2024 trade package #24: Cards on Cards

Continuing with my marathon posting of trade packages this evening, here's #1 from earlier this month: a basketball-heavy mailer thanks to Kerry from Cards on Cards. Maybe this is something he can read as he nervously awaits his Oregon team's Wednesday Rose Bowl matchup with the hated Buckeyes. My suggestion: the Ducks wear crazy-ass jerseys all the time anyway so why not make an Oregon version of the iconic winged helmet and wait for Ryan Day to poop his pants like he usually does? Oh, and I happen to know that he has another envelope from me that may include one or more Ducks whenever he gets a chance to open it.

Anyway, here's what Kerry sent me earlier this month:

Most of the baseball fit in this one scan. Like his cards above, Baddoo may be feeling Blue after being DFAed so new pitcher Alex Cobb could join the roster. Greene, whose roster spot is secure, looks groovy on the Big League card, and he also offers my first look at this year's Stadium Club Chrome insert (not to be confused with the separate base issue). I wonder if Jung will get a chance to stick with the club now that Gleyber Torres has been signed and other moves may be in the works. Donruss' recent products are geared toward folks like me who love collecting classics like Sisler. Skubal, who's going to be very, very rich within a couple years, was an All-Star this year, as the above Topps insert reminded me. Verlander comprises the rest of the baseball content, and the shiny version of his Attax card makes the all-too-common regular versions seem even uglier than they are, if that's even possible.

Topps' flagship design has always been hit or miss with me, mostly the latter, but Stadium Club is rock solid when it comes to looks. I love the horizontal Verlander photo of him finishing his pitching motion, and the Sepia parallel looks quite nice as well.

Most (but not all!) of the rest of the content is basketball, and Hoops-related products are well represented. That works for me since I needed practically everything here! As with football, Panini released a Halloween-themed product called Haunted Hoops, and Bufkin and the younger Howard are two of the former Wolverines you can find in it. Burke is "just" a regular Hoops RC (nice!) and former UM coach Howard gets just his second card from the past decade to join my collection thanks to 2023-24 Topps Chrome, with Topps having to do the logoless thing like Panini does with baseball.

LeVert, Poole, Robinson, and both Wagner brothers also get the Haunted Hoops treatment here. Every card you've seen has been a base except for the two Orange parallels--Bufkin above and Poole here. Poole also gets a new Panini Flux for his PC, Robinson joins Bufkin above from the apparently-difficult-to-scan Hoops Premium Stock product, and Franz adds appearances from Panini Illusions and the most recent Topps Chrome.

Remember a bunch of the guys we just saw? Well they're back--in sticker form! These are all 2023-24 Panini Stickers, and four of them are standard versions while Poole gets a cool holofoil entry and Franz appears in the Global Icons subset representing his native Germany. I hope both Wagner brothers heal up in time to run it back next season!

Lastly, I can always count on a fellow college collector like Kerry to send some Wolverines my way. Better yet, half of these are college uni photos! Hutchinson's season ended too soon earlier this year but with the injury luck the Lions have had in 2024 there's no doubt he wouldn't have made it through the season anyway. That doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for collecting him, and I continue to root for his team to keep winning to make my friends who are Lions fans happy.

His former teammate J.J. McCarthy suffered his own injury before even making it through the preseason, and I hope he returns to health next year as well. For now I'll keep collecting him, especially Michigan cards like the above pair of Score inserts which remind me of happier memories earlier this year when JJ led Michigan to a national championship.

And lastly, I guess the theme of this section is injured recent Wolverines because Wilson also dealt with similar issues in the preseason and has barely played so far in 2024. His pro debut may be done prematurely but boy did he come up big time and time again for last year's title-winners catching 12 TDs including the one that tied the Rose Bowl against Alabama with under 2:00 to go in the eventual OT win for the Maize & Blue. While I tend to favor Score's RC design, Prestige does sometimes have its moments, and I've always appreciated them using college shots as well.

Kerry, thanks again for this envelope stuffed with Tigers and Wolverines! I'll continue my full-throated support for your team especially as a matchup looms with a team with possibly the most toxic fans in the nation. GOOD LUCK, DUCKS!

Well that's three posts I've done today and that leaves three for New Year's Eve, giving me something to do as I watch Michigan's noon bowl game against Alabama (again). Most of the impact players will be gone due to the draft or transferring, and it was already looking like a mismatch before taking that into account, so I won't be expecting a win, but regardless I'll be thankful for one last 2024 Michigan Football game after the calendar year began on the best note possible. LET'S GO BLUE!

2023 trade package #s 34-37: Bob Walk the Plank, The Collector, The Lost Collector, and A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

So I can finish up covering the trades I received from bloggers last December before the calendar flips to March, here's a combined trade post featuring the last four envelopes that hit my mailbox before Christmas '23:

Former Bob Walk the Plank blogger Matt and I still manage to swap cards at least once or twice a year and I enjoy that we tend to keep things fairly high-end, or at least above average. This time he sent me a very nice Michigan-themed Christmas present after picking up some stuff from COMC:

Merry Richmas! Of the five you see there, four are new to me and the fifth was a great deal he didn't want to pass up despite knowing it was a dupe for me. The latter would be card #1 in the scan, a Bright Yellow Back from 2017 Heritage that isn't numbered but is limited to just 25 copies. That's most definitely a good idea of the generosity remaining in this envelope. The other Hills include his 2019 Topps Mini Pink parallel (/25), 2020 Topps Mother's Day "Hot Pink" (/50, and could have fooled me on the color!), 2020 Topps Mini Pink (/25), and 2020 Topps Update Black (/69, NICE). That's an outstanding selection of recent numbered Hills and it's not like I get to add this many of him at once very often!

Joining him on the baseball side is one more dupe Matt couldn't pass up, a 2008 Bowman Chrome Draft Gold Refractor (/50). He's obviously got great taste because pre-2010-and-later Refractors continue to look fantastic!

Finishing up on the football end of things we have a pair of very rare Wolverines. Former TE and solid broadcaster Jake Butt is up first with a 2017 Panini Certified Mirror Green auto. It's really tough to make out on the scan but along the upper-right edge it's numbered a ridiculous 5/5--hell yeah! That's my 9th hit and 7th auto of the talented pass-catcher. Flipping over to defense, there's my third signature of LB Mike McCray, and certainly my best as it's a 2018 Elite Orange Status die-cut auto numbered 07/10. The signature's nothing to write home about (pun intended) but the card design--die-cut plus numbered--and home college uni action photo make this a winner in my book.

Thanks again for our yearly trading and in particular this outstanding Christmas present, Matt!

Next I have a fun surprise PWE from Chris, the Collector, which ended up being the second that he sent me last December and third since November:

Former Michigan pitcher and current Guardians prospect Steve Hajjar leads off this one. This is just the 9th card in his collection so the Wolverines uni-highlighted '21 Prizm Draft Green Pulsar Prizm was a fun surprise. I was of course thrilled to see another Rich Hill need out of '23 Topps Chrome Update even if Topps dropped the ball on showing him with the Padres. And Chris tapped into his extensive hockey knowledge to send me a foily 2002-03 Pacific Vanguard base of goalie Steve Shields, a very successful netminder in Ann Arbor in the early 90s who played for six teams over 10 NHL seasons.

And as if those weren't enough, the big prize was this full SI For Kids sheet from the November/December '23 issue starring none other than NCAA Champion RB Blake Corum (plus a few other notable names). Corum and his teammates delivered the greatest possible present to Wolverines fans after the holiday with a Rose Bowl win over Alabama and title win over Washington. He ended his extremely productive Michigan career with school highs in single-season rushing and total TDs and points scored and career records in those exact same stats. I look forward to seeing what he can do in the NFL though I wouldn't ask a single thing from him after his career in the college game that I much prefer anyway. But I'll be glad to add on to the paltry five cards I have for now.

Thank you, Chris, for the extra Christmas present!

Next, after sending me a nice chunk of cards last September, AJ the Lost Collector hit my mailbox again before Christmas with this small but effective group of cards:

I think I'm sensing some kind of theme here.... First up is what's easily my best card of WR Ronnie Bell so far, a '23 Prizm Draft Gold Ice Prizm. It's just my third card of the Niners pass-catcher who outperformed his recruiting ranking in college by a mile, and it'll be hard to top for a while! Breakout WR Nico Collins of the Texans is next, hailing from last year's Score set, and I look forward to seeing him continue his upward trajectory next season. RB/PR Chris Evans hasn't been able to get things going for the Bengals but I'm happy to continue to add his RCs to his collection either way, such as the '21 Donruss Optic up above. And how could you possibly go wrong with two defensive stars Michigan lost, only to continue their dominance in 2023, in Mazi Smith and DJ Turner, out of last year's Prestige? The brand continued its practice of using college photos, which of course I love, and I was glad to cross these off of the needs lists of those two players, for whom I now own two cards and one card of--welcome to the collection, DJ!

Thank you, AJ, for gifting these to me last year just before my team put a bow on possibly their best season ever!

And finally tonight, definitely the most Christmassy bunch of cards that could have sat under my tree came from A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts' Jon. Whether you're a fan of Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" or get excited at the site of Christmas colors red, gold, and green, you'll love these as much as I did:

Panini's solid 2013 Cooperstown product offered cracked ice-type parallels in a number of colors, and Jon represented three of those over three different players in the HOF-themed product. Wolverine/Tiger Charlie Gehringer is up first with Gold and Red cards, which is great as I apparently already had the Green of him. The Golds are /299 with the Reds a more common /399. Tigers HOF hitter and iconic broadcaster George Kell is next, and Jon sent me his cards in three colors, including the Green, whose set is the most common and not numbered. Another former Wolverine, Gorgeous George Sisler, rounds out the group with a Red card of his own. I'll have to track down his Gold but do have his Green as well. I also have Blues /499 of Sisler and Gehringer, and need to track down Matrix (/325) cards of everyone seen here.

Jon, thank you for a very festive PWE of HOFer PCs (too many acronyms!) to close out the year in collecting, and I look forward to trading with you again this year!

Thank you once again to everyone who sent me cards in 2023, which resulted in an average of 1.5 envelopes/packages per month! No matter how long I keep blogging, I'll continue to work with all of you that enjoy swapping cards as it's one of my absolute favorite parts of being here. I already have some 2024 trades to show off once I finish up the rest of my '23 acquisitions, and I promise I'll get back to sending packages out myself soon. As a matter of fact, two are due to arrive to current trading buddies in the next day or so.

Next time: either TCDb deals (likely split into two parts), a show recap, eBay pickups, or my late-year COMC haul, though the latter will likely be my '23 finale.

2021 Sportlots purchases part 8: more Michigan? Marvelous!

Previously: Quick summary and set wants; Big and small we have them all!; Better off Ted; A Tettle-ton of Froot Loops; Lucky Tiger Seven; Dizzying Deans, Sportlots has been Barry, Barry good to me

Just two posts left after this one! Tonight's will be another group post instead of a single player like the last one, though we're sticking with Michigan Baseball as the theme. I believe I counted 17 different players in the scans below, enough that I originally considered splitting them up, but I'm feeling motivated to finish these up. Therefore, it's more Michigan mania!

We'll start with this group since I found a lone new card for all nine players. Up top are three of the older Wolverines you'll see today: 1976 SSPCs of P Jim Burton and OF Tom Grieve, plus a '78 TCMA of 1B/OF (and UM football player as well) John Herrnstein. Burton's '78 SSPC card will sew up his four-card run whenever I can find it. Herrnstein's collection will be tougher to complete because, as a reminder, he shares '60s rookie star cards with Willie Stargell and Dick Allen.

The next four are some of the latest Michigan alumni to make their pro debuts. Blomgren, Criswell, and Franklin (2020 Bowman Draft) were all selected in the first five rounds of the '20 draft, while Brewer (2020 Topps Heritage Minors) was a Houston 3rd rounder the year before. They're all pretty good prospects, and these items represent my first for each player except Criswell (my 4th).

A couple "S" players close out the scan. First is a 2011 Triple Threads Sepia parallel (#d /625) of HOFer George Sisler, giving me 99 different items of "Gorgeous" George. The other continues the run of oddballs, especially of the food issue variety (foodballs?) in this series: an '81 Topps Coca-Cola St. Louis Cardinals issue of P Lary Sorensen. Aside from the obvious Coke logo up front and different numbering on the back, these are very similar to the base cards, but still fun pickups for your everyday player or oddball collector.

Jim Abbott got the biggest boost in numbers to his collection of the players you'll see today, and this group of nine isn't even all of them. The scan is bookended by food issues from Topps/Bazooka's 1990 partnership plus 1993 Kraft, a pop-up I won't be popping up myself. Also from 1990, starring a poorly chosen photo emblematic of the junk wax era, is Donruss' Learning Series, a 55-card set geared towards elementary- and middle-schoolers.

Then things get Canuckified with 1990 Fleer Canadian and O-Pee-Chee, a couple issues from our friendly neighbors to the north. That Fleer photo was another bad choice, to be sure. A pair of Classic cards produced in 1991 and '92 look much better to me since action shots almost always trump portraits in my opinion, plus it's always really cool to see portions of Jim's one-armed delivery. Last up here is a pair of '93 Upper Deck Gold Hologram cards, which are annoying to have to track down as a player-collector, but then I suppose they do give me a reason to collect a second version of a card where Abbott's wearing a Michigan shirt! You'll see one more of these below since he was all over that '93 set.

One last Abbott (for now) gives way to a few slightly more recent guys. I found a new pair of cards of Portage, Michigan native and 2019 Arizona draftee Tommy Henry: his Bowman Draft and Draft Chrome Refractor issues. It's always nice when I can track down stuff with backs that mention Michigan in one form or another, such as these that include his college stats.

Drew Henson is a player whose cards I get to chase in two sports, and here I have four of the five from this purchase. The first couple are from 1999 team sets for New York's Tampa affiliate, with the second apparently hailing from an "update" set that's almost identical. The '02 Hot Prospects insert he shares with another guy that had some hype behind him, Xavier Nady, is pretty cool thanks to a pair of rounded corners. And to those I added a four-player 2003 Bazooka sticker whose players happen to appear in the order of best MLB career to worst!

You'll see more of both of the other guys in this scan in a minute, but interestingly enough they're both still involved with the game despite their ages. Old Rich Hill turned 41 a few months ago but is still pitching pretty well, though of course those efforts are now for the Rays instead of the Twins, with whom he appears on his 2020 Topps Heritage base. And former Cardinals C and manager Mike Matheny made the relatively short trip to Kansas City to helm the Royals after being let go by St. Louis, the team pictured on his 2004 Topps 1st Edition parallel above.

The other Matheny cards I found were both from 2005. The first is also a 1st Edition version of his Topps flagship base, and it offers and even better action photo than the previous year's. I wonder if an out resulted from that throw? The other is the Silver parallel from Total, which wasn't as good as the 2002-03 versions in my opinion, so I'm not really disappointed the brand disappeared until the bastardized cash grab online version resurrected the name in 2019.

The rest of this scan stars William Harold Morris, and almost everything I scored of Hal this time was of the oddball variety, but that worked for me as a fun way to beef up his PC a bit. Here you see a trio of Classic cards from 1989 and '91, a 1991 Baseball Cards Magazine issue done up in the style of '66 Topps, and Morris' three appearances in a Rembrandt/Ultra-Pro promo set put out in '92. The latter was a 20-card set featuring casual shots of some baseball stars (such as Bobby Bonilla and Jose Canseco), mainly focusing on their favorite pastimes, such as tennis for the guy above. The backs included Ultra Pro holograms and a message of the "limited" nature of the cards; the ones you see here received 125,000, 250,000, and 100,000 copies, respectively.

Two more Morris cards get me just a pair shy of 300 for his collection. The first is from the US Playing Card Company's 1992 Baseball Aces deck, and it's only natural that someone playing for the Reds should be assigned a suit of that color. The other is the only "mainstream" card in his bunch, his '95 Collector's Choice Silver Signature parallel, making him the fourth Wolverine I've found from that set (Steve Ontiveros, Steve Howe, and Scott Kamieniecki are the others).

Player #2 in this scan is Hal's former teammate Chris Sabo, and as with Morris I came away with '89 and '91 Classic issues of "Spuds". You can add him to the food issue club as well thanks to a '92 Jimmy Dean oddball from an 18-card set that also included Jim Abbott among its stars. Lastly, also from 1992 is a goofy design (and funny photo of Sabo utilizing a hitting training aid) from Topps Kids. If you care for whatever reason, the latter is the variation that has two asterisks in the trademark line instead of one.

It seems like a good idea to mention that this post will be published on Juneteenth as we look at the last player in the group of vertical cards. Moses Fleetwood "Fleet" Walker was a C for Toledo of the old American Association, considered a "major league", back in 1884, making him the first black player (or just "the first black in the majors" according to the cringe-y back of the 1986 Fritsch Negro League Baseball Stars card you see on the left) to break the color barrier. That makes Jackie Robinson's bravery in 1947 no less important, though, as he fought through the same kind of ignorance and hate that Walker did. While you won't find him on too many cards, unfortunately, another of his items can be found relatively easily: a base card from Upper Deck's 1994 product Baseball: the American Epic, which describes Fleet's history a bit more intelligently.

To finish things up today, here's a six-pack for your weekend. First up is the final Jim Abbott Gold Hologram from 1992 Upper Deck, a set that included lots of those artsy cards. My Tommy Henry collection grows by one more thanks to a cool 2020 Topps Pro Debut base that makes good use of the card's orientation. A multiplayer card including fellow Yankees prospects from the time Juan Rivera and Jackson Melian is Drew Henson's other appearance from the Minors team sets mentioned above. I got two cards closer to Rich Hill's 2020 Topps rainbow with his base card and Gold Star (factory set) parallel, not to mention two more cards from his year with the Twins. And lastly, Sabo joins Morris in needing just two more cards for a milestone (he's at 198) thanks to one last food issue: a 1992 French's card he shares with HOFer Wade Boggs. I've never been a mustard guy but that 19-card set full of All-Stars is fun and I may have to try to track down more of those.

Considering these additions combined with those from some of the earlier posts in this series, I got a lot of good work done on the checklists of some of the many former Wolverines I collect, and added some fun pieces.

Still to come in the final two posts are one more single-player feature plus a last one with a team theme that I think will please many of you!

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!

2021 eBay purchase: this George is gorgeous!

I'm just showing off one card today as I catch up on my most recent in-hand eBay purchase (with a multi-item buy coming soon!) and then I'll be back with another trade package.

This was the first of my buys from this month, about a week after I snagged the Zach Putnam plate I showed off recently. Considering the player here I was quite pleased to have spent almost half as much--$8.60 for the card and $12.83 total with tax/shipping:

Well I'll be damned if that isn't a thing of beauty! What you see here is a cyan (pretty sure) printing plate of HOF Michigan Baseball alum George Sisler out of 2015 Panini National Treasures Collegiate. The "National Treasures" portion of the name renders the product way out of my price range, but naturally "Collegiate" piques my interest, so happily I was able to let someone else play the cardboard lottery and get this card on the cheap!

Here's a look at the base card (/99, as you can see here) for comparison. I love how Sisler's team is proudly stated up front: "MICHIGAN WOLVERINES". 

As mentioned on the back, Tigers legend Ty Cobb thought very highly of the former Brown/Senator/Brave who hit at a .340 clip over his career, which included a pair of batting titles and the 1922 AL MVP. For some reason it took him four tries to make it to Cooperstown (1939), but then again I guess you'd say there was a pretty good backlog of legends since the Hall had only opened up three years prior.

The numbers he put up in Ann Arbor over three years (1913-15) were certainly a sign of things to come, and Wolverines coach-turned Browns manager Branch Rickey (a Michigan Law alum) was able to maneuver his former player's contract situation with the Pirates into a deal with Rickey's St. Louis club.

Besides being immortalized in MLB's Hall of Fame, Sisler earned entry into Lubbock, Texas' College Baseball Hall, as mentioned near the bottom of the card on the back. He's currently one of 11 "veteran (pre-1947 era)" players, and was elected in 2010, a year after Rickey. He joins Jim Abbott and Barry Larkin there.

The front of the plate, only being part of the image, isn't as exciting as the base card, but obviously it has the rarity factor going for it, and the back is still very cool. The write-up is nice and of course I love the large Michigan logo, plus the stamped script "One of One" is great. The overall design on the back (and base card front) makes it feel like a very sophisticated historic high-end product. My only quibble is that Panini declined to state exactly what color the plate is, which can be a big deal when they're hard to identify.

Overall this is an extremely cool piece to add to my collection at a very reasonable price, and it joins this Panini Hall of Fame plate from the previous year in my Sisler PC:

Now I just need to track down the yellow for each of them to get as close as possible to the maize and blue pairing!

With this pickup covered I'll be back soon with a fun new PWE from a reliable trade partner.

1/4/20 and 1/31/20 show reports: January Jonesing

I didn't have to wait very long this year to get to my first shows of 2020, getting east to Taylor on the first Saturday of the month and again on the last Friday.  Things just happened to work out that February's show weekend started in 1/31 and I went that day as I had friends in town the next day.

Because I wanted to get going on getting these posted I decided to just combine them, but I'll give a quick note on how both went.  I didn't want to miss January's event because my usual guy was doing his thing where pretty much everything was half its usual price, and that worked out quite well for me as I dropped $30 on mostly trade bait, some of which has already gone out.  Then at the end of the month I threw down $40 to the same guy for more goodies, many of which were $2 hits for my football collection.  To those I added a nice little bunch of vintage pickups (again, some for trade bait) for another $20, bringing my monthly total to $90.

Here's a look at the combined haul this time:

Trade bait, part 1: baseball.  I believe the last three cards here were $0.50 at the first show while the Ward was $1.  Why would I pick up what appears to be a base card for that much?  It's tough to see the stamp on the front if you're not looking for it, but the back helps:

This is a 2003 Donruss Atlantic City National stamped card /5 that I'm sure someone will want.

And part 2, the football stuff.  I believe a couple of these were just $0.50 too, and at most a buck or two.  As usual, please claim anything you like in the comments or via email and we'll work something out!

Now we can move on to the stuff for me:

You can see how that vintage purchase paid off in this scan, especially in the top row.  The Gehringer is from a 1961 set called Golden Press and I think it looks great, especially for the era, plus it's my oldest of the Mechanical Man so far.  Horton's card is from 1970 Topps (his oldest as well) and I'm kind of slowly working on his vintage stuff.  And the dual Tigers rookie is fun since I mainly needed it for my Fisher collection as he's a Michigan alum, but scoring a RC of excellent Canadian relief dude Hiller is a very nice bonus.

Down the middle we have three guys from some of my biggest PCs in Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken.  The Junior phone card might look a bit familiar since I picked up similar stuff recently from that '95 Classic set.  My fun with Panini's Leather & Lumber continues with a cool die-cut Maddux insert called Benchmarks.  And we head back to the '90s for Fleer's Emotion E-XL and a '96 insert called N-Tense.  The while the front and back "layers" of the card are die-cut those areas in the middle of the letter are paper, though it's still a very cool design.

The bottom row opens with another extremely cool vintage item, a '72 Kellogg's of Wolverines HOFer George Sisler.  These look awesome and I hope to add more of similar guys like Ted Simmons as I find them.  And last up is former Tiger and current Trashtro Justin Verlander on a 2019 Donruss 150th Anniversary parallel (#149/150).  The photo on this one is actually the variation of the regular base, though I'd assume that they have the same odds of being pulled.

Heading over to the gridiron for the non-hit football stuff I came up with this trio.  Shoelace's card is a 2013 Spectra RC (/99), though I didn't realize that when I picked it up, so that was a fun surprise, and leaves me just a couple short of all his first-years.  Bo's card is a Delong Gum insert from 2013 Panini Golden Age, a "baseball" product like A&G, GQ, and Goodwin.  And my favorite of the bunch is the last vintage item of the day, a solid '57 Topps base of former Wolverines DE Len Ford.  It's just my third card of his along with his '55 Bowman RC and a '94 Topps Archives reprint of this very card!

And the hit parade begins on the Y-axis.  Leaf Trinity's Clear autos look amazing, such as Chesson's (eight hits) above.  I picked up three new Braylon (89) items, two of them featuring a second player, and one of those is on display here in the form of a dual jersey with former Lions WR Roy Williams.  Williams was a guy who was fairly productive and then was flipped to Dallas for, among other picks, a first-rounder that Detroit characteristically wasted on TE Brandon Pettigrew.

Getting back on track, it's unfortunately somewhat rare for me to pick up new Hart (69) stuff these days but I did luck out with his rookie year '08 Stadium Club Beam Team auto, a nice throwback to that brand's classic insert.  Lewan (15) gets a jersey swatch from last year's Certified that's about as big as he is a jackass.  Solid CB David Long is today's new player with his first hit, an autograph from '19 Prizm.  Former #1 overall OT Jake Long (86) makes a Michigan quartet from the 2008 UD Icons Rainbow auto set (with Arrington, Hart, and Henne), so I just need Manningham and Shawn Crable.  And probably the best of my trio of Chris Perry (55) items is this '04 Leaf Certified Mirror Blue ball/helmet/jersey relic, a card that's totally up my alley).

Pressing on with the horizontals, Jason Avant (63) gets a new jersey from '06 R&S, though I'd have a bone to pick with whoever would refer to it as "prime" if I IDed it correctly.  TE Jake Butt (6) joins former teammate Chesson with an amazing 2017 Leaf auto of his own out of Metal Draft.  Airbrushed helmet aside, the State Pride cards are super nice, though I wouldn't mind more of Michigan's motto on display.  Braylon's back for his promised third appearance, a Playoff Honors ball/jersey that pairs him with fellow Browns rookie Charlie Frye, a Cleveland QB that busted (go figure) even quicker than Edwards.

His more successful NFL counterpart, Mario Manningham (95) gets a "super" jumbo jersey swatch from '08 Gridiron Gear that I've labeled as "prime" since Panini didn't change the serial numbering (/50) from the non-prime version.  Oh, Panini....  It's a beautiful swatch and I'll put down a few bucks that Matt will have a positive comment about it not long after this gets posted!  Then we're back to Chris Perry's other two hits from 2002 Fleer's Rookie Throwback Threads insert.  The jersey/ball (/50) and leather helmet may be event worn/used but they're still plenty of fun to pick up.

David Terrell (45) didn't even up his hits total with counterpart Anthony Thomas's 53, but this 2001 Fleer Legacy Triple Threads jersey makes for some nice parallels as I now have a card like this for each player, plus they're both at exactly 150 in their PCs.  Michigan's former #1 had the worst career of the three as Gardner did decently well in four-plus years with Washington while Wayne was, uh, pretty good with the Colts, I believe.

Last up is RB Ty Wheatley (6) on a super nice shoe relic from 2001 Absolute Memorabilia.  This was from way back when Donruss/Playoff/whoever included a helpful image on the back showing the actual item the material came from, like-a so:

It's always fun to add something like this among the sea of less interesting relics like jerseys these days.

I think many of you will agree with me that that was a fairly productive pair of shows, especially since you haven't seen all the trade cards I've sent out or will be doing at some point.  Milestone-wise we're coming up on a pretty big one as I'm at 1495 football hits.  With the definition of some of those being a bit iffy in my mind these days (such as unsigned manu-relics) I'll feel a bit more comfortable about the number when I've eclipsed it by a bit, but it'll be worth a celebration no matter what!

Happily I'm just about caught up on in-hand stuff again with an eBay pickup being the only thing left for now, though I'm looking forward to a trade package in the next couple days and another eBay win.  After that I'm hoping to find some time to redo how I'm presenting my PCs, mainly to incorporate TCDB but also cleaning things up generally, plus I have a potential feature that may interest a lot of you, so stay tuned.  Oh, and welcome back, baseball!

2019 COMC purchases: the 12 cards of COMChristmas

I'm going through another one of those periods where I want to get some posts up, especially so I can catch up to new stuff from this month, but I don't feel like writing.  It also doesn't help that work's been stressful lately, plus there was the tragedy of the helicopter crash yesterday that cost Kobe Bryant, his daughter, and other families their lives.

Solution:  don't write much and just get posts up!  Pictures something something thousand words, right?  So here's the baseball loot from my latest COMC shipment, mostly comprising purchases from the Black Friday/Cyber Monday promotions:

Today's only autograph is my first card of Nationals pitching prospect James Bourque, an Ann Arbor native with a pretty strong mustache game who pitched for Michigan in 2013 and 2014.  He got a one-game cup of coffee (Shot of coffee?  Drip of coffee?) last season five years after the team drafted him in the 14th round.  He's got lots more Bowman Chrome autos (like this one from 2019) to chase as well as a 2019 Topps Update base and its 50,000 parallels, and is the 27th member of my baseball hits PC.

2001 marked my first year of college and it was also an excellent year for collecting, falling right in the middle of that '95-'05 decade that I love so much.  Upper Deck was still around and they obliged relic-hungry collectors back when that was still quite a novelty.  For just a few bucks each I scored three such cards of Tony Gwynn, all from products I'm very familiar with:  SP Game Bat Edition, SPx, and UD Legends.  I believe I now own 10 relics (plus an autograph) of Mr. Padre, and I'll happily add more of these whenever the price is right.

Although he's known better as a Yankee during his brief (failed) foray into baseball, Drew Henson was a Red for a bit before being flipped back to the Bronx.  That makes the color of this Mirror Red parallel of his 2003 Leaf Certified Materials bat relic somewhat appropriate.  Donruss/Leaf/Panini/Playoff/whoever made some beautiful cards like this in the aughts and the price was low enough to add another Henson relic (#074/250), giving him 15 in the baseball collection.

Don't worry, I'm not boring you today with a post that's just hits, which I'm guessing a number of you would ignore as they're not your taste.  Looking for something else?  I got you, fam!  The "90s inserts rule" tag makes another heralded appearance today in part because if this amazing '97 Leaf chase card called Knothole Gang (#1046/5000).  Leaf layered a thin, wood-like material die-cut in the shape of a fence with a large hole in the middle over a photo, in this case Barry Larkin doubling up Braves stalwart Jeff Blauser.  These are too cool and I believe I'm chasing a few other PC guys, so I hope I'll have more to show off soon!

It's been long enough since I finished up my purchases on COMC that I can't remember for sure (and don't feel like doing the work to verify this), but I believe I came out of those sales with 19 printing plates/one-of-ones intended for my PCs and Christmas Cards packages.  Something like eight of those stayed with me, including this 2019 Topps Update Black plate of PC dude Clayton Richard, who appears with the Blue Jays for the first time.  Richard is now one of three Michigan Baseball guys with nine or more such cards in his collection, joining J.J. Putz (10) and Rich Hill (23) with nobody else above four.  Also, this marks my 130th plate and/or 1/1, though I may revise that collection a bit in the near future.  Anyway, I'll be casually on the lookout for the other three plates to go with this one!

The three jerseys of Gwynn above are awesome but this trio of Ripken inserts might be my preferred group of the two.  Up top is the '97 version of UD's amazing, um...Amazing Greats insert.  These also have a bit of a wood grain texture with a diamond shaped slide/cel insert on the right.  The '98 iteration is beautiful in its own right, and they're so different that I'm happy to appreciate both.  Oddly enough, Cal's my only example from '97 while his '98 card is the only one I lack of the Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken group.

The other two get me a bit closer to the fun 2000 Fleer Gamers Cal to Greatness set.  #s 6 and 9 here give me the full run of 1-10 while I'll now have to track down the rarest ones, #s 11-15.  Those were a tough 1:144 while the first five were 1:9 and the others 1:25.  This might take a bit of time and money.

I don't harp too much on HOFer "Gorgeous" George Sisler having played at Michigan, do I?  Nah, I'm sure I don't.  In case you forgot, here's a great photo of him courtesy of Panini's 2015 National Treasures Collegiate Multi-sport product.  It's a numbered base card (#74/99) and I initially balked at the price of more than a buck for such a card, but I eventually relented, especially as I'm trying to get him past the 100-card mark.  Hopefully the next time I add some they'll be this nice!

I'm happy to end today's post with a pretty nifty card of recent HOFer Alan Trammell.  Back in the early 2000s the Playoff brand was responsible for a product called Absolute Memorabilia, and boy did they make some great looking cards.  One of their most notable issues was the Tools of the Trade insert, one that came in autograph, memorabilia, and combo versions.  And when I say "combo" I mean you could get six-plus game-used pieces and maybe even a signature!  No matter what you got, the design looked great, like this here 2004 card of Tram (#088/250).  This bat/jersey duo appears to give me a nice split of five each of autos and relics of the Tigers legend.

Hopefully I'll get the next post in this series up a bit sooner.  For now I'm planning a combo basketball/football post, then more football for the big finish.  That way I can finally get around to covering a huge trade package, a show or two (the next one's this weekend!), and one eBay card, and get to where I'm somewhat caught up.