2019 COMC purchases: wild cards

I'm back today with more COMC loot, and this time there's a lot less to cover, which makes things easier on me!  In honor of the MLB playoffs pretty much starting--good luck to this year's four wild card teams--let's have a look at the baseball stuff I picked out this time:

 

Let's start with a bang with this gorgeous acetate insert of Mr. Padre.  Gwynn's 1998 Upper Deck Amazing Greats (get it?) is one reason I get to use my favorite "90s inserts rule" tag today, and for good reason.  I mean, just look at this card and try not to like it!  It's see through, it's limited to 2000 copies (so rare!) and it stars one of the greats of his generation.  This embodies everything great about collecting in the 90s and it's still amazing to think cards like this were being made 20+ years ago.  I should also point out that I'm also after the 1997 versions, which look awesome in their own right.  As for this one, I happily knocked it off my single/player wants list.

Next, this Steve Howe '94 Stadium Club Team First Day Issue parallel probably doesn't interest the vast majority of you, and ordinarily it would barely move the needle for me, too, except that in this case it's the 81st and final card I needed to complete his mainstream checklist.  All that's left to chase are oddball-types and minor league stuff.  It feels good to get another PC done, especially after needing just one card for so long.

And now, back to 90s inserts that do, indeed, rule.  I've long loved the multiple glove-themed die-cuts that were available during that decade, such as Pacific Paramount's Fielder's Choice.  Of the three that came out of the brand my favorite design is the 1999 version, but this one from its 1998 debut isn't exactly chopped liver, and, I mean, I want all of my PC guys from all three anyway.  That includes all-time Gold Glove king Greg Maddux here, who would win half of his 18(!) awards after this card was produced.  The glove's die-cutting is well done but Pacific gets bonus points for attention to detail by also cutting the webbing inside.  Just more classic 90s fun.

When you talk playoffs you'd be remiss if you didn't include three-time Series winner and '91 World Series MVP Jack Morris.  35 years ago he led the juggernaut '84 Tigers to their most recent title, winning game 1 of the ALCS and games 1 and 4, with the latter two in complete game fashion.  It was a season for the ages and culminated in a matchup with a young Tony Gwynn and his Padres.  That series is highlighted here on this 2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes Classic Match-Ups Memorabilia jersey card, featuring a Morris swatch dead center.  Tony went 1-2 with a pair of walks in the Series opener, then 1-4 in the penultimate game, but his fellow HOF foe was the one celebrating after game 5.  And I'm celebrating my fourth hit of Morris, the first of hopefully more relics!

And we'll end with two more 90s inserts that rule of one player, Mr. Cal Ripken Jr.  #1 is another beautiful die-cut glove card, this time Fleer's 1994 Flair Hot Gloves.  Cal joins Griffey and Maddux in this 10-card set available in Flair's second annual offering, which continued through 1996, moved to Flair Showcase in '97, was a memorabilia chase set in 2001 Legacy, went back to Showcase in 2003-04 as both an insert and multi-material memorabilia insert, and made its last appearance as an insert only in 2006 Showcase.  It's got a lot of history, as does Cal, who actually only won two Gold Gloves, mostly due to playing at the same time as SS legend Omar Vizquel.

 

We opened with an acetate card and then saw two glove die-cuts, so why not close things out with one more see-through insert?  1996 Ultra's Season Crowns were apparently not that tough to pull at 1:10 packs, but they were a Series 1 insert, and I only ever busted Series 2, so I never pulled one of these, and somehow missed out on them until landing one of Maddux at some point.  That led me to chase Cal's card, which largely celebrates the Streak, and here we are!  The back points out a Streak fact that doesn't always get as much press:  it included 8,243 consecutive innings from June 5, 1982-September 14, 1987, meaning he didn't just start every day, he finished.

With these cards posted I'll turn my attention to the fun of the postseason while working on the other two football COMC posts now that the calendar has flipped to October.  Stay tuned to those and good luck to any playoff teams you're rooting for!

Christmas cards, TCDB, and a completed PC!

Hooray, it's a post about something other than a trade package or cards I bought!  I'm covering three topics today:

1.  Christmas cards

I've had somewhat of a tradition of sending out Christmas card packages over the last few years--I found related posts from 2014, 2016, and last year, at least--and was happy to bring that back for this holiday season.  I put together a bunch of packages of stuff weeded out from my collection and purchased from COMC, eBay, and Sportlots, and thanks to my COMC stuff arriving yesterday was finally able to get them all in the mail.  It was too late (after 6pm) for them to go anywhere but at least they'll be on the move come Monday.

Here's another festive shot of the 19 packages (waiting on cards for #20 later this week):

That's one flat rate envelope (with a box in it), one PWE, and 17 bubble mailers.  I'm pretty sure most of you will be pretty excited with at least one thing in your packages.

While doing the Paypal shipping labels I used email addresses for everyone I could find so many of you may be aware these are coming, but just in case here's a list of ZIPs getting cards (hopefully) this week:

05866
07066
13601
16933
19390
23666
26505
29730
33323
46516
49002
66223
76013
76063
85338
91770
95119
97202
97213

Folks in those areas should be keeping an eye on their mailboxes this week!

2.  The Trading Card Database:

I'll probably have much more to say about the site in a future post, but for now I thought it would be worth announcing that I'm finally using it and would be happy to add anyone who wants to friend me.  I was able to find a few of you so far but I know there's a lot more of you I haven't, so please look me up and add me if you'd like.

Right now I'm spending a ton of my "card time" adding my collection to the site and uploading scans where I can; Trade bait will come later.  It's a very cool way to track things and there's definitely a certain amount of pride that goes into crowdsourcing the checklists and scans.  And that doesn't even take into account the trading aspect which I know many of you rave about.  So for now I'll just say that I'm really enjoying what's become an addictive pastime that's been another way to keep collecting interesting, and though I have a few gripes about the site I think both it and its community are amazing!

3.  Another PC bites the dust:

This one's somewhat related to #2.  I'd be chasing the seventh and final card in my PC for former Michigan pitcher Bobby Korecky--a 2008 SP Authentic Rookie Exclusives Autographs card--for long enough that I wasn't really sure it existed.  Though a checklist for that set appears on Beckett's OPG I'd never seen one of any player for sale or even posted at all.  Since they were allegedly redemption cards I figured they could be rare but not that rare.

So I threw up the question of their existence on TCDB and got a response or two that pretty much confirmed they didn't exist, which was good enough for me.  That means I'm considering my Korecky checklist complete at six cards, making him the 16th PC guy whose run I've completed.  Hooray for not going insane trying to track down a nonexistent card!

That's it for today but I'll probably be back before long with loot from COMC and Sportlots (of which you'll see way more on TMM in upcoming posts) in addition to my aforementioned look at TCDB.

2018 Sportlots purchases: too many Verlandersons

After lots of scanning and more I'm finally ready to start showing off the goods from my latest bunch of Sportlots purchases.  This group totaled around 950 cards (including trade bait for others) for a bit over $200 when including shipping.  I managed to hit the vast majority of my PCs from baseball, football, and hockey, and even added my first card to one of them.  You can look forward to a lot of fun stuff ahead in many, many purchase showoff posts on both blogs (my bread and butter at this point, let's be honest).

Today I decided to kick things off by featuring both of this here blog's namesakes because it's fun to post them together, plus their combined number of cards was manageable.

Let's begin with the blog's original title guy, Curtis Granderson.  In the past I hadn't really included him in my Sportlots searches but this time the light bulb when on and I was able to add a solid bunch to his collection:

Though I'm open to acquiring cards of Granderson on other teams I went 100% Tigers here.  That includes a 2008 Topps brand pair of Finest and Chrome.  I don't think Finest has put out designs as good as some of those from the 90s, but the '08 is still solid.  A cool postage stamp-style 2009 SP Legendary Cuts rounds out the vertical cards here, and it's fun to see a modern PC guy from that product for a change!

Continuing on the rest of this scan is all UD all the time.  First we jump back to 2008 again with SP Legendary Cuts once more, and another very cool design, then on to SPx, a die-cut set that calls back to the original '96 offering.  Then we go ahead one year to '09 and UD's flagship product.  These are two of Grandy's three appearances in that base set:  a fantastic shot of him sliding back to first plus a team checklist card that also features Miggy and the next player in today's post.

I also grabbed six of Curtis' cards I needed from Topps' 2007 Generation Now insert.  I've mentioned and/or showed this one off numerous times so I think by now you all know there's one card of each of his 31 doubles in 2006.  While I wasn't going to chase these if the price didn't make sense, I found this group at or near the site minimum of $0.18 so I happily knocked them off my list.  At this point I still need:  522 526 527 528 534 537 542 547 548 549.  I'll do a showoff post when I acquire all of them, of course.

Next up, naturally, is current namesake (if not current Tiger ::sad face::) Justin Verlander:

In terms of what I added for my PCs this time, some of it came down to brand name recognition and some was design; I even looked up a bunch of stuff on COMC to get an idea of how much I liked it before adding it.  So I would say the Topps bunch of 2007 Bowman Chrome/Finest/Topps Chrome and 2008 Topps Chrome falls more into the former category, though they each have something going for them.

Card #3 is a 2007 Fleer Year in Review insert that was fun to add since most of what you get on Sportlots at or near minimum price is base.  I love adding stuff that highlights JV's amazing 2006 AL ROY campaign.

As for the rest of the scan, it includes one of Verlander's appearances in 2007 Topps Co-Signers, an Upper Deck base from the same year (with more to come in a minute), and Heritage cards from '07 and '08, with the latter being a Black Back parallel.

This scan starts of strongly with one of my favorite photos on a card (in this case a 2008 UD base) showing Justin having signed a newspaper celebrating his first no-hitter, the one he tossed against Milwaukee in 2007.  That's joined in vertical solidarity by a 2009 UD base and 2011 Playoff Contenders issue, one that makes me appreciate football's version.

Switching to the other axis we'll start with a 2007 SP Rookie Edition offering that gives way to two more flagship base cards from the same year to go with the one above.  Then jumping ahead to 2008 there's a fun SP Authentic Marquee Matchups insert that pairs JV with retired star Vladimir Guerrero.  After that, Verlander joins Granderson in the 2008 SP Legendary Cuts set and on the previously seen team checklist from '09 Upper Deck.

That's not quite all, though, as I found the last nine cards of his I needed from that Generation Now set.  Of course his was easier to finish since it was only 17 cards, one for each of his wins in 2006.  At some point, probably after I'm done posting the rest of my Sportlots pickups, I'll devote a post to showing these off front and back.

These 27 new additions put Verlander's collection over the 300-card milestone to 309, so happy mini-milestone to that bunch!

That's all for today and I'm not sure who you'll be seeing next, but I'll at least try not to keep you waiting.  I'll likely be alternating posts with TMM depending on how I want to schedule things so keep and eye out of there as well!

2018 eBay purchase: brought to you by the letter "L"

It's been a busy last couple weeks for me--my birthday, friends visiting, Deadpool 2 and Solo, plus a Tigers game and card show in the same day!  I finally found some time to post again, though, and this evening I'm showing off one of my more exciting pickups from this year:

Setting me back $11 delivered at the tail end of May this is another of Rich Hill's 2008 SP Authentic manu-letter patch autos.  Take a good look because this is the last time I'll be posting one of these as a new pickup, catch my drift?

That's right, I finished up Hill's nameplate to go along with the "C-U-B-S" version I'd previously knocked off:

If that doesn't give you a

 "Shiiiiiiiirrrrrrre.........Baaaaaagginnnnnnssssss" kind of vibe, I don't know what to tell you.

Anyway, the two "L" cards--this one plus one I grabbed at the end of February--completed the project for me and I can now proudly display them whenever I figure out how I'd like to show off all of my completed nameplates.  As a reminder you can always see those (plus my finished rainbows and other related projects) right here or hit the tab with the same name up top.

That makes 132 different Hill hits in my Michigan Baseball PC and 291 total cards overall.  Hooray for another completed project!

Coming up soon I'll have a trade package, card show and Tigers game report, and more!

2018 eBay purchases: not Mad about finishing another PC

As I think I mentioned recently I snuck in one more eBay purchase before April ended, and I was happy to find that envelope in my mailbox upon returning from a trip to visit friends.

This one comes with a bit of a story:  I'd been trying for months to find the last card I needed to complete one of my PCs and had had no luck when searching his name specifically.  Finally I thought to see if I could find it in a larger lot and that's when my luck changed.  I was fortunate to be working with a very responsive and reasonable seller who agreed to toss the card I needed in for a buck if I won one of her other auctions.  I readily agreed by picking up this guy:

This Greg Maddux 1994 Flair Hot Gloves insert was actually on my singles/players wantlist as well so I didn't mind paying maybe a bit over the usual price for it.  These super cool die-cut inserts could be found in Flair from 1994-96 and Flair Showcase in '97 and once again in 2006.  While Pacific ultimately made what I'd argue is a cooler version, Fleer was the first to come up with these fantastic looking cards that exemplify the creativity of the 90s.  And Maddux naturally fits into the set thanks to finishing his career with an insane 18 Gold Gloves, still a record!  I'm hoping to track down the Griffey and Ripken issues from this set eventually, plus subsequent versions of my PC guys.

And the card I was so excited to track down that I put in this much effort?  Ross Powell's 1994 Score Boys of Summer insert.  This was the last card I needed to nail down his seven-card PC, making him the 15th complete Michigan Baseball player collection I've knocked off.  And it really did take some effort as this was one of those cards I may have seen available somewhere once, then never again.

These could be found in Super Packs (I'm assuming jumbos) of '94 Score as part of a 60-card set, where 25 different teams were represented, especially the expansion Marlins (a set-leading five cards) and Rockies (four, tied for second).  The late Powell was one of two Reds, and he fits in with lots of other guys that are head-scratchers more than 20 years later.  However, a few future stars did figure in such as Mike Piazza, Manny Ramirez, Pedro Martinez, and Chipper Jones.

Considering the way I keep adding new supercollection chases to my PCs it's nice to finally finish up another one.  That leaves me with three players with just a single card between them and completion:  Jake Fox, Steve Howe, and Bobby Korecky.  You can see all three of those needs at the top-right of this here blog under "Too Many Cards I Really Need".

With these covered I have one more eBay post scheduled for each blog and I'm looking forward to showing off those purchases.  But for more reading today please head over to TMM and check out the latest envelope I got from Jeff over at My Sports Obsession!

2017 eBay purchase: Howe I completed another rainbow

I've got one more July trade package for you, but I'm enjoying this one-card-at-a-time thing on this lazy holiday weekend, so let's have a look at a couple cards I picked up on eBay at the end of that month.  One of those is Michigan Football-related and can therefore be seen on TMM this evening, and the other is a Michigan Baseball alum, which means I'm posting it here as part of my baseball PCs.

It's pretty likely almost anybody reading this here blog is familiar with the auto-per-pack 1996 Leaf Signature set, a product that caused quite the commotion back when it came out since that kind of thing was pretty much unheard of at the time.  There's a much smaller chance that you were aware that I completed the Bronze/Silver/Gold autograph trifecta for one of my Michigan Baseball PC guys, Mike Matheny (and posted it on my Completed Nameplates and Rainbows page).

Well, I'm happy to announce that I've completed a similar trio:  that of former pitcher Steve Howe:

This Gold auto is the last one I needed, and it became mine for under $7 delivered, which isn't bad considering how much some of these can go for.  As others did, Steve signed a total of 5000 of his cards, broken up into Bronze (3500), Silver (1000), and Gold (500).  Those print runs seem large today but were minuscule by 1996 standards!

Here's all three cards for your viewing pleasure:

With that one out of the way, I currently own 80 of Howe's 81 cards, and just need to track down his 1994 Stadium Club Team First Day Issue parallel.  I've never seen it for sale in any of the usual places I buy cards (or a few others I generally don't) but I'll keep my eyes peeled, and I hope some of you will too!

Cal-osing the book on this project

Previously:  Ken Griffey Jr., Tony Gwynn, Greg Maddux

It took me longer than it probably should have to finish up my Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken scanning project, but now I can finally say it's done!  (Well, except for a few odd items I've mentioned a couple times, but those fall outside of the scope of this project).  Today's post features yet another player many of you collect just like I do:  Cal Ripken Jr.  Roughly 25 years of buying and trading have made Ripken my largest PC at almost 700 unique items, including the more than 200 I scanned for this project alone.  It's no surprise that that count puts him head and shoulders above the other three players, so I had a ton to choose from to show off to you today, assuming you give a Rip (ha!).

So have a look at some more cardboard greatness, most of which hails from the golden days of the 90s that celebrated creativity and choice over monopolies and "meh"!:
A few favorite sets:

Great photos and designs:

Putting the "ball" in "oddball":

Ripken-serts:

The Streak:

With this project finally in the books I'll certainly have an easier time determining whether or not I need anything of any of those players while digging through boxes at shows!  Also, I can now return to trade packages as well as large purchases from COMC and JustCommons.  Stay tuned for more PC-Palooza!