2025 Facebook Marketplace purchase: 10,000? Maniac!

It took a few months this year but back in mid-March I made my first Facebook Marketplace card purchase of 2025: a pair of 5000-count boxes of random stuff for $60.

I drove east to nearby-ish Livonia (my hometown!) and met up with a guy who was cycling out some unwanted stuff from collections he'd picked up, and that's exactly the kind of stuff I like looking through at around this price.

These boxes turned out to be heavier on base than inserts but the latter were still prominent enough to give me some great trade content, and the former were useful in some ways as well. I'd say the split was around 60% baseball, 20% football, and 10% each of basketball and hockey, give or take (it's been a while so I can't remember for sure!).

Regardless, as always I had fun flipping through this stuff, and a good chunk of it has already gone out in trade packages, plus I may list some on TCDb eventually.

As for the reason most of you are probably reading this, here were my keepers, which amounted to a pretty nice stack:

This bunch skewed recent, as in the past five or so years, which was great for me since that helps fill a lot of holes for current Tigers and other PCs. In terms of older stuff, the 2007 Topps Tigers you see here aren't base but are actually from the team set, which I didn't already have.

The Tigers were well represented, as you'd probably expect from cards I picked up in a suburb of Detroit. It's great to see the '06 World Series guys together with some of the stars leading the charge for a surprisingly good 2025 squad.

Both of my blog namesake guys made the smallish group of horizontal cards. Curtis deserves all of the awards for being a talented player who was fun to watch in addition to an impeccable ambassador of the game.

There was just a quartet of Wolverines I needed in the basketball stuff, but this gives you a small idea of some of the brands that were heavily represented.

The football contingent was three times larger (and happily included some love for the defensive guys) and again this gives you a bit of a taste of brands I found.

2024 Absolute Retail and Prestige were by far the biggest stacks so it's no surprise I had multiple keepers from both. Some Prizm and Mosaic sets also popped up a good amount, just to a lesser degree.

When it came to hockey the local favorites also made lots of appearances, mostly to the benefit of the collections of two guys I loved watching in my younger days. Sergei Fedorov got a great bump to his PC with a cool mix of brands and designs.

Though most of his cardboard appearances here depict him with other teams, Brendan Shanahan also got a nice boost, and there's even a few in the next scan from his tenure in Hockeytown.

The HOF three-time Cup winner, all with Detroit, spent parts of nine seasons as a Wing, but was also known for multiple years with the Devils, Blues, Rangers, and Whalers. What a great trade acquisition he was as Detroit finally ended its Cup drought in '97.

Oh yeah, one Michigan Hockey card did manage to sneak into the pile: an early 2000s base of Mike Cammalleri, a guy who had a nice 15-year career of his own.

Like I said, these were fun to look through and sort into piles for my trading buddies, plus I still have some stacks I may list for trade, we'll see. In the meantime, I recently bought another lot from this same seller--around 300 recent baseball inserts for $50--but probably won't do up a post on them since I only ended up with a single keeper for myself. Some of those did make for nice filler in the 11 trade packages that went out to some of you today, though, so some of you should watch your mailboxes!

Next time you see a post from me I should be into Aprils acquisitions.

2025 trade package #6: Topps Cards That Never Were

Hey, look, I've finally made it to the last trade package I received in January! It was a busy month for my mailbox as this was #6 for the first month of '25, and it was a PWE from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were.

He and I tend to send envelopes back-and-forth without warning, which is a lot of fun to do in this hobby of ours. I certainly wasn't expecting this one but enjoyed its contents as usual. Here's what Jeremy gifted me this time:

Not many managers get much more Classic than Sparky, and he still owns the Tigers record for wins with 1,331, exactly 200 more than fellow HOFer Hughie Jennings, the only other skipper in franchise history with more than 700 victories (Jim Leyland hit that number exactly).

Fielder and Fryman, seen on a pair of '92 issues (Big Daddy's a Gold Hologram version), were the main corner infielders in Sparky's twilight years in Motown. They manned those spots together from 1990-96, when Fielder was traded, a year after Anderson's last dugout appearance.

Keith (Topps Holiday) is tonight's only active MLBer but he still looks very promising despite struggling a bit to get his bat going for the surging 2025 Tigers.

When (not if!) I hit 1000 unique cards of Barry Larkin, it'll be thanks to many of you who've contributed, like this Donruss Orange parallel/'24 Panini Prizm pair from Jeremy. As of this post I need just 19 more.

Robson's the only recent guy besides Keith in this post but the OF and 2016 Tigers draftee (8th round) hasn't been in the organization since 2022.

Pudge joins Sparky in this post as a Tigers HOFer and he has something in common with Fielder above as well: the card you see above is the tougher to find Gold Hologram variant. It's really nice getting those knocked off my wantlists!

Big Daddy makes one more appearance featuring the star of my last post, Mickey Tettleton. The Cecil/Mickey pairing posted 35 and 32 HR in 1992, then 30 and 32 the following season when the UD card above was released.

Last up tonight is a 2014 Panini Golden Age Mini Hindu Back of Red Wings HOF C and current GM, Steve Yzerman. He's come in below expectations in terms of getting the franchise back to the playoffs but may still get there with a bit more time. If nothing else he'll always be a franchise icon and "The Captain" that led the team to three Cups.

Jeremy, thanks again for treating me to this fun PWE. I may actually be returning the favor relatively soon once I decide to pull the trigger to mail the small stack I've put together for you.

With that, January '25 trades are done and I should be mixing things up a bit with January's show recap next time.

2025 trade package #3: Nachos Grande

Not too long after I received that PWE from Chris, "The Collector," that I just wrote about, I was treated to an envelope from another Chris that's east of me: Mr. Reed of Nachos Grande. I've known him as a great blogger and quality trade partner for years now and was happy to include him in my most recent Christmas Card mailings, helping him complete his run of Reds Topps Lineage relics.

He was nice enough to return the favor the following month with a package that screamed "Nachos Grande" to me as it was chock full of items I associate with his collecting habits:

That foil Cobb actually hails from the same 2011 Topps Lineage product I just mentioned and it's one of several parallels you could find in the set, not to mention a card I didn't previously have on hand.

Then we get into the Ginter stuff, which is definitely a Nachos Grande staple. I had all of the ones you see here on my TCDb wantlist including 2020 base of Cobb, Fielder, Gwynn, and Tram, a 2020 Mini of Mr. Tiger Al Kaline, and a 2011 of former blog namesake Curtis Granderson. As it turns out, Fielder and Tram are both SPs in the 2020 product so it was extra nice of Chris to include them. They give me four former Tigers that were short-printed, along with Jack Morris and Sparky Anderson. I could also add Magglio Ordonez and Jim Bunning to my wants but haven't decided to do that yet.

And as if those weren't enough, Chris also helped me out with a dupe of a guy we both PC, Barry Larkin. I appreciate any extras he can send my way since he's managed to write up individual posts for more Larkins than I currently even own! #980 in my collection is the '21 Donruss Red and White Stripes parallel you see above, #d 1801/2021. That marks my fifth parallel of his Retro '87 base appearance along with the base card itself in what would likely be a years long search for the product's rainbow. While I miss the MLB logos I do like the design, including the throwback to the 1987 set.

Chris, thanks again for thinking of me and sending these great new additions my way. I'll keep working on trying to find some new Larkins for you to try to get more of your doubles into my collection.

And once again I'll be back soon as I have three more blogger trades from January to cover, not to mention a huge one from February, and three monthly shows to recap. Until then, enjoy some Spring Training ball as we head into warmer weather and a new season!

2024 TCDb trade roundup part 2: the pretty goods

Following up on my last post, here are the rest of my 2024 TCDb trades that I hadn't covered yet.

By my count this recap includes a total of 34 trades and 1 PIF from 33 different members. Going by my transaction history, the last one you'll see alphabetically here from zmaciag was the first to be marked complete, while the most recent one (yobshabob) actually arrived in my mailbox last week after a huge USPS delay (we agreed to the trade late in December).

These all went well as usual. I was very grateful to receive a PIF from generous member mzentko, plus I got to meet fellow UM Football fan MichiganFan9 (imagine that!) in person to swap cards at a location convenient to both of us.

Since there's a ton of images chock full of some of my favorite Tigers, Wolverines, and other PCs, I'll let the images do the talking this time. Enjoy!

b14rebel:

bballkm32:

brcdad:

Burefreak:

Chefjacob:

CollectorKing23:

CollectorTBNL:

dirtysock47:

Forallitsworth1971:

heattreat:

hershey:

homerjg007:

ILLRIMESAYA:

Jaskau82:

Miabert1:

MichiganFan9:

Misfits138:

MViP:

mzentko (PIF):

Orry04:

PennsylvaniaTiger:

philliesphan (1 of 2):

philliesphan (2 of 2):

poorlittlecritter:

propmaker:

RAMONESRULE:

RyanFrueh (1 of 2):

RyanFrueh (2 of 2):

Thejexican18:

tnewman5280:

Twinjim8791:

Vnbball:

wischeese:

yobshabob:

zmaciag:

With these covered I may move on to the remaining 2024 card shows I have yet to recap. I'll be back soon!