbed PC guy Dean Palmer's Museum Collection parallel for under a buck, and boy does it look nice in its own right.

To those I added a five-pack of ex-UM pitcher autos, all of which I believe were less than $2.50. Bourque's is a Refractor of the only other hit I owned of him, and that's numbered /499. New Rockie Jeff Criswell gets a nice trio added to his total out of Bowman Chrome, Elite, and Topps Pro Debut, and of course the middle card is my favorite since it features a college uniform photo. He now has four such cards to his name in my collection. And I ended up with a single card, but a spiffy one, of Criswell's potential Colorado teammate, Karl Kauffmann, also from Elite. It's a Status die-cut parallel numbered /99 and gives him four autos also out of six total hits.

The other two baseball items deserved their own scans. I thought the 2013 Panini America's Pastime booklet of former Tigers (and Yankees) A-Jax and Granderson was just too cool to pass up, especially for just $6.45. I don't have many booklet cards in my collection and getting one with large relic swatches from two of my favorite Tigers OF was a coup in my book. The one you see above is the Gold version numbered /49. The Granderson pinstripe is a nice bonus!

Card number two here was I believe the most expensive one I landed for myself, but well within my price range for a card of its type. My purchase history says I dropped $8.34 for Clayton Richard's 2018 Topps Cyan plate, one of five 1/1s I bought this time (but the only one for myself). That gives the former QB/P 13 total 1/1s to his name, 10 of which are plates.

Switching over to football, it was easy to split these into vertical and horizontal scans. A couple players got the most love this time but I also added a pair of new names and lots of college action cards so I spent my money well.

My first autograph of stud WR Nico Collins was one of my biggest steals at just $3, and I couldn't complete the purchase of it fast enough at that price given they usually go for more (plus the whole Michigan uni thing). Darboh got four new additions to his count (two more below) including a sweet triple jersey/auto and a green parallel of his 2017 Prestige autograph (/150) seen here. I love the latter's use of an action shot from a home game in the Big House.

Chris Evans made his debut in my hits collection thanks to the crazy cool 1/1 Matt sent me, and now I have a college uni autograph to go with that, also courtesy of Prestige. Talented DB Lavert Hill is making his first appearance with a 2020 Prizm autograph, and so is the guy on the last card of this scan, outstanding C (and current New Orleans Saint) Cesar Ruiz out of the same year's Playbook product. I'm making a more concerted effort to add hits of players missing in my collection and that work paid off here with some great looking cards of two recent Wolverines, both in their alma mater's duds.

And who could forget the namesake of my former other blog, Mario Manningham? I scored three verticals and one horizontal card (in the next scan) of the Super Bowl hero. One's from '08 Absolute and it comes with a football chunk plus jersey swatches in the shape of his number. The second is one of his two appearances in 2008 SP Rookie Edition and is done in the style of SP's '93 product. And the last one seen here is 2010 Prestige auto limited to a somewhat strange 113 copies.

Over on the X-axis we start with the other two Darboh cards. The current iteration of Leaf is pretty sketchy but you still get some extremely cool cards from them sometimes, like Amara's inscription-laden Trinity auto seen above. The jersey/auto/RC next to it from Panini's Illusions was also pretty cheap and further enhances one of my quieter quality collections, which now stands at 47 cards!

I occasionally chase cards of some of the guys that transferred out such as QB Ryan Mallett and found a good price on the slightly flawed (bit of a crease between his first and last names) auto/jersey from 2011 Timeless Treasures. That kind of thing doesn't pop up much in the other places I tend to look, so why not drop $2 for a solid hit?

The final Manningham card--though four is NOT "too many"--is from the hit-laded 2008 SPx product, and this one's a dual jersey with the swatch windows also in the shape of his jersey number. Mario's just one hit away from joining the 100-club in this collection, which currently includes Chad Henne and nobody else! (Jake Long remains at 97 and Braylon Edwards is chilling nearby with 93.)

One of my most interesting pieces I scored this time is the Denard Robinson 2013 Panini Black Rookie Shadowbox auto you see above. I thought the card enclosed a small mini jersey but it turns out it's just a flat image in a shadowbox-type design. That's still extremely cool, plus it's a new autograph of Shoelace for my collection, and it was just $2.25, so I'm very happy with it. That appears to be hit #54 of the dual-threat QB.

And this evening's final addition is my fifth hit and third autograph of DT Chris Wormley, a Ravens draftee who now suits up for the Steelers. He's the final recipient of a college uni auto for his collection, in this case out of 2017 Elite Draft, a product that was made for collectors like me. He's got a very good signature, especially with how low standards have gotten, and this one wasn't even $2, so it happily found a home in my football collection.

I was glad to be able to take another ride on the COMC train in 2022 and score some nice cards at great prices, plus they even arrived in time for me to send some out before Christmas! I hope those of you who follow the folks I sent them to (and will be doing so soon) enjoy seeing even more spoils on other blogs and social media.

As for me, while I wait for Sportlots to send me my now-ready-to-ship box cards, I get to show off some fun early 2023 items thanks to two fantastic trade partners plus some spoils from last weekend's show. It was a great start to the year in collecting and I'm looking forward to another enjoyable one with all of you. Happy new year!

TCDB trade roundup: Tuesday tradin'

I'm back this evening with five, count 'em, five more TCDB deals! No sense in dawdling, let's get right down to it:

Trade #1 was kind of a RAK (random act of kindness) very similar to my deal with Brian (FiresNBeers) in that I got to pick some stuff I wanted after sending this member a bunch of surprise stuff I knew they'd want. This time it was Dan, a.k.a. vrooomed, doing the gifting. Like Brian, Dan is one of the hardest workers on the site, resolving inaccuracy reports left and right and making database edits as needed. He's a long tenured member with a wealth of knowledge, especially when it comes to the fastest ways to make fixes. All that and he's a good dude when it comes to trading as well!

Here's what he let me pick from his regular profile plus a second he runs for a separate collection, SwamiLee:

We'll start with a couple current Tigers in Miggy and Candy, with the former doing well to reach 3000 hits quicker than I expected and the latter struggling early. Big Daddy and food issues go together like PB&J. Two many Grandersons are always welcome here! I'll happily take any Lemon cards, especially vintage items, even pre-Detroit issues. And I continue to add to my collection of fun 2010s Tiger A-Jax, with my favorite a Chrome Refractor.

We already had a '77 Topps of '84 Tigers OF Herndon so why not Lemon too? Rogers starts on a cool Panini Chronicles card. "Whatever Works" is kind of my approach to collecting JV at this point. And Griffey, Larkin, and Pudge feature on recent-ish inserts, with Barry being a Berger's Best reprint (one of many, many reprints!).

Last up I have a couple basketball items to go with some football fare. Coach Juwan Howard and fellow Fab-Fiver Jalen Rose look great on flagship/Chrome cards. Crable is one of the "biggest" pickups here as he appears on a rookie year '08 Leaf Limited Gold Spotlight parallel /49. Funch looks cool on a rookie year Chrome insert. Graham and Lewan were stars in Ann Arbor around a decade ago and are still going strong in the NFL. And finally, I thought the pair of pennant inserts of Michigan-to-Stanford transfer FB Jon Ritchie would be fun additions.

A big thanks to Dan for being awesome in general and specifically for sending me these!

Next up is a trade courtesy of Alabama man BLWinborn40, another member that enabled me to use the riches from the collection I bought on Facebook to facilitate some swaps. He collects Braves team sets and I was able to flip a bunch of '96 Finest and Flair cards for this haul:

Scan #1: lots of current and former Tigers. I'm not much of a Ginter fan but the cards of three '84 champs on the corners were a welcome addition. I'm slowly building a small collection of Baddoo while rooting for him to repeat last year's success. Bunning and Cochrane are two of the team's all-time greats even if they're more known for playing on other teams. Miggy seems destined to enter Cooperstown wearing a Tigers hat, at least! And that trippy Chronicles card of Skubal is a nice breath of fresh air after seeing the usual same-old Topps stuff.

#2: sweet, a pair of Cronenworths! He's scuffled a bit to start the season but has shown signs of life as well. 2007 Hall of Fame buddies Gwynn and Ripken get in on the act with a few inserts and a sticker of the latter. And three many Verlanders sorta fit the name of the blog, right? That Prizm Red, White, and Blue parallel is a few weeks early for Memorial Day.

Last up is an eight-pack of the other Junior I collect, Griffey. This is generally a mix of Topps inserts and Donruss and adjacent base along with a trio of 2021 Panini Mosaic cards.

Everything about this deal went smoothly and I could see us trading again at some point if our wantlists and trade lists match up.

Mississippian SWATty67 is next with a pretty basic PWE deal. He collects a few players including Ozzie Smith, Robin Yount, and Mike Piazza, and I turned some of those into this group of 13:

Cronenworth again! Yes he is indeed an All-Star rookie which makes sense since he made the NL squad in his first full season. Another Granderson ups today's total to...uh...too many! They may be low end but I wasn't going to say no to a pair of Maddux base cards I was missing. And of course Junior Griffey's from 1995's superfluous UC3 product, which is definitely of its time!

On the football side I nabbed some more base stuff as well, mostly from the 2000 Topps Collection set. I did double up on TE Riemersma with a Season Opener card, and FB Jon Vaughn joined the trade via his '93 Pinnacle base. I've gained even more respect for Vaughn as he's continued to push against UM for its decades of ignoring systemic sexual abuse in the athletic department (and school as a whole).

Again, this member was easy to work with and everything went great.

Deal #4 was another small one (seeing the general theme for today?) that only cost me a Natrone Means jersey card I picked up at a show probably for a buck or two at the most. Oklahoman Chargers collector thesouthpaw sent me the following 10 items I was glad to get back in the swap:

The baseball side of things was all about 2021 A&G with base issues of young pitchers Mize and Skubal and Minis of Sparky (base seen earlier) and Mad Dog. The stars of the gridiron got even more facetime in this deal with six different players getting repped. What's funny is that I didn't even realize all six were defensive players, something you don't see happen too often. Paye is seen on his 2021 Donruss RC, one of three from that product, while the trio of 2021 Prestige players should all be on new teams this year (Bush's fifth-year option was declined, Peppers is with the Patriots, and Winovich was traded to Cleveland).

I don't make a habit of trading hits for low-end stuff but the Means jersey clearly belonged in this member's collection and I got some fun stuff out of yet another easy deal.

And last up tonight is my favorite deal of the bunch because, as we say around here, 90s inserts rule! Also, there's a bit of a funny story to it. Wisconsin native aselchert10 was very interested in a pair of my better inserts of Chipper Jones, and fortunately for me he's also a connoisseur of chase cards from that decade, meaning I had some excellent stuff to choose from. Lots of (productive) back-and-forth later, we had a deal. We PWEd the cards to each other and things seemed fine.

Then a couple hours later as I was getting ready for bed I had the realization that I'd forgotten to put stamps on the PWE I sent his way. Not a huge deal since I'd likely get the envelope back at some point and be able to re-send it, just annoying. So I was very surprised when he let me know that it made it to his mailbox five days later. Sweet! Weird, but sweet!

Anyway, in addition to a nice insert I scored for a future trade, here's what I picked out for myself:

90s me would definitely give today me a big thumbs up for this one, with my four big star PCs from that decade featuring on some sweet inserts. You see Griffey up there on 1998 Score's All-Score Team, '98 UD's All-Star Credentials, and '99 Topps Chrome's Lords of the Diamond. Ripken Jr. joins George Kenneth out of that All-Star Credentials set, a design I loved immediately upon pulling one from a box I busted way back then. At one point I considered chasing the set but they were just too expensive at the time, and now I'm pretty much just a player collector, so I'm just thrilled to have these. And the other two inserts are pretty spiffy as well.

When it came to my choices for Mr. Padre cards I decided on his 1998 Paramount Team Checklist. Paramount was a ton of fun back then with some great inserts and the die-cut Checklists are a good example of that. I mean who else from that decade do you associate more with a pair of crossed bats?

And finally, I combined two collecting favorites--Maddux cards and numbered inserts--in selecting Greg's 1998 Leaf State Representatives card, limited to "just" 5000 copies. It's everything I could want in a chase card of its time thanks to its foil, numbering, and fun design.

This trade was obviously a fun one for me and the exact kind of swap I'm glad to be able to make when putting up some of my better 90s stuff for trade. I appreciated this member's patience in working out a deal we were both comfortable with, and other than the mini heart attack I had after I realized I forgot the postage, everything went smoothly once more.

Well that's five more TCDB trades' worth of cards I get to put away, and I'll surely cover more of them soon, but first I'll probably take a detour to another high quality blogger deal I'll be glad to show off once I get everything scanned and logged. Until then, thanks once again to everyone who made these great swaps possible!

TCDB trade: FiresNBeers

Tonight's post is the first in a series of unknown size that will cover around 30 (and still growing!) trades I've made on TCDB over the past few months. A few of the larger deals will probably get their own posts while I'll group smaller ones together so it doesn't take forever to get through these.

First up is FiresNBeers, a.k.a. Brian from Wisconsin. Brian's one of my favorite people on the site and someone I talk to pretty often because we both do some work maintaining it by handling inaccuracy reports (IRs) for missing checklists, wrong images/other info, etc. There's a group of dedicated folks who put in a ton of effort to make sure TCDB is as useful and accurate as it is and Brian is one of those people.

That's one of the reasons I decided to send him a nice trade package of stuff from his wantlists at some point last year, largely to say thanks. A bit later, he was the one to whom I sent a Robin Yount relic I found at a show in return for a Paul Goldschmidt manurelic I sent to Daniel, and he was generous enough to let me pick some stuff from his trade list as well.

The items below comprise everything he sent me, including the cards I picked plus a few surprises:

Not too surprisingly, Brian is a big Brewers fan, and over his years of collecting he's compiled quite a few Milwaukee police team sets. Above are some of the cards I picked out, with some bonuses he added. Basically the photos stay the same for a given year with only the various suburbs' names changing. 

I was interested in scoring cards of two former UM alumni, Jim Paciorek and HOFer Ted Simmons. Jim has just two MLB cards to his name--1987 Fleer and its Glossy version--so oddballs like these help grow my collection of the brother of the more well known Tom. All of his cards here are from 1987.

Simmons, meanwhile, never played baseball for UM but attended school here so he fits the parameters of my collection. Brian had cards of him from each year of 1982-85, 12 cards in total. Pretty cool!

I'll just have to figure out how I want to store these as they're larger than standard trading cards and therefore won't fit will in my 5000-count player collection boxes.

Most of the rest of what you'll see tonight consists of '84 Tigers, other well known former Tigers from during my fandom, and a few other PCs. Here Bergman and Evans represent the wire-to-wire champs of 1984 on pre-Tigers issues. MLBPA prez Clark's late 90s offerings are shiny and cool. Philly/Detroit legend Cochrane won two rings with the A's and one with the Tigers (1935) and was also the manager for the latter (as well as their pennant-winning club the year before). Big Daddy oddballs are always fun. And you can't have too many Grandersons, especially when they have awesome photos like this one.

Henneman joins Fielder as one of the better early 90s Tigers of my youth and one of the best at the closer position. Hernandez was a standout himself in the role in '84, winning the AL Cy and MVP awards, and I scored two pre-Detroit cards of him plus one of '84 OF Herndon. I've been growing my Inge collection a bit since he joined Michigan's coaching staff. And Jackson was sometimes the next best thing to Granderson, so I ended up with four cards (one more below) of him, including a Finest Refractor as the last card of this scan.

Parrish and a sticker of Morris represent the last of the '84 champs here while bookending the rest of the baseball stuff, and the sticker is a good reminder that Jack was a Series hero for another team as well! Simmons gets two more oddball appearances and I have to say that the 1992 Carlson Travel '82 World Series card really pops. The Brew Crew didn't take home the win that year but you can't exactly blame Simba who put up 2 HR and 3 RBI in the loss to the Cards. Cobb, seen here in miniature form, never won a ring himself despite three trips to the Fall Classic, losing to the Cubs twice (1907 and '08) and Pirates ('09).

Brian also had a good selection of football to choose from so I grabbed 10 cards of 10 different players, starting with the three above: WR Derrick Alexander, RB Tim Biakabutuka, and OL John "Jumbo" Elliott.

And here's the rest of the football stuff: QB Elvis Grbac, LB David Harris, WR/KR Desmond Howard, DL Maurice Hurst, OT Jon Runyan (senior!), RB Derrick Walker, and TE Jerame Tuman.

I owe a big thanks to Brian for all this great stuff, not to mention all the times he's made my life easier on TCDB, and I'll be trying to score some new stuff for him at future shows. If you're on the site and haven't traded with him, he comes highly recommended from me so go send him a proposal!

2021 trade package #32: Bump and Run Football Card Blog

Today's trade package is one of the last (if not the last) I received in 2021, and it's one that came about thanks to the stuff I put up for grabs from my Facebook collection purchase. Utah resident Trevor, who writes as Bump and Run Football Card Blog (wow, a football card blog?! Nice!) was interested in one of my '96 Score complete sets as well as a partial set of  '94 Finest (both baseball, to be clear), and I was able to cram those into a padded flat rate envelope.

In return Trevor allowed me to choose some stuff from his tradelist on TCDB. Not only that, but he also threw in even more that I hadn't selected myself. It was a nice win/win deal where I cleared out some unwanted stuff for cards I like, and Trevor got an opportunity to chase a couple sets that probably wouldn't have been a priority for him otherwise.

Here's a look at what the BYU/Packers fan sent over at the end of December:

Miggy was the star of this package with five cards (and also he's, you know, a big star), all from fairly recent sets: 2016 Donruss, 2019 Topps NBCD, 2020 Topps Big League and NBCD, and 2021 Topps' foil-y tribute to to the Topps Big product of my childhood. With the team looking to get out of rebuild mode I'm looking forward to him getting the the 13 hits he needs for 3K and then playing less so the lineup can be more effective.

Speaking of Tigers legends, it's cool to see a B&W shot of Ty Cobb signing autographs for kids in the earlier part of the 20th century. Austin Jackson's a more recent favorite of mine but the set his card here is from, Honus Bonus, was named after his contemporary, so that's cool. Kinsler's another past Tiger I'm always happy to see in any trade due to his effective bat at second. And potential future star pitcher Mize is the only other current Tiger in this package. He indeed made his debut on 8/19/2020 against the White Sox, giving up three ER in 4.1 IP in the loss, though that ended up being the 'pen's fault ultimately. He did pile up 7 strikeouts in that brief appearance, plus he was pretty useful last season, perhaps a sign of things to come for a breakout in 2022?

No big deal at the start of this scan, just one of the best catchers of the 80s and then a HOFer for the next two decades. The back of the Big Wheel's card, from '84 Fleer, mentions he turned down a football scholarship from UCLA to sign with Detroit, which seems to have paid off nicely, even if he played the baseball position that gets a football level of abuse. Pudge's cards hail from '94 Sportflics (w00t!), '97 Pinnacle X-Press x2, and 2002 Topps Pristine.

The well-loved Matchick card was a bittersweet addition here as the former Tigers IF passed away just a few days after this envelope arrived at the age of 78. He played just six seasons in the bigs, three for Detroit, but that included the glory of '68. That season's stats appear on the '69 Topps card you see above.

Possibly my favorite card in the entire bunch is another Sportflics offering, this one from the '87 Team Preview set. The lenticular technology allowed the manufacturer to include 12 different players--three each in the four frames. Aside from a couple guys I couldn't care less about, this one includes Sweet Lou, Dan Petry, Tram, Darrell Evans, Chet Lemon, Jack Morris, Gibby, and Willie Hernandez. A who's who of '84 champs, if you will! It's fun to have one card that fits into this many PCs.

Last up in this bunch is a pair of Fleer stickers, both from 1982. I love seeing a couple fun logo versions, including the Olde English "D" and my favorite version of the team's namesake mascot.

The final scan this evening starts with the last of the Tigers: an insert celebrating team mascot "Paws" and the Tiger merry-go-round, one of Comerica Park's attractions. For my part I tend to think of the Ferris wheel made out of baseballs more than that, but they're both cool features for kids to enjoy themselves at a game.

It feels great knocking a couple '21 Topps Update issues of PC guys off my lists, and that's exactly what I was able to do here thanks to Trevor. Cronenworth has two cards in the set and his combo appearance with Tatis Jr. is the first one I was able to land. I'm probably one of the few people more excited to get the card because of Cronenworth! As for Hill, this is his only Rays issue with the brand (I don't include Topps now since those don't mean anything to me), which is stupid because he signed with Tampa in February and had long since been traded to the Mets when this one came out. With him moving on to (back to?) Boston will he get any Mets cardboard? Then again, who cares? They suck!

Greg Maddux is the last of the baseball stuff and this jersey card from 2004 Leaf Second Edition was most definitely a welcome sight as a surprise addition to the envelope. Leaf produced both Home and Away jersey cards and this is the latter starring one of my favorite all-time pitchers. I now count 15 relics plus an autograph in his collection!

We'll end the post on a couple former Wolverines from other sports. Former NCAA champ Glen Rice remains the king of my basketball PC and that UD3 card from Upper Deck is a great example of how much fun collecting the in the 90s was. Rice also got to experience a pro title, something familiar to the other guy up there, one Tom Brady. The unquestionable GOAT of the NFL may or not be retiring without another ring but he did end up with seven (and five MVPs) in 10 chances, which I hear is pretty good. That's a 2020 Panini Rookies & Stars base you see up there of the Canton-bound signal caller.

That was a lot of words to write about cards but it was worth it to show appreciation to Trevor for an excellent trade package! I hope we can trade again this year, especially if I can land some trade bait you'd be interested in, but for now I have no problem celebrating the end of 2021 with new PC additions!

More trade recaps to come soon!