2023 trade package #28: the Collector

Welcome back, everybody! I hope you all had an outstanding Christmas like I did. And now I'm back to show off more presents in the form of trade packages that I received in the last couple months of 2023.

We've at least made it into November now, though I'll still be covering 2023 pickups in January. Oh well!

Tonight's envelope was a PWE that came from Chris, the Collector. He and I have been sending cards back and forth for about seven years now and the fact that we're both on TCDb also makes things a bit easier since we can find more specific needs for each other. Here's what he sent this time:

Funny story about the '96 Finest Bonds and Clark: I sent Chris a big old package of stuff a few weeks ago including some complete sets, and one of those was one of my dupe Finest Series II bronze sets. I believe Chris kept the cards he wanted or needed and put the rest on his trade list. I noticed the two above, which are the last two I needed for one last extra S2 bronze set, and basically got them back from him. Nice!

Mike's son Daz didn't end up working out in Detroit after being acquired in the deal for Justin Verlander, but I can't blame the Tigers (or anyone else) for assuming he'd pay off his potential. His '22 Heritage High Number card is one of several Tigers I own from that set.

Meadows is another guy that came over in a lopsided trade and unfortunately his Tigers career was all too brief things to injuries and anxiety, but I continue to wish him well as he potentially works his way back to playing. His '22 Stadium Club Chrome card looks outstanding, as you'd expect from that brand.

Kudos to Chris for remembering that I collect cards of Dean Palmer, like the above '95 Pacific. I suppose, though, that he can just look at my TCDb ranking of members who collect Dean-o and see that I'm quickly approaching the top spot.

Finally, "hockeydude" lived up to his username by sending me a pair of ex-Wolverine icers from 1993-94 Donruss. That season was Jeff Norton's first with the recent expansion Sharks after six with the Isles, the team that drafted him. His career would span all the way through 2001-02, so, not bad! Meanwhile, Stewart, a native of someone I know's hometown of Kitchener, Ontario, would make his NHL debut after three college seasons in which he showed steady improvement. That makes the card you see above his Donruss RC, which I'm glad to own now.

Chris, thanks again for these cards, plus the couple shipments you sent this month that I'll cover at some point! I'm glad you had such a successful year of trading on the DB and that I could be part of that fun!

Back soon with another trade recap.

2023 trade packages #21: Scribbled Ink

Well once again it's been far too long since I've posted--we're in October now!--but here I am back with another trade package, and boy is this one a doozy.

Buddy of the blog Paul, who I believe is enjoying some recreational R&R right now, mailed me a couple sizeable packages back in August and I'll cover them together this evening. I'm curious to see if everyone else will be as blown away as I was!

Scan #1 is all cardboard/whatever they use nowadays. Paul's a dude for the three-card assist for my Cronenworth PC which has eclipsed the century mark since he fired these westward. Panini brands like Prizm and Mosaic were the stars of this one and I'm totally cool with that. Why not when another PC guy like Junior Griffey gets in on the fun with a pair of great shots at the plate? Hill's a rare non-Panini entry here but very much appreciated. I'm curious to see if Mize is part of the team's future next year on a roster that could very much use him back. Ripken was the most represented player this time at five cards, and the best in my eyes is the Gallery parallel you see here in spot #9.

Cal continues to dominate my baseball player collections (and all sports, in fact) with over 1200 cards thanks to generous packages like this one. JV's Astros are headed back to the postseason, and nothing against the dude himself but I hope his team falls to the winner of the Jays/Twins series. Woodson's blue (what else?) parallel was a fun football throw-in.

And then we have the biggest (literally) card of the envelope: a dual jersey booklet of two of my favorite Tigers of the past 20 years! It's weird to me that A-Jax retired a year sooner than Grandy, who debuted six years prior to Jackson, and then of course they were both involved in the three-team trade between the Tigers, D-Backs, and Yankees. And here they are together again! If this booklet looks familiar that's because I previously nabbed the slightly rarer Gold version:

I really appreciate Paul tracking this down on COMC and sending it my way!

That's it for the card portion of the two shipments (though they hardly deserve a "that's it) but Paul had bigger things up his sleeve.

I know Paul to be many things and one of those is an excellent photographer. He's taken some great looking photos, many of which I've seen, and one thing he likes to do is print out some favorites and get them signed. He did exactly that when Tigers pitching prospect Reese Olson and the organization's AA Erie SeaWolves visited Paul's nearby New Hampshire Fisher Cats late last year. He ended up with three very vibrant photos of the future (and now current) Tiger warming up, then sent those off to be signed. He kept one, sent one to John, and included one for me here as well.

As you can probably tell I slightly ruined the bottom of the photo trying to remove the blue painter's tape holding it to the cardboard it shipped in, but I figure I can either cut off that portion or cover it up with framing. The popping colors and cool baseball action can't be overridden by something that small anyway.

I really liked that he included not only the COA from the local-ish (to me at this point, not him!) signing, but a ticket from that game as well. That's a perfect compliment to a piece I'm glad to have. And I hope Paul continues pursuing his photographic hobby at other games.

So that leaves one more item, something that came in an oddly shaped box:

(5000-card monster box for scale)

Ok, so I knew in general what the item was by the shape, but not specifically what he'd paid a hefty amount to send me. That ended up being this:

Wow, that's a black beauty of a bat! Louisville Slugger is obviously one of the most well known makers of MLB lumber and this one is a stunner. But wait, that's that?...

Do my eyes deceive me or is that name up there one Dean Palmer, celebrated slugger of some 90s Tigers squads and a favorite of this guy right here? Hell yeah it is! And it's my first game-used memorabilia item as far as I'm aware. What an absolutely amazing item for my collection!

(Admire my knob)

While I decide how I want to display this, likely with at least one or two other bats that would be worthy to join it, I'll just celebrate how cool it is to have it and throw some big respect Paul's way for acquiring it (I believe along with something for his own collection) and going to the expense of shipping it 700+ miles from New Hampshire to Ann Arbor. WOW!

I owe Paul a huge thanks for some absolutely huge--both size and how impressive they are--items I had the pleasure of showing off tonight, and now I'm glad I found some quality stuff I could send his way the last time I hit him back, which I'll try to do again very soon. Thanks, Paul!

For the folks reading this, what's your favorite item Paul sent me this time?

I'll be back with lots more stuff to cover soon, and I may go a bit out of order so I can make some trade bait available in anticipation of sending out a pretty large stack of packages after this Friday's show. Stay tuned!

2022 Sportlots purchases: 90s and 2000s Tigers PCs

I'm back this evening with the last of my Sportlots purchases from late last year. Yep, it only took me until ::checks:: mid-March to cover my 2022 purchases!

Anyway, as we just did this past weekend it's time to spring forward and look at some cards starring players that are younger than those in part 2. Tonight's subjects are Tigers and Tigers-related PCs from the 90s and 2000s (including a small number of 2010s):

Cecil is one of the players in this post that got a very nice bump to his collection with some 19 additions, giving me a pretty nice total of 225. Since I'm not supercollecting him (as in, I'll take what I can get but I'm not actively chasing everything) I put my focus on affordable but cool looking base and inserts. There's plenty of cool to go around here with Collect-a-Books, a hologram, Sportflics, fun inserts, and more. Fleer's EMotion product is a precursor to the bordered/framed cards you still see these days.

You'll see a bit more of Big Daddy down below but the '96 foursome up top is quite cool if you ask me. Yep, we're back in the days when I loooooved Topps' products!

Two Grandersons does not equal too many Grandersons, but they're always welcome in any quantity. I think the Unique Unis insert could have been less bland but I do like the recognition for Detroit's olde English "D." The shiny Lineage parallel was a fun add too, even if it's from his time with the Evil Empire.

BInge is a Tiger I've come to appreciate a bit more lately, but I think what spurred me to collect him a bit more recently was when he joined UM's baseball coaching staff for a short time. Two of his three additions are on display here from Diamond Kings and one of Topps' many parallels.

As for Dean-o I count a massive 30 new items for his collection giving me a TCDb-dominating 469 cards. I'm now more than halfway through the wantlist I put together on the site, where I've excluded a number of issues that don't really fit my collection. This group includes some fun 90s inserts such as a '97 Studio Silver Press Proof and Ultra Gold Medallion plus a '98 Finest No-Protector parallel. The Flair Showcase card is certainly a highlight in terms of base design quality.

There's even more 90s insert-age to see here, like four different versions of his Topps Stars card, numbered between 2299 and 9799 copies. The die-cut Paramount Team Checklist is also a beaut, and who wouldn't love to see Pacific back in the game in this time of bland, thoughtless designs?

There's a few more Palmer cards below but this scan gets us through the rest of his vertically oriented stuff. The die-cut Black Diamond Reciprocal parallel and Topps Gold insert were of particular interest to me, but it was also nice to track down a cheap copy of his '01 Topps Limited base as well.

Underappreciated spark-plug Tony Phillips gets a bit more love in a scan below but right here you see him with the Angels on his '98 Score Showcase parallel, an insert that brings me back to a fun era of chasing such cards.

This purchase also boosted my Mickey Tettleton collection a bit. I'm over half the number of Froot Loops' cards documented on TCDb and maintain a huge lead when it comes to him as well. This time it was all parallels of the slugging catcher, with a pair from Stadium Club, a Collector's Choice Silver Signature, and the '97 version of Score's Showcase, another personal favorite.

Then we have the remaining six Fielder cards, all of which are landscape style. The Leaf Power Brokers and Donruss Bomb Squad inserts, the latter pairing him up with NL counterpart Andres Galarraga, highlight his ability to mash dingers. Denny's provides his second hologram card of the post. '95 Pinnacle's Museum Collection is a top 10 all-time parallel for me. I nabbed one more Sportflix issue from '95 because I've always enjoyed that product. And why not a third Score parallel as well?

We can just about (but not quite) close things out with this scan. Inge gets one more addition in the form of an Emerald parallel, appropriately from his brief tenure in Oakland in 2012. I only scored one AJax this time but I made it count in the looks department since it's a Topps Chrome Refractor. Palmer gets a couple more interesting UD items and a '95 Pinnacle Museum Collection card of his own. I have 21 cards from that parallel and another four on my list! And Tony Phillips gets three more added to his total (257, again, a TCDb lead) thanks to Stadium Club parallels.

We're not quite done though because there's still this oversized item:

Palmer joins Barry Larkin as having one of these cards in my collection from 1994 Upper Deck All-Star Jumbos. While a chunk of the cards focused on one player, this one pairs up Dean-o with ex-Giant and new teammate for 1994 Will Clark. Palmer's fellow corner IF put up five straight All-Star seasons between 1988-92 in San Fran, and he'd make his final Midsummer Classic team in '94. Dean, for his part, put up 19 homers during that shortened campaign but wouldn't reach the All-Star game until 1998 with the Royals.

Hooray, I've finally covered all of these Sportlots additions! Next time I expect you'll be feasting your eyes on a very generous trade package from one of the coolest bloggers around, and then I'll get to my backlog of other stuff (eBay, a show, and TCDb trades, at least). Happy almost baseball season, y'all!

2022 eBay purchases: remembering the -embers

While I'm trying to keep up some relatively positive posting momentum, here's a look at my personal eBay wins from the months of November and December:

When talking about sets that are important in the hobby's history, 1996 Leaf Signature's one-auto-per-pack product ranks way up there. Thanks to eBay I scored my 10th from that iconic set, and second of PC guy Dean Palmer. In this case it's the Silver version (which you can kind of tell by the stamp), and those were generally limited to 1000 copies (Bronze were 3500, Golds were 500). I already own the Bronze and just need the Gold to round out Dean-o's run of mainstream certified autos. The clean look and relatively low print run meant I didn't think twice about paying not quite $3.25 for this.

Would it be an eBay roundup without something purchased from my favorite seller, markaguirre22? Back around Thanksgiving I won the pair of Zach Putnam Topps Mini parallels you see above. Again, I don't put much thought or money into the on-demand stuff, but the Blue /10 was just $2 and the Orange /25 half that, so I was cool plunking down $3 plus tax (and free shipping) to add those.

And once again he was super nice to throw in some extras of guys he knows I collect! The Hill minis are from 2008 Ginter and are the A&G Back and Black Border versions. Meanwhile, Larkin's cards hail from 2001 Pacific Private Stock and 2011 Topps mini inserts. I already owned all four but will be happy to use these as trade bait.

Switching over to football briefly, here's a not-quite-maize plate repping my team that will be continuing its playoff quest this Saturday. Standout CB Marlin Jackson appeared on a number of cards in Topps' 2005 Draft Picks & Prospects product back when Topps was able to produce those (and actually did a nice job!). What you see here isn't a base card plate, but one used for printing his Senior Standouts Relics jersey insert. A slight twist is that this is one of those products where you could find both the front and back plates, and in this case we have the latter. Here's the back of that jersey card (which I own) for comparison:

I believe this is just my second back printing plate card to go along with a Topps Mayo of Adrian Arrington. As you can see, the color yellow didn't factor much into the rear of this card, but it's a different story on the front with Jackson seen in Michigan's iconic uniform.

For under $8.50 delivered I scored my first Jackson 1/1 and his 23rd hit overall. The seller took a page out of markaguirre22's book and threw in some cool UM-specific extras:

That's three RCs of former TE/WR Devin Funchess plus a Topps Magic Mini of WR great Braylon Edwards. Once again I have all of these but the gesture was very nice, plus I happen to know someone who could use the Braylon!

Back to baseball. We're coming up on almost seven years since Doug sent me what was my first card of UM pitcher Karl Kauffmann, a player who wasn't even on my radar at the time. Kauffmann had only recently signed with the Wolverines, and even if he'd been with the team for a year or two, it was rare for players who hadn't been drafted yet to appear on cards. But thanks to Leaf's Perfect Game product, I had the start of my PC of the future Rockies prospect.

Flash forward to a couple weeks ago and I snagged my second plate from this same set on eBay. Like the one above, the one Doug sent me (a yellow version) isn't a 1/1, but one of two made instead. I'm not sure how that works with these All-American Classic plates--fronts and backs? Maybe something having to do with these saying "Base - Common"? Still, while not true 1/1s, they're fun cards to find and can still join my plate/1-1 collection. And would you believe that I paid just a bit over $2 to get this in my mailbox? Not bad, eh?

To close things out this evening I have a pair of Bowman Draft plates of pitcher Clayton Richard from two different years and separate auctions. Up top is the Magenta plate from the base 2005 product, which featured Richard's first MLB cards. He definitely looks extra creepy and possessed with his eyeballs looking like they're 100% white in the scan!

The other is from the 2009 product, though I'll mention that Clayton did appear in the 2008 version as well. The 2009 base card included stats from his 2008 MLB debut campaign with the White Sox, though he'd only be with them for part of the season when that card was produced, getting sent to San Diego in July of '09 in the deal that brought Jake Peavy to the South Side.

Thanks to these purchases--$6.64 for the '05 card and $7.63 for the other--I now count 12 different 1/1s in his PC, second only to Rich Hill's ~26 (still TBD) and one better than J.J. Putz's 11. Those are also my earliest plates of his as the oldest I previously owned were three of his four from 2011 Topps flagship.

So once again without spending a crazy amount I added some very nice stuff to a few of my PCs thanks to eBay. I look forward to showing off more additions in the form of the rest of my TCDB deals from this year before the end of the week!

TCDB trade roundup: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

I actually had some intention of getting this post done over the weekend but then TCDB needed to do its database migration and I didn't want to put this together without access to that, so here we are!

Again, I don't always feel like I have to have a theme, but I came up with eight trades that brought me between one and five cards and thought that would be a fun grouping. So here we go!

Deal #1 today is from Texas A&M fan amalum who sent me five total cards (one that's since gone out in another deal) for a college uni card of his team. I scored this quartet:

Yes I do get Verlanders from TCDB deals from time to time, and spoiler alert: you're about to see another one. The football cards were enjoyable adds as well. Calloway's obviously long been retired but Peppers (Pats) and Wormley (Steelers) are still active.

Next is a single card from BLWinborn40, a member I've now traded with twice. Not only did our first deal go just fine, but he also has more than 1000 successful transactions. So when my end of the trade fell off the face of the earth for about a month I knew not to blame him, and that paid off when it showed up from the black hole that USPS randomly assigns some PWEs for temporary storage. Anyway, I happily snagged this card in return for a couple 1996 and '97 Finest Silver Braves:

As far as manurelics go these plasticky 70th anniversary logos are kind of goofy, but at the cost of a couple cheap 90s cards I'm glad to grab another Verlander. It's actually my fourth manu-card of JV, with the others being more patch-like:

So it's no big deal to me that it's not some "premium" card because it's basically just a fun insert of one of my favorite players. And it was worth the wait!

Next, hey, do you all remember TCDB user cjjt, the guy who sent me the Michigan box stuffed with his Wolverine football (and others) dupes? Well he saw a few Michigan cards on my trade list and told me to pick out a few on his list to make a deal. I think that went very well:

Arrington is numbered /125, Avant 500, and Hart 999. Biakabutuka is a typically sweet Pinnacle Dufex card. And Harbaugh is from the hard-to-scan '98 Score Showcase Series parallel. Those bottom two guys are doing a fantastic job with the 7-0 Wolverines this year and I'm grateful for Hart's seemingly complete recover from a scary seizure he suffered on the sideline last week at Indiana. The quality of these inserts reminds me that I need to find more stuff on Chris' wantlist because there's much more available where this came from!

Kansas City guy homerjg007 was nice enough to work with me on a deal where I sent him 11 cards, a chunk of which were '96 Flair baseball dupes, for these four:

I'm slowly building a decent little Jesse Franklin collection and if I can keep adding Michigan uni cards like the Prizm insert above I'll be glad to continue that. I can't have Too Many Grandersons like the 2012 Heritage Chrome (#d /1963) above, even if he's with the Yanks. And a pair of excellent '97 Dean Palmers (Finest Silver Refractor and Pinnacle Totally Certified Platinum Blue /1999) bolster my #1 position on the site with 435 of his cards, nearly 150 better than the #2 collector. 90s inserts rule!

jj00148 is also a fan of a top-10 football team this year in Tennessee, who just knocked off Alabama in an instant classic. Anything that pisses off Nick Saban is good in my book. Anyway, I was able to flip him a pair of numbered football inserts I grabbed from the quarter box at a show for this Wolverine pair:

These are of course my two favorite players from the 2008 draft class, and among my all-time top 10: the previously seen Hart plus a new Henne as well. Mike's card is a 2008 Bowman Chrome Bronze parallel that's numbered /329. Meanwhile, Chad's card was found in 2008 Donruss Gridiron Gear's Next Generation Silver version and is limited to 250 copies. Football inserts rule too!

If anyone is a fan of one or more of 2022 playoff heroes, Tigers that actually did well this season, or twice-fired managers, you'll enjoy this quartet from Martinma21 that I got in return for some 2020 Heritage and '21 Panini Mosaic cards:

Just to remind everyone, I was in the #CroneZone before it was cool! Though he finished the regular season in a bit of a slump he came up aces in the Padres' surprising upset of the Dodgers, going 7/16 with a homer and five RBI, including a game-winning two-run single to clinch the NLDS in game 4. Here you see him represented twice among the 60 total cards I now own of him. Greene is also an up-and-comer and I like the look of his '21 Donruss Optic Rated Prospect card even though "Rated Rookie" just sounds so much better. And the 2016 Bowman Family Tree Green parallel (/99) is my second of the six versions of the insert that pairs former Cardinals and Royals manager Mike Matheny with his son Tate.

Next, vintage lovers will likely get a kick out of my two-for-five deal with SaveDaKid. I was able to send him a pair of 2007-08 Topps basketball inserts for these:

If you're in this scan you're a winner, literally. Gator and Northrup were key pieces of the '68 champion Tigers, not that either knew that was in their future when their photos were taken for those '67 Topps issues that still look terrific today. The late Bergman had three years to wait until he'd enjoy the same celebration after he was shown on his '81 Topps Traded card depicting him with his third of four franchises (five if you count his very temporary stay with the Phillies in '84). Morris, the ace of the '84 staff, was still going strong over his HOF career in '86 when he won a career-high 21 games for the first of two seasons (and 20 for the second of three), with those stats captured on his '87 Drake's issue. Finally, star DB Rick Volk won it all in his second NFL season with Baltimore in 1968, four years before the Topps card you see above was made. What a great bunch of champs this group is!

And lastly, I'm happy to end this post on a strong note--a 90s inserts rule! note, to be precise--thanks to a deal I made with SeventhSon in which I sent a small mix of stars for the three below (plus another since included in a trade mailer):

Mr. Padre was the subject of many a great card from that decade, and even though the Ultra Diamond Mine insert is actually from 2000, we'll make that year an honorary member. Don't forget that we didn't really start getting great looking inserts until a few years in anyway. Regardless I love the diamond theme, silver foil, and great photo of the master of his craft.

No offense to that card at all but it can't hold a candle to the greatness of 1996 SPx and its Bound for Glory insert. If the first version of the die-cut hologram base set was a revelation, so was this chase set that also looked amazing.

And finally, yes, I consider the Silver and Gold versions of the base cards from 90s Finest to be inserts, and anyway, they rule. That's a great looking Maddux no matter what you call it.

That's eight more deals in the books but I still have a nice chunk left to cover in addition to a couplep more pending transactions there. To those I can add a couple eBay buys that'll get a post soon, and who knows what else. Look forward to reading about and seeing lots more cards soon!

TCDB trade roundup: I've got my mind set on you

I'm back today with a roundup of eight TCDB trades from the past few months. While I don't feel like every post in this series needs to have a theme, I decided to pick one for this post anyway: deals that brought me at least one card for any of the baseball sets I'm working on. Of course, I love to make bigger trades when I can, so these deals also include a number of my teams and player collections, so this'll still be a fun mix of new stuff.

There's a ton to look at, so let's get to it! I uploaded the scans in the order they appeared in my drafts folder, which were named alphabetically by member name, so these aren't in chronological order, which I figure doesn't really matter.

First up is Orioles fan Aschroyer. I swapped a few cards of his team for these:

The set wantlist card in question here is in the #6 spot: Benji Gil's '95 Finest base. I was happy to tack on some Topps-branded Minor League cards of former Wolverines Brewer, Criswell, Franklin, and Nwogu. And because his end of the deal included a Manny Machado RC I didn't care about, I was able to snag a jumbo relic swatch (my first) of Jake Cronenworth from last year's Select. Dig that pinstripe!

Another O's fan, doublee919, had been after a couple Ripken inserts I had listed, and we came to a pretty fair four-for one swap:

The first two are base cards from '94 SP and '99 Topps Opening Day, with an especially nice photo on the latter from back when Topps wasn't mailing it in. The '96 Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders card was a fun inclusion from a 90s inserts standpoint. And the set card for me is #3 of the 10-card 2632 insert Topps released in 2015. I now have eight of those and just need #s 6 and 9. And I'm glad they didn't make 2,632 of them!

Floridian FSCGrad777 (who would have thought) originally reached out to me on Twitter, I believe, and we were able to put together a trade I know I was stoked about. I ended up with the following 15 cards in return for just five:

Blomgren and Hajjar are Michigan guys, of course. The Gwynn (Epix!), Larkin (Silver!), and Maddux (Staremasters! #d /1500) were pure "90s inserts rule" picks and there's nothing more that needs to be said other than I love them. Evans was a fun throwback that made for a good throw-in. And the Palmer I believe was a bonus as well.

Even more Palmers, including a Refractor and Atomic Refractor? Yes please! Ripken's a '97 Finest Silver just like his NL counterpart above. Tettleton's '96 Finest Refractor scan actually does it justice, which is great. And the very last card, Andres Galarraga's base from the same product, is the one that lowered the number on another wantlist.

I hit up member George Hayes primarily for a little set help as he happened to be one of the few folks on the site who could move the needle on one of my longest set-builds, and a few others too:

Abbott's a '96 Pinnacle Starburst Artist's Proof because hell yeah! (And '90s inserts rule!) Greenberg and McLain look great in the classy '94 Ted Williams product. Palmer's '94 UD Electric Diamond parallel is another notch in his belt. And then we have four set wants. Servais is from '95 Donruss, down to just one card needed for Series 1. The big gets were Olerud and Gonzalez out of '97 Score Hobby Reserve, specifically the cards with the "HR-" prefix on the numbers on the back. I've been working on replacing the incorrect versions I unknowingly had for years and now I'm back down to two, I believe. And Piazza's card is one I didn't realize counted toward a full set of '98 UD--an SP of him from his brief (five games and eight days) tenure with the Marlins that year before the Dodgers star got flipped to the Mets. So consider that one done. Again.

My deal with Washington state member nwcardsupplies hinged mostly on set wants so it's perfect for this recap. Colin was great to work with and very patient when I realized after we agreed to our deal that my inventory was off and I was missing one of his cards. I was able to buy another copy on eBay and send it his way since there's no way I want a bad reputation on a site that's so amazing for traders. Here's what I ended up with:

Scan 1 of 2 is mostly set wants out of 1994 and '95 Finest, '95 Donruss, and '97 Score Hobby Reserve again (though unfortunately I didn't ask him to check the numbering on the latter and it ended up being the wrong version. Life goes on.) Maddux's '95 Donruss appearance here technically doesn't go towards the set but his PC instead since I'm currently only chasing Series 1 and he's the first card found in the second series.

Scan the second opens with five more cards destined for set storage. The first is the start of my chase of '95 Skybox E-Motion's Cal Ripken Jr. Timeless set, and next to it is another from 2015 Topps's 2632-themed chase set. Then we switch over to another Junior, Griffey, and three of his 2016 Topps The Kid inserts. My pursuit of that set now stands at 16 of 30, so not bad.

The others here are sweet PC cards of a couple favorites. Barry's is a '98 Score Showcase parallel while the late Tony Phillips appears on a '96 Fleer Update Tiffany parallel and '98 Score Angels team set Platinum variation.

My transaction with Puma1125 is the biggest swap you'll see in this post as I sent him 85 cards towards his '95 Score wantlist and got a solid 36 back that I wanted:

This one brought back a great mix of years, brands, and players. A couple of old Evans cards from his pre-Tigers days, a post-Detroit Granderson, two of Griffey (showing off that sweet swing), two more of Gwynn (I love me some 90s Score parallels, as this post makes obvious), and a couple more of ace closer Hernandez.

Herndon and Lemon were '84 Tigers favorites (and beyond), of course. I keep sneaking in new Larkins wherever I can, even low-end stuff like Classic. And Maddux continues making a good number of appearances in trades I'm showing off this evening.

Peaches and Stanley are also Tigers favorites from the past. The two Ripken inserts were a win for me, especially the '97 Topps All-Stars card from one of my favorite Topps products of all time. I managed to pair up Tram (1982 Topps Squirt) and Lou ('87 OPC Stickers) for a double-play in this scan. And then we have four of the five set wants from this deal: Jim Thome from '94 Finest and then a trio for my own set build of '95 Score Series 1 (which is now complete!).

The final set card (and baseball fodder here) is Donnie Baseball's '96 Score subset appearance, the last one I needed for the last of my extra sets that are for trade. As you can see I was also able to tack on some fun football PC additions like Anderson's Michigan uni Classic issue, some '93 Topps Gold, and a 2008 Cleveland team set issue of Braylon.

My deal with RJeng is another that involved a mistake I had to correct as I'd mis-IDed one of the cards I'd sent him and had to find a replacement on eBay once again. It all worked out, though, and my side included these:

Another '95 Finest base, this time of former Pirate Esteban Loaiza, is the lone set card. The injured Mize is seen on yet another RC for his collection, in this case '21 Bowman Chrome. Larkin's cameo here is courtesy of Topps' 2021 Double Headers insert I've mentioned before, and it reprints his first Topps card (not necessarily RC) on the front and final base appearance on the back:

For all my squawking about too many reprint sets this is one to which I'll give a thumbs up. Fellow 90s star Gwynn is last up with a Denny's hologram from '94 when they were made by Upper Deck. Sweet!

Colorado resident twprkj was the other half of tonight's final deal, another one that involved a bit of a screw-up. We agreed on a three-for-four deal where I got the larger end, and unfortunately the most valuable item in the PWE I sent his way, a ~$5 basketball RC, got absolutely mangled. He was actually content to just take the loss but I told him I'd handle it, and after a bit I was able to nab another copy of that card on eBay and send it his way along with a couple bonus cards--in a BMWT, just to be safe.

Here's what he sent me:

'95 Finest figured in the first and last trades in this post, go figure, and why not '90s slugger Jeff Bagwell? Pinnacle's 2013 Swing for the Fences acetate (or acetate-adjacent) inserts look amazing and I knew I needed to have one. You won't see Ryan LaMarre pop up on here too often since I've nabbed most of his easier to get cards, but here's one I didn't own: his 2016 Ginter SP RC. And speaking of Ginter, here's another trade where I found a way to up my Larkin collection thanks to a 2020 Chrome mini. He also threw in that Detroit olde English "D" sticker which looks awesome. I'm not sure if it's from any licensed baseball product or just a standalone thing but I'm happy to have it either way.

After I took care of the issue mentioned above, Eric expressed his appreciation a couple times in messages to me, then sent me the following wants, which proved that there were no hard feelings and that he's a good dude:

The Henne card is (I believe) a base offering from Panini's 2014 Rookies & Stars Longevity product (and not the Longevity parallel of the Rookies & Stars product. So confusing!) It's been long enough (pun intended) since former Dolphins #1 overall pick Jake Long suited up for St. Louis that I initially associated the Rams team card from 2015 Topps with current CB David Long, even though he wasn't even in college at that point! And the biggest surprise was a jersey relic of WR Amara Darboh from 2017 Panini out of an insert called Squires Jerseys. I didn't have this one yet so it's relic #14 and hit #43 of the former Wolverine, but given his Darboh collection is also one of the best on the site, I wasn't remotely surprised that the TCDB images of the card were provided by Jeff.

I've still got quite a few trades to cover, some large and some small, so you should expect a few more posts like this coming up reasonably soon, though likely without a theme, at least an intentional one. In the meantime, I hope some of you take this post as a sign to get trading on TCDB!