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: CraigM

With no other cards in-hand to cover at the moment I'm going to start recapping all of the TCDB deals I've made over the past few months since the last time I got caught up on them.

Today's will likely not be too wordy due to the large number of cards and images, so I'll mostly just let you enjoy some cardboard.

I proposed this transaction to member CraigM back at the end of July and he accepted it the next day without any counters, which was pretty cool. It probably helped that I offered to send him 200+ cards in return for closer to 100. It mainly involved a lot of lower end/common stuff going both ways which I was totally happy with as I've got plenty of gaps in my collection to fill and I'm glad to continue clearing out my set-fillers. The bulk of what I sent him came from '89 Bowman, '95 Stadium Club, and 2006 Topps, and in return I got the following, broken down over 14 images:

I said "mainly" low-end stuff because, I mean, come on--that '65 of the Gator is awesome! I don't even own double digits of the '68 champ and former PH star. I did add 10 of Cecil "Big Daddy" Fielder, though.

His teammate from the opposite corner of the diamond was well represented in this one too, also getting a 10-spot added to his collection. I crossed the 200-card mark for Fielder and Fryman's not far behind, thanks to deals like this one.

This packaged scored me five cards produced before 1980, which I currently categorize as "vintage", and the pre-Tigers '78 Topps base of Herndon was one of them. Craig helped me fill in a good number of cards of Morris with the Jays. And you'll see lots more of Nokes in the next couple images.

I think I've explained before that I don't really put much effort into chasing Nokes' cards--he was only briefly a star and wasn't a Tiger for very long either--but he's been a reasonable throw-in when working on some of these deals, so why not? As of this post I have 80 of his cards, or almost a quarter of the 331 he has to his name on TCDB.

I didn't do this on purpose but I love that this scan ended up being 100% catchers. Before Nokes there was the Big Wheel, who played for a few teams after leaving Detroit. I'm getting closer to 150 cards of Lance, and that's pretty cool. While those two guys were playing, Pudge was just getting his career started, and of course he eventually made his way to Detroit as well. I love the design of Score's 1993 Dream Team subset (not insert, though the insert that became was great as well!).

I wish Rogers had been healthy this year so Detroit fans didn't have to suffer through subpar play from Tucker Barhnart. Tanana is another nomad who suited up for a few different teams (six total), equaling his run with the Angels by spending eight seasons in Detroit. I now own 85 cards of the Michigan native who won 240 games over 21 seasons.

Here's the horizontal versions of the Tigers players in the package, with Petry's card the only one starring a player not seen above. 1981 was the second of six straight seasons Peaches would win 10+ games as he'd go 87-59 with 43 complete games from 1980-85.

Besides the usual PC guys, something that stood out to me on Craig's tradelist was a nice bunch of 1991-93 Conlon cards. It's great that legends like Cobb and Greenberg figure in, but so do many guys who make few other appearances, if any. At some point maybe I'll figure out how many I'm missing of the teams from the first half of the 20th century in those sets.

And another nine, with Jennings probably being the most notable, though I believe at least Veach and Walker have some name recognition too.

I was happy to tack on some earlier Tigers from '94 Topps Archives and UD All-Time Heroes as well. Chalk up another example for just how diverse this trade was!

The baseball items conclude with six non-Tigers PC cards. Former Michigan Baseball guy Kostro ties Gates Brown above for the oldest card in the bunch out of the '65 Topps set. That's just my third of his issues and the oldest I've found from his limited run. I believe the '95 Leaf of Bichette sewed up the Series I set for me, entirely built from the Facebook collection I bought last year and TCDB trades. And the '97 Score Hobby Reserve of Spiezio gets me one step closer to re-completing that set with cards that have the correct numbering (HR###), which is down to just two.

The first of two football scans offers this nice mix of cards from multiple decades. Hicks is the Wolverine repped on the Niners card, Higdon's a RC and McRae hails from Topps' 1970 football set.

And the second includes a pair of Fleer's oversized Gameday cards, of which I now own a solid number!

And lastly I came away with a pair of legendary Wings D-man Nick Lidstrom, including a RC, plus former UM icers Jeff Norton and Aaron Ward, a WolverWing I love to collect.

With this many cards to show off I think you'll all understand why I gave this deal its own post. But the quantity was part of the fun here and I couldn't have been happier with how things went overall. Many thanks to Craig for being a great member and making this deal with me--I highly recommend working with him myself.

Depending on what shows up in the mail you can likely expect another TCDB recap soon, probably covering multiple smaller trades as I once again work through my folder of scans.

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.

2019 Sportlots purchases: Old Tigers' Day

It's a sunny, not-quite-so chilly Sunday afternoon here in Ann Arbor, plus my Wolverines had another nice game yesterday, so I'm feeling pretty good.  Why not keep up the good vibes with some cards?

The penultimate post in this series is kind of a grab bag of older Tigers that didn't warrant their own posts or necessarily fit in with previous themes:

We'll start with "Gator", a.k.a. William James "Gates" Brown, an absolute beast of a PH who spent all of his 13 MLB seasons with Detroit.  That indeed included '68 so he appears in the 1988 Domino's Tigers team set celebrating the champs from that year.  I grabbed this copy because the one I already had from what used to be a complete set was in rough shape.  I still need to track down a few more of these, including Mickey Lolich's card, which I believe I used for an IP auto.

Next is slugging 1B "Stormin'" Norman Cash, a Tigers mainstay after coming to Detroit from the White Sox via the Indians in an absolute steal of a deal.  His 15 years in Motown included five All-Star nods, a ridiculous '61 season in which he won the AL batting crown and socked a career-high 41 dingers (377 career) with 132 RBIs, and a very nice 52.0 bWAR.  Oh yeah, and he was another key player in the '68 squad.

My Cash collection is smaller than I'd like at just 18 cards, only four of which were made during his playing days, but that's what Sportlots is for!  I did add a vintage piece in the '73 Topps card you see above, then added modern issues from 2001 Topps American Pie (which, again, came up a lot in this series), 2005 Upper Deck Classics, and 2013 Panini Golden Age.  Don't be surprised if I add more vintage items to this bunch in the near future.

The next two guys are even more well known.  My collection of Cobb is fairly healthy thanks especially to generous traders, but I was excited to add a pair of beautiful Fleer Greats of the Game cards from 2001 and 2002.  As for Ernie, the voice of the Tigers, he doesn't have a lot of cardboard to chase, but I still came up with a younger Harwell on his 1989 Pacific Legends issue, plus the gorgeous 2003 Topps Gallery HOF.  The latter set really is a work of art, and kudos to Topps for including him here.

And here we have a couple more Tigers greats.  Heilmann starred for Detroit in the early part of the 20th century, spending 15 of his 17 MLB seasons with the Tigers.  He was an outstanding hitter for average, winning four batting titles and hitting .403 in 1923, and had a bit of power to spare, too.  Can anyone here guess when MLB implemented new baseballs?

Heilmann's .342 career average and 72.2 bWAR were eventually enough to get him in the Hall in 1952 after 13 years on the ballot, and almost 50 years later he appeared on the 2001 Greats of the Game base you see above.  It's one of only four of his cards I own, but as he can be found in many other products I like, that number may increase before much longer.

Last up today is 15-year vet Harvey Kuenn, an OF/IF who spent eight very good seasons in Detroit, where he accumulated eight of his 10 All-Star appearances, was the '53 AL Rookie of the Year, led the league in hits four times, and won the '59 AL batting crown.  He was flipped to the Indians before the 1960 season for Rocky Colavito, who gave the Tigers four nice seasons himself.

Up top he stars on a couple late '80s oddballs in '88 Pacific Legends and '89 Swell Greats.  The next two are reprint-style offerings from 1991 and 1994 Topps Archives.  The '91 set reprints 1953 Topps, though Kuenn's card falls in the "cards that never were" group mentioned by BaseballcardPedia--he didn't appear until '54, which is accurately represented by the 1994 card.

Finally, the last three comprise a trio of fun 2000s Upper Deck products focusing on past greats.  In order they are:  2002 SP Legendary Cuts, 2005 Upper Deck Classics, and 2007 SP Legendary Cuts.  Combined with what I already had, I now own 15 Kuenn cards, and hopefully I'll track down more of him as well.

With these done I'm down to one more post, a big one starring a single player, and I'm really looking forward to getting that one done since I know a bunch of you will enjoy it.  It'll take me a bit to put together so look for it in a few days as I work to try to get it done before my attention turns to COMC shopping this holiday weekend!

2014 trade package #15: Reader Mark makes it as easy as '71-2-3

If one of the goals of my giveaway was to get back some trade packages (it was), especially from bloggers I hadn't traded with it, then I can say I've been successful thanks to people like avid blog reader Mark H..

Mark grabbed a 1999-2000 Topps basketball set and an Oakland A's player lot, and though it wasn't required at all, he was nice enough to send a fat PWE back my way:

What's this?  A couple rows of nine-pocket pages stuffed with vintage Tigers?  SWEET!

To start things off we have this 1971 Topps multiplayer RC (love those!) of Lerrin LaGrow and Gene Lamont.  LaGrow went 16-40 in five seasons with Detroit, but still managed a ten-year career, which is respectable.  Lamont played all of his 87 career games over five seasons in Detroit before managing the White Sox and Pirates for four years each in the 90s.  Formerly the Tigers' third base coach, he's been the team's bench coach since 2013.

The 1972 set was the biggest representative of this package with a whopping 17 cards.  The highlights include a Billy Martin manager card, a Mickey Lolich pitching leaders, slugger Norm Cash, PH specialist Gates Brown (GATOR!), 22-season pitcher Joe Niekro, Mickey Stanley, another Lolich, and a team card.  I should put these together with the few others I have and see how close I am to a team set.  What a nice bunch of Tigers!

Finally, Mark included this six pack of 73's.  Fryman, who was with Detroit for three seasons, is the guy I know best in this group.  LaGrow makes a second appearance as well, and the team card is again a highlight.

Thanks again, Mark, for not only taking some unwanted cards off my hands, but also for sending back a trade package stuffed with Tigers!