1/5/19 show report: lots of hits for two bits

If last Saturday's show is any indication, I'm gonna have another great year of pickups from my usual guy at Taylor Town Trade Center!  It was a nice day all around with the sun shining as I headed east and then spent a couple hours digging through quarter boxes.  Also, props to Tigers legend Willie Horton who was there signing autographs when apparently a gas leak caused an evacuation (after I left, I guess?).  Horton ended up continuing to sign for folks in the parking lot.  What a guy!  (HT to Paul for letting me know about this)

Anyway, my efforts once again paid off handsomely as I headed home with 175 total cards for $47.  170 of those were $0.25 per and the other five were a buck apiece.  Not much of a discount this time, but it all evens out.

I'd say the personal keepers vs. trade bait percentage was around 40%/60%, but regardless I ended up with a ton of new stuff to enjoy.  That includes a pair over on TMM this evening, plus this bevy of stars:

My take-home largely comprised the big guys, starting here with Junior Griffey.  This first bunch includes his '94 Finest base, a quartet of '97 inserts, and a shiny offering from 2000 UD.  I still remember pulling some of those Pitcher Perfect cards from packs of '97 Score!

Griffey part 2/3 here.  I guessed a bit when sorting these and got the years wrong because like Donruss/Leaf, UD didn't always use the actual year as the copyright date.  So you get to see, out of order, Ovation Curtain Calls inserts from 1999 and 2001, then a 2000 PowerDeck Magical Moments CD (no, I'm not gonna try to play it), and a cool Superior Sluggers insert from the 2003 flagship set.  Now that I'm looking at all of these and the next scan, I realize I grabbed a lot of UD stuff, but that makes sense since they made a ton of great inserts during their run while Topps mostly opted for boring stuff.

And the horizontals.  The SI Covers insert is my favorite here because I've always loved those, but four UD inserts spanning 1994-2000 and a 2000 Fleer Gamers subset aren't bad either.  Black Diamond was a favorite of mine one year, and we get another appearance by PowerDeck.

This little haul of Gwynns has me pretty close to a total of 600, which (spoiler) I'll be achieving soon thanks to Sportlots cards.  You'll also see a few more starring Gwynn in a later scan in this post.

A Diamond King and Sportflix insert from '95 have me pining for the good old days of the 90s, while there's plenty more cool chase cards like 2000 Fleer Gamers' Change the Game and '99 Pacific's Team Checklists.  Pacific sure knew how to make checklists anything but boring.

By the way, that '96 Circa Access insert was new to me, and I had fun scanning all facets of the booklet-like card:

He's right, too--I bet Tony would have hit .400 given the chance in '94.

I went three-for-four on the Larkins I pulled out of these boxes so a certain Jeff will be getting the dupe of the group in a future trade package.  As for me, I scored a pretty interesting mix, including a 1994 Score Dream Team Sample (samples are fun!), a Century Stars insert from 2004 Throwback Threads (#d /1500...for a quarter!), and an example of one of my favorite chase cards, Select's 1996 Team Nucleus.  These acetate cards look badass and the trios are pretty interesting.  Here the '95 NL MVP is matched up with Reggie Sanders and Bret Boone.  The former would play eight seasons in Cincy, putting up an All-Star '95 in which he recorded a career-high bWAR of 6.6, while the latter spent most of his solid career with the Reds and Mariners.

It was another good day for my Maddux collection thanks to this lucky seven (plus one!).  Most of what you see here is from my favorite cardboard era--the mid-90s through the mid-aughts.  Respect was a cool insert from '96 Ultra, and next to that is a successfully exchanged UD Predictor from '95 (again, guessing on the years when scanning).  Those are followed up by a '99 Skybox Molten Metal "Don't Call Me Leaf Preferred Steel" Xplosion card and a much more recent Topps Gallery Insert from 2017.

The horizontals feature my second copy (one that hasn't been peeled) of Donruss's '95 Dominators insert, another from Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders Gold, a 2000 Pacific team insert, and one of a couple Donruss Estrellas Spanish cards you'll see today.

Ripken's group ended up being a pretty interesting one as it paired him up with a couple other PC guys.  The solo offerings include a Score Dugout parallel and Ultra Checklist from the mid-90s, another Ultra insert, a second Estrellas card from the early 2000s, and the "Auxiliary" (read:  non-CD) version of a 1999 PowerDeck insert.  He then gets matched up with a couple other good shortstops on a '94 Triple Play Medalists insert, one being Tony Fernandez and the other, Hall of Famer Alan Trammell.  The final three cards are from a Ripken/Gwynn insert from 2007 Upper Deck that celebrates both entering the Hall that year (I attended that induction ceremony!).  There's apparently 50 of these and I may eventually try to chase them down.

How about starting the year off 100% on-brand with too many Verlanders?  I didn't mind paying a quarter apiece for 18 new cards of his from 2007 Topps Moments and Milestones, which also let me earn a few points but uploading their scans to TCDB.

Here's the other nine, giving me one from his "wins" version and 17 of the "strikeouts" cards.  Taking a quick look in his folder it would appear that I now have two of the former and 22 of the latter "base" versions (plus two Black parallels of just the strikeouts).

I also came away with these two Topps Chrome Generation Now cards from the same year, then found that I actually completed his run of that version because the only offering #s 1, 10, 15, and 16 in Chrome for some reason.  I'd previously knocked out all of the base versions from Flagship, so that's pretty cool!

Last up is mostly a mix of buybacks plus another PC checklist card.  Elliott Maddox ('74 and '79) and a badly miscut Lary Sorensen ('79) are 2015 Topps Originals Buybacks.  Sabo's is the Gold version of his 2017 Bowman Buyback of his '90 Bowman base.  Finally, I found a pair featuring Geoff Zahn from Topps' 2014 75th Anniversary Buybacks:  his '75 Topps RC(!) and his base from the following year's set.  Not bad!

To those I can add retired 2B Chris Getz's Yellow parallel from his final flagship appearance, 2014 Topps.  That leaves me needing six more versions from the flagship/Mini rainbow.

It was indeed another great show for me, and I may just be looking to replicate that success in the western part of my state as weather (and getting my ass up in time) permitting I might be meeting up with John for a show in his neck of the woods, the Kalamazoo area.  Here's to another blogger meet-up!

2018 Sportlots purchases: A-toZ PCs

Before I cover the last two single-player posts I'm going to use this one to show off the rest of the PC guys for whom I mostly just picked up a handful of cards (or even just one!).  They didn't fit the Tigers/Reds theme from a couple posts ago but they do share one thing in common:  all are former Wolverines, which isn't a surprise since the vast majority of my PCs are Michigan guys.

So here's a bunch of different players, some of whom I hope you recognize:

Jim Abbott is surely one of the most well known guys in this post and it didn't take much luck to turn up eight new cards of the one-handed wonder.  There's a nice mix of oddball--'90 Topps Magazine and '96 Angels Mother's--base, including a cool pairing with Nolan Ryan from '92 Pinnacle, and parallels, especially '96 Pinnacle Starburst.  I now count 259 cards in his collection.

Previously I didn't have enough cards of former Yankees OF prospect Casey Close to warrant an album, but thanks to these four I went ahead and made one, adding to a couple Michigan-specific items I already had.  Close is now known as a superagent who represented Derek Jeter, among many others, but in the 80s he was toiling in the minors for New York and Seattle after a terrific college career.  These four minors products, two each from '88 and '90, capture him with the Columbus Clippers (Yankees, AAA) and Calgary Cannons (Mariners, AAA).

If you've read at least a few posts on this here blog you know my favorite supercollection is that of current Dodgers lefty Rich Hill.  While putting together this massive Sportlots card I was fortunate to find a couple new cards for my assault on his checklist, this pair of Topps All-Star Game Silver cards from the special stamped sets the manufacturer made for the occasion.  In knocking off a couple more cards for those rainbows I also got closer to the 300 mark and am just five short!

I'm still lacking one freaking card ('94 Stadium Club Team First Day Issue) for my collection of late pitcher Steve Howe, but I did find this interesting pair to bolster it.  He's the third of four players I grabbed from the 1990 Dodgers Target set, and the second of another quartet, this time from Line Drive's 1991 AAA product.  You already saw Ross Powell's card a couple posts ago and you'll see the other two shortly.

One of those guys is former Brewers pitcher Mike Ignasiak.  I completed his 15-card collection a while ago but I'm always on the lookout for new stuff like this Minor League trio with cards from 1990-92.  The brands represented are Grand Slam, Line Drive, and Skybox, and the teams are the El Paso Diablos (AA) and Denver Zephyrs (AAA).

The other is pitcher Scott Kamieniecki, a pitcher mostly know for his stints with the Yankees and Orioles.  To his nearly-completed run I also added a trio of Minor League issues with the '91 Line Drive card book-ended by '90 Best and 1991-92 ProCards Tomorrow's Heroes (and its little foil diamonds).  Albany was the Yanks' AA squad while Columbus was their top affiliate until 2007.

Former Brewers/Giants/Cardinals catcher (and manager for the latter) Mike Matheny is one of the more well-known guys among my PCs, and I managed to track down new checklist needs from three of his four clubs (the Blue Jays aren't represented since no cards of him with the team appear to exist).  Those are, in order, a '98 Pacific Online Red parallel and base cards from 2005 Donruss Team Heroes and 2016 Topps Heritage.  I'm getting reasonably close to 100 unique cards for his collection not to mention 50% of what I've checklisted so it's nice to have productive days like this.

Former QB/current pitcher Clayton Richard is a few years into his return to San Diego, and while he hasn't been terribly effective he's at least been able to eat some innings for them.  As you can see here I finally nabbed his 2017 Topps Update base and got the Rainbow Foil parallel to go with it as my first examples of his issues from that product.  I still have lots of his stuff to track down, especially cards released over the last couple years, but I'm at just about 60%, and hopefully future posts will see more bunches of his cards.

The last of the multi-card players for today is former pitcher (and Michigan Baseball manager) Geoff Zahn.  As with Ignasiak I completed his run a while ago but was glad to find other stuff to add, like this oddball pairing.  On the left is the third and final Kellogg's issue I added through this series, in this case from 1979.  It's not exactly mint--the scan doesn't show how much the card's cracked--but it's not like I especially care as I'm just happy to have another fun lenticular food issue.  And as promised I can show off the last of the '90 Target Dodgers.  Zahn was with L.A. for the first two-plus seasons of his career so he too was part of that very cool perforated set.

And now we'll take a quick look at the guys for whom I picked up just one new item:

• Brett Adcock, a 2016 4th round selection of the Astros out of Michigan, is my latest brand new player collection.  The lefty isn't high on the team's list of prospects for now but you never know!  The first card for his debut is his 2016 Bowman Draft base and I currently have 16 of his cards to track down.
• Like Howe above I need just one card to complete Jake Fox's PC, though the quad auto I'm hunting will be much, much harder to find.  In the meantime I added my first non-checklist card thanks to this shiny 2006 TriStar Prospects Plus base from his time as a slugging Cubs catching prospect.
• Former White Sox IF and current front office guy for the same franchise Chris Getz has a larger checklist for me to chase, but I likewise added a Minor League issue, this one from the 2008 Just Autographs product from which I already own an autograph.
• That's right, it's a run on Minor League cards!  Injured pitcher Zach Putnam completes the trio with another TRISTAR-branded offering, 2009's Projections.  Zach was a member of the Indians organization at the time and this card includes a shot of him with his pro debut club, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a low-A affiliate in the NY-Penn league.  The Niles, Ohio-based team is still affiliated with Cleveland today.
• Vintage legend George Sisler is the lone HOF PC guy in this post (though Nolan Ryan does make that cameo!) and while I usually can find more new items of his at a time I was happy to add this SSPC HOF card from the product's 1980-87 run.  There's no date on the back so I'm not exactly sure when it was made, but I do like that it shows him as a member of the 10-person 1939 Hall of Fame class that was the fourth ever inducted and also included Lou Gehrig (thanks to a special election due to his health).  It represents my 83rd card of the one-time single-season hit king.
• Last up is a final SSPC offering, once again from 1975, of former Cardinals (among other teams) IF Ted Sizemore.  I'm adding it to his completed collection along with another non-checklist card as a fun vintage oddball item. 

Two more large single-player posts await, so stay tuned!

2017 Sportlots purchases: Rich on the Hill (and other guys)

For a huge number of baseball fans like myself, Christmas came early this past Saturday when the World Series-bound Houston Astros gave us all the gift of Yankees Elimination Day!  Houston celebrated its fifth year in the AL by taking home the pennant, largely thanks to this here blog's namesake, Justin Verlander.

But I don't have any cards of him to show off today, and as a matter of fact I'll be pulling for JV's opponents, the Dodgers, this Series--even though they (rightfully) left former this here blog namesake Curtis Granderson off the roster.  Why?  Just look at L.A.'s starter for game 2--one Rich Hill, he of the incredible comeback a couple seasons ago that culminated in consecutive playoff appearances with his latest team.

In his first taste of the postseason since 2007, Hill went 1-1 in three playoff appearances last year, winning his lone start--game 3--of the NLDS to the eventual champion Cubs.  Now he's taking the mound for the favored Dodgers in game 2 of the Fall Classic--crazy!

That made me do some quick digging to find out the last time a Michigan alum

• ...made it to the playoffs (Hill, 2016 Dodgers)
• ...made it to the World Series (Barry Larkin, Hal Morris, Chris Sabo, 1990 Reds)
• ...won a World Series (that same Reds group)
• ...participated in the World Series as a pitcher (Steve Howe, 1981 Dodgers)
• ...won a World Series as a pitcher (Howe, 1981 Dodgers)

So this is a pretty significant game for one of my favorite PC guys and you know I'll be watching!  To celebrate, I have some Sportlots pickups of both Hill and Howe, plus some of a few other guys who came in at four or fewer cards in my enormous 1000-ish card haul from the site:

In grabbing these flagship and Archives issues I finally got my first 2017 cards of Hill, and therefore my first of him in a Dodgers uniform, because why would Topps have done that in last year's Update set?  Or even Series 1 this year?  God I miss those idiots having competition.  I'm back up to around the 2/3 mark of his run though that doesn't include his Chrome Sapphire releases, which I haven't been able to checklist yet.

While filling my cart with loot of the other PC guys you'll see in this series, I dug deep for everyone I collect just in case, hence the appearance of a few guys today such as Dransfeldt, the former Texas farmhand.  I turned up a couple minor league issues from 1999:  Baseball America Diamond Best Gold and Just.  Both were decent products and I've always liked the look of the BA set (not to mention the magazine and its excellent prospect coverage).

Here's the other World Series-winner I mentioned (as a Dodger!), Steve Howe.  Throughout this post and the rest of the series you'll see a good number of oddball items, mainly from the 80s and early 90s, after I let loose and grabbed almost literally everything of my PCs that was $0.20 or under.  Such is the case here as we have a couple 1983 Fleer offerings:  a Star Stamp (you can kind of make out the perforations in the scan) and a Sticker as well.

Getting back to mainstream issues for my supercollections, here's my favorite card of the post:  David Parrish's 2001 Topps Chrome Retrofractor.  A parallel of a RC he shared with fellow catching prospect Scott Heard of the Rangers, this is one of the best Refractor-type cards Topps produced, and that's saying something!  It features the typically excellent parallel finish, which looks great with that shade of green, plus it includes an old-school cardboard texture on the back to give it that "retro" feel.  My 20th card of the son of former Tigers backstop Lance leaves me just two shy of his run!

I belatedly discovered that Powell was a Michigan alum around this time last year, and in the roughly 12 months since, I've tracked down all but one of his seven cards.  The '94 Score Gold Rush parallel on the right was no problem as I could have nabbed it several times if I didn't mind paying more, but the Pinnacle Artist's Proof from the same year is one of those issues I was beginning to think didn't exist!  I was so shocked when it turned up that I immediately made sure to buy it before it disappeared, either in a sale or as a mirage.  Now I'm just left chasing his '94 Score Boys of Summer insert, a copy of which I've seen online so I know it's extant!

Just as I was happy to see Rich Hill finally appear in 2017 flagship Series 2, I was also pleasantly surprised that injured White Sox RP Zach Putnam also gained admittance, his first in a flagship product, not to mention his first mainstream issue since 2010!  I now get to chase his rainbow from that set while I try to lock up the final three cards I need from his earlier cardboard appearances.

By my reckoning Putz is the made the next most recent appearance by a Michigan alum in the playoffs, Arizona's 2011 NLDS loss to the Brewers.  As with Putnam I only tracked down one card of the former closer, a 2014 Topps Wal Mart Blue parallel made the same year as his sunset season.  It's my ninth from that rainbow with a good number of parallels still to go.

Howe's not the only player for whom I went all oddball, all the time.  I'd long since completed the checklist of Sorensen, a late 70s/80s pitcher for seven different teams, when I managed to come up with these fun additions:  another 1983 Fleer Sticker (we're not done with those yet!), another sticker from Topps' 1984 version (shared with Royal Larry Gura), and a standard-sized 1990 Swell Baseball Greats.  Man did people in the 80s look weird....

We'll finish at the end of the alphabet with another pitcher whose checklist I've had completed for a while:  Geoff Zahn.  Another former Dodger, Zahn appeared in the 1982 postseason with an Angels squad that lost to Milwaukee, who'd lose in seven to the Cardinals.  I added three more stickers to my collection in the form of Zahn's entries from 1983 Fleer and Topps and 1985 Topps.  Then I went big--literally--with Geoff's 1985 Donruss Action All Stars, a large 3.5 x 5 inch release from a 60-card set.  Adding these four boosted me to a nice even total of 40 Zahn cards.

And with that I'm off to watch two of my favorite PC pitchers duke it out on baseball's grandest stage!  Good luck to both in what I hope continues to be a classic Series.