8/6/22 show report: deals for days

I'm back with a show recap post despite having two blogger trade packages to cover. I usually try to prioritize those but I had this post ready first and it should be easier to just finish it up and then get to the trades.

Anyway, I had another great time, almost two hours worth this time, I believe, digging through boxes at the monthly show a couple Saturdays ago. For whatever reason despite it being early afternoon on a Saturday the place was relatively dead so I had plenty of breathing space and time to look stuff over. I even chatted a bit with a couple other folks going through the quarter boxes, and that was nice.

The final damage this time was 100 quarter cards, 40 dollars, and three that were $2 each. That comes out to $71 and the dealer knocked that down to $60 because he's a dude and seems to like charging me that amount. You know I'll be back next month!

I made a few nice finds in the dollar box but really enjoyed the quarters this time. As usual I didn't get through all of those boxes because there's a ton and my patience runs out before long.

First, here's a quick look at the non-specific trade bait I grabbed:

The Walker, Davis, and Jones have already headed out into TCDB deals, but would you believe these were all quarter cards? There were lots more numbered football inserts I would have picked up if they were dimes. Anyway, I thought those three were amazing for the price--'97 Circa's fun felted Fast Track and a couple versions of Leaf R&S Slideshows. Of the rest the McNown is notable for being #d /5000. Those are available here or on TCDB.

Next you'll get a look at the stuff I picked up for myself, all of which came out of the quarter and dollar boxes. The Gibby surprised me because it wasn't on a list (collection or wantlist) for me on TCDB, making me realize I needed to update it! That's a '95 Summit Nth Degree parallel, a rare card made during his career that I needed. It's always nice landing more Griffeys. That Kaline is beautiful, a 2005 Fleer Classic Clippings parallel called Final Edition. It's not numbered but its reflective foil makes it a beaut. Larkin promo! A rare Barry card I own that Chris doesn't. And I love me some numbered cards of my big PC guys like Maddux, with that Topps Stars above #d /9799.

And even more baseball. $1 was plenty cheap for Mad Dog's '04 Donruss DK insert (/2500). Fellow HOF pitcher Jack Morris also appears on a numbered Donruss insert, 2005 Classics' Stars of Summer (/1000). Northrup's '99 Ball Park Franks card is from a set entirely new to me and now I'd love to find the other nine. Parrish and "Sweet" Lou both came out of the '81 Topps Coke team set for $1 apiece and I was glad to track down the latter on the day his number was retired at Comerica Park (I didn't go because the team's awful and the stadium experience sucks). Two many Verlanders is always a good number, and my Topps-hating ass still loves stuff like his 2019 Heritage Cloth Sticker.

On the basketball side of things I felt I spent $0.75 well, coming up with die-cuts of coach Juwan Howard and fellow Fab-Fiver Jalen Rose, plus another of the latter. I'm pretty sure everything you see from football here was the same price. Touchdown Timmy sure ran like a Boss. Three new Nicos yielded two new RCs. Crable's 2008 Leaf R&S parallel (/249) is from the earlier Donruss/Leaf/Playoff age that was vastly superior to the current Panini mess, and they know how to make inserts and parallels back then (get off my lawn!). Bengals RB Evans joins Collins with a RC out of last year's Mozaic.

Finishing up with football here are five more numbered inserts of three former stars. Perry's are from 2005 Score, 2007 Rookies & Stars, and 2004 Playoff Hogg Heaven, and go for 599, 349, and 750 copies each. Terrell and Thomas are paired up like I like to see them, with the former on a much-needed 2001 Donruss Classics RC (#s /475) and the latter in his sunset season with the Bills (2007 Topps Copper /2007).

So in summary, as usual, great cards for me and a few for some of you too, possibly going out in trade packages soon.

Next time you can look forward to a blogger trade package, and another after that as well, after which it's pretty likely I'll be doing a few more TCDB trade roundups. Until the next show!

2022 trade package #18: My Sports Obsession

Well it's already August--hell, almost halfway through it!--though today's felt more like a late September kind of day, 60s and rainy.

I've kept plenty busy with card stuff, especially TCDB as usual, and non-card activities (almost done with the new Lego Star Wars, reading, starting up Better Call Saul), and all of that has put blogging on the back-burner for me.

That said, I do have some stuff to cover, and most importantly I owe a very cool person a trade package post.

Longtime buddy of the blog Jeff of My Sports Obsession, a fellow Michigan fan who I know is also looking forward to the upcoming football season, hit me with a mailer last month that went above and beyond in quality. Check it out!

Jeff and I have a lot of player collections in common so it's fun to swap cards of them back and forth. I was really happy to see the four above cards of Cronenworth as many of his cards are still beyond reasonable/affordable prices. I've snagged a few through TCDB trades and I'm grateful to Jeff for sending more! My favorites are the Diamond Kings card (even sans logos) and Bowman Chrome insert since it's a Refractor. TCDB tells me I have exactly 50 of him logged so far, not bad!

My biggest PC remains one Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr., and he's another guy Jeff collects bigtime. Because I have over 1100 Ripken cards I looked at the above (and below, as you'll see in a second) base items Jeff sent and though, "Thanks, buddy, but these are all dupes." WRONG! Somehow I needed all but one of the Cals he sent me (seen in the next scan). That's a pretty big surprise because besides the volume of cards I have of the Iron Man, these pretty much all came from when I was going crazy buying all kinds of boxes/packs without any kind of focus. They're a terrific mix and I'm happy to have them.

Here you see seven more of Ripken, and the lone double is the Pinnacle Inside card right down the middle. If nothing else I'm shocked I didn't have the UD Starquest insert that opens this scan. The '98 Ultra base is the last of the older bunch and then we have a 2018 Topps Silver Pack card that came out two decades later. Maybe someday I'll have as many Ripkens as the number of consecutive games he appeared in: 2632. Thanks to folks like Jeff maybe I'll get there.

Oh yeah, and then we have the biggest surprise of this package. Out of nowhere popped out a 2016 Panini Pantheon Milestone Scripts Bronze autograph of Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline. Wow! Al had a beautiful signature, of which I'm well aware thanks to owning seven of them now, and let me tell you, it doesn't get old at all each time I get a new one. This one is from a set that celebrates certain marks, and as you can see it highlights Al reaching the 3,000 hit plateau with a total of 3,007. He achieved that count in his final season, 1974, his 22nd in the bigs. Interestingly enough those extra seven came from his 30-game cup of coffee in 1953 over 30 plate appearances. He's currently #32 overall in the category, with fellow great Roberto Clemente the last in the club with 3K exactly. Now that Miggy has joined elite company (he sits at #25 as of this post) it's hard to say how long we'll be waiting for the next member.

Anyway, this is a stunner of a card and I was absolutely floored to find it. And then I turned it over and it got even better:

Yep, it's limited to just 15 copies. Just amazing. Thanks so much for your generosity, Jeff!

That's not all there was by a long shot, though, because as I mentioned, Jeff and I both chase Wolverines as well. From the growing group of basketball alumni we have a shiny twofer of three-point machine Duncan Robinson, who just got paid, and a great college action Michigan uni card of Mo's bro Franz Wagner.

Football begins promisingly with a Gold Zone parallel of star CB Leon Hall's 2007 Score RC, #d 532/600. I do love numbered parallels from this era. Joining him is former 5* QB recruit Brandon Peters, a guy who looked like as sure of a future star as anyone. Things didn't work out that way and he transferred to Illinois, in whose uniform he appears in the above Bowman University card. One of Jim Harbaugh's earliest and most promising recruits at the position, it's a shame things didn't go differently but I'm happy he was able to get his chance with the Illini.

On the hits side of things, first up is another Michigan uni card, this time a great autograph out of Panini's excellent Contenders Draft product. Zach Gentry was a QB recruit who successfully converted to the TE position and got himself drafted by the Steelers. Next to him is a guy with whom the word "success" most certainly applies, at least during his career in Ann Arbor, Chris Perry. The insanely talented RB ended his four-year Wolverines career all over the record books and as a Heisman finalist in 2003. I love the 2004 Fleer Sweet Sigs Copper auto (#011/160) Jeff was nice enough to include here because I thought the trend of signatures on all kinds of manufactured materials was very enjoyable. I believe this is the fourth such card I have of him out of 56 hits. Very cool!

Jeff, once again, thanks very much for being so generous with this latest envelope! I was already going to appreciate the Cronenworth and Ripken cards and the Michigan additions were excellent, and then you blew me away with the Kaline! Hopefully I'll have some great stuff to send back your way before long, plus maybe at some point we really can get together for a show?

All of you should get on over to My Sports Obsession while I work on my next post covering last weekend's show. After that it shouldn't be too much longer before I start catching up on my latest batch of TCDB swaps. Until then, keep enjoying summer as those of us who watch look forward to the return of college football!

1/4/20 and 1/31/20 show reports: January Jonesing

I didn't have to wait very long this year to get to my first shows of 2020, getting east to Taylor on the first Saturday of the month and again on the last Friday.  Things just happened to work out that February's show weekend started in 1/31 and I went that day as I had friends in town the next day.

Because I wanted to get going on getting these posted I decided to just combine them, but I'll give a quick note on how both went.  I didn't want to miss January's event because my usual guy was doing his thing where pretty much everything was half its usual price, and that worked out quite well for me as I dropped $30 on mostly trade bait, some of which has already gone out.  Then at the end of the month I threw down $40 to the same guy for more goodies, many of which were $2 hits for my football collection.  To those I added a nice little bunch of vintage pickups (again, some for trade bait) for another $20, bringing my monthly total to $90.

Here's a look at the combined haul this time:

Trade bait, part 1: baseball.  I believe the last three cards here were $0.50 at the first show while the Ward was $1.  Why would I pick up what appears to be a base card for that much?  It's tough to see the stamp on the front if you're not looking for it, but the back helps:

This is a 2003 Donruss Atlantic City National stamped card /5 that I'm sure someone will want.

And part 2, the football stuff.  I believe a couple of these were just $0.50 too, and at most a buck or two.  As usual, please claim anything you like in the comments or via email and we'll work something out!

Now we can move on to the stuff for me:

You can see how that vintage purchase paid off in this scan, especially in the top row.  The Gehringer is from a 1961 set called Golden Press and I think it looks great, especially for the era, plus it's my oldest of the Mechanical Man so far.  Horton's card is from 1970 Topps (his oldest as well) and I'm kind of slowly working on his vintage stuff.  And the dual Tigers rookie is fun since I mainly needed it for my Fisher collection as he's a Michigan alum, but scoring a RC of excellent Canadian relief dude Hiller is a very nice bonus.

Down the middle we have three guys from some of my biggest PCs in Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken.  The Junior phone card might look a bit familiar since I picked up similar stuff recently from that '95 Classic set.  My fun with Panini's Leather & Lumber continues with a cool die-cut Maddux insert called Benchmarks.  And we head back to the '90s for Fleer's Emotion E-XL and a '96 insert called N-Tense.  The while the front and back "layers" of the card are die-cut those areas in the middle of the letter are paper, though it's still a very cool design.

The bottom row opens with another extremely cool vintage item, a '72 Kellogg's of Wolverines HOFer George Sisler.  These look awesome and I hope to add more of similar guys like Ted Simmons as I find them.  And last up is former Tiger and current Trashtro Justin Verlander on a 2019 Donruss 150th Anniversary parallel (#149/150).  The photo on this one is actually the variation of the regular base, though I'd assume that they have the same odds of being pulled.

Heading over to the gridiron for the non-hit football stuff I came up with this trio.  Shoelace's card is a 2013 Spectra RC (/99), though I didn't realize that when I picked it up, so that was a fun surprise, and leaves me just a couple short of all his first-years.  Bo's card is a Delong Gum insert from 2013 Panini Golden Age, a "baseball" product like A&G, GQ, and Goodwin.  And my favorite of the bunch is the last vintage item of the day, a solid '57 Topps base of former Wolverines DE Len Ford.  It's just my third card of his along with his '55 Bowman RC and a '94 Topps Archives reprint of this very card!

And the hit parade begins on the Y-axis.  Leaf Trinity's Clear autos look amazing, such as Chesson's (eight hits) above.  I picked up three new Braylon (89) items, two of them featuring a second player, and one of those is on display here in the form of a dual jersey with former Lions WR Roy Williams.  Williams was a guy who was fairly productive and then was flipped to Dallas for, among other picks, a first-rounder that Detroit characteristically wasted on TE Brandon Pettigrew.

Getting back on track, it's unfortunately somewhat rare for me to pick up new Hart (69) stuff these days but I did luck out with his rookie year '08 Stadium Club Beam Team auto, a nice throwback to that brand's classic insert.  Lewan (15) gets a jersey swatch from last year's Certified that's about as big as he is a jackass.  Solid CB David Long is today's new player with his first hit, an autograph from '19 Prizm.  Former #1 overall OT Jake Long (86) makes a Michigan quartet from the 2008 UD Icons Rainbow auto set (with Arrington, Hart, and Henne), so I just need Manningham and Shawn Crable.  And probably the best of my trio of Chris Perry (55) items is this '04 Leaf Certified Mirror Blue ball/helmet/jersey relic, a card that's totally up my alley).

Pressing on with the horizontals, Jason Avant (63) gets a new jersey from '06 R&S, though I'd have a bone to pick with whoever would refer to it as "prime" if I IDed it correctly.  TE Jake Butt (6) joins former teammate Chesson with an amazing 2017 Leaf auto of his own out of Metal Draft.  Airbrushed helmet aside, the State Pride cards are super nice, though I wouldn't mind more of Michigan's motto on display.  Braylon's back for his promised third appearance, a Playoff Honors ball/jersey that pairs him with fellow Browns rookie Charlie Frye, a Cleveland QB that busted (go figure) even quicker than Edwards.

His more successful NFL counterpart, Mario Manningham (95) gets a "super" jumbo jersey swatch from '08 Gridiron Gear that I've labeled as "prime" since Panini didn't change the serial numbering (/50) from the non-prime version.  Oh, Panini....  It's a beautiful swatch and I'll put down a few bucks that Matt will have a positive comment about it not long after this gets posted!  Then we're back to Chris Perry's other two hits from 2002 Fleer's Rookie Throwback Threads insert.  The jersey/ball (/50) and leather helmet may be event worn/used but they're still plenty of fun to pick up.

David Terrell (45) didn't even up his hits total with counterpart Anthony Thomas's 53, but this 2001 Fleer Legacy Triple Threads jersey makes for some nice parallels as I now have a card like this for each player, plus they're both at exactly 150 in their PCs.  Michigan's former #1 had the worst career of the three as Gardner did decently well in four-plus years with Washington while Wayne was, uh, pretty good with the Colts, I believe.

Last up is RB Ty Wheatley (6) on a super nice shoe relic from 2001 Absolute Memorabilia.  This was from way back when Donruss/Playoff/whoever included a helpful image on the back showing the actual item the material came from, like-a so:

It's always fun to add something like this among the sea of less interesting relics like jerseys these days.

I think many of you will agree with me that that was a fairly productive pair of shows, especially since you haven't seen all the trade cards I've sent out or will be doing at some point.  Milestone-wise we're coming up on a pretty big one as I'm at 1495 football hits.  With the definition of some of those being a bit iffy in my mind these days (such as unsigned manu-relics) I'll feel a bit more comfortable about the number when I've eclipsed it by a bit, but it'll be worth a celebration no matter what!

Happily I'm just about caught up on in-hand stuff again with an eBay pickup being the only thing left for now, though I'm looking forward to a trade package in the next couple days and another eBay win.  After that I'm hoping to find some time to redo how I'm presenting my PCs, mainly to incorporate TCDB but also cleaning things up generally, plus I have a potential feature that may interest a lot of you, so stay tuned.  Oh, and welcome back, baseball!

2019 trade package #40: Bob Walk the Plank

Though he may no longer be an active blogger, Matt from Bob Walk the Plank is very much still out and about in the collecting world, which is easy to tell if you follow him on Twitter.  He posts his pickups and trades over there so he's definitely worth a follow.

Speaking of trades, my West Virginian collecting counterpart sent some cards my way--in an unorthodox fashion--in time for Christmas.  I love the spectrum of people I swap cards with since they increase the diversity of my collection, and if I had to label the stuff I get from Matt at this point, I'd go with higher-end Tigers and Wolverines with a nice emphasis on my PCs.  Whereas I have a show (or two) that acts as a good source for fun inserts and low-end hits, which I supplement via eBay and COMC, Matt hits me back in a big way with quality over quantity, and the results have been amazing.

That's why I should have known who was behind a pair of cards that arrived separately last month that research ultimately proved came from eBay sellers.  I knew I wasn't waiting on anything so I took to Twitter and Matt reminded me that I had a few things on the way.  Boy did I ever!

In total, Matt appears to have had three cards shipped directly to me, which made for a fun surprise before I even saw what the cards were, at which point my jaw hit the floor.  Please enjoy this high-end Christmas package from him that would lead you to believe that I live in a certain city in Ohio (barf) if not for their Michigan connection:

Spuds-erman, Spuds-erman, does whatever a Spudser-man can!  I believe this super cool Chris Sabo autograph from 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites was the first of the three to arrive, and I was definitely excited when I opened it (before realizing that I hadn't bought it and didn't know who it came from).  That's because while Sabo is a pretty well-known player, he currently only has 25 autographs to his name, and of those only five of the products are MLB licensed (e.g. Topps). 

As it turns out this is actually Sabo's first autograph, and it's from one of Topps' products with the somewhat rebooted (it was used a bit in the 90s) Archives/Fan Favorites branding in the early 2000s before they milked it for all it was worth.  It's a nice portrait of Spuds on the 1991 Topps design, and I like that the back notes his excellent stats in the Reds' surprise 1990 World Series win.  As for the front, he has a very interesting signature to look at, and now I'm excited to add hit #1 of the '88 NL ROY, a card that gets me to about 75% of his 200-plus cards I'm chasing (and 181 overall).

I believe this card arrived that same day, and again, it was in another envelope from a different address, increasing my confusion.  I love including 1/1s in some of my trade packages--and had especially good luck buying them on COMC during the Black Friday sales, benefiting Matt, among others--but getting one back was a really nice treat.  Better yet, it stars one of my favorite Michigan Football PCs, RB Chris Perry.  As you can see, this one comes from Topps Draft (2005), one of my favorite Topps products back when they made them.  The designs could be pretty fun, especially the 2003 and '04 versions, and of course I loved seeing the players in their college unis.

In this case Perry was going into his second year so he's grouped with the vets, joining Tom Brady and Drew Henson.  I'll also point out that this is one of a number of products in the hobby that inserted plates for the fronts and backs of the cards, which is a fun thing to see every now and then.  That's actually the case for 2005 Topps Total, which is responsible for the other Perry plate in my collection--the front version, if you were curious!  This is a great addition to my Perry collection, 115 cards strong with 52 of them being of the "hits" variety, good for 9th in the collection.  It's also plate/1-of-1 #129 in my collection.

Now here I'll pause a minute for effect and to mention two things.  The first is that today's theme is high-end Cincinnati cards, not players named "Chris," so expect something a little different next.  The other is that any reasonable person who got those two cards above would be thinking to themselves that their (unofficial) secret Santa had already been especially generous and thankful for what they got.  I am that kind of reasonable person and at that point I felt that Matt had already done enough to ensure a merry Christmas for me and my collection.  Apparently he felt otherwise because he let me know that one more card would be arriving soon.  And boy did it ever:

Yowza!  Now there's a Topps card I can get behind!  Transcendent's prices aren't affordable for most collectors, but sometimes when you let breakers pay the gambling tax and then list them on eBay you can benefit.  Even so, I really have to credit Matt for his generosity in sending me this 2017 autograph of Reds/Wolverines HOF legend Barry Larkin!  I think this is what today's kids call "being extra," but in the best of ways.  Larkin's autographs aren't the cheapest even on the lower end so an on-card version limited to 25 copies in this ultra high-end product probably set Matt back a few bucks.  Between that and all the red going on between this and the Sabo, I think he really got into the spirit of the season!

So let's get into the details of the card.  The front has an image from the previously mentioned 1990 World Series, done up very artistically.  There's a section that's plenty large for a signature and I love that Barry managed to loop his initials a bit above it to where the numbering is, plus I just flat out love his signature.  The back has a good writeup that mentions some key things about his career, like going 30/30 and winning the '95 NL MVP, plus I like that blurb about training with a guy that's somewhat his current counterpart in Lindor.  I think mentioning the '90 series would have been cool, but short of that, thumbs up from me.

But the biggest aspect of this card besides the signature is its thickness.  A 2D scan can't portray this very well, but not only does the card have a lot of depth to it, it's also very heavy because it has a gold frame around it.  Topps has done framed cards recently to what I would consider good effect--hell, it's much better than another of the endless color or Hallmark holiday parallels--and that adds to the quality of this piece, making it something I'd definitely like to display if I was on the fence about it for some reason.

While I'm proud of the size of my Larkin collection (772 cards as of this post, including 21 hits), this is just my sixth auto of the former superstar, which I know is more than some other collectors, but a  number I'd like to grow.  That's not intended to be a humblebrag but instead another reason why I'm so impressed with Matt's generosity here.  Impressed but not surprised, considering the dude has sent me amazing stuff like autos of Griffey, Kaline, and a previous Larkin, among others.

Matt, thanks again for this amazing trio which most certainly let me enjoy a merry cardmas!  I look forward to swapping more cards this year and already have a few things in-hand that I think you'll like.

Everyone else can stay tuned for even more trade package fun, including another in-person deal and a box from our neighbor to the north slightly east.

Trade post Tuesday with Hiflew

Johnny/Hiflew (Cards From the Quarry) and I agreed to a trade at some point recently, that much I'm sure of, because I vaguely remember sending him stuff, and he reciprocated by sending stuff back that arrived to me today:

First up is this JJ Putz 2008 Topps Heritage Chrome parallel.  Compared to some of Michigan's recent baseball alumni, JJ's had a pretty nice career (plus he's still kicking ass for me on my fantasy team this year).  As far as non-hits go (I do collect those too!) this is a super addition to my Michigan baseball PC.  Topps Heritage is pretty reliably a beautiful set, and that plus Chrome equals awesome.  As usual, these are numbered (this one's a difficult-to-read 0962/1959).  I think this is part of what started this deal because I remember asking Johnny about it a while ago.

Next is this Chris Perry 2004 SAGE HIT Silver auto.  Perry was a beast of a running back and a Heisman finalist at Michigan, and here we have a great shot of him determined to pick up a big gain in a game or practice (or at the park, in his full uniform for some reason).    Welcome home, Chris Perry #13.

Finally, Johnny sent over a David Terrell 2001 SPx Winning Materials ball/jersey.  The older football versions of these often turned out more interesting than their baseball counterparts, and I think this is a great example.  In this football set we get a couple small swatches, but one's a non-white jersey, and the other is a ball, which I feel, without any facts to back it up, is rarer than a bat card when it comes to baseball relic stuff.  For comparison's sake, here's what I'm talking about in an example from the same year:

I love my Ripken relics, but the Terrell is hands down much better in my opinion.  (Did you notice how I both explained which one I preferred and detailed why, Chris Olds?)  Rounding out the card are a nice action shot of Terrell plus one of my favorites--serial numbering (105/750).  Just curious, do you people prefer serial numbering on the front or back?  It doesn't make a huge difference to me, but in general I like it on the back because I like the front to have enough going for it that it doesn't need numbering to improve it.  Anyway, that's David Terrell #26 for me.

Three quality Wolverines PC additions equal a great trade package for me, plus I'm pretty sure I dumped my unwanted Rockies on Johnny, so this deal was even better for me, but hopefully a win-win overall.  Thanks for an awesome third trade, Johnny!