2024 trade package #27: Baseball Cards Come to Life

And now we've come to my final trade package of 2024. This one arrived just after Christmas and was a fun surprise from Bo over at Baseball Cards Come to Life. He and I had previously made a trade via TCDb a couple years ago but this was our first "blogger" trade outside that site. Bo asked for some of the beat-up vintage I made available a few weeks ago and I came up with a pretty solid group of those for him in addition to some other stuff that I found on his wantlists.

He was nice enough to return the favor with some extremely cool stuff he must have pulled straight from my own wants as all were new to me:

The top group here represent my favorite items in the entire package. I wasn't familiar with the 1969 MLB PhotoStamps because their combination of vintage and oddball-ness made me unlikely to notice them. So I'm grateful to Bo for gifting me four of the Tigers that could be found: PC favorite Bill Freehan and fellow Detroit greats Willie Horton, Denny McLain, and Jim Northrup. I love the fact that these came out the year after that team won it all, and receiving these inspired me to add the others to my wants: Kaline, Cash, Stanley, McAuliffe, and Lolich.

The vintage action didn't stop there, though, as he included two '72 Topps base that I needed: Ted Simmons plus Darrell Evans' In Action subset appearance. That's a second-year of Simba and it puts me very close to his full Topps base run. Technically it's a second-year of Evans as well; His RC came out two years earlier instead, then he got consecutive base sports in '72.

Going back to oddball-ish stuff, the bottom row includes a Superstar back of Mr. Padre, a Topps Sticker of Willie Hernandez (shared with HOFer Steve Carlton), and a UK Mini of Jack Morris. There's enough of these one-offs that despite being common still represent holes in my collection, though not if someone like Bo can help it!

Next, he included a trio of Brandon Inge needs. Though I've long since had the '07 Topps base, I did indeed lack the Red Back seen above (I didn't scan the reverse, so trust me, bro). From that same year I was also treated to a horizontal photo of him attempting to make a crazy diving play in the stands (found in that year's Upper Deck product), and then Brandon's appearance in Topps' throwback 206 product released in 2010.

The last of the baseball content was one of a number of 2001 UD Vintage team checklists I've been chasing for a while because they include one or more guys I collect. In this case, Cal's the lone Oriole in my PC, but I do remember this team well, one that included ex-Cleveland star Albert Belle, Jeff Conine, Brady Anderson, and more.

Did Bo's generosity end there? Most definitely not! Also tucked into this envelope were three former Wolverines I needed from 1975 Topps football: longtime NFL O-linemen Dan Dierdorf and Reggie McKenzie, plus 10-year NFL CB John Rowser, who suited up for Green Bay, Pittsburgh, and the pictured Broncos. I now have 12 cards from this set, partially thanks to Bo, and just need #s 203 (an All-Pro card that includes HOF G Tom Mack) and 395, which is Giants RB Ron Johnson.

Bo, thanks for sending all of these needed cards my way! I hope we can increase the frequency of our trading in the new year and fortunately that shouldn't be too difficult with you making your wants available on my favorite trading site!

And once again thank you to everyone who contributed to TMV as a reader, commenter, and trade partner. I appreciate you all and will keep going in 2025--as long as none of you try to hold me to a three-post-per-day pace. I can't promise I'll put up six posts in a single month! But please do keep in mind that I still have a good amount of 2024 content to cover in the form of pickups from Facebook, TCDb, eBay, and shows, plus at least one other surprise source.

I'm not sure how long it'll take to catch up on those, so for now, I'll wish a happy new year to everyone who took the time to read this. May your 2025 be filled with good news, good friends, good food, good health, and everything you could want!

2024 trade package #20: Baseball Card Breakdown

Christmas is just a few days away but tonight I'll be showing off cards I received from someone born the day before the big holiday. Longtime friend Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown sent me some cool stuff back in September and it's about time I posted it:

Scan #1 includes two things I associate Gavin with more than pretty much anyone else. First is one of his trademark customs. His creativity has resulted in him using many different methods to create them, and one of them is sun bleaching. While I think he debuted that technique with the eye-blindingly yellow 1991 Fleer set, you can see he also gave it a try with 1988 Topps, and I was treated to Tram's All-Star subset appearance in that product.

Here's a look at the back which also includes a cool custom feature:

I really like the stamp Gavin uses as a calling card, and that he also signs his initials. What a treat these are! One of these days I really will try to show off the various customs he's (and maybe others) sent me in the long time that I've known him.

A dogged pursuit of a number of Topps' extremely cool Retired/Fan Favorites base and autograph sets is another thing I associate with Gavin. His accumulation of some of the tougher cards, especially from Archives Reserve and Retired Chrome Refractors really is impressive. If you don't believe me for some strange reason, head over to his blog and check them out.

As for me, I was super happy to receive the five-spot of '03 Topps Retired base you see above. The product used that year's flagship design but went with white instead of blue borders, and somehow that made them look even classier in combination with their great vintage photos. Gavin gifted me Sparky, '84 Tigers Evans and Gibby, phenomenon Fidrych, and HOFer Kell, which gave me six from that set (to go with the Tram I already had). I just updated my wantlist and appear to need Kaline, Gwynn, Ripken, and former Phillie/Tiger Jim Bunning. Again, I can't overstate how much I like the looks of these, made back in the days when Topps actually cared about design.

That's not all he sent, though, as I have one more scan of goodies. A Rainbow Foil of John's favorite guy (and new Cubs P) Matt Boyd leads off. That's followed by a Ginter X base of one of my personal faves, former blog namesake Curtis Granderson. Do I have too many? The answer is still no, but I'm proud to be in the lead on TCDb, at least for now.

Another former Tigers P on a Topps parallel is up next with ex-RP Shane Greene out of 2018 Update's Gold insert, which is naturally numbered to that year. Then we jump to another classy design in the form of Topps' Heritage Minors (2011), and a surprise autograph of former prospect Francisco Martinez, an IF/OF that played a couple stints in Detroit's system but never reached the Majors. His rather interesting signature graces a card numbered /861 on the back.

Former ROY Michael Fulmer is the final pitcher in today's post, and maybe from the scale of his card compared to the others you can tell it's from Topps Mini's 2019 version. He didn't pitch in the Majors this year but rumors exist that the Red Sox may try to shift him back to the rotation, and regardless, I hope he gets to enjoy a healthy season.

And the last card is one that brings to mind base-stealing king Rickey Henderson, who sadly passed away yesterday. Nobody's ever going to do it better than him, but back in 1997 the Tigers had an OF by the name of Brian Hunter, and he led the Majors in steals with 74, which is exactly what Rickey averaged per 162 games in his 25-year career. In '98 Topps's Stadium Club brand included a parallel called One of a Kind that was limited to 150 copies, not quite living up to the name, but they looked cool. Hunter's card appropriately shows him zooming in the direction of the next base on a beautiful foil parallel I'm now proud to have in my collection.

Gavin, thanks so much for these cards from about three months ago, and happy early birthday! There's a chance you'll get a small envelope from me this week in time to celebrate because I'd never leave a Christmas Eve baby/collecting friend out of my Christmas cards!

As for gifts that have hit my mailbox, I currently have one envelope left from September to cover, then two each from November and December, as long as no others decide to appear before the end of the month. Stay tuned for the September cards next!

Fun freebies featuring A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

Who doesn't love free stuff? That's why my post is all about this evening.

The main star for tonight is Jon over at A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts. I was one of a pretty large group of folks who participated in his "Take my cards Tuesdays" and "Free Card Fridays" back in May, and I know I saw quite a few familiar names in the comments so this won't come as news to many of you. I give Jon a ton of credit for his generosity as he was truly asking for nothing in return--not a follow, not cards, not a damn thing. And some of the stuff up for grabs was very high quality considering the price, or total lack thereof. Stars? Check. Serial numbered inserts? You bet. Vintage, oddball, and non-sports? All there, friend.

All he asked was for folks to try to limit their initial requests so a reasonable number of people could get a chance to claim something. I had no problem with that and came away with eight cards I chose plus a bonus:

The baseball selection was pretty much Tigers baseball royalty. Cobb, Cochrane, and Manush are all HOFers, Miggy will join them in a few years, Evans and McLain came up big for title-winning teams, and Granderson is one of the best players the farm system has produced in the past 20 years. I think the Purple Refractor of Granderson was the one I wanted the most from this bunch so I made sure to get my comment in very quickly!

Before we get to the football pair, the Evans you see up there is the bonus Jon was nice enough to include (along with, remember, my free cards) and it was totally new to me. Normal '87 Topps? Nope, I already said it was new to me:

That's a blank-back version! What a fun throw-in.

As for the two Michigan football stars, Anthony Carter's is an SI For Kids issue from 1992, and HOF Rams LG Tom Mack's hails from 1976 Wonder Bread. I believe I can count my NFL food issue cards on one hand so that oddball-ness is extremely cool to me, in addition to it being a vintage piece of a former star.

Thanks again to Jon for treating so many of us to some quality free cards!

Next up is a freebie via Twitter thanks to a friend. Buddy of the blog John saw an account named C-Train GatorMayne offering up the following card gratis and asked him to send it my way, which he did:

Ex-UM WR Nico Collins is looking mighty fine on a 2022 Panini Obsidian parallel called Electric Etch Orange. It lives up to its name for sure and as always it looks better in person so just take my word for it when I say it looks nice.

Thanks again, John!

Last up tonight, I believe I've mentioned a number of times that my mom has always been very supportive of my interest in the hobby, one of the many reasons I appreciate her so much. She gets out to garage and estate sales once in a while and sometimes even grabs things she think I might like. At some point in the past year or two she found me a sealed 1991 Topps baseball factory set.

A few weeks ago she texted me asking if unopened 1990 Donruss packs were worth anything. Naturally I asked if she was thinking of starting a fire. Anyway, she specifically wondered if I thought she overpaid for 10-15 "packs" of them, and I thought, "probably, but it's the thought that counts, thank you!"

Well, it turned out to be a bit better than that:

Hmmm, opened but...

Ah, those are the "packs she's talking about. Let's take a look at a few of them:

Yep! It's an opened factory set and but with the base cards and Grand Slammers still sealed, meaning the only thing that appears to be missing is the Yaz puzzle, which I believe I already have anyway. Each sealed brick has 55 base cards plus one Grand Slammers insert except for the 13th brick which has the Bart Giamatti tribute base card in place of that insert.

While I already had a complete set put together by hand, it's fun knowing I for sure own a complete run of the cards with the factory set border, which is a bit different than the one on cards that were packed out. That and it's really nice having another set my mom specifically bought for me. Please believe I treated her well as always when Mother's Day came around in May!

So thank you to everyone involved who made my collection that much better with the free cards you saw this evening! Stay tuned for some more trades before I catch up on other stuff I'm excited to show off.

TCDB trade: FiresNBeers

Tonight's post is the first in a series of unknown size that will cover around 30 (and still growing!) trades I've made on TCDB over the past few months. A few of the larger deals will probably get their own posts while I'll group smaller ones together so it doesn't take forever to get through these.

First up is FiresNBeers, a.k.a. Brian from Wisconsin. Brian's one of my favorite people on the site and someone I talk to pretty often because we both do some work maintaining it by handling inaccuracy reports (IRs) for missing checklists, wrong images/other info, etc. There's a group of dedicated folks who put in a ton of effort to make sure TCDB is as useful and accurate as it is and Brian is one of those people.

That's one of the reasons I decided to send him a nice trade package of stuff from his wantlists at some point last year, largely to say thanks. A bit later, he was the one to whom I sent a Robin Yount relic I found at a show in return for a Paul Goldschmidt manurelic I sent to Daniel, and he was generous enough to let me pick some stuff from his trade list as well.

The items below comprise everything he sent me, including the cards I picked plus a few surprises:

Not too surprisingly, Brian is a big Brewers fan, and over his years of collecting he's compiled quite a few Milwaukee police team sets. Above are some of the cards I picked out, with some bonuses he added. Basically the photos stay the same for a given year with only the various suburbs' names changing. 

I was interested in scoring cards of two former UM alumni, Jim Paciorek and HOFer Ted Simmons. Jim has just two MLB cards to his name--1987 Fleer and its Glossy version--so oddballs like these help grow my collection of the brother of the more well known Tom. All of his cards here are from 1987.

Simmons, meanwhile, never played baseball for UM but attended school here so he fits the parameters of my collection. Brian had cards of him from each year of 1982-85, 12 cards in total. Pretty cool!

I'll just have to figure out how I want to store these as they're larger than standard trading cards and therefore won't fit will in my 5000-count player collection boxes.

Most of the rest of what you'll see tonight consists of '84 Tigers, other well known former Tigers from during my fandom, and a few other PCs. Here Bergman and Evans represent the wire-to-wire champs of 1984 on pre-Tigers issues. MLBPA prez Clark's late 90s offerings are shiny and cool. Philly/Detroit legend Cochrane won two rings with the A's and one with the Tigers (1935) and was also the manager for the latter (as well as their pennant-winning club the year before). Big Daddy oddballs are always fun. And you can't have too many Grandersons, especially when they have awesome photos like this one.

Henneman joins Fielder as one of the better early 90s Tigers of my youth and one of the best at the closer position. Hernandez was a standout himself in the role in '84, winning the AL Cy and MVP awards, and I scored two pre-Detroit cards of him plus one of '84 OF Herndon. I've been growing my Inge collection a bit since he joined Michigan's coaching staff. And Jackson was sometimes the next best thing to Granderson, so I ended up with four cards (one more below) of him, including a Finest Refractor as the last card of this scan.

Parrish and a sticker of Morris represent the last of the '84 champs here while bookending the rest of the baseball stuff, and the sticker is a good reminder that Jack was a Series hero for another team as well! Simmons gets two more oddball appearances and I have to say that the 1992 Carlson Travel '82 World Series card really pops. The Brew Crew didn't take home the win that year but you can't exactly blame Simba who put up 2 HR and 3 RBI in the loss to the Cards. Cobb, seen here in miniature form, never won a ring himself despite three trips to the Fall Classic, losing to the Cubs twice (1907 and '08) and Pirates ('09).

Brian also had a good selection of football to choose from so I grabbed 10 cards of 10 different players, starting with the three above: WR Derrick Alexander, RB Tim Biakabutuka, and OL John "Jumbo" Elliott.

And here's the rest of the football stuff: QB Elvis Grbac, LB David Harris, WR/KR Desmond Howard, DL Maurice Hurst, OT Jon Runyan (senior!), RB Derrick Walker, and TE Jerame Tuman.

I owe a big thanks to Brian for all this great stuff, not to mention all the times he's made my life easier on TCDB, and I'll be trying to score some new stuff for him at future shows. If you're on the site and haven't traded with him, he comes highly recommended from me so go send him a proposal!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 10: 100% '84

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; more Michigan? Marvelous!; Tony the Tiger

Well here's a post that's been a long time coming. I'm finally wrapping up the huge Sportlots haul I picked up earlier this year, and I'm excited to be doing it with today's theme: the 1984 World Champion Detroit Tigers!

A few of the guys you'll see today previously appeared in this series' second post that covered all sorts of stickers, minis, and other oddballs, but besides those I scored a bunch of (generally) more standard stuff of some of my favorite members of the Wire-to-Wire Champs:

The first scan features three subjects, and we begin alphabetically with Sparky, the first manager to win a World Series in both leagues. He led Detroit to glory in his sixth season with the club after winning four pennants and two rings with the Reds. I added six cards to his collection (more later), and the four you see here are all from the early part of his 17-year Tigers career: 1981, '82, and '83 Donruss, plus an '84 Fleer team checklist. I also bought what should have been a variation of the '83 card, but the seller must have had it mislabeled since it was the same as the other I grabbed. No big deal, though, these are still fun early 80s issues of the guy that managed my favorite team as I watched them growing up.

Next, Evans was an addition to the team as a free agent in late '83 and he'd prove to be an important contributor the following year, though his best Detroit seasons would come the following three years. I added three interesting items to his collection, starting with a pair of Topps box bottom cards from 1989 and '90. I think they were a cool inclusion for collectors back then, and fun pickups now as I chase his checklist. Those are joined by a '94 Upper Deck All-Time Heroes base that combines black & white photos with a bit of a throwback design. It's fun seeing Darrell with his second and third franchises on the front as I know him best as a Tiger, but he spent more years in San Francisco (eight) and of course, Atlanta (nine), than the five he was with Detroit.

Last up in this scan is dramatic World Series home run guy Kirk Gibson; Decline to walk him at your peril if you're a racist MAGAt reliever. Since Gibby was a guy I started supercollecting before I knew what that was I'm quite surprised I didn't have his '95 Topps Cyberstats parallel, but that was easily rectified here. And speaking of his legendary Fall Classic performances, I came up with his Tigers entry in Donruss' 2004 World Series Blue insert to go along with the Dodgers one. You'll see the third item I picked up of him below.

Next is a guy who dominates the next two scans just like he dominated during the regular and post-season in '84. HOF P Jack Morris threw two complete games against the Padres in the Series to win his first of three rings after earning 19 dubs (including a no-hitter) earlier in the year. This scan and the next two include a total of 19 new items for his collection, one of the larger of my Tigers PCs. All but four feature him with Detroit because I didn't feel like paying $0.18+ for non-Tigers cards, though I'm still happy to acquire them otherwise.

This scan covers the 1981-93 stuff, which means it includes stats from his second, third, and fourth full seasons as a starter (he appeared in 28 games in '79 but only started seven of those). The '81s include the debuts of Donruss and Fleer, Topps (because I somehow didn't have that), and Topps' Coke Team Sets. The Coke card is my second from the Tigers set to go along with Kirk Gibson. As with the '81 version, I somehow didn't own Morris' '82 Topps base before this, but now I do! The '83s are a pair of Donruss cards, including a Diamond King(!), plus Fleer and OPC. The back of the DK refers to "The 27 year old" as "the ace of the Detroit pitching staff for the last four seasons", and considering he averaged 16 wins person year in that span, I think that's fair.

In this scan we get through the rest of the 80s stuff before jumping to stuff that's a bit more modern. Jack's 1984 cards include his stats from the previous season, during which he won 20 games for the first of three seasons ('89 and '92). The top three cards in this group were printed the year Detroit last won it all, and they include Donruss, Fleer, and Topps' Glossy Send-In All-Stars. The '85 Donruss card appears to be the last mainstream one I needed of the ones made the year after the Roar of '84, leaving me chasing some boxed sets and oddball-type stuff.

The next four are the only non-Tigers cards I grabbed because they were too cool to avoid. First is '92 Triple Play's Gallery of Stars, another Perez-Steele collaboration that makes them all but Diamond Kings. Two '94s capture his sunset season with the Indians: a Pinnacle Museum Collection and Sportflics Rookie/Traded base. That's one of my all-time favorite parallels plus a brand I love combined with the rookie/traded theme, so they were obvious takes. And last up in the group is a 2001 Topps Traded Gold parallel of Morris' base card in a subset that reprinted earlier Topps Traded issues. It's #d /2001, continuing that year's flagship product's debut of the Gold parallel as we currently know it.

And then we're back to a Detroit card, at least in terms of the uniform and team listed, if not the subject. As I mentioned, Morris came up aces in the '84 Series, but his gutsy 10-inning complete game in 1991's Game 7 combined with his victory in game 1 over Atlanta earned him the Series MVP. At that point he was 4-0 in five Series starts, though he'd go 0-2 in a rematch with the Braves the following year as a member of the champion Blue Jays. Regardless, that legendary '91 performance earned him the final card in this scan from Donruss' 2003 Champions set.

Scan #1 included three of the most important '84 Tigers, and so does this one! Morris finishes off his post-dominating run with a base from one of my favorite Upper Deck product lines: Sweet Spot (Classic, from 2003, in this case).

I also managed to grab a few cards of Detroit's iconic double-play pairing, Tram and Sweet Lou. The HOF SS's cards here are from '95 SP Championship's Die-Cut parallel (giving me all four of his appearances in the product), '95 Stadium Club Virtual Reality Members Only, '96 Donruss, and 2020 Topps Archives. Once again I'm in disbelief that I lacked such a basic card as Tram's '96 Donruss, but that was easily rectified. We'll see Tram again shortly, but for now I'll mention once again that I like 2020 Archives' callback to the 2002 flagship design.

Sweet Lou one of two today is from one of the same sets a Trammell from above came from. 1995 Stadium Club continued its Members Only parallel, and that year it introduced Virtual Reality, the product's answer to flagship's Cyberstats insert that attempted to extrapolate full stats for the shortened season. Topps mashed the two together into Virtual Reality Members Only, a third insert, and the result is what you see above.

I think I have to name this scan my favorite of the bunch by default since it includes four of the guys previously discussed today, including a pair of slick '90s inserts (which, of course rule, so that tag is once again in effect today!).

Sparky gets a multi-photo '85 Fleer Superstar Special subset demonstrating "giving the signs", and then a super cool 2002 Fleer Greats Dueling Duos insert with another managing legend, Earl Weaver. The back explains that the two faced off in the 1970 World Series, with the third-year Weaver's Orioles defeating Sparky's Reds in his managing debut. These guys combined for 43 seasons as managers, earning 3674 wins, nine pennants, and four titles (one for Weaver). I like the classic look of that insert, not to mention the pairing.

And then there's the other three players I said you'd see again. Gibby returns thanks to the pinnacle of the Pinnacle brand--its 1995 product and the highly sought after Artist's Proof parallel. The foil has faded from gold to something more like silver over the years, but it's still awesome. Tram's other appearance is another Stadium Club parallel: 1994's Golden Rainbow, with the lone difference being the gold/rainbow foil in the Label Maker-like player name section. And Sweet Lou's appearance in the super cool 1994 Triple Play Medalists insert is a textbook example of knowing what to look for before searching Sportlots, because that very card won't appear under a "Lou Whitaker" search (instead the description reads "Alomar|Baerga|Whitaker"). The card itself is another fun 90s insert, highlighting the best in each league by position, even if it's now off-putting to see the recently disgraced Alomar on it.

Well, just like the 1984 season, this was definitely a wild ride that ended in success! Another huge Sportlots foray is in the books, and now I can get to other stacks of cards on my desk from a blogger trade, eBay, and a TCDB deal, plus who knows what else to come?

2021 Cardbarrel purchase: a barrel of fun, or an Easter feast!

Happy Easter, y'all! I decided to spring into action today, the third day of Detroit's season (hey, 2-1's not bad!) and show off my first purchase from Cardbarrel since they switched over from the JustCommons name. Aside from the title of the site everything seems to be the same, including lots of reasonable prices and shipping, nice selection, and t he usual minor issue that seems to accompany all my orders there, though as usual I was taken care of by their excellent customer service. Two of the cards I'd ordered weren't included in the original shipment but they PWEd them to me eventually.

I managed to score more than 150 cards for just a cent over their $25 minimum purchase to achieve free shipping and managed to coordinate what I bought here with another Sportlots Box buy (coming soon!) so I could take advantage of Cardbarrel's lower minimum prices, with some cards as cheap as $0.12 (Sportlots sets the floor at $0.18), and free shipping. In the end I grabbed cards for 11 different player collections and a couple base sets I'm working on as well.

Here's a look at everything I ended up with:

Here's the first of three scans of the smaller groups. Card #1 shows the benefit of using TCDB over Beckett: while the latter labels it as "checklist", the database made me aware that it's a new Abbott for my collection! I thought it would be fun to grab a few early 80s cards of Evans (and would love to add more at lower prices or via trade) plus I couldn't resist grabbing a couple Sportflics issues I needed too. Kaline and Kell form a nice pair in 2010s retro-themed sets. And that Lemon is one of a few Kellogg's cards you'll see in this space in the near future, including two more in this very post.

Morris and Parrish formed the battery that powered much of the 84 Tigers' success and I went after some 80s needs of them as well, including another Sportflics item, even if it shows Lance after he left Detroit. Speaking of catchers, Simmons was a pretty good one, and I had a good time adding some of his needs, eight in total, including what you see to lead off the next scan. It's nice to collect a number of guys from his era because many of their cards are plentiful and easy to come by.

As promised seconds ago, here you see the rest of the Simmons cards, this time from the mid-80s, and yes I'm happy to see yet another Sportflics card I needed. The other items here are from 1990 Pacific Legends and '93 Pinnacle Series 1 to go toward my set builds of each. Both sets will be complete once my Sportlots package arrives, possibly as soon as tomorrow. I was able to complete the Pacific set at a pretty low price after being gifted a great starter lot by Fuji, and the Pinnacles came from the larger of my two pre-pandemic Facebook purchases last year. I had to get a bit creative to fit the latter here, but in case you care the other players are Andujar Cedeno, Jay Buhner, and Rob Deer.

Dean-o is the first of three guys for whom I added enough cards to their PCs to pick nine of my favorites for a regular scan and then show off the rest in a photo. Palmer was the big winner of this package as I made a nice dent in his checklist to the tune of around 55 cards, getting him over the 200-mark. My highlights here include a pair of Pinnacle Starburst parallels, '96 SP, two different Topps Gallery base, Fleer's Sports Illustrated, UD's Ultimate Victory and SPx, and an awesome Stadium Club design with the huge bonus of a great photo. Lots of beauties for sure.

And to those I added this huge haul. These pretty much span Palmer's entire career, hailing from 1991-2003, and there's plenty of nice ones that could have made the cut above. That's no surprise since in my eyes the hobby will never reproduce the glory of 90s designs. No problem--there's still lots for me to collect from that decade! And still plenty of Palmer cards too, though he'll be one of a few players getting huge boosts to their PCs from Sportlots shortly.

The criminally underappreciated Tony Phillips is next, though I sure appreciated these nine out of his pile. This group actually only captures three of the five times with whom he appears on cards I purchased, but you'll see the other two shortly. I chose a few of these because I liked the brand or the design, but there's some excellent photos to enjoy as well. Look at him catching air during a twin-killing in a throwback uni up top, getting captured smiling in a portrait and warming up, or flying into a base. His positional versatility is on full display here as well.

And the rest, with some 80s thrown in for good measure. The first few and last cards bookending the rest show Tony with two of his other clubs, the A's (with whom I associate him the most besides the Tigers) and the Mets. You can see a few different positions listed again, as well as the fact that Tony was a switch hitter. I now own more than 150 of his cards with a nice bunch coming from Sportlots, and there's a good change he'll overcome Curtis Granderson in my collection before long--Too Many Tonys!

And the last PC guy with his own scans today is old Fruit Loops. The top three photos are all great for different reasons, and really, how often did you see Mick bunting? I love Dufex cards like Pinnacle's '94 Museum Collection (though nothing beats '95). Gallery and UD flagship ('96 and 96-97) had some great years during the decade. '97 is probably my favorite set that I don't own, and I love the game-dated photos.

Tettleton's haul was less than Palmer's--closer to 35--but it was still very productive, jumping him over the 150 mark as well. There's just a few Tigers cards here but that's ok since there's plenty of 90s goodness for me.

We can't call it a day until we get to this last image, though, filled with odd sized items and stickers. I collect Phillips' stuff big and small, like the storage-challenged Fleer Extra Bases cards and Topps Minis (which also star Palmer and Tettleton). You saw a 1981 Kellogg's Lemon earlier and it was joined by this '82 version, which is a bit smaller in both dimensions. Next to him is a Parrish from the even slimmer '80 set, which might be my favorite, though I'd like to see more sets for comparison. Evans' early 80s cards are joined by Topps (1981) and Fleer (1984) Stickers from the same era, and fellow '84 champs Morris and Parrish hail from the same '81 Topps Sticker product.

As with Baseballcardstore.ca I definitely feel like I got my money's worth here while stocking up on some new items to bolster some of the PCs I'm most interested in lately, so I'm very happy with this purchase and will surely go back to the well at some point.

Speaking of new pickups, the aforementioned Sportlots haul may be the subject of my next post, pending delivery of that (and any surprise deliveries) so stay tuned. Until then, happy Easter and MLB season!

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!