2023 trade package #15: the Collector

Well we're more than halfway through the year and I still have a lot to catch up on in terms of cards to show off on my desk, though it's getting a bit better. It certainly helps when I actually post them and can get on to the next pile!

Tonight's envelope was yet another from one of my favorite trade partners (I have a lot of favorites), Chris of the Collector. We send stuff back and forth all the time, often without any warning, and I'm pretty sure that's what happened here because I don't remember him letting me know something was on the way.

Here's all the cardboard goodness he hit me with this time:

Now that's a nice pair of Miggy cards! I'm still partial to the 2001 Topps set so the Archives parallel is especially cool to me. Also, this is a great time to chastise MLB for not giving Cabrera the kind of send-off he deserves as much as guys like Pujols, Ortiz, and Jeter. Whatever, just another ball dropped under Rob Manfred's watch.

E-Rod's looking good in blue and I wonder if he'll be wearing a new jersey with that color (or any others) in just a few weeks. When I saw the Sabo I hoped it was one of those annoying to track down Gold Hologram versions, and it was! With the MLB draft all wrapped up I'm sure some fans are already giving up on Tork and looking ahead to some of the bats and arms the team took this week. Verlander was one of those arms way back, a rare good draft choice for the franchise. And underrated SS Carlos Guillen represents a trade that went in the Tigers favor plus a guy whose talent I appreciated during his eight years in Motown.

Sure, we've had some normal sized cards, but why not oversized? Back when Finest still looked like its own premium product, like 2000, you could snag a box topper like Mr. Padre above (and even a Refractor version!). Gwynn is #17 in the set so he would have been pulled from a Series 2 box while #s 1-10 were found in Series 1. It's a beauty and one I'll happily add to his collection.

Sticking with oversized stuff but going even more oddball, how about this thing? I'm sure those of you familiar with 90s stuff remember Stadium Club's Master Photo pieces, but did you know Topps collaborated with Toys'R'Us to produce a 100 card set that came with a bonus 12-card insert set that included the 5x7 above? Sure, just about any Tigers "prospect" they picked back then would have sucked, but it's still a very cool piece. Thanks, Chris!

One last scan will take care of the other three sports that made it into the package. The Fab-Fivers go well together, but while Webber's has the cooler design, King happens to be the subject of a recent feel-good story, returning to Michigan to finish up his degree in time to graduate with his daughter!

Heading over to football, Brady and Collins are notable guys from recent Panini Products, but Ojabo may be less well-known to non-Michigan fans (unless you're an Ohio State fan!), and of course you don't hear as much about SAGE as the major brands. Still, that's a very cool card of a guy who could be making some major noise in the league when he's fully healthy.

Lastly, we move onto the ice where Michigan just had another guy drafted in the Top 5, with Hobey-winner Adam Fantilli joining the Wolverine contingent in Columbus at #3 overall. The photography on the UD cards Chris sent me looks excellent as always, and I'm grateful that Larkin will continue to captain the Wings for years to come (with a pair of fellow ex-Wolverines to boot!). I wouldn't mind seeing another former top-10-er, Jacob Trouba, on Detroit's blue line. And lastly, I realized later when I had finished scanning everything that the Ultra Gold Medallion of front-of-the-net-maestro Tomas Holmstrom had fallen behind the scanner so I made sure to add it to this group.

Chris, thanks again for such a fun surprise envelope with some especially cool oversized items! I'm not sure when I'll be returning fire but best believe when I do you'll be getting the same quality coming back your way!

2022 trade package #8: Nachos Grande

Today's trade package is one I was super excited to receive, and I was anticipating getting it just as much as I was impatiently waiting for today's Michigan Football spring game to get here since that marks the warmer (eventually) season and serves as a reminder that college football will be back before we know it.

The star of today's post actually almost came to Ann Arbor on a football scholarship before opting for the diamond and a Hall of Fame career. That would be one Barry Larkin, a guy who gets heavily collected by Chris of Nachos Grande. Chris generously let me pick from his Larkin dupes after he got them added on TCDB and I ended up with almost 50 new cards to add to my own collection (which still pales in comparison to his PC by more than 400!).

So here's a quick look at what he sent in this package stuffed with Larkins (and a few other PC guys too):

Scan #1 has the most oddball items of any of today's images but we open with a favorite of mine in Sportflics. This is one of the 1987 Team Preview cards and it includes a solid 12 players up front, some of which were big contributors to the Reds' 1990 title such as Eric Davis, Tom Browning, Larkin, and Paul O'Neill. The other two cards in that row from Classic and Topps/Toys r Us are also from Barry's RC year of '87.

Down the middle we have a Topps Magazine trio from 1990 that includes the previously seen Eric Davis plus fellow Wolverine and '90 champ Chris Sabo, plus a pair of U.S. Playing Card Company cards. And the bottom keeps up the oddball theme with food issues from Dairy Queen, Kraft, and Milk Bone. Hey, I didn't say it was all human food! I'm always a fan of cards showing former Wolverines participating on Olympics teams.

As we head deeper into the 90s there's less oddball stuff but it's still there. '93 Studio's Heritage insert looks awesome and is perfect for a game that works so hard to honor its history. UD's Fun Pack product tried all kinds of stuff to hook kids, including "base cards" that were, among other things, stickers. And there's our second Kraft card of the day--one of two food issues in this image.

'95 Score's Hall of Gold was a fun insert that shouldn't be confused with the Gold Rush parallel. It looks like September of that year was Barry's lone appearance on the cards that could be found in SI for Kids magazines. And Tombstone is the last of the food cards you'll see today.

The bottom row starts with one of the best looking cards of the envelope straight out of the greatest era for inserts, and that's a '96 Bowman Bowman's Best Preview Atomic Refractor. Hell yeah! Next to it is one of a few Larkin appearances in '96 Collector's Choice Silver Signature parallel, and after that we have Fleer's E-Motion XL with its design that included frames and stamps.

For a product that was all about the one-per-pack autographs, '96 Leaf Signature has a base set I find very appealing. Pacific Online is more annoying to collect because it's huge and the variations are hard to track down, but Barry's Reds team checklist looks cool too. And it's too bad the Pinnacle name didn't last beyond 1998.

I've long thought that 1998's offering was one of the best in terms of SP Authentic. The Gold Label (another gem!) next to it is the Class 2 version while the base sees Barry in the field and following through on a swing. And Paramount was one of a number of excellent Pacific offerings, with the '99 Copper parallel as an example above.

The bottom row runs it back with Topps Gold Label (1999 Class 3), the third year of Topps Stars (also 1999) and 2000's Pacific Prizm. On a scale of one to five, Topps gives Barry the following ratings on his Stars card: Hitting: 4; Power: 3; Speed: 4; Defense: 5; Arm: 3. Oh yeah, and give me the Pacific version of Prism over Panini's slightly differently spelled product any day!

This last scan that's 100% vertical cards has some of the highest-end stuff you'll see today. 2000 Pacific Vanguard was big on card thickness and shininess so you know I'm a fan. The back notes that Larkin is one of two Reds to join the 30/30 club, and of course the other one (at the time) was Eric Davis; Brandon Phillips joined the club with 30 jacks and 32 steals in '07. Next is our final Gold Label offering of the day: another Class 3 version from 2000. And even if its silver foil is so reflective that it doesn't scan well, 2001 Leaf Certified Materials was 100% certified Grade A high-end!

Next, 2001 SP Game Bat brings to mind the fad of one-per-pack bat cards that we enjoyed 20 years ago. And after that we have one of my favorites of the whole package: 2003 E-X. This product had multiple variations on the name and design but the '03 version was one of the best as it was mostly clear acetate! Larkin's 2004 Donruss World Series Blue insert is a great reminder of his excellent stats in the '90 World Series sweep of Oakland: .353 AVG (6/17) with a .421 OBP and 3 runs scored.

Heading to the bottom row we begin with the Retail version of Fleer's 2004 Skybox L.E. (limited edition) product. It can be easily differentiated from the hobby version which is die cut along the top. A flying Larkin once again turning two stars on a 2004 Ultra Gold Medallion card which is itself die-cut. And then we have one of the most recent cards you'll see in this post, a 2011 Gypsy Queen Framed Green parallel. You all know I'm not a big fan of the Ginters and GQs of the hobby but the framed cards do look quite nice.

Here we have six horizontal cards before we get to the final verticals. Up top are Barry's base card from Pacific's 2000 Aurora set plus the Pinstripes insert. Since his Reds wore unis with stripes I'd say his team was 100% appropriate to be in the set. Also from 2000 you can see his 2000 Upper Deck Gold Reserve base. That product used the same photos as the flagship product but had different design elements, especially the eponymous gold, and if you compare the two you'll also notice that the Gold Reserve card lacks the All-Star notation. The next card is a 2001 Upper Deck Vintage team checklist which uses the old floating heads look you might have seen decades ago. This card is great for me since it doubles as a Griffey appearance. Larkin and Junior were Reds teammates from 2000-04 and coincidentally they both made the All-Star team on the bookends of those five years!

The last two horizontals are Topps cards of the reprint variety, so don't be fooled and think they're older. On the left is a 2011 Topps 60 Years of Topps Original Back which very helpfully says "reprint" on the back. Of course that's another look at his '95 Topps base you see up there with its unmistakable design. The other is from last year's Stadium Club Greats insert which reprints Larkin's appearance in Stadium Club's 1991 debut product.

We're getting near the end now with two more vertical items that couldn't be more different. On the right is a 1992 Panini Sticker. I very likely pulled one of those from a pack when I was nine and dutifully stuck it in my album but now I have one that I can keep intact. To its left is one of just two numbered cards you'll see today, a 2011 Topps Tier One Blue parallel which is numbered /199 up front. I still need Barry's base card but this Michigan fan is certainly happy to say GO BLUE to the one he owns!

I had to say "near to the end" in the last scan because we've got two more Barrys to admire, and they're both relics, my 23rd and 24th hits of the HOF SS! On the left is a 2003 Prestige Connections dual memorabilia card that includes a Larkin bat along with a jersey of three true outcomes poster boy and feared slugger Adam Dunn. It's numbered /400 on the back and has just a little bit of damage in a couple places around Larkin's bat piece, but looks amazing otherwise with its bold red background.

The other brings to mind the kind of relic A&G is known for but it's actually much older than that product. The jersey you see before you is from 2002 Topps 206, but you still get that framed cigarette card look. I'm guessing this is one of the earliest, if not the first, examples of Topps making the framed minis, and you have the nice little cutout in the window so you can actually touch the relic piece.

This is simply an outstanding bunch of cards to add to a collection I'm happy to keep building so again I really appreciate Chris' generosity. These may have all been dupes to him, but they were new to me, and he could have just as easily decided to keep them to trade on the site for more Larkins. Trust me, I'll do my best to pay him back, especially if I can find some he needs somewhere in the wild.

We're not quite done yet, though, because Chris also let me grab four more cards of three other PC guys:

Bookending the top row are 1998 Sports Illustrated cards of Mr. Padre Tony Gwynn and Dean Palmer. One's an all-time great HOFer and the other...is a guy I still enjoy collecting. Speaking of Dean-o, I also snagged a '98 Pacific Online base of him. Down below is one other 2001 UD Vintage team checklist card, and if you look closely enough you'll realize I grabbed this one thanks to the presence of another Wolverine: current Royals skipper Mike Matheny. 2000 was his first of a five-year stint with the club culminating in the 2004 pennant, but he'd be in San Francisco for his sunset season in '06 when Edmonds was the only guy on this card to win a ring that year. In terms of the 2004 team, Matheny, Renteria, Lankford, and Edmonds all participated.

So once again I'd like to say a big thanks to Chris for allowing me to grab nearly 50 Larkin cards from him, many of which are of above-average quality or more. I'm hoping I have some success finding stuff he can use out of the boxes at my local card show if not elsewhere so I can reward his generosity.

Up next will be one more large trade package from one of the usual suspects, and then depending on what else comes in I may finally be able to recap my bevy of TCDB deals so I can put those stacks of cards on my desk away!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 8: more Michigan? Marvelous!

Previously: Quick summary and set wants; Big and small we have them all!; Better off Ted; A Tettle-ton of Froot Loops; Lucky Tiger Seven; Dizzying Deans, Sportlots has been Barry, Barry good to me

Just two posts left after this one! Tonight's will be another group post instead of a single player like the last one, though we're sticking with Michigan Baseball as the theme. I believe I counted 17 different players in the scans below, enough that I originally considered splitting them up, but I'm feeling motivated to finish these up. Therefore, it's more Michigan mania!

We'll start with this group since I found a lone new card for all nine players. Up top are three of the older Wolverines you'll see today: 1976 SSPCs of P Jim Burton and OF Tom Grieve, plus a '78 TCMA of 1B/OF (and UM football player as well) John Herrnstein. Burton's '78 SSPC card will sew up his four-card run whenever I can find it. Herrnstein's collection will be tougher to complete because, as a reminder, he shares '60s rookie star cards with Willie Stargell and Dick Allen.

The next four are some of the latest Michigan alumni to make their pro debuts. Blomgren, Criswell, and Franklin (2020 Bowman Draft) were all selected in the first five rounds of the '20 draft, while Brewer (2020 Topps Heritage Minors) was a Houston 3rd rounder the year before. They're all pretty good prospects, and these items represent my first for each player except Criswell (my 4th).

A couple "S" players close out the scan. First is a 2011 Triple Threads Sepia parallel (#d /625) of HOFer George Sisler, giving me 99 different items of "Gorgeous" George. The other continues the run of oddballs, especially of the food issue variety (foodballs?) in this series: an '81 Topps Coca-Cola St. Louis Cardinals issue of P Lary Sorensen. Aside from the obvious Coke logo up front and different numbering on the back, these are very similar to the base cards, but still fun pickups for your everyday player or oddball collector.

Jim Abbott got the biggest boost in numbers to his collection of the players you'll see today, and this group of nine isn't even all of them. The scan is bookended by food issues from Topps/Bazooka's 1990 partnership plus 1993 Kraft, a pop-up I won't be popping up myself. Also from 1990, starring a poorly chosen photo emblematic of the junk wax era, is Donruss' Learning Series, a 55-card set geared towards elementary- and middle-schoolers.

Then things get Canuckified with 1990 Fleer Canadian and O-Pee-Chee, a couple issues from our friendly neighbors to the north. That Fleer photo was another bad choice, to be sure. A pair of Classic cards produced in 1991 and '92 look much better to me since action shots almost always trump portraits in my opinion, plus it's always really cool to see portions of Jim's one-armed delivery. Last up here is a pair of '93 Upper Deck Gold Hologram cards, which are annoying to have to track down as a player-collector, but then I suppose they do give me a reason to collect a second version of a card where Abbott's wearing a Michigan shirt! You'll see one more of these below since he was all over that '93 set.

One last Abbott (for now) gives way to a few slightly more recent guys. I found a new pair of cards of Portage, Michigan native and 2019 Arizona draftee Tommy Henry: his Bowman Draft and Draft Chrome Refractor issues. It's always nice when I can track down stuff with backs that mention Michigan in one form or another, such as these that include his college stats.

Drew Henson is a player whose cards I get to chase in two sports, and here I have four of the five from this purchase. The first couple are from 1999 team sets for New York's Tampa affiliate, with the second apparently hailing from an "update" set that's almost identical. The '02 Hot Prospects insert he shares with another guy that had some hype behind him, Xavier Nady, is pretty cool thanks to a pair of rounded corners. And to those I added a four-player 2003 Bazooka sticker whose players happen to appear in the order of best MLB career to worst!

You'll see more of both of the other guys in this scan in a minute, but interestingly enough they're both still involved with the game despite their ages. Old Rich Hill turned 41 a few months ago but is still pitching pretty well, though of course those efforts are now for the Rays instead of the Twins, with whom he appears on his 2020 Topps Heritage base. And former Cardinals C and manager Mike Matheny made the relatively short trip to Kansas City to helm the Royals after being let go by St. Louis, the team pictured on his 2004 Topps 1st Edition parallel above.

The other Matheny cards I found were both from 2005. The first is also a 1st Edition version of his Topps flagship base, and it offers and even better action photo than the previous year's. I wonder if an out resulted from that throw? The other is the Silver parallel from Total, which wasn't as good as the 2002-03 versions in my opinion, so I'm not really disappointed the brand disappeared until the bastardized cash grab online version resurrected the name in 2019.

The rest of this scan stars William Harold Morris, and almost everything I scored of Hal this time was of the oddball variety, but that worked for me as a fun way to beef up his PC a bit. Here you see a trio of Classic cards from 1989 and '91, a 1991 Baseball Cards Magazine issue done up in the style of '66 Topps, and Morris' three appearances in a Rembrandt/Ultra-Pro promo set put out in '92. The latter was a 20-card set featuring casual shots of some baseball stars (such as Bobby Bonilla and Jose Canseco), mainly focusing on their favorite pastimes, such as tennis for the guy above. The backs included Ultra Pro holograms and a message of the "limited" nature of the cards; the ones you see here received 125,000, 250,000, and 100,000 copies, respectively.

Two more Morris cards get me just a pair shy of 300 for his collection. The first is from the US Playing Card Company's 1992 Baseball Aces deck, and it's only natural that someone playing for the Reds should be assigned a suit of that color. The other is the only "mainstream" card in his bunch, his '95 Collector's Choice Silver Signature parallel, making him the fourth Wolverine I've found from that set (Steve Ontiveros, Steve Howe, and Scott Kamieniecki are the others).

Player #2 in this scan is Hal's former teammate Chris Sabo, and as with Morris I came away with '89 and '91 Classic issues of "Spuds". You can add him to the food issue club as well thanks to a '92 Jimmy Dean oddball from an 18-card set that also included Jim Abbott among its stars. Lastly, also from 1992 is a goofy design (and funny photo of Sabo utilizing a hitting training aid) from Topps Kids. If you care for whatever reason, the latter is the variation that has two asterisks in the trademark line instead of one.

It seems like a good idea to mention that this post will be published on Juneteenth as we look at the last player in the group of vertical cards. Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker was a C for Toledo of the old American Association, considered a "major league", back in 1884, making him the first black player (or just "the first black in the majors" according to the cringe-y back of the 1986 Fritsch Negro League Baseball Stars card you see on the left) to break the color barrier. That makes Jackie Robinson's bravery in 1947 no less important, though, as he fought through the same kind of ignorance and hate that Walker did. While you won't find him on too many cards, unfortunately, another of his items can be found relatively easily: a base card from Upper Deck's 1994 product Baseball: the American Epic, which describes Fleet's history a bit more intelligently.

To finish things up today, here's a six-pack for your weekend. First up is the final Jim Abbott Gold Hologram from 1992 Upper Deck, a set that included lots of those artsy cards. My Tommy Henry collection grows by one more thanks to a cool 2020 Topps Pro Debut base that makes good use of the card's orientation. A multiplayer card including fellow Yankees prospects from the time Juan Rivera and Jackson Melian is Drew Henson's other appearance from the Minors team sets mentioned above. I got two cards closer to Rich Hill's 2020 Topps rainbow with his base card and Gold Star (factory set) parallel, not to mention two more cards from his year with the Twins. And lastly, Sabo joins Morris in needing just two more cards for a milestone (he's at 198) thanks to one last food issue: a 1992 French's card he shares with HOFer Wade Boggs. I've never been a mustard guy but that 19-card set full of All-Stars is fun and I may have to try to track down more of those.

Considering these additions combined with those from some of the earlier posts in this series, I got a lot of good work done on the checklists of some of the many former Wolverines I collect, and added some fun pieces.

Still to come in the final two posts are one more single-player feature plus a last one with a team theme that I think will please many of you!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 2: big and small we have them all!

Previously: Quick summary and set wants

Today's post is filled with all kinds of crazy oddball stuff: minis, oversized cards, discs, coins, and even a sticker dump from Topps and Panini that has nothing to do with Henry Owens. After initially opting against picking up many of these items I decided I'd enjoy filling in some of the odder parts of my player collection checklists with the zany offerings you see below. And better yet, I realized it would be a blast posting them all at once instead of going player by player, so you can get a look at great examples of unorthodox collectables from the past 40 years--especially the earlier half of that run.

I'm curious to see how many of you collected some of this stuff in your younger days, and to see what everyone's favorite type of item in this post is, and why.

And now, on to the gallery of weirdness!

Stickers (and stamps):

Stickers were and are a great way to get kids into collecting. My brother and I enjoyed working on filling in our Panini albums for a good chunk of their run, but we never really collected the Topps versions, maybe because they weren't as available as Panini's. Either way, you'll find both brands here (and O-Pee-Chee), and a couple stamps as well. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but regardless of whether or not I have a player's sticker stuck in a Panini album, I've been buying them intact for player-collecting purposes.

Jim Abbott: 1990 Topps (with Vince Coleman, and Darryl Strawberry on the back); 1991 Panini, 1994 Panini

That '91 Panini design was definitely an outlier for the product!

Hal Morris: 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1996 Panini

I definitely get the '94 and '96 Panini designs confused from time to time. '94's has the player's name in a pennant and '96's is a bit smaller.

Dean Palmer: 1992, 1993, and 1995 Panini

I definitely remember the first two versions here but '95 doesn't stand out to me (though '96 does) so I don't recall if I actually worked on the album in 1995.

Tony Phillips: 1985 O-Pee Chee and Topps (with Dave LaPoint); 1988 Panini; 1988 O-Pee-Chee and Topps (with Kevin McReynolds; Ryne Sandberg on the OPC back, Jeffrey Leonard on the Topps back); 1991 Panini French

Multiplayer stickers were a great idea, especially when OPC and Topps included a player on the back that made these even more collectable. The '88 Panini design is definitely one of the best in my opinion.

Chris Sabo: 1989 O-Pee Chee (with Ozzie Smith on the back); 1992 Panini x2; 1993 Panini

If you were a kid ripping Panini sticker packs back then maybe you'll remember the excitement of pulling one of those super shiny versions used to highlight team and league logos and the All-Stars. Years before X-Fractors were a thing, these looked totally badass!

Lary Sorensen: 1984 O-Pee-Chee (with Larry Gura)

Geoff Zahn: 1983 and 1985 O-Pee-Chee

I scanned these together because why not? You'll see a number more from the early and mid-80s in the next couple scans. I think it's pretty cool how OPC had you peel the '85 version out of the rest of the image, which would have made them more fun to add to whatever scene you were imagining.

Ted Simmons: 1982 Fleer Stamps; 1982 Topps; 1983 Fleer Stamps; 1983 O-Pee Chee and Topps; 1984 O-Pee-Chee; 1984 Topps x2; 1985 Topps (with Mike Fitzgerald); 1986 O-Pee Chee (with Ken Oberkfell); 1986 Topps (Simmons half only)

Lots of fun examples here! I've got just a few stamps (I believe all are from Fleer) so it's cool to add the odd one here and there. The '86 Topps here is one of six or so where one of the sellers (or whomever they got the stickers from) cut some two-player stickers in half. That wasn't clear in the way they were listed on Sportlots but it's not a big deal to me. I may try to replace them at some point but more likely I'll just decide I don't care. It's a bit more annoying when there's another player on the back, but all I'm really interested in is the player I collect! Anyway, like the shiny Panini sticker above I also chased after other "premium" versions like the foil you see here from 1984.

Mickey Tettleton: 1989 O-Pee-Chee (Tettleton half only, Joe Carter on the back); 1989 Panini; 1989 Topps (with Dave Smith, Harold Reynolds on the back); 1990 Topps (with Andre Dawson on the back); 1990 Topps Superstar Backs (with Kirk Gibson(!) and Teddy Higuera on the front); 1991 Panini French; 1993 Panini

We have another half sticker here, but the bigger story is that Tettleton's 1990 Superstar Back filled another need for me in the form of a Kirk Gibson sticker!

(snagged from TCDB because I was too lazy to scan mine)

No need to grab an extra copy of either since I was able to kill two birds with one stone here.

Lou Whitaker: 1983 O-Pee-Chee; 1985 Topps x2 (Whitaker half only on second sticker); 1986 O-Pee-Chee and Topps (Whitaker half only on both); 1987 O-Pee-Chee; 1987 Topps x2 (Whitaker half only on second sticker); 1988 O-Pee-Chee (Whitaker half only, Paul Molitor on the back); 1989 O-Pee-Chee (with Doc Gooden on the back); 1990 Topps Superstar Backs (with Bob Walk and Tom Candiotti on the front); 1991, 1992, 1994, and 1995 Panini

Well damn, that's a good way to beef up my collection of Sweet Lou stuff when most of what I'm left chasing is relatively rare! It was nice gaining three more foils among this huge variety, plus I didn't miss out on anyone I cared about on the five that were cut up.

Coins (and a pin):

Topps tried the coin thing back in 1964 and '71 and then went back to the well from 1987-90. Just like stamps the format makes them very collectable so they were a natural fit when it came to baseball collecting. It seems like pins were less common but they're so oddball that they're pretty much off my radar except for the odd examples in my collection.

Sweet Lou represents my fourth 1984 Fun Foods pin (Lance Parrish, Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell), and they're kind of fun to collect when you find them for cheap like I did here. Morris' coins were made by Topps in 1987 and '88, with the latter being my only example from that year's version. Lastly, Larkin, Tram, and Tettleton are all from the 1990 set, though I'm not sure why Barry's has more of a silver look to it while the others are gold.

And here's the backs. I like the way the pin uses a comic book-like font.

Minis, micros, and more!:

If you only like your cards to be 2.5x3.5, look away now! Most of this stuff has dimensions smaller than that, making them a pain to store but interesting to look at. Also, it's easier to fit lots more of them on a scanner.

Up top we have Chris Sabo on an '89 Topps UK Mini, a reasonably well known set. Humpty Dumpty appears to be (or have been) a Canadian snack food brand, and in 1993 they offered diminutive cards like the Abbott you see above. It came shrink-wrapped but I was happy to open it up now that it was safe from any greasy (a.k.a. delicious) food. Freehan appears in a playing card-type set made in 1969 by Globe Imports, and the black and white "card" is printed on fairly thin paper stock, making me think I could pretty easily print up a whole set of those if I wanted! Hal Morris finishes up the top row with a 1992 Donruss Cracker Jack mini that could be found in boxes of that snack. Those were made a year after the snack maker teamed up with Topps to do the same.

Then we go even smaller with a trio of '93 Topps Micros for three players whose collections I focused on bigtime in this purchase. They're followed by more traditional minis from the last decade out of Panini's Golden Age and Topps' A&G and GQ. I'm happy to note that this isn't the last you'll see of Horton and Kell in this series.

I've had some fun loading up on those cool Kellogg's cards from the 70s and 80s that so many people are into, and for good reason! Here you see a Simmons from 1980 along with Morris versions from 1982 and '83. What a consistently excellent food issue!

I probably could have included Ted Simmons' 1983 Fleer Star Sticker with the group above but as it was still joined to the same piece as the Reds logo, which made it larger, I thought it was a good fit here. A 1990 King B disk of Chris Sabo and '94 Oscar Mayer Round-Up of Jim Abbott seemed to make sense in this group as well. Maybe I'll take the plunge and "pull" on the Abbott disc's tab if I get another one I don't mind opening up and potentially damaging.

Most of the rest of the group here is shorter and wider than your typical trading card. The first three are from a Crown/Coke Orioles team set that reminds me a bit of the Target Dodgers set from the same era. This one is made up of 501 perforated cards sorted alphabetically, and I scored my first three in Tigers great Kell, former Wolverine Maddox, and PC guy Tettleton. Below them are Tettleton and Phillips from the slightly smaller (physically, but not set size) 1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball electronic game (which you can read a lot more about here). And breaking up the combo here is 1981 Topps Scratchoffs of Ted Simmons that will remain unscratched in my collection.

Oversized oddballs:

These can present a storage challenge of their own but sometimes bigger really is better when it means more room for creativity!

We'll end things today with the biggest stuff because that's what I scanned last. I'm pretty sure Donruss' Action All-Stars jumbos like Simmons' from 1984 above are pretty well known at this point. Maybe a bit less known are the All-Star-related Pop-Ups, with examples of Morris (1986) and Whitaker (1987) seen in this scan. I didn't realize that two Midsummer Classics in a row were held in dome: Minnesota in '85 and the Astrodome the following year. The stadiums can be seen in each card's background plus the home team is mentioned on the back.

Today's largest item by far is a 1990 Topps Heads Up of Jim Abbott. These originally came with suction cups so you could stick them up on your wall or elsewhere, but I don't think the disembodied head thing proved too popular.

And we'll close out tonight's post with a more mainstream oversized item: Dean Palmer's entry from Fleer's 1994 Extra Bases set. I've snagged a number of these now and have resorted to keeping them, along with lots of my other larger card items, in a graded card box, where they fit quite nicely without having to worry that I'll accidentally bend and crease them in a standard monster box. That's where everything else in this scan will probably reside as well.

That was definitely a fun bunch of weird stuff to look through and post about. While I'm working on getting everything put away safely I hope at least a few of you reading this will let me know which of this stuff you collected and/or what you liked/hated.

And I'll be back soon-ish with another stack of Sportlots stuff from this order once I figure out what I feel like scanning and writing about!

2021 Baseballcardstore.ca purchases: bunches of baseball

With a few things definitely on their way to me I decided to get off my butt this weekend and get things ready for part 2 (here's part 1) of my baseballcardstore.ca order. This one's all baseball, and that bunch came in at nearly 200 of the 251 cards I received, so you'll see a mix of scans and photos (both poorly done!) as I decided to show off all of them:

Here's the stacks (with single cards in some cases) for all of the players, plus a 26th pile for stickers and smaller stuff. As usual my photograph skills are lacking when it comes to trying to group stacks of cards in straight lines. Anyway, I believe this came out to 26 different players, with the last one somewhere in that final stack. Once again, I grabbed pretty much everything I needed of a bunch of guys I usually collect, and even some I don't traditionally chase since, hey, they're just a dime!

I started by grouping together the guys with very few cards. By the way, only one guy in this whole group wasn't a World Series champ, and as you'll see most of the players here are '84 Tigers. The Sparky cards are OPC and Gibby's a Gold Hologram from UD. You'll see a number of Tigers with other teams, such as '84 champs Hernandez and Herndon here. While the cheap price tended to push me towards junk wax stuff, I was excited to grab some early 80s cards of a number of players like the latter.

Herndon's OF mate Lemon is one of those guys whose cards leaned heavily into the late 80s/90s, but that's fine since these were all needs. You'll see quite a bit of O-Pee-Chee today since I hadn't otherwise chased those in terms of my non-supercollection PCs. A couple oddball Sabos bookend Canadian versions of popular brands: the Canuck offering of Fleer and yet another OPC. Simmons is the only guy in these first few scans that didn't win a ring as his '82 Brewers fell to the Cards, but you certainly can't blamed the future HOFer!

Those playing card sets popped up quite a bit too, making for some fun oddball items to grab. Tram also got the OPC treatment with both of his '91 appearances. And that JV is one I picked up before Gavin was nice enough to send a copy my way, so now I have one I can trade to another Verlander collecting buddy.

Here's a look at most of the stickers and other odd-sized stuff. These are mostly Panini, and I'm sure I have almost all of them in the albums they went in since my brother and I collected them for so long, but it's nice having clean, unpeeled copies. Whitaker's only appearance today is that Topps sticker you see, um, up top. The mini hologram is considered a Chris Sabo item as he's the answer to the trivia question on the back: "Who was the last player to hit two home runs in one World Series game?" Spuds did it in 1990's game 3. Looks like that feat has been matched quite a few times in the past 30 years, but only Albert Pujols (2011) and Pablo Sandoval (2012) have joined Ruth and Reggie Jackson in clobbering three.

I managed to get creative enough to fit all of the Gwynn, Maddux, and Ripken items in one scan, which was good since the smaller stuff probably wouldn't have fit with the rest of the stickers. I always thought that Score insert repped by Maddux in the middle was pretty nice for a low-end product. The sparkly Gwynn Panini sticker takes me back to the days when I'd rip packs hoping for just such an item. And the tiny Topps Micro of Ripken in the bottom-left was a bonus item the sellers were generous enough to throw in as I made sure it wasn't part of my order--very cool! No Griffey here, but I wasn't too surprised since there aren't many dime cards of his I probably still need at this point.

Next we're getting into guys for whom I grabbed a larger number of cards, but was still able to scan in a reasonable amount of time (if not cleanly--some were bowed enough to make it a pain while a few just refused to stay in one place. Oh well.). The late Bergman is the first of those players alphabetically, and I nabbed seven new Tigers cards plus an early Fleer issue where he was with the Giants.

Utility guy Tom Brookens is next, and I also came up with an early 80s piece for him: his '81 Fleer card, which is a second-year card since his RC can be found in '80 Topps. It's a bit weird seeing him in other uniforms but I liked him enough to go after the Yankees and Indians cards as well.

And then we have half of difference-maker DH/1B Darrell Evans' purchases, all from Fleer. The '81 and '82 join the pile of cards made just a bit before I was born, and Evans is the third '84 Tiger today that was with the Giants not long before joining the wire-to-wire champs. Thanks, San Fran!

After Evans' group finishes up we have six many Grandersons! Nothing terribly exciting, with UD's goofy Documentary product and a couple mid-2010s Donruss designs that don't look like they're two years apart. The Goudey card is fun, though, even if it has Jeter's stupid mug on it.

The rest of the images you'll see from here on are obviously photographs since each player had more than nine cards and I didn't feel like scanning them all. Former closer Henneman got a nice group, with Stadium Club and Ultra cards being among the highlights, though nothing can top Leaf Black Gold. Say it with me: "That shoulda been the base design!" The Astros Collector's Choice card is a great example of why he earned the nickname "Henne-buttchin"!

There's only a couple Tigers items of '84 ace Jack Morris here, but since I was dropping dimes I didn't mine grabbing some cards of him with his other teams. I mean his performances with Minnesota and Toronto are a good reason he's in the Hall today. Hell, even his sunset season with the Indians wasn't that bad. My favorite here is the Donruss McDonald's card, which feels more like an Ultra-type offering than what was still a pretty boring flagship design back then.

"My god how can there be that many plus however many you already have" --Paul (Scribbled Ink). This is a nice bunch to add to my collection, and Paul's response was when I told him how many more I had on the way from Cardbarrel and Sportlots. I'm particularly fond of the RCs up top (couldn't figure out why they kept getting cut off while I was cropping so I just gave up) plus the last three. Those take me back to when I had a blast opening boxes of Topps flagship.

I ended up with a really nice stack of Lance Parrish stuff too, though once again almost none of it was Tigers-related since I have a good amount of that content and then he left for Philly in '87. He also got lots of needs added to his collection, including a UD Gold Hologram, multiple OPCs and Stadium Clubs, and more. And of course my favorite is the '81 Fleer, made in the fourth year of him appearing on cards and Fleer's first making them.

Another '84 pitcher, Petry got a nice bunch, not to mention a solid pair of early-80s offerings. Most of the rest are with other teams, but how cool is it that the last three with him pitching for the Sox look like they were all taken during the same pitch?

In Phillips' case a good chunk of his pickups were Tigers cards because his years in Detroit coincided with a spike in new brands. Not that I mind cards of him with the A's, with whom he won the '88 pennant and a ring in '89, mind you. And as usual, the Metal Universe card almost literally screams "1990s!" because it's so radical. He's another guy who's getting some more PC help from the sellers I've mentioned a couple times here already, and I'm interested to see how much of a dent I've made on his checklist when I have everything in hand.

Tanana played eight seasons each for the Angels and Tigers, but since all of his California years were before 1980 I only ended up with one card of him with that team, out of Pacific's Nolan Ryan set. Most everything else is from Frank's nice run with Detroit, though we do open up with a Texas card that shows a guy clearly in need of a shave.

And we'll finish up with another guy that got one of the biggest hauls from the site. Fruit Loops' cards here span 1987-96, most of his career, so we cover all four of the franchises for which he suited up. As is typical for me I get more interested as we get into the mid-90s, so my favorites are in the last couple rows. My top new card is definitely the Tiffany parallel from '96 Fleer, which offered up an outstanding one-two punch with the matte base cards. But no matter what you pick here, there's a lot of great stuff in terms of photography and design, including some great shots of Tettleton behind the plate.

That's it for my first order from the online dime box, though I can promise it won't be my last thanks to their excellent prices and service. I'll give them some time to reload as I work on the other incoming stuff and then hopefully I'll have a similar haul to share again!

In the meantime expect one or more Cardbarrel posts with Sportlots down the line (Box shipping delays things a bit but I'm not in a hurry and you save a ton of money). But first I should be seeing my next incoming trade package soon, one coming in from an old friend!