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!

10/3/25 card show report: scary cheap October cards

Catching up on these posts has gone decently well since I've actually put some effort into writing more often! Here we are with the last post I have planned for October.

Tonight we'll take a look at what I picked up at that month's show. I spent a paltry $50 that day, my low for the year by $5 (April), but that's ok because I definitely made up for it over the final two months. Plus I brought home some fun stuff for myself:

The baseball scan includes a fun mix of 90s/ish inserts and relics-ish. Gwynn's card is a 2002 Topps Gold, back when you could tell it was that parallel (and not "gold toile redgold waveblue"). It's numbered /2002 on the back and represents just the second year Topps printed that parallel after it began with the excellent 2001 set. I really like how these look, especially compared to the doldrums of the 2010s and 20s designs.

Next is Pudge on a 2000 UD Ultimate Victory Lasting Impressions insert. UV was the higher-end Chrome-like version of the budget Victory brand, and Rodriguez was one of 10 superstars found in this set. He'd just won the '99 AL MVP as well as his 7th straight Gold Glove (out of 10 in a row and 13 overall) and 6th straight Silver Slugger (of 7) and made his 8th of 10 consecutive All-Star appearances, with four more yet to come. So yeah, he made a lasting impression and fits right in with this set!

The unfolded Maddux card is the reason for the "90s inserts rule" tag tonight, though the others are close enough to be honored too. He's seen here on a 1998 Circa Thunder chase card called Limited Access, which includes a typical front and back but folds out so you get even more content inside. That includes another image and some stats in various situations from his first five seasons with the Braves:

(It took me a minute to figure how what these numbers represented until I checked just his Atlanta stats!) Pretty cool, eh?

As for the other interesting cards, first up there's a manupatch of Griffey from 2003 UD Patch Collection's MVPs insert. This one represents his '97 AL MVP win. It's a fun manufactured relic and came to me relatively cheap, so I'm quite happy with it.

Next is a 2005 Bazooka Blasts Relics bat of former Tigers SS Carlos Guillen. Don't ask me why he's listed with the Angels there since he only ever suited up for Seattle and Detroit. This looks to be my second relic (first bat) of the three-time All-Star who was quite productive for some 2000s Tigers teams.

And going alphabetically saves the best for last: a Greg Maddux 2003 Fleer Tradition Milestones Game Used Gold jersey (numbered /100 on the back). I snagged this with a few other cards in this scan and one or two in the next one for a very good total price. Mad Dog's 15 seasons of 15+ wins was a very impressive feat, and he achieved that in consecutive seasons (actually 17, in the end), plus an 18th in 2006 (and missed by one in '07). From 1988-2007 his average record was 17-10, and that's how you get to 355 career wins! This cool relic marks my 20th such card of Maddux and 21st hit overall.

With most of the attention on the baseball stuff, we'll quickly switch over to basketball and football to close things out. The former includes some nice color of Trey Burke, Caris LeVert, and Jordan Poole, and I continue to be able to find stuff like this in the dime and quarter boxes decently often. They grab my attention enough even though they're from my least favorite sport, and I'm happy to add them, plus cool stuff like Juwan Howard's '98-'99 Bowman's Best base.

As for football, RCs of Seattle RB Zach Charbonnet and Washington DB Mike Sainristil were nice finds for my chase of first-years. Harbaugh's a '97 Collector's Edge Extreme Foil insert, though there's not much of that feature on the card besides the swoosh running along the left and curving around to the bottom. And last up is one of my favorites from this month: my second of what amounts to three Charles Woodson entries from a 1998 Press Pass insert called Triple Thread. The '98 Heisman winner as well as QBs Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf each got a trio of cards in this set, naturally, and the versatile Woodson was the one true player who could claim the set's name. The three cards fit together kind of like Stadium Club's Triumverate, and I'll show those off once I nail down his card #7.

That's it for the month of October, at least for now. I may show off a non-card Facebook purchase from then if I feel motivated enough, but I'm really more interested in finalizing my blogger trades, shows, eBay pickups, and eventually, TCDb deals from the second half of the year. So I would expect my next post to dip back into trades, in this case from November. Maybe even soon!

2016 trade package #2: Fuji sends me some paper Tigers

One of my favorite all-time west-coast traders, Mark of the Chronicles of Fuji, recently sent me my second trade package of the year, and just like my first it's another two-parter!  Please make sure to head over to TMM for more nice stuff, including what I consider the highlight of the package.

The last time he sent me cards (in November) he acted like it might be a while before he did so again because he was low on trade bait, but I've known Fuji long enough to realize he doesn't roll that like--he's too generous to go that long without sending you stuff!

Here's some Tigers from the flea market fanatic:

We start off with some great inserts.  Remember, there's no such thing as a bad Refractor, especially when it's blue!  All-Star SS Carlos Guillen arrives in the form of this 2008 Topps Chrome done up in the best color possible.  Following him is reliever Luke Putkonen on a 2013 Emerald parallel.  I hope he regains his health and can get his career back on track.  Finally, we go back to blue with a 2014 parallel of 2B Devon Travis, whom the Tigers unfortunately (for Detroit fans, not Toronto-ans!) flipped to the Jays for Anthony Gose.  Enjoy your outstanding second baseman, Jays fans!  Travis' card is numbered 044/500, by the way.

This next pair turned into nice additions for my vintage baseball collection; chances are if it's from the 70s and back I probably don't have it, so I really appreciate those of you that treat me to older cards like this, especially of Tigers.  The '67 card actually includes a pair of Tigers in Denny McLain and Earl Wilson, and here "Pitching Leaders" signifies wins;  Kaat led the league with 25 of those in '66, McLain took the silver with 20, and Wilson tallied 18 (including 13 with Detroit) after heading to Detroit that June.

Meanwhile the '69 version focuses on strikeouts, with McDowell's 283 edging out McLain's 280; Tiant trailed with 264.  I'm of course amused that Topps used the same image for McLain two years apart, but it's not a huge deal since they're well-known for having done that.

There was one more card in the package that took me a bit by surprise:

From the 2004 USA Baseball 25th Anniversary set comes an autograph of former Team USA member and Reds 2000 second-round catcher Dane Sardinha.  This threw me for a loop until I vaguely remembered him signing with the Tigers years ago.  BBR confirmed that the Hawaiian was a backup in Motown from 2008-2009 after seeing action with the Reds in one game each in '03 and '05.  He finished up his career in Philly in 2010-11.

I'll be happy to make this available to fans of the Reds, Phillies, or Team USA.

Thanks again for surprising me with some great stuff, Mark, and hopefully I'll have a few things headed back your way before long!

2015 trade package #1: Nomo's Sushi Platter rings in the new year

It's a new year and that means it's time to reset the counter on my trade package posts!  Number one from 2015 comes from Spiegel at Nomo's Sushi Platter.  I sent him some Christmas cards last month because he'd sent me a package last March, and then he decided to return the favor.  This is another two-part trade post with the other half of the package viewable at TMM, so don't forget to check those out too.  Here's what Michael sent me this month:

How about some Tigers?  Cabrera, Holaday, and Price are the current Detroiters here while Fielder and Granderson highlight the group of former players.  The Price may be my first of him with the Tigers, though I may have already said that recently!

More Tigers!  Pudge, a pair of (soon-to-be-former Tiger?) Scherzer, and Whitaker are the best of the bunch.  That's definitely one of my favorite Whitaker base cards as it's from later in his career but still shows his enthusiasm for the game.

He also included a pair of other guys I like to collect in Griffey, who should be in next year's Hall of Fame class, and Maddux, who's of course already in.  I may just have to make the trek next year to see Junior's induction, and if I do go I can get a shot of Mad Dog's plaque as well.

There were a couple nice hits as well:

Clete Thomas 2008 SP Authentic auto RC (#600/850)

Clete appeared in parts of three seasons with the Tigers and was most recently in the Majors with the Twins in 2013.  I really like that year's autograph design with the cool window for a signature as it's a definite upgrade over a sticker.

Carlos Guillen 2009 Upper Deck Icons jersey

Would you believe this is my first hit of Guillen in the Tigers collection (or at all)?  I'm not sure how I went this long without one, so I'm grateful to Spiegel for sending this my way.

Thanks again for a great first trade package of the year, Michael!  I promise to find some new stuff to send your way before much longer.