2026 eBay purchases: rare cards and a coin

Well at least I didn't let the entire remainder of April pass before I posted again! It's been a lazy month for me hobby-wise and as usual I wasn't dying to put the effort into posting, but now I have some motivation to catch up thanks to a couple trade packages that arrived this month.

It was an interesting one for Michigan fans: the highs of the basketball Wolverines winning just their second national title followed by the even more favored hockey team falling once again in the semis of the Frozen Four to the hated Denver Pioneers, who've lapped Michigan in hockey titles, much to my chagrin.

But I can hardly complain about the results, along with football spring practice in the books that has me looking forward to the fall (but not until I've enjoyed some warm weather for more than a few days at a time, please!).

So apropos of almost nothing, here's a look at my four eBay pickups from the first third of 2026:

My first eBay purchase of any type this year, way back in February, was my second 1/1 of beastly Super Bowl-winning LB LaMarr Woodley. For a hair under $9 I'm now the proud owner of this 2007 SAGE HIT black plate of the 46th overall pick way back in '07. It's from the era when a brand like SAGE was allowed to use full team logos, names, and uniforms, and that makes the Michigan uni aspect a bonus.

Here's the base card for comparison:

Not bad at all. Like I said, that's 1/1 #2 to go along with a plate from 2009 Topps, and it marks hit #12 of the big hitter who piled up 58.0 total sacks, 319 tackles, and nine forced fumbles.

A few weeks later in March I scored one of my biggest cards so far of the young year. For whatever reason, my collection of WR Amara Darboh boasts some of the best looking items in my Michigan Football collection, and the rich got richer here. I was willing to go all the way up to almost $20 for this National Treasures plate/prime jersey/auto combo. Why? Once again, there's the Wolverine-ness of the thing: a Michigan uni shot, the logo on the back, and most of all, the fantastically large maize/blue/white jersey swatch. It's a thing of beauty!

Darboh's 51st hit marks his first 1/1 in the collection (surprisingly enough, given the overall quality of his PC), and one I was thrilled to add for sure.

Just a few days later I was finally able to rectify a small issue from a purchase from the February show. As I noted here, I grabbed what I thought were three 7-11 Slurpee Coin sets, but one of them--the 1986 Central Region version--was missing probably the biggest coin: Carlton/Ryan/Seaver. A bit over $6 shipped was enough to snag me two copies of this coin along with a couple dupes of another. And that's one more set knocked off the wantlist!

I was glad to catch the note at the bottom that states, "Nolan holds the all-time mark for K's, followed by Steve and Tom." That was indeed the case at the time, but the list looks a bit different some 40 years later. Ryan still stands along with a crazy 5714 over a crazier 27 seasons, but Randy Johnson (4875) and Roger Clemens (4672) topped Carlton's 4136, and Bert Blyleven (3701) snuck above Seaver's 3640. Those are your top 6, with Justin Verlander hoping to return to health to pitch enough to take over 7th place, currently held by Don Sutton. Only 20 K's separate the two!

And finally we have my most recent pickup. For a penny under $12 I scored my latest Manningham of (too) many just last week. This here is a black plate from Upper Deck's 2009 Heroes product, specifically for the Blue Retail Jerseys insert. Do I happen to own that card like I do with the base of the Woodley above? Could I claim I have "too many" Manninghams otherwise?

While I don't like the 2009 set as much as the 2008 version, which included RCs of Manningham and a bunch of his other teammates that are favorites of mine, it's still a cool looking set, and, I mean, since when am I not gonna chase a rare Mario I need?

Since I threw out numbers for the others I'll note that this is my second 1/1 of Manningham (the other is a National Treasures auto/plate that I showed off on TMM almost EIGHT years ago) and hit #103 of the namesake of my former sister blog.

As always, money well spent, I'd say!

And now I'll try to get back to work on a couple other posts before getting back to trade package action. In the meantime, bring on the warmer weather and more baseball!

2024 trade package #2: Scribbled Ink

My next trade package from January arrived courtesy of another longtime buddy of the blog, Paul, who can be found on Twitter now that he no longer blogs as Scribbled Ink. This one was just full of surprises and, well, just check it out:

It wasn't long after Christmas that the envelope showed up in my mailbox so I'd say the little Tigers helmet was still appropriate for the season. It looks great and has a perfect little olde English "D," and I may decorate a small tree late this year with all my sports-related ornaments.

Paul also included an unopened 2023 team set of his local minor league team, the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. The sets you can get starring these teams are very cool, period, and I'm always glad to add more whether I've seen the team or know any players on them. This set includes last year's roster of AA players working their way up Toronto's system and the subject I'm most familiar with is a favorite of Paul and his son, Orelvis Martinez. The slugging Dominican infielder popped 28 HR in his first full minor league season, 2021, then added 30 and 28 more the two subsequent seasons, working his way up to AAA Buffalo. He's a top 100 prospect and I hope his fans get to enjoy his Major League debut soon!

The MLB stuff starts with some '96 Topps Tigers, and the less said about the teams back then, the better, though the players seen here are of higher quality than the average guy on those 90s squads. Cronenworth's start to the '24 campaign gets Gold Stars from me in addition to Topps. That Griffey Topps insert is deceiving because it's actually a green version and numbered /299! And a couple late 90s Cals lead into just a few more in the next scan.

Seven's just a few, right? The couple recent Topps and Donruss parallels are great--orange really goes well with Baltimore's unis, of course--but those 90s cards are outstanding. 1997's design is one of my all-time favorites from Topps, and Chrome makes it look even better, plus the photo they went with on this one is easily a top-10 Ripken for me. The horizontal Zenith is simply a work of art depicting the HOFer at bat. And the others are excellent too!

Paul even managed to sneak a Verlander (just one!) into this package, a Rainbow Foil from last year's Topps flagship product and one of a small number I own that show him with the Mets.

And last up for baseball, Paul was nice enough to snag one of the last two 1997 Score Hobby Reserve base cards I needed to re-complete my set. It's been a few years since I discovered that while most of my complete set included cards with the "HRxx" numbering on the back, a handful of the cards were the wrong version lacking numbering like that. I chipped away at the set until I got down to just two cards: the Nagy that he picked up and shipped to me, and the Andruw Jones Goin' Yard subset card you see above, which I bought myself on Sportlots last year. So, once again for the first time, I'm the proud owner of the full 1997 Score Private Stock/Hobby Reserve base set. w00t!

And we'll end on a strong note with some football and hockey. The latter is made up of a pair of UD All-Star related cards from the early 90s starring a couple Wings favorites from the team's 90s/2000s dynasty, Fedorov and Yzerman.

And the second football item is quite nice: a triple jersey of former UM QB and current (for now, given his arrest earlier today for OWI) staffer Denard Robinson, my 57th of Shoelace.

But SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP, what is that leading off this scan? Are you kidding me, Paul? An Aidan Hutchinson printing plate AUTOGRAPH?

Yep, sure is! That's an unexpected late Christmas gift if I've ever seen one, and a very, very, VERY generous one at that! Hutch could be found in Leaf's 2022 Ultimate Draft football product and this plate, which is indeed signed, was used to create Aidan's autographs found therein.

This is just my third Hutchinson hit and somehow all three include his signature, but it's going to be extremely difficult to top a signed 1/1.

Paul, sorry for the super belated post but thank you again for the incredible stuff above, truly a great mix that lives up to your reputation for sending a good variety every time. I don't have anything remotely close to the quality of some of this but will be able to hit you back relatively soon, which I can hopefully do now that the shock of the contents of this package has worn off!

This post wraps up January's blogger trades so next I'll either move on to one from the following month or recap some shows or something. We'll see relatively soon.

TCDB trade roundup: four trades and three PIFs!

It's New Year's Eve Eve and this will probably be my final post of 2022 unless I'm feeling especially celebratory tomorrow for events related to the gridiron and not the end of the year. I'm sending off this year in collecting with the latest batch of cards that hit my mailbox thanks to TCDB. That amounts to four trades plus three PIFs (pay it forwards), the latter of which were perfectly timed with the season of giving.

Here's how those transactions went:

Deal #1 was my first with Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life, though it was through his TCDB ID of borosny that we were able to connect for this swap. He matched me for nearly 20 cards on my wantlist--man, does using that site ever make trading easier!--and I came up with more than 42 cards for him off his baseball set wants on his site. Those came from '95 and '96 Score plus '96 Donruss and Leaf. Here's what I got in return:

As I often do when it comes to trades there I picked out a wide variety of items to hit my many collections. You'll see '84 Tigers like Bergman and Brookens again in this post. Three more Grandersons add nicely to my quest for "too many." Ex-closer Mike Henneman pops up twice in this deal (see the next scan). AJax is another ex-Tiger I've come to appreciate in the years since he's been gone. Matheny and Hal Morris are two of the four Michigan alumni to be found here, and that Morris minors card is pretty cool.

HOFer Jack joins the Morris and '84 Tigers parties with an early 90s duo. Former Wolverine Leon Roberts indeed managed Detroit's AAA squad, the Toledo Mud Hens, at one point. The Maddux/Ward/Cora trio completed or nearly finished their three respective sets--'94 Ultra Series II, '95 Donruss Series I, and '96 Donruss. And lastly we have a fun trio of late 80s Topps Stickers Super Star Backs. Barry's from the '89 set while Tram and Lou are rightfully seen together out of the previous year's product.

Bo was awesome to work with and I look forward to making more deals with him, plus I'll continue to follow his excellent blog.

Next up is a smaller deal with bravefan1, my third with him since I joined the community. Naturally I gave up a few Braves cards, including a couple low-end autos, and in addition to a solid relic I'll be including in a belated Christmas package, I nabbed these three for myself:

These three are right up my alley! First up is a 2004 Absolute Memorabilia base of Tigers HOFer George Kell. It offers a beautiful, shiny rainbow foil design and is numbered (/1349) so it's right in my wheelhouse. Mad Dog's 2000 UD Faces of the Game Insert isn't quite from the 90s but it's close enough, and this is another one of those chase sets I fondly remember from back when it was actually fun and affordable to open boxes. Finally, I managed to sneak in a 2022 Topps Gallery RC of #1 overall pick Spencer Torkelson, who hopefully got his sophomore slump out of the way with his tough freshman campaign. That's my first RC of his, and I look forward to seeing how he bounces back in '23 on what will mostly otherwise be a pretty uninteresting tanking squad.

Next, I made more headway on a couple set chases plus scored a nice PC pair in a deal with Mat9975. In return for a quartet of 1996 baseball base and a pair of '06 Bowman football RCs, I got these:

How sweet is that Barry Larkin '94 SP Holoview FX card? Upper Deck had already shown some hints of what they could do with holograms in previous years, but they really upped their game on this insert, that's for sure! The Long Ball Leaders card of PC guy Dean Palmer produced the same year by Donruss also looks very cool. I'm so grateful we didn't have to suffer through a Topps monopoly and instead got the greatest decade in card creativity in the 90s.

The two set wants I grabbed are from the same year, oddly enough. Larry Walker's Finest card puts another small dent in that one, and I'm down to just 17 that I need. And between the Kieschnick and the Maddux from above, my second set of '94 Ultra Series II that I was building after my Facebook collection purchase should now be done. Once I verify that I'll be happy to make it available for trade!

The last of my trades before we get to the PIFs came from pdmkam. He made a proposal aiming for 13 of my '95 Donruss baseball dupes, and after a quick counter from me, we had a deal. Here are the nine cards I ended up with:

I told you you'd see more '84 Tigers! There could have been even more in this transaction but I swapped a few of them out for a couple of the newer items you see above. The late Bergman appears on '82 and '84 Donruss cards when he had yet to be flipped to Detroit. Brookens joins him in the latter set that came out the same year the Tigers last won the Series, as does the Big Wheel, Lance Parrish, who also gets his '83 card from that manufacturer added to the pile. HOFer Ted Simmons joins the 80s party with his '81 Topps appearance.

As for the "newer" cards I referenced, those came in the form of Mr. Tiger's '84 Topps Archives reprint of his '54 RC, plus my latest Rich Hill add, his '22 Topps Update base. It took Topps until Update to include Hill despite the fact that he re-joined the Sox before 2021 even concluded, but that's Topps for you. How long will I need to wait for my first card of Dick Mountain with the Pirates?

I mentioned that I ended up with nine cards and this fun oddball of the Bird from Upper Deck's 1993 All-Time Heroes product was the last. UD did a great job picking images for the main panel and the left side, I must say. According to TCDB I just need Ty Cobb's solo appearance (#32) and one he shares with Honus Wagner (#145) to finish up the team set!

All of these deals went off without a hitch and marked the end of a great year on the site, which I'll briefly recap in a minute. But first, here's a quick look at the three PIFs that came my way in December:

#1 was from Bo who I guess appreciated the fact that I threw in a few extra Yankees when I sent his envelope. Back my way came this six pack:

Gwynn, Maddux, Ripken, and a (former) Tiger PC guy too? Yes please! All of these were on my wantlist and it was fun looking though them when the PWE showed up. The two food issues bookending everything are great, and I've always been a fan of the Triple Play and Score products representing Gwynn as well. Thanks again, Bo!

Next, Colorado native Jim, a.k.a. budler, went on his own Secret Santa spree, as evidenced by the many thank yous he received in the "Pay it forward" thread. I happened to be one of his lucky targets and enjoyed seeing these two:

There's that trademark Gwynn hairstyle from the late 80s! Once again, both of these were needs, and I appreciate Jim's Christmastime generosity.

Finally, while trying to PIF another member, one of my site buddies was able to get their address from Joe, a.k.a. ymmat, so to show my appreciation I sent Joe a bit of baseball set help from my dupes. Not long after he returned the favor with these:

Yeah, it was a Holly Padre Christmas in this three-pack of PIFs, and I'm absolutely fine with that! It was great adding so many new Gwynn cards to my collection, enough to get me over the 800 mark, as it turns out. Once again all of these were new to me as they came straight from my wantlist, including the oddball playing cards and Gold Topps Micro. My favorite by far, though, is the '97 Topps Hobby Masters insert. 1997 was the first year of what I consider modern Topps' best five-year run in terms of base design plus inserts after years of being very blah. That's a fantastic looking chase card of Mr. Padre and I'm happy to add it to his collection with everything else you see above.

Based on how much I talked about the site this year and all the trade recaps I did, you'd probably assume I had a great year on TCDB, and you'd be correct! Between 2019 and last year I'd completed only 18 total transactions there. Things got a bit better for me this year when I put more effort in:

Yep, I finished up 76 formal deals to go with a nice number of PIFs back and forth. I even managed to shed a net 10 cards, not including those that didn't get captured in the count due to PIFs or unofficial trades. Now that I'm approaching 100 completed transactions I'm looking forward to boosting that number even more in 2023!

Thank you again to all the members I traded with this year who made TCDB a site I'm happy to spend lots of time on. I'll be back better than ever in January.

The "OMG what did I get myself into?" lot part 3: all set

While I hadn't planned on finishing up covering my enormous Facebook Marketplace collection purchase stuff before everything else, I figured I might as well go ahead since my next most recent post, technically part 2 in this series, went over the trade bait I had available since I wanted to include what I could in Christmas Cards shipments. So here we are!

Most of what I have left to cover is the complete and partial sets I pieced together from the multiple unsorted boxes of commons and inserts. And I'm not kidding when I say "unsorted" because most of those monster boxes had sets mixed in them like they got hit by a tornado. That's why it took me so long to sort everything out, such as an almost full 5000-card monster box of '96 Score!

Anyway to remind you, the haul looked like this:

I did hold onto a few non-card items I'll show off later, but first I'll give y'all a look at the sets:

1994 Finest: well here's a great way to start! As I think I've mentioned once or twice here, one of the boxes was filled up quite nicely with base and inserts from 1994-97 Finest, putting me in a good position to chase some of them when that would have been unlikely otherwise. The set that reminds me of Fruit Stripe Gum has 440 cards to chase and I ended up at a healthy 388 when combining the ones in the box with what was already in my collection. (Wantlist link)

1994 Ultra Series 2: this one really takes me back to when I was around 10 or 11, and I especially remember the Award Winners insert. The base was quite cool too and portended some good things that I think came to fruition in the '97 version, one of my favorites. The collection pretty much only included Series 2 so we'll see if I ever try to track down the first, but it wouldn't be the only set in my collection that's halfway done! At least I only need three cards to sew this one up. (Wantlist link)

1995 Donruss Series 1: another partial set and there's a couple more to get to as well. I kind of like how Donruss changed things up a bit back in their heyday like this version with the home plate inset photos and foil. As you'll sometimes see the two series here weren't split down the middle but instead the one I'm working on is 330 cards and the other is 220. With what I had already in my collections I came up a reasonable 10 cards short so this one shouldn't be bad to finish. (Wantlist link)

1995 Finest: didn't think I'd have much chance of owning this one for quite a while either! There weren't as many of these in the box as those from the other years of Finest but I still ended up with a lot of the first version that came with protectors. On a related note, you might remember from my first post about this collection pickup that I grabbed all the dupes I found of my PC guys so I'd have peeled versions of them as well. I'm just shy of 75% of this set at 246/330 when including my existing PC cards. (Wantlist link)

1995 Leaf Series 1: another half set, this one includes probably one of the more divisive designs in the hobby, but I've always liked it so getting to chase it is fun for me. The 400-card complete set was split in half and the first series includes some of my PC guys and favorite Tigers to collect like Dean Palmer, Cecil Fielder, Kirk Gibson, Greg Maddux, Cal Ripken Jr., and Lou Whitaker. I fell just one card short of the series, needing Dante Bichette's card #135. (Wantlist link)

1995 Score Series 1: I'm not the biggest fan of the infield dirt-colored backgrounds Score went with in '95 but this is still kind of a fun set otherwise. This is (sort of) the last of the partial sets, at least in the sense that it's the last one I only ended up with one series of. Once again this one comes in at 330 cards while #2 was 275. There's plenty of stars to see here plus a few prospects, season highlights, and, interestingly enough, dual team checklists. At some point in the new year I'll try to track down the 22 cards I need to finish this one and then maybe eventually figure out if I want the second series as well. (Wantlist link)

1996 Donruss: this one didn't take too long to grow on me and I was glad to see it among the boxes I was sorting through. The full bleed photos are quite nice though I understand the criticism of the placement of the team name/logo box. Like others here this one was issued in two series but both of them were plenty present in what I pulled so I'll be able to work on completing the whole thing, which is nice. And that shouldn't take long since I just need five of the 550 base cards! (Wantlist link)

1996 Finest (Common/Bronze only): man is this one exciting! I think '96 and '97 are my two favorite versions of Finest from the 90s and the box stuffed with the brand had plenty of the former--enough to put together two more complete Series 2 sets and two more of those that both needed fewer than 10. Oh, and in my case I'm shooting for the whole shebang, at least when it comes to the bronze base cards (also called Common on the backs). Though I came away with a surprising number of the silver and gold cards I'm more than happy to stick to the 110 cards from each series that could be found most often. That means I'm just chasing #21 (Eddie Murray), #101 (Tim Wakefield), and possibly a decently expensive Derek Jeter (#92) to close out the set with Series 1. That I'm this close to it is awesome, and plus I added more peeled cards to my collection! (Wantlist link (includes rarer cards of PC guys))

1996 Flair (Silver base w/ gold foil and Gold base w/ silver foil): I'm handling these together since they were apparently produced in the same quantities, though I tend to consider the cards with silver backgrounds and gold foil logos/names the "true" base. There was one monster box almost full of these and at first I thought there were five complete sets but instead they were mixed between the two versions. That led to an enormous TCDB project to get both variants correctly on the checklists (many thanks to those that did the bulk of the work, though I helped!) and now I'm chasing each 400-card variation. Considering how high-end it was at the time it's pretty cool that I seem to be a total of 25 cards shy of owning both silver and gold sets! (Wantlist link)

1996 Leaf: this is a fun, colorful and foil-y set with some cool photos so I was happy to end up with all 220 cards with enough dupes to put together a second set minus just one card (Jason Isringhausen's #26). It's got a good mix of Tigers and PC guys I collect while not being huge so it's right up my alley in a 90s kind of way!

1996 Score: and the final set today is a textbook entry from Score back when they still produced baseball sets. The 1996 version weighs in at 517 cards and I had absolutely zero problem pulling a whole set from the mess that was the boxes after stuffing a monster box full of commons. In fact, I ended up with three complete sets, a fourth missing just one card, and three more Series 1 sets, plus lots of extras! I still like the relatively simple look, decent subsets, and cool photos like Hal Morris' card above, so it was great to land one more full set here.

And now here's a quick look at what else I kept, generally for future TCDB trade bait and other deals:

Inserts part 1: 1994-97 Finest. This will be true of all three groups of inserts I show here but considering how many I kept for my PCs and included in Christmas card packages, it's absolutely bonkers to me that I have this many cards left, and some really nice ones too! I'm hoping I can turn some of the Refractors and Silver/Gold cards into similar ones of the players I collect.

Inserts part 2: 1996 and '97 Donruss. There's still a nice pile of Press Proofs (Gold and Silver) from both years giving you an idea of just how many there were (again). There's also a handful of examples from four other '97 chase cards, with Power Alley and Rocket Launchers being numbered. I still remember opening '97 Donruss boxes, especially the Rookie Update (essentially series 2) version fondly.

Inserts part 3: the last of them, from '96 Bowman and Score. That includes a few Bowman's Best previews and their parallels (though most got traded), ROY Candidates, and a Mantle reprint. Score includes Gold Stars, Future Franchise, Diamond Aces, and Artist's Proofs. I also mentioned the bevy of Dugout Collection parallels I had left in the last post listing stuff for trade, and those will also make their way to my TCDB trade bait at some point soon.

This plaque of Junior Griffey was one of three in the lot and one of two of this exact player, though the others ended up in Christmas packages. I already had something similar but since there were two up for grabs I kept the one that was more useful to me as it also included a card I didn't own, a fun 90s insert!

And finally, I kept a pretty large number of souvenir cups from a family that obviously loved them some Tigers and Wolverines. I'm more likely to store these than display them but couldn't convince myself to get rid of them, other than the duplicates, some of which I redistributed.

Well, that's pretty much everything I wanted to show off! As a reminder, I still have a good amount of stuff available from the last post that I'm willing to make deals for until I get sick of seeing it and list it on TCDB or dump it on Facebook/elsewhere.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas (I sure did!) and look forward to showing off the December trade packages and other pickups I keep promising.

2021 Sportlots purchases part 1: quick summary and set wants

It's been a few days since I got my COVID vaccine, and after about 24 hours worth of side effects I'm feeling great again, not to mention happy that this likely means I'll be able to return to my favorite monthly card show in a few weeks. It's been 13 months since I could go to a show, but fortunately I've been able to keep things going thanks to some of my favorite online sellers. Back in January I gave Baseballcardstore.ca a trial run and declared it a success. Then in early March I gave Cardbarrel another shot for the first time since they'd rebranded from JustCommons, and that went well too.

Shortly after that, having crosschecked prices and availability with Cardbarrel, I put together my latest Sportlots order. This one was another doozy at 650+ cards spread out over 14 sellers. A small percentage of those were set aside for three trade packages, leaving me with more than 600 new cards for my various collections.

I grabbed some set wants but mostly focused on player collections, especially guys that I've been focusing on more recently: Dean Palmer, Tony Phillips, Ted Simmons, and Mickey Tettleton. But I still managed to put together nice stacks of guys like Barry Larkin and other Michigan Baseball PCs (Dick Mountain represent!) along with Al Kaline and some of my Tigers favorites.

There's a lot of stuff to cover and I'll figure out how I'll be posting it as I go, but you can look forward to a bunch of different players, sets, and designs, and even a mix of sizes and formats. I grabbed a ton of stickers plus minis, oversized items, some coins, and other weird stuff. When you PC as many guys as I do you're gonna benefit from lots of variety.

You won't see a ton of variety in this post as I'll be briefly recapping the numbers on this purchase and then beginning the series with cards from my set wants, but no worries, there'll be plenty to gawk at soon! (And if numbers bore you, please feel free to skip down to the cards immediately--I won't judge you!)

Quick summary:

This time my purchase consisted of:

• Approximately 660 cards (estimated due to some the sellers were missing)
• 14 sellers
• $14.21 in seller shipping costs (where the sellers send the cards to Sportlots to be shipped to me when I'm ready)
• $9.46 in Box shipping, for a savings of over $50 compared to direct shipping
• One direct shipment from a seller who offered free premium shipping
• Four missing cards from shipped packages (all successfully refunded) and four more that couldn't be found before shipment (also refunded)
• Roughly $149 total spent in cards and shipping

Today's cards:

Today we'll be looking at the cards I received for sets I'm working on. While I have very few I'm still chasing, I had five I was able to attack here, four or which I finished up:

We'll open things up today with the only card I didn't get more than one of from my 1988 Pacific Legends box break last year. Late Ball Four author and former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton finishes up a second complete set of this fun low-end fan favorites-type product, and I'll happily make it available in trade to anyone who's interested! I'll also credit this card as the biggest reason I started this latest Sportlots purchase.

Nine years later Score released what I believe were hobby-only premium versions of its Series I and II base sets. Series I's version was called Premium Stock and fronts were gray instead of white while Series II was called Hobby Reserve and went back to the white fronts. Both series' cards were thicker than the regular base and had gold foil stamps up front with the "Premium Stock" or "Hobby Reserve" name. I bought some boxes of both and eventually completed each series...or so I thought.

As I was scanning in a bunch of my Hobby Reserve cards on TCDB I realized that a number of mine were of a variation that had different card numbering than most of the set, which is numbered "HR###" (as seen on the back of Swfit's card). Not one to let that stand, I sought out the "correct" versions I needed, which were helpfully labeled on Sportlots, and I landed the five you see above, all at fairly reasonable prices. Hopefully I'll track down the final five I need so I can re-cross that off my list!

Last up in this scan is a pair of cards from roughly the same point in time. My brother and I collected some basketball for a bit in our younger days so I have a few complete and in-progress sets from the sport. It's been long enough that I can't recall if we bought a box or just some packs of 1997-98 Upper Deck UD3, one of the manufacturer's short-lived but cooler products. Either way, I was apparently only two cards short, with both guys actually being former Pistons. If you weren't aware of UD3, especially its debut version in multiple sports, I highly recommend you check it out!

The other two sets needed enough cards to try to squeeze each pile into its own scan. First is the 1990 version of the Pacific Legends product you just saw. This is a set I've mentioned a few times since Fuji so generously gifted me an excellent starter lot back in January. I found three of the cards I needed for better prices at Cardbarrel and snagged the rest on Sportlots, meaning I only had to pay a couple bucks to sew up another very cool set. It's another who's-who of fan favorites and icons, and I may just have to show the whole thing off in its own post soon!

Last up is 1993 Pinnacle Series I. A huge chunk of this set was part of one of my bigger Facebook Marketplace purchases last year around this time, and it seemed like a reasonable task to try to complete it. One or two TCDB trades got me closer, and between the four cards I grabbed from Cardbarrel and this bunch here I can now call it complete. You can see this is a pretty good group of stars but I got all of them for the minimum $0.18 except for the Griffey, which I had to re-order (still free using a refund/loot!) as the first seller I bought it from couldn't find it. It was fun adding new cards of both Juniors to their PCs as well as to a set I was completing. While I vastly prefer Pinnacle's design from 1994 on, this is a cool early/mid-90s set to have in the old collection.

That's it for today but after I happily get all of these set cards put away I'll work on figuring out what you'll get to see next. Stay tuned for lots of different players on multiple designs, oddball stuff, stickers, and more!

2020 Facebook purchase: boxing day (with recap from last night's break!)

So I ended up doing things a bit out of order by breaking the '88 Pacific Legends box last night before posting this, but then again it's my blog and

Here's a quick breakdown on how this purchase came about, plus a bit of a look at everything I ended up with.

Last Monday I was perusing Facebook Marketplace again and noticed a guy not too far from me had posted a bunch of listings for a few things that caught my eye, starting with boxes of Topps commons from the 70s (and 1980) at very good prices. I was hoping to grab those for Jeff since he's working on a number of those sets, and he was definitely interested in these.

Besides those I was after a nice pile of 80s and 90s boxed sets, plus a couple of boxes of the aforementioned Pacific Legends cards, one of which I offered to Fuji.

Happily everything worked out and after about a 45 minute trip both ways and $80 cash I was back home with quite the bounty. I've already sent Jeff and Fuji their cards, which they can share at their convenience if they feel like it, and now I can cover everything else here.

  

First up: the results of my Pacific Legends box. I had a blast ripping packs, sorting cards, and talking to Fuji, Andy, Chris, and Chris last night, not that the video is a great indicator since I was spending a lot of time off-screen sorting. I don't really do boxes anymore so this was a fun treat for me, even if it came from the junk wax era. The $10 price was perfectly acceptable to me as I chased a complete set, and maybe a second?

While set #2 wasn't quite meant to be--I pulled only one of card #20, Jim Bouton--this was a fun rip of 36 packs of 10 cards each while attacking the 110-card run. Considering how bad collation could be back then, though, one set plus practically a second was a steal at that price! The player selection is awesome--Bill Freehan and Mark Fidrych join the likes of Kell and Kaline, not to mention Teddy Ballgame, Hank Aaron, and more--and the hits kept coming.

I did a quick breakdown and ended up with 367 cards, even when removing the six Tigers I already had in-hand, broken down into:

• Set 1: 110/110, 100%
• Set 2: 109/110, 99%
• Set 3: 60/110, 54%
• 53 quadruples
• 31 quintuples
• 4 sextuples

I'm working on tracking down one more Bouton so I can finish my second set, plus I have some dupes to help others, possibly even Fuji when he breaks his box!

With that covered, the rest of this post will show off everything else I grabbed, which was in the form of 80s and 90s boxed sets that set me back $1, $2, or $5:

Most of them can be seen here, and I'll go into a bit more detail below. The majority of these were a buck with some of the ones on the bottom making up the $2/$5 group.

And my favorite find of this haul was a 1992 Stadium Club Dome package for just $5. It's not that these are rare, but I don't think I'd ever seen one in-person, so having all the pieces is extra cool!

I opened anything that was sealed and got all the cards put in order, because that's always fun, then tried to get a quick look at fronts, backs, and any extras from each box. In this scan you can see (top to bottom, left then right):

• 1986 Donruss Highlights (56 cards): pretty obvious by the name. Includes a mini Hank Aaron puzzle.
• 1986 Fleer Limited Edition (44): a bunch of stars (like Gibby and Sweet Lou, whose card I didn't flip over to show off the back, d'oh!) plus free stickers.
• 1986 Kay-Bee (33): a collaboration with Topps that shows off young Superstars, like Tony Gwynn at the time!
• 1987 Fleer Award Winners (44): another obvious one. Also comes with stickers, which is a common theme among these.
• 1987 Fleer Baseball All-Stars (44): yep, 44 cards and stickers, plus wot it says on the tin.
• 1987 Fleer Limited Edition (44): you can see where I'm going with this. Look up a couple rows in the photo to compare the two designs.
• 1987 Fleer Record Setters (44): why not 45? I dunno! Cool stickers again.
• 1987 Kay-Bee (33): same set size as the year before, but the word "young" is left out and this is all "superstars" chosen quite well--few if any duds.
• 1988 Fleer Baseball MVPs (44): Fleer didn't have any problem coming up with excuses to print boxed sets, and that's fine by me!
• 1989 Donruss Traded (56): I've always been a sucker for trade & rookies-type sets. The real ones, that is, not the monster that Topps Update has become. Nolan Ryan on the Rangers seemed like a good sample card, and this one also came with a mini Musial puzzle.
• 1988 Score Young Superstars I (40): yeah, this should have been above the Donruss cards chronologically. Oh well. This is Series I of the super glossy young star cards Score produced in their debut season, and they also came with the mini lenticular trivia cards the brand would be known for for a few years.
• 1987 Fleer Mini (120): ok, these are here on purpose, at least, since I thought I'd put them last due to their oddball size. That's a little Eric Davis base you see, plus a rad version of the Tigers' best logo in sticker form.

I believe all of these were $2 apiece except for the UD hologram set on the bottom, though one or more might have been a buck more:

• 1989 Score Rookie/Traded (110): that's a good size for one of these sets. I think this one was $3 which seemed reasonable enough when you consider the Griffey seen here is a RC, one I didn't have! Also, more mini holograms.
• 1990 Topps Debut '89 (154): this one kept the standard '90 flagship design but added a banner up top mentioning the player's debut from the previous season. I couldn't help but show off card #84 of Yankees pitcher Kevin Mmahat--what a last name!
• 1990 Score Rising Stars (100): welp, I did it again, probably because I keep thinking Debut '89 is from '89, though it isn't. Anyway, here's another super glossy set filled with up-and-comers (and holograms). A huge stack of these was part of an earlier Facebook purchase of mine but pretty much all of them were damaged, so this was a nice replacement.
• 1990 Score Rookie/Traded (110): very similar to that year's colorful (as usual for the time) base set, except with orange borders. No huge stars to chase here, but some fun stuff, like cards of hockey dude Eric Lindros and football player D.J. Dozier, as highlighted in this Baseball Card Backs tweet yesterday.
• 1992 Upper Deck Team MVP Holograms (54): I already had a few of my PC guys' cards from these, but I just couldn't ignore the awesome packaging and presentation here. The shrink-wrapped packaging has a cardboard sleeve touting how limited this thing is, and that protects a sweet branded hinged plastic case. The super premium holograms were banded together with a COA starring Junior Griffey, too! Each team at the time got repped by their best pitcher and hitter, plus there's a couple checklists, giving you 54 cards.

Last up is the super cool 1992 Stadium Club Dome set, so called because it came packaged in a little replica of Toronto's SkyDome, host of the '91 All-Star Game. If you thought the presentation above was great, try this: the 200-card set goes into a fairly typical box, inside a molded plastic stadium that opens (and looks like R2-D2 at the bottom), and into another cardboard box!

This one includes 100 draft picks, 25 Team USA cards, 56 cards highlighting the '91 All-Star Game, and 19 more covering the playoffs and World Series. I grabbed fronts and backs from all four subsets, with my favorites being the mulleted draft pick and a back starring one of my favorite names in the game, Basil Shabazz. I'm definitely geeked to have such a nice looking Stadium Club set in my collection, and the original packaging is a very nice bonus.

Now that I have these covered I'll be back soon with another eBay buy and at least one more trade package, so watch for those as I figure out how to make room to store all of this!