2023 trade package #4: Dawg Day Cards

In the days since I last posted I've received even more amazing stuff from some very cool people, so it's about time I cover something else on my card desk.

This evening's envelope arrived earlier this month from Angus who I mostly think of as the writer of Dawg Day Cards, though he can also be found on TCDb (user ID armac). The Canadian fan of the Browns has been around for quite a while but we've only ever really interacted once, not quite four years ago when he and Night Owl met up at a show and they teamed up to send me some fun cards.

Angus may have had my address handy from that effort or he might have gotten it from someone I've dealt with on TCDb, but either way, he was very generous with the envelope he sent across the border:

In addition to a very nice note we'll start out with the baseball stuff. I love trading with Canadian folks because they have much easier access to stuff we don't down here, such as older Leaf cards (including the '85 Tram above) and the Canuck version of Panini's stickers. The trio of '90 stickers are as American as they team and players depicted, but the three '92s beneath them come straight from America's friendly northern neighbor. And boy do those crazy pixelated rainbow foil versions take me straight back to being a kid and ripping packs of these while trying to fill up my albums. Fielder was obviously an excellent choice for such a sticker that year.

On the football side, I suppose it would make a ton of sense that Angus would have some dupes of the guys who have been part of the Michigan-to-Cleveland pipeline. The four Braylon items are great, especially the trio from '05 Topps Heritage, including both variations of his RC, plus a foil (more like Chrome) parallel. Hoard was drafted by the Browns and spent his first six-plus seasons with the franchise, including their sneaky move to Baltimore. Long is a Michigan uni card and that made it a natural throw-in.

Here's where things got really impressive: this six-pack of autographs! Wait, let me be more specific: six Michigan uni autographs! Hell yeah! Angus did an amazing job picking them out so let's look at them one by one.

QB-turned-WR-turned-QB-again Devin Gardner earned himself a ton of respect on the field after gutting out wins (and losses) while often injured during some of the program's low years. He turned that resilience into a very respectable analyst career after the NFL didn't work out. But before that he made his way onto some very cool cards like the 2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions auto you see above. Though the super reflective foil doesn't lend itself to good scans, the in-hand item looks great with his signature and an all caps "GO WOLVERINES!" inscription atop a great college action shot. That's my 10th hit of DG and I'm happy to have hit that milestone, hopefully with more in my future.

Speaking of cards with tricky-to-scan reflections, next up is CB Marlin Jackson's 2005 SAGE Autographs Bronze auto. You can just barely see his very nice signature on the sticker, and this one is hand numbered 322/650. It's my 24th hit of the 2006 Super Bowl champ who picked off fellow Wolverine Tom Brady's pass to seal the Colts' win over the Pats in that season's AFC title game.

We'll proceed alphabetically with Mike McCray's 2018 Panini Elite Draft Picks auto. One of those products that's obviously geared toward collect collectors like me, it's a great one for finding hits of the less known guys like McCray, a LB that's made the transition from player to coach, joining former UM DC Don Brown at UMass. His autograph isn't much to look at but at least the card looks cool. I'll happily keep it with the other auto in his collection.

Guinea-born DE Kwity Paye is next, and he's the youngest player in this bunch, still playing for the Colts, who took him 21st overall in 2021. A force on the D-line (like a good number of guys the Wolverines have sent to the league recently), Paye put up some nice sack and TFL numbers in Ann Arbor. He certainly looks fearsome on the outstanding pair of autos Angus sent out of '21 Score, which I of course love thanks to the college action they capture here. The top card is the "base" version of the autograph while the one below it is the Gold Zone parallel. The pleasing pair jumps his collection up to three signed cards, and it was fun to receive them together in one envelope.

Heading back to the offensive side of the ball, we'll wrap up today's post with prolific #1 jersey-wearing WR David Terrell, whose three years in the Big House ended a year before I headed off to Ann Arbor myself. The 8th overall pick by Chicago in 2001, he was an NFL bust, but his college career meant the hype was off the charts when it came to cards. That's why you can see him on such items as the above 2001 Crown Royale Rookie Signatures auto, which is both signed on-card and numbered /250 (in that goofy but sort of endearing digital print way instead of foil stamping). He looks like he's about to run another route that finishes with him in the end zone, and the large signature goes nicely with the whole package. It's my 46th hit of Terrell, which along with the 56 I have of teammate and fellow '01 Bears draftee Anthony Thomas, gives me exactly 100 of a pair that will be forever linked in my mind.

Angus, once I again I want to thank you and say how much I appreciate the effort and generosity that went into sending this envelope over to me. And I'm happy to report that I'll be able to pay you back in kind relatively soon, though I'm thinking of waiting to hit up one more show in case I can sweeten the pot even more.

Everyone else, please stay tuned for some more excellent trades and PIFs, show pickups, eBay buys, and more, which I may actually get caught up on at some point!

2019 COMC purchases: superb basketball and football

It's been a superb Sunday here in Ann Arbor weather-wise considering it's just the second day of February.  Temperatures got up in the 50s a day after we were dealing with the usual cold and snow, and I definitely took advantage.

Now I'm sitting here putting together a post while glancing at the game every now and then, between two teams I don't really care about.  But the fact that it's Super Bowl Sunday is a good reminder that I still haven't covered all of my 2019 pickups.  This COMC recap and one more should do it.

Today I'll be showing off my basketball scores and, yes, some of the football as well!  (A quick note:  I don't have all of the former cataloged in my own albums or on TCDB yet as I've had to create their checklists myself, which sometimes takes a bit.)

I believe I mentioned the crazy number of plates I purchased in the last post, and a large chunk of the ones staying with me are surprisingly from basketball, my least favorite of the four major sports.  I'm not the type to pass up a good deal when it comes to my Michigan collections, though, and four of these were under $4, with the other less than $5.

Here's the backs so you can tell who actually appears on each card.  I landed my first plates of Burke and THJ (times two!), second of Rice, and fifth(!) of Sauce Castillo himself, Nik Stauskas.  All of them are from higher-end products meaning Panini did their thing where they affixed the plates to super thick pieces of cardboard.  Those are totally fine but I really like what they've done with colorful backs on the actual metal the last couple years.  Three of these were inserted into the following year's National Treasures products so checklisting them can take a bit of work.  But who cares, because five new basketball plates!

The football section is quite good as well, though you're in for a pretty good show in the final post of this series.  WR Amara Darboh's up first with a cool pair from 2017:  a Playoff autograph and Absolute dual jersey/football auto RC (#282/299).  As long as Panini keeps producing Playoff cards with college photos like that, I'll keep buying them!  Those two bookend my first 1/1 of former QB (and one-year WR) Devin Gardner.  It's a magenta plate from his only NFL card out of 2015 Topps Field Access, a product known more for its plethora of sticker autos.  He's looking quite acrobatic there for sure.

The middle contains three new players to the collection.  First is DL Rashan Gary, a former top college recruit who went to the Packers in the first round last year.  I came up with a 2019 Panini Legacy auto of him in a Michigan uni, which is awesome, though his signature is anything but.  Hey, they can't all look like Griffey's and Rivera's!

Next is his fellow New Jersey native Ron Johnson, not to be confused with the former Michigan RB.  This one played on the D-Line and was part of that same recruiting class, but he transferred out last year.  He's one of a few future college players I can name from the autograph portion of that 2016 Upper Deck USA set.

The last of the newbies is another former QB that changed positions like Gardner, but in Zach Gentry's case, the move to TE stuck, and it worked out ok for him since he got drafted by the Steelers.  His 2019 Contenders Draft auto looks pretty cool, which doesn't surprise me a bit, and he has a somewhat interesting signature too.

Moving on we have another QB, transfer guy Ryan Mallett.  As I think I've said a few times, I occasionally collect his stuff as long as he's not shown in an Arkansas uniform.  Here you can see a 2011 Plates & Patches jersey/auto RC (#080/299) followed by a Topps Magic signature from the same year.  Both are cool in their own right but Magic is a somewhat recent Topps product I actually like, so that's notable.

Ok, we're on to the last QB of the day, I promise.  John Navarre, the gumpy signal-caller from Cudahy, Wisconsin, gets another of his very occasional appearances; this is just my 13th hit of him.  Luckily I found a cheap new addition in the form of a 2004 Bowman's Best Green auto (#189/499).  I already had the base version, which I prefer mainly because the green ink doesn't look great here--the parallel version of the card is fine otherwise--so it's nice to have them as a pair.

Last up is former Michigan DL Chris Wormley, who's often a fun follow on Twitter:

I hit the trifecta today! I got pooped on, peed on, and puked on by my lovely daughter. 👍🏽

— Chris Wormley (@Chris_Wormley43) January 29, 2020

My second auto and third hit of his is a rookie year 2017 Donruss Optic Rookie Autographs Blue auto (#23/75).  What better color of a parallel could you ask for in terms of a former Wolverine?  He's seen a decent amount of playing time with the Ravens and hopefully that increases enough for him to earn a rare non-rookie appearance in some Panini products.

That's it for today but stay tuned for another blowout post where I cover the rest of my football purchases.

12/7/19 card show report: Christmas shopping

As I sit here awaiting the results of the MLB Veterans Committee vote, which could right a few wrongs including Lou Whitaker still waiting to hear his name called, I figured it would be a good time to show off my latest show haul.

I headed out to Taylor as usual yesterday hoping to find a bit more content for some upcoming Christmas card packages (more on those soon!) and did pretty reasonably well for $50:

• 125 quarter cards @ 5/$1 = $25
• 18 dollar cards @ 6/$5 = $15
• 6 $2 cards @ 3/$5 = $10

All most everything I got for myself came from the quarter boxes, though a few dollar cards ended up in my pile too.  Here's what I landed this time:

Baseball part one starts with a 2003 Elite base of former Tiger Jeremy Bonderman (#0185/1750) which I grabbed for his collection because I love the design.

Then you can see four of five Gwynns I pulled, including a '95 Classic $10 phone card (not sure why I put that first here), a '92 UD insert with comments on players by Ted Williams, his '94 Finest base, and finally, a '96 Donruss Hit List insert (#08117/10000).  Oh hey, "90s inserts rule" tag, it's great to see you!  Naturally Mr. Padre is #1 in that set, and this would have been a fun pull back in the day.

Then we get to a quartet of Ripkens.  He also got in on the phone card action, plus he appears on base cards from 2000 Upper Deck Ovation (not sure how I didn't have that one) and 2003 Fleer Rookies & Greats.  But my favorite pickup of the day came from the $1 box:  a 1996 Sportflix ProMotion insert.  I remember busting lots of packs of the product around that year hoping for any of the cool inserts while enjoying the base set, and while I didn't have any luck back then, now I can pick them up at my convenience.

If that's not worth an animated .gif, I don't know what is!  I did laugh when I saw that Cal turns into a glove, though.

Gwynn and Ripken made one more appearance on a horizontal card each, but first I need to mention my lone Griffey score of the day, a '94 Upper Deck Electric Diamond parallel of one of his base cards in that excellent set.  While that parallel doesn't do much for me, I'm a fan of '94 UD and the leap in design it made over what in my opinion was a pretty meh look in '93, though I expect comments filled with opinions that state otherwise.  Anyway, UD did a great job with photography and holographic foil, and this was easily worth a quarter to me.

As for the other two guys, Gwynn stars on a '93 UD insert called "On Deck With" that includes a nice close-up photo and quick answers to some interview questions on the back.  Meanwhile, Cal's last cameo looks like a TV appearance thanks to the design of a '97 Collector's Choice Exchange card, the result of a winner being sent in.  That and the ones above get him up to 939 items and he maintains a commanding lead among my baseball PCs.

I was fortunate to track down six new Michigan Football cards while I was at it.  Former college QB/WR/QB again Devin Gardner is seen flying high on a Gold parallel of his 2015 Topps Field Access rookie (#42/99).  Topps knew CB Ty Law was one of the game's Finest way back in '97 when he was included in the set of the same name, and now 22 years later he's been rightfully elected to the football Hall.  And WR Amani Toomer is looking cool on a 2000 Black Diamond Gold parallel (#0522/1000) that makes me remember how much I liked the product back in the day.

And then I get to end on a fun trio of Charles Woodson cards.  First is a rookie-year insert from 1998 Upper Deck called Define the Game, one that was made not long after Woodson became the first primarily defensive player to win the Heisman.  Next is a 1999 Playoff Prestige SSD Spectrum Blue parallel (#002/500) that set me back a buck, well worth it for a variation of the best color, not to mention one that's numbered.  And last up is Chuck's base card from 2000 Collector's Edge Masters, one that's numbered as well (#1496/2000), albeit in digital fashion instead of foil.  These three give Woodson a total of 312 items, maintaining his lead among football players I collect, though Chad Henne is gaining ground.

That's it for this month but you'll probably get to see most of the rest of what I bought this time over the next few weeks when they arrive in mailboxes around the country.  Until then, LET'S GO LOU!