2/4/23 card show report: We Bought a Dime Box!

Considering I'm planning on heading to my monthly show tomorrow, tonight's probably a good time to get the cards I brought home from February's posted and recapped!

A few weeks ago I headed to Taylor as I usually do once a month for my favorite show. This time there was a twist, though. Not only did my usual seller have an assortment of dime boxes to peruse, but he had a sign near them offering them up for $25 each! That definitely piqued my interest. I didn't immediately jump on that, though, and I took a while compiling 50 cards from those boxes plus nine from the $2-or-3/$5 selection.

It felt like kind of a waste to head home with just 59 cards for $20, though, so I checked with the seller about the dime box offer. Did he care if I built one dime box out of the six or eight or so that were there? "Do whatever you need to do," he replied. I made sure not to take advantage of that by stuffing the hell out of one of the 3200-count boxes, plus I had no intention of spending an hour-plus filtering out specific cards. Basically I tried to grab handfuls of what looked good from each box, focusing mainly on baseball with some football along for the ride.

In the end I was happy with what I put together, which you can kind of see for yourself in the image above. It worked out to a bit more than two rows of baseball, a bit more than one of football, plus maybe half or slightly more than one row of basketball that I didn't notice. The dude let me fold the 50 dime cards I'd grabbed earlier into that box, so my total was $25 for that plus $15 for the nine two-buck cards I'd grabbed. I returned home to the fun of flipping through that box.

And fun it was! I pulled a few things for myself and lots for others which will be heading out in trade packages. Nothing extremely valuable, not that I expected there to be, but I got my money's worth in useable cards and entertainment value, that's for sure. It's possible I'll list some of what isn't already earmarked for others on TCDb, such as solid groups of recent Topps flagship and Heritage commons, but even if I don't I'm satisfied with what I pulled.

Here's a quick look at my keepers from the dime and $2 boxes:

The baseball content included a new Heritage Cronenworth for me plus a few former Tigers, one of those appearing in a Detroit uniform. Subsequent runs through the box produced two more for my collection: another Scherzer (also as a Met) plus an Indians card of Victor Martinez, a guy I don't go out of my way to collect but whose cards I do keep.

The dime box produced four new basketball items for me in former Wolverines Caris LeVert (x2), Jordan Poole, and Duncan Robinson. '20'-'21 Donruss was the most prominent set from the basketball group and I'm considering putting those up on TCDb if I think they'll generate a few trades. Meanwhile the McGary jersey of course came out of the $2 box and it looks nice with a die-cut design and solid blue swatch. That's my fifth relic and eighth overall hit of McGary.

Switching over to football, a couple transfers were the stars here. My original perusal of the dime boxes while at the show produced the pair of Thomas Rawls (who transferred to Central Michigan) cards, and after I scanned everything I came up with one more base card of the RB not seen here. Ex-Patriot Chase Winovich was a fun find as well on a solid Donruss design. And GOAT DB Charles Woodson adds to his lofty PC total (TCDb says 331) with a select base card from a couple years ago.

The $2 box supplied the rest you see here, including my first two hits of transfer TE Devin Asiasi, who was a great recruit that headed home to UCLA after spending the 2016 season in Ann Arbor. New England took him in the third round in 2020 and he caught one TD pass for them later that year. After a single appearance in 2021 the Bengals picked him up and he got in 12 games this past season, catching a pair of passes.

I believe both autographs you see from 2020 Panini Illusions were together in the $2 box, an exciting find for me because I previously had zero hits of him to my name and I'm making more of an effort to track down certified autographs of any former Michigan Football players I can. The card in the dead center of the scan is the base version of the Rookie Signs insert and is numbered /199 while to its right you see the Black version which is numbered /50. These additions make the single-season Wolverine member #238 of my UM Football PC.

And last up is a solid looking relic of highly ranked WR Nico Collins, who left college having not seen as many targets as he deserved, only to be stuck with the Texans and their abysmal QB options. He's seen here on a rookie year 2021 Panini Playbook jersey card that counts as his fourth relic in my PC and fifth hit overall.

Barring unforeseen circumstances I should be heading back to Taylor tomorrow having opted against going today due to a snowstorm that currently has it looking beautiful outside, if not conducive to safe driving. I don't expect to be bringing another dime box home but you never know! I look forward to seeing if I get any further value and entertainment out of that and in the meantime hopefully I'll have more great items to include in upcoming trade envelopes after tomorrow afternoon.

7/2/22 show report: freedom isn't free but dime boxes practically are

(I don't want to forget to mention that I didn't skip June's show, I just ended up with practically nothing to show off since almost all of it was trade bait destined for packages, many of which were shipped out, so it wasn't worth doing a recap.)

Like I said in last night's post I had a great time as usual at the monthly card show yesterday. For whatever reason the crowd was relatively small at the time I got there so I had a lot more breathing room and felt better about taking my time. First I worked on the $1 and $2 boxes and then I still had enough energy (and wasn't totally stiff from standing for an hour-plus) so I wandered over to the dime boxes. This time all of the boxes that weren't $1s and up were 10/$1 (he usually has quarter and $0.50 boxes) so I tried to take advantage of that while I could.

In the end I came home with 80 dime cards, 23 from the dollar box, and 20 more that were $2 apiece. Yes, that totals $71 and not that's not what I paid because this guy is awesome and told me my total was $60. Hell yeah! That's why I'm a repeat customer and pretty much make the monthly trip just to head to his table.

As usual, first you'll get a look at the general trade bait I scored that's up for grabs:

Everything here was a dime except for the Erickson ('91 Topps Desert Shield) and Anderson dual relic. Young is /475, Anderson is /200, Carlson is /125, Fasano is /897, Helu is /897, Jones is /249, and Ollison is /299. I'll grab numbered cards from dime boxes all day every day!

And the rest of the trade bait. Treadwell (/599) and the Jets insert (/800) were dime cards. No, Jeff, you don't need either Darboh (according to TCDB), though you're welcome to them if you like having dupes.

If you see anything you want please claim it in the comments!

Ok, now for the stuff I kept for myself:

Part 1: baseball. The first six came out of the dime boxes. The top three are 2020 Topps and Update Turkey Red inserts, and I thought it was cool getting two of Junior on the teams he's most known for. Meanwhile the GQ cards are 2013s. I grabbed a few more since I couldn't remember if I had them or not, and those ended up being dupes, but they'll happily find good homes soon enough. JV is a 2020 Topps Holiday card, and I can never have enough of his cards. And lastly, the Pudge jersey /250 from 2002 UD 40-Man was just $2 so it seemed well worth picking up. I now appear to have 10 hits of his, one of which is an autograph, with the other nine being relics like this one.

Part 2: basketball and football. Everything here except for the final two cards also came from the dime boxes. THJ's and Duncan Robinson's cards were the right color for me to pick up for sure. Transfer TE Asiasi's first Select card at the top was a RC need (my third of 13 if I'm tracking correctly) while I also added Prizm parallels of him and stud C Cesar Ruiz, all from the 2020 product. 2021 draftees Chris Evans and Kwity Paye are next and appear on the retail versions of their Panini Absolute cards from last year. You can tell the versions apart easily because despite both of them having that foil design, the hobby cards are serial numbered and these aren't.

And lastly I came up with two new football hits, both of which I believe were out of the $2 boxes. First is a large 2017 Spectra jersey swatch of the previously seen Darboh, numbered /199. It's my 42nd hit of the former WR, and like Jeff I have a crazy number of his better cards, probably because we keep helping each other out with dupes (mostly Jeff!). Joining him was transfer RB Justin Fargas (whose USC Trojans are joining the Big Ten!) on a 2003 Bowman Signs of the Future auto. Although I could have sworn I already had something of him I was wrong so this is my first hit of Huggy Bear Jr. That makes him the 232nd member of my football hits collection, which is nearing the 1600-card milestone, by the way.

As usual you can expect to see some of what I picked up in some blogger trade recaps once I get them mailed out, and the rest is available here or on TCDB. Until next show, have a great July and stay cool!

10/1/21 card show report: I want Blue to show me the way

With a big Michigan game looming at noon on Saturday (which went quite well for the Maize & Blue, if you hadn't heard), I once again took a Friday off to head to the monthly show in Taylor a couple days ago. Although I was disappointed to see that my favorite seller still had no dime boxes with him, and that most of what was in the $0.50/$1/$2 boxes was as uninteresting as the last couple shows, I did have some fun going through his quarter boxes, pulling out 60 items, mostly for trade bait, for $15. Given how busy his tables were when I got there, though, I started at the table of a guy I don't remember seeing before. He had a shoebox of 2/$3 autos and relics, of which I grabbed eight, plus some quarter cards that were serial numbered. I snagged eight of those as well, dropping another $14.

Again, it was nothing huge to write home (or blog) about, but I still accomplished my goal of adding some trade bait plus new items to my collection--two scans' worth--so I left reasonably satisfied. Here are my scores from this trip:

My baseball pickups all came out of the big quarter boxes. Griffey's is a base from Topps' 2006 Co-Signers product, and while some might call the design "busy" I find it shiny and fun, plus it's a new Junior! I still appreciate Kinsler's time with the Tigers enough that I sometimes collect cards of him with the team for whom he's more well known, the Rangers, such as Bowman Chrome Refractors from 2011 and '13. Maddux was my other baseball twofer thanks to a 2016 Topps Wrigley insert and '96 Collector's Choice Silver Signature parallel. '96 was definitely a good year for UDCC's design. Last up is a 2002 Leaf Rookies & Stars subset issue of Cal Ripken Jr., meaning I have 3/4 of his run in the bunch (missing #251 celebrating his '82 AL ROY). Not a bad little group with three of my big four non-Michigan PCs hit!

Meanwhile the Michigan side of things was a full nine cards strong with the three other sports represented. Coach Juwan Howard stars on one of the two numbered cards I grabbed for myself, a '98-'99 UD AeroDynamics Tier 1 die-cut that was limited to 2000 copies. It's even more enjoyable collecting him since his successful return to Ann Arbor has made some "experts" look foolish for predicting that he'd be a bust.

Of course football was the main attraction and I scored seven cards of six subjects. TE Devin Asiasi transferred out to UCLA but remains in my collection thanks to non-Bruins cards like his 2020 Absolute Retail base, which I'm not sure counts as a RC. I'll decide at time point. Former UM footballer and US president Gerald Ford gets in on the action with a 2015 Topps baseball insert. Quality OL/unquality person Taylor Lewan pops up twice on Score Gold parallels from 2017 and 2020, with the design on the latter much better since it goes all the way around the border. Bengals TE Tony McGee is the subject of a '96 Pro Line parallel that was a staple of the era: a Printer's Proof. Cleveland WR DPJ's partially airbrushed uni/helmet comes courtesy of 2020 Leaf Draft. And top 10 college football player of all time Charles Woodson continues to appear in the base sets of newer Panini products, such as 2020 Mosaic, in this case with his first/final team, the Raiders.

And finally we have one more quarter numbered card, one that I was excited to dig up: a Mike Knuble 2001-02 Pacific Hobby LTD parallel that's numbered 76/99 on the back. I'm a fan for a few reasons: I love Pacific's base designs from the time, their numbered parallels are fun, and Knuble's one of my favorite Michigan Hockey alumni as he also played for the Wings, winning the '97-'98 cup that brought glory back to Hockeytown. There are few ways to spend a quarter better than this!

It's hard to believe that just two more months and their respective shows remain in 2021. Given how bad things were last year (and in some cases continue to be thanks to selfish idiots) I'm grateful to have been able to get back to them this year even if the results aren't always what I hope.

But speaking of results I did hope for, Saturday's destruction of Wisconsin has me in good spirits as I look to have another good week of collecting no matter what it brings. That should include a post showing off another PWE that showed up the other day, one that brings some shine to ward off the recent cloudy weather here in Ann Arbor. Stay tuned and Go Blue!

TCDB trade roundup: c2cigars, deadhead11, and Mjprigge

I had a pretty busy couple weeks in terms of card stuff that feels like it included everything but blogging. Lots of logging/scanning, going to a show, and proposing, sending and receiving some TCDB trades.

Speaking of the latter, I've been fortunate enough to have three envelopes show up recently thanks to that site (with at least one more on the way!), so I thought it would be fun to do a second (I believe?) TCDB trade roundup. Here's a quick look at what I received:

First up was either a PIF (pay it forward) or RAK (random act of kindness) from C2Cigars, a.k.a. Chuck. If his name sounds familiar to you, that's because I was able to meet up with him and Paul at a show in Paul's neck of the woods late in 2019. Continuing the spirit of a thread that's now more than four years old and 2500+ posts strong, Chuck sent me the following nine cards out of the blue:

The first two are 2021 Donruss base issues of Tigers teammates Miggy and the Candyman. I think the design could have used less white and more color, but it's cool having a couple more 2021 Tigers in my collection since I don't buy packs or anything. Candelario's lacked the power he showed off last year, but it's fun to see Cabrera chasing a couple milestones as his career winds down.

Besides those I was treated to a seven-spot of '21 Heritage Tigers. Topps is running back the '72 design this year, and it features a solid design, though I still prefer action shots to this posed stuff. But it does hit some classic notes nicely, so there's that. Miggy and Candelario are also featured here, along with pitchers Tyler Alexander, Gregory Soto, and Spencer Turnbull. Also in the picture is slugger C.J. Cron, who I was disappointed to see gone after his powerful start to the 2020 season was interrupted by injury. And then there's my favorite of the bunch: a throwback to the multiplayer RCs of yesteryear. This one includes a trio of pitching prospects: the recently DFAed Beau Burrows, who lost his lunch on the mound and then his spot on the team; Kyle Funkhouser, who's been quite good out of the 'pen; and Rony Garcia, whom Detroit snagged from the Yankees in the 2019 Rule 5 draft.

I also want to give extra credit to Chuck as Alexander's card is a short print, one of three Tigers in the high numbers (including Joe Jimenez and JaCoby Jones).

And why not include the backs for completeness?

It was very cool of him to send these my way and fortunately for me I'd already gathered a few items for him before supplementing them with a few more at last week's show (recap coming soon-ish). I may also follow his lead and pick a random TCDBer to send a PIF to so the fun continues.

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Next up is a deal I completed with John from Minnesota who goes by deadhead11 (with an assist from Paul!). A fan of Saints and Shaq, among others, John DMed me asking about a couple New Orleans hits I scored on the cheap from my monthly show, wondering if we could work out a deal around them. Hey, I'm happy to take a look, at least.

We batted the proposal back and forth a few times, and thanks to a few cards Paul was generous enough to PWE to him on my behalf, we agreed on a deal that brought me some cool Michigan Football stuff, including a pair of new autographs:

The first nine include vets like WR Derrick Alexander ('99 Finest), OT John "Jumbo" Elliott ('94 Stadium Club), insane Viking C Steve Everitt ('95 Pacific), and QB Elvis Grbac ('99 Pacific). Rookie year cards comprise transfer TE Devin Asiasi (2020 Playoff RC), beastly DL/LB Brandon Graham (2010 Playoff Contenders Rookie of the Year Contenders insert), transfer QB Ryan Mallett (2011 Finest RC), LB Jonas Mouton (2011 Rookies & Stars Longevity Silver parallel /249), and transfer QB Jack Rudock (2016 Panini Prizm RC). I loved getting some of the lesser seen vets like the two OL, and the rookies were helpful with my project where I'm chasing those, including guys who transferred out (Asiasi and Mallett), and new additions like Rudock. I appear to be just one first-year shy for the two quarterbacks here, while I own just a pair of Asiasis.

Before we get to the autographs there's one more base to admire, with former #1 Alexander getting the die-cut/horizontal treatment courtesy of 2001 Pacific Crown Royale. How could I not try to swing that as part of the deal?

But my real prizes were a pair of Thomas Rawls autographs (speaking of transfers!). John had one listed and came up with another one, which was a nice bonus for me. The Wolverines/CMU Chippewas RB can be seen here on a pair of signatures from 2016 Panini products: Infinity's Infinite Ink (/188) and Prestige. Both are great in their own right with the card on the left being thick, shiny, and numbered, and the other showing off that full bleed Prestige look that I tend to appreciate.

These are my first two solo autographs of Rawls to go along with a relic, auto/relic, and plate.

I was very happy with my experience dealing with John and would highly recommend him thanks to his patience and willingness to work out a fair deal.

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And finally, hot out of the mailbox today, is the result of a deal with TCDBer/Tweep Matt of Wisconsin, whom many of you know as Mjprigge on the former and @mjpmke on the latter. The author/librarian/Brewers fan tweeted that he was hoping to try to put together the fun debut of Upper Deck's SPx from 1996. I almost immediately asked him to send me a wantlist since I had a few I was happy to give up. We ended up matching up for five that he needed, plus a college football autograph I'd grabbed at a past show. In return, I was happy to get the following in an easily worked out PWE trade:

I think I was the most excited about card #1 here since it's the oldest: a '69 Topps Deckle Edge of former Tigers great Willie Horton. Bulking up his collection is something I've been trying to focus on recently so scoring something like that in a deal is great.

The next four cards represent three of his teammates that combined to help the Tigers win the '68 Series. Mickey Stanley is seen here on his '73 Topps base, on which someone noted in pen that the Gold Glove CF that year also played some SS, which is a bit of an understatement. Detroit manager Mayo Smith made the ballsy call to move Stanley to the all important infield spot for the World Series, replacing all glove/no-bat SS Ray Oyler while fitting OFs Horton, Al Kaline, and Jim Northrup, into the lineup as well. Man did that pay off!

The aforementioned Northrop comes up next on his '74 Topps base, and he took advantage of his '68 Series at-bats with a pair of homers and 8 RBI in the win.

Then awesome story and PH great Gates Brown joins Stanley's second appearance out of 1976 SSPC, with that product continuing to be the gift that keeps on giving. Brown chipped in 6 HR during the title-winning season, with a few coming in clutch situations off the bench.

Gates won a second ring as a coach with the Tigers in '84, a team that included former White Sox OF Chet Lemon, who came to Detroit in a swap that sent Steve Kemp to the Windy City in 1981, the year the card you see above was made by Topps . I'd say that deal worked out just fine for the good guys as Lemon put up eight solid-to-excellent campaigns in nine seasons in Motown, including a career-high 6.2 bWAR (matching the previous year) during that magical '84 season.

Last up in this scan is another ring winner, just one that didn't accomplish the feat with Detroit. I can't go that many posts on TMV without at least one Verlander, and here you can see the 2017 champ on a 2020 Topps League Leaders subset issue, which mentions his 21 wins to top the AL in 2019; teammate Gerrit Cole came in second with 20. Alas for the cheatin' Astros, they couldn't repeat the magic of 2017 for some reason, and fell to the Nats.

We're not quite done here, yet, though, because there's one more item remaining. Toymaker LJN co-produced these oversized oddballs, like Larkin's here, with Topps in 1989, and while the front looks normal enough, the back is definitely enough to throw most people for a loop. You could "play" audio clips on the top half of the back with a special record player that was sold separately (wasn't everything, back then?) making them a fun novelty, though obviously they never caught on.

Big thanks to Matt, who's a fun Twitter follow and excellent TCDBer, for another easy deal, our second (with the other happening about a year ago). I love helping people tackle sets when I can, and getting some very cool cards from a rock solid trade partner is just gravy.

At some point in the near future I'll have another recap of a deal made on the site with a familiar (at least to me) trader, but first I'll be showing off a couple other trade packages plus going over the results of my latest monthly show.

6/4/21 card show report: That's Bait

As much fun as I had at last month's show where I made good use of my favorite seller's $1 box, my enjoyment and loot were both doubled yesterday. How do you top a take-home like that? Cut prices in half! All of his cards that were previously a buck were now $0.50, and friends, I went nuts. The box you see above is the haul I brought home: 124 $0.50 cards and 130 dimes ($75, for those of you that are as math-challenged as I am). A few of the dimes went towards my collections, I found a ton of great stuff for upcoming trade packages, and I landed a ridiculous amount of general trade bait figuring I'd either find takers here or throw them on TCDB. At those prices I was much less likely to toss something back in the boxes, though I did tend to ignore the minors/low-end college hits. I grabbed so many cards thinking "This is only $0.50?!"

So have a quick look at my personal dime pickups and then settle in for a trade baitapalooza!

Just a reminder: almost everything here cost me a dime. Gwynn's first card is from the pre-Chronicles/Optic combo product 1998 Donruss Collections and is a chromed-out version of his Leaf base from that year. Flagship Donruss, Elite, and Preferred could also be found in those packs. Speaking of Donruss, I also found Mr. Padre's base from last year's product, at least the one that uses his more common name instead of an "Anthony" variation.

My lone personal pickup from the $0.50 was the '96 Studio Bronze Press Proof of Cal, and I was pretty excited to nab that parallel, one of "just" 2000 copies made! The foil's a bit messed up on the back but that doesn't bother me as I'm a huge fan of that year's design, and the product in general. To that I added a 2019 A&G Ginter Greats insert and 2020 Donruss base (I already had the variation of this one) for a dime each.

I've mentioned him enough here for all of you to know that I love collecting HOF former Wolverine George Sisler, and I snagged the 1999 UD Century Legends card you see above out of the dime box because I wasn't sure if I had it. As it turns out I didn't because it's actually an NNO (no number on the back) version with a Washington logo on something that looks like a circular sticker where the number would be:

Finally, on the basketball front I couldn't ignore a new Jamal Crawford insert for a dime. It's from 2012-13 Panini Prestige's Bonus Shots Gold parallel set and is numbered /249, which coincidentally seems like the number of years he played in the league!

I had even better luck when it came to football dimes, especially on the rookie card front. Card #1 is my first of TE Devin Asiasi, who played one season in Ann Arbor and then transferred back home to UCLA. He joins C Cesar Ruiz (RC #2) and LB Josh Uche (also #2, plus a Michigan uni!) out of 2020 Donruss. I was also very happy to find my third first-year of CB Jourdan Lewis, this one out of 2017 Playoff.

On the insert side of things, I believe the two Thomas Rawls parallels were pretty close together, if not back-to-back. The first is a 2016 Panini Sacrifice Die-Cut and is numbered /199 up front (and, yes, die-cut) while the other is an unnumbered Blue Press Proof from the following year's Donruss. Speaking of transfers, he also departed the Wolverines for his senior season, going up to Central Michigan before appearing in parts of four NFL campaigns.

One of my favorite recent guys, Denard Robinson, overlapped with Rawls' college career for a pair of seasons, and there was no way I was going to ignore his 2016 Prestige Xtra Points Green parallel you see above, because chances are good that if I didn't need it, Jeff would.

And then we have two more items of star WRs bookending Uche's RC. First up is a sweet Amani Toomer that isn't an insert but might as well be with its stylin' foil at the bottom. That's his 1996 Press Pass Paydirt base. On the other side is even more gold, specifically a Gold Medallion parallel of former #1 Derrick Alexander's '95 Ultra 2nd Year Standouts. I already had the regular version of that so I'm glad to have finished off the pair.

That was a pretty nice take-home for me, but obviously I'm even more excited about the cards I've already sorted into piles for future trade packages, plus this bonanza that I'm geeked to offer today.

Briefly, if you see anything that interests you, please leave a comment here, shoot me an email, or hit me up on Twitter, then I'll see about working something out with you. I'm being up front in stating that these cost me $0.50, so it's not like I'm gonna ask an arm and a leg. If you're already a common trade partner of mine, I may already have a stack going for you and will be happy to add to it. If we haven't dealt before I'll probably want to come up with a deal with you first.

Also, if anyone needs details on one or more of these (e.g. name, team, serial numbering, etc.), please let me know!

Baseball and football dimes. I leaned towards numbered stuff and parallels since those tend to be good items to have for TCDB deals. I don't know why most of the baseball ones were Twins, but maybe a Minnesota collector will want them!

Vertical baseball autos, auto/relics, and relics. (The Inscribed Overbay is actually a $1 card from last time, but I figured I might as well include it here.) A bunch of these (and the rest that you'll see) are also numbered.

Horizontal baseball autos, auto/relic, and relics. Beltre and Johnson hits for $0.50? Sign me up!

I even grabbed a few basketball autos (and one relic) to diversify my portfolio, as it were!

It wasn't on purpose, but football definitely overtook baseball in volume. Here's all the vertical autos and relics. Again, lots of numbered stuff.

And lastly, here's the horizontal football autos and relics.

I'm hoping at least a few of these result in deals here but if not I'll eventually get them added to TCDB and see what I can get done over there.

Once again I had a blast at a show, my second in as many months since it became possible to get back to them, and I'm already excited about the next one!

I believe my next post will cover the Facebook purchase I've teased a few times now, so stay tuned for that. While you're waiting, let's get trading!