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!

TCDB trade: randylaw, part 1: Roar of '84

All the way back in April I completed what was just my third TCDB deal that wasn't with Paul, and it ended up being my largest until a couple months later. This awesome trader was Randy (randylaw), a fellow Michigander who hails from Lapeer, a city northeast of me starting to approach the thumb area of the state.

Over the course of three transactions (it was easier to create new ones when adding more cards to the deal), I ended up with almost 450 cards in exchange for about 750. The best part was that a large majority of what I sent Randy came out of the ridiculously cheap $10 Facebook lot I'd grabbed the previous month. Since I was pretty much playing with house money I didn't mind throwing in more cards since I could help him with his set wants and clear out some piles of stuff from those boxes.

Before I get to the cards I wanted to say that Randy was great to deal with and I'd highly recommend doing so yourself if you have the opportunity. He mentioned some health issues that might slow things down but I have zero complaints about how our deal went. We had an easy back-and-forth getting things added to the transactions, shipping went just fine, and I got everything I was expecting safely. What more can you ask for?

So I'm breaking this deal down into three posts since I'm inclined to show everything I scored for myself (I believe I picked up some trade bait as well). While I'm not usually the type to split things up like this I think it'll be worth it overall.

Still, the volume of cards means I went with photos instead of scans (I hope they're good enough to show off what I got), and that I'll probably be less wordy than usual in hopes that these posts don't take forever to finish.

Today's theme is the 1984 Tigers. The last of the franchise's squads to win it all (just a year after I was born!), it featured lots of players I enjoy collecting, and in this case it would appear that I landed at least one of each subject except Alan Trammell, since Randy didn't have any I needed.

Here are the 12 subjects in today's post and their stacks, some of those larger than others. Minus Tram, this covers the manager, the starting lineup (if you swap utility infielder Brookens in for future Mets slugger Howard Johnson at 3B), the top two starters, and the AL Cy Young/MVP-winning closer. What a team!

Image #1 covers the two subjects with the fewest and most new items in this group, and they form the bookends, which is pretty cool. How can you go wrong with a smiling Sparky on a Studio checklist? I added a solid 11 cards to the late Bergman's collection, spanning most of his Tigers career. I'm glad he was around long enough to make it onto Stadium Club and Ultra cards after those products pulled the industry kicking and screaming from the boring 80s. The previously mentioned Brookens' stuff is all from that decade but at least there's a good mix of brands. And Evans was the big winner today, though you'll see why in the last scan of the post. Here you can see I started with Donruss' '81 debut and went all the way through to '89 with a super eclectic bunch that includes some of the many OPCs you'll see today, plus a Sportflics cameo!

The second group begins with of two Gibby items you'll see today, a 1993 Metz Baking oddball I definitely hadn't see before. Then it's on to smiling closer Guillermo "Willie" Hernandez, the bullpen ace who was a shrewd pickup (along with Bergman) from the Phillies just before the '84 season. Naturally I was thrilled to add a Sportflics card of him as well! We already covered Gibson, so why not add his outfield teammates Herndon and Lemon back-to-back? I tracked down some OPC of both along with some other 80s needs like Donruss, Fleer, and Score. Those are low-end enough that I wouldn't have bought them in the past and just hadn't had them show up in trade packages yet, which is fine since TCDB ended up being a great resource for them! Finally, there's HOFer Jack Morris on all four teams for which he pitched in the Majors, even Cleveland, not to mention a Reds photo that must have been Spring Training action since he never pitched for them. These span 1982 (Donruss!) to 1995 (Collector's Choice) with a couple fun oddballs in between. Morris' haul was second to Evans, tied with our next subject,

...slugging catcher Lance Parrish. The eight-time All-Star socked 200+ homers in his 10 years in Detroit before appearing for the Phillies, Angels, Mariners, Indians, Pirates, and finally, Blue Jays. I managed to get almost all of those teams here, and even better, got a lot of shots of him in action behind the plate. As with Morris his haul spanned a large percentage of his career, going from '82 Fleer up to '95 Stadium Club. Meanwhile, his battery mate from 1979-86 Dan Petry was the next biggest beneficiary. Due to his career mostly taking place in the 80s, most of his cards here are from that time, with some nice early appearances from '81 Donruss (pre-facial hair!) and its sophomore version, and going on up to '91 UD and his sunset season. He has a few cards from his brief tenures with the Angels and Red Sox (mostly found in complete sets I already own) and you won't see any of those here.

Last up today are the minis and stickers. Evans appears on a good chunk of these, adding to the cards you saw earlier to give him an easy lead with 23 items. There's even a sticker of him with the Giants, though the rest are with the Tigers, including a couple 1988 back variations in row 5. Gibby got one sticker from '85, making Sparky the lone Tiger with a single item, and the back notes that the Tigers were 1984 AL Champions. Yep, that too. Hernandez and Morris round out the Topps Mini Leaders cards. Whitaker's only appearances are seven different variations from 1988 where the stickers on the front are different in each case. Herndon and Parrish hail from the '84 Topps Stickers product, and Lemon and Petry each share multiplayer stickers from the same set.

That's it for today but I assure you I have lots more to share from the other two piles, so look for posts on those fairly soon!

RIP '84 Tiger Dave Bergman

I was saddened today to learn of the passing of former Tigers 1B Dave Bergman.  A member of the '84 champs, he was apparently struggling with bile duct cancer for a while until succumbing at the age of 61.

I actually saw one of Bergman's final appearances with the Tigers during the '84 team's 30th reunion last year, and though I couldn't make him out from my left field seats, he was definitely looking run down, almost unrecognizable, even:

Despite his tragic passing, this seems like a great time to remember a guy not everyone outside of Detroit was familiar with, but still a player that was important to his Tigers teammates and fans.

Dave was a second-round pick of the Yankees back in 1974 out of Illinois State.  He appeared in just 12 games in parts of two seasons with the Bombers, then was sent to the Astros as a PTBNL late in 1977.  After three-plus seasons in Houston he was flipped to the Giants in 1981, and there he enjoyed a pretty solid three years.  Still, in March of '84 he was on the move once again, traded to the Phillies, then to Detroit (along with ace closer and Cy Young/MVP-winner Willie Hernandez) on the same day (essentially a three-team deal).

Detroit would prove to be his home for the remainder of Bergman's career, and with the Tigers he'd average almost 100 games per year for his nine seasons in Motown, primarily as a 1B.  '84 proved to be the apex of that career, but what a high it was as he combined with slugging DH/1B Darrell Evans to form a pretty good platoon at the position for a team that roared out to a lead it never relinquished.  Although he went hitless in his five World Series ABs, he did collect a hit, steal, and run in his only plate appearance in the ALCS against the Royals.

You might think, then, that he wasn't really memorable that season, but that's where you'd be wrong.  On June 4, the Tigers faced the Blue Jays at home, and although Detroit had run out to their amazing start, Toronto wasn't that far behind.  Going into the bottom of the 10th the game was tied at 3.  New pitcher Jimmy Key allowed a single to Lance Parrish, who moved up to second on a Darrell Evans bunt.  Roy Lee Jackson came on and got Rusty Kuntz to ground out, then walked Chet Lemon.  With 2 on and 2 out, Bergman stepped to the plate.  The players battled back and forth for 12 pitches, and then #13 proved lucky for the batter as Bergman launched a moon shot into the right field upper deck.  The game-winner was his first career Tigers homer and it couldn't have come at a better time.  Check out the video here for yourself:

I still get goosebumps thinking about that season and I was only a year old!

So while he wasn't the most famous, even locally, the game and the world are poorer today with his passing.  As my way of remembering him, here are the 19 Bergman cards I could find in my collection:

His '78 Topps RC (what a set for Tigers rookies!) gets its own scan because it's great.  As I mentioned, he'd been shipped to Houston from New York, so he gets an Astros hat on this card.  Joining him is future Rockies/Pirates manager Clint Hurdle.

This bunch is a mix of singles and cards I have from complete sets.  In order they are:  '85 Topps, '86 Topps, '87 Donruss, '87 Topps, '88 Donruss, '88 Topps, '89 Donruss, '89 Fleer, and '89 Topps.  The '85 Topps is my favorite since it includes his stats from the championship season.

Continuing the collection are cards from:  '89 Upper Deck, '90 Bowman, '90 Donruss, '90 Fleer, '90 Leaf, '90 Score, '90 Upper Deck, '91 Donruss, and '92 Score.  Although he'd go on to play 87 games during the '92 season he never got a farewell card in any of the 1993 products.

Rest in peace, Dave, and thanks for everything you did for this team and the game, from a Tigers fan who will always remember you well.