2024 trade package #3: the Collector

The calendar may say May--one of my favorite months--but in terms of blog time I'm still back in February. Baseball's spring training was due to begin shortly when Chris, a.k.a. the Collector, hit my mailbox with one of his excellent PWEs. One thing I liked about it is that he themed it to the sports of the season at the time: basketball, football, and hockey. You all know I put very little time, money, or effort into my basketball collection, and not a whole lot more of each into hockey, so I appreciate it when some of my trading buddies are nice enough to include them like this.

Let's take a quick look over the cards he sent this time:

McGary didn't pan out as an NBA first-rounder but he did help Michigan get to the NCAA finals in 2013. "Sugar" Mills was a big part of UM's '89 champs and then spent 11 years in the NBA, six of those with his hometown Pistons. Rice was the star of the 1988-89 Wolverines, then enjoyed 15 NBA campaigns, winning it all with the 2000 Lakers. Riley turned a decent four-year Michigan career into a second round pick and five NBA seasons, each with a new team. And of course Fab-Fiver Rose went from a star-studded college roster to 13 years in the league, though he lost out in his lone finals appearance to Rice's Lakers.

The football side of things here is smaller, but that's ok because I can take care of that myself easily. Still, I appreciated the Mazi Smith RC out of Prizm and the Score base of GOAT DB Charles Woodson. Mazi definitely didn't have the season anyone wanted--a lone sack and 3 TFL--after Dallas took him in the first round, but we'll see what a difference a year makes.

And then we have the hockey content from hockeydude. Beniers, Hyman, and Powers all hail from the same UD set, and that's one super talented trio right there. Matty's numbers dipped a bit in his third season after Seattle made him 2021's #2 overall pick, but he's got a bright future ahead of him. Owen, the #1 choice just before Beniers, had a solid season on Buffalo's blue line. And perhaps no former Michigan icer has enjoyed a better season than Hyman, who ranked third in the league in regular season goals with a crazy 54, and has added seven more in the playoffs to tie for the lead with his Oilers into the second round.

Hughes is looking pretty Glossy this season too, putting together a ridiculous 17/75/92 line as a defenseman and putting himself in position to win the Norris Trophy. Kolarik was a low draft pick who appeared in all of six NHL games but had a very nice college career, and I love adding a numbered card to my small collection of him. Larkin had a tough season for a number of reasons off the ice, but he proved to be the most important player on the team he captains. He reached a new high in goals (33) and eclipsed 200 scores and 500 points this season on a team that sadly choked away its chances at the playoffs. And lastly, Werenski reached new heights in assists (46) and points (57) on a team that missed the postseason but gave playing time to four other Wolverines.

Thank you again to Chris for the lone blogger trade envelope I received in February (not a complaint), and of course, because he's a generous guy, I have yet another one to show off from last month once I catch up. Again, I appreciate you finding some great stuff for my collections, especially the ones I don't really focus on my myself.

Still to come from the month that was February: a show (at which I've spent the most so far this year through April), a super cool Facebook purchase, and a Twitter pickup from someone just about everyone should be familiar with.

2021 trade package #29: My Sports Obsession

We're 12 days into the new year and I'm finally back with my first post of 2022. However, thanks to a stack of trade packages from the past few weeks that I still need to cover, I'll be stuck in 2021 here for a bit longer. But it'll be worth it to show off all the goodies some nice folks sent me. I'm planning on covering blogger trades first and then getting to the deals I've made on TCDB lately.

Jeff who blogs at My Sports Obsession is one of my oldest blogging/trading buddies, and our shared interest in collecting Michigan sports means it's always a good time when we send cards back and forth.

At the end of November he let me know he'd sent a package my way and I was looking forward to it as usual, but I certainly didn't expect this:

That box was absolutely stuffed with cards! He even held his nose and filled up a good chunk of it with Tigers stuff. Check out how the piles came out in terms of baseball, basketball, and football stuff:

After thinking about how I wanted to present these I decided to try to show off all my keepers in a mix of scans and (mostly) photos. Here's the goods:

Scan 1/3 includes three of my PCs, two of which are Wolverines. Seattle native and Braves prospect Jesse Franklin is up first on just my third card of his, from 2020 Panini Prizm Draft Picks. Big thumbs up for a Michigan uni card! Canadian Cubs draftee and Franklin's former 2018-19 Michigan teammate Jordan Nwogu is next on his 2020 Bowman Draft base that give me three issues of him as well. And then there's many (almost TOO many?) Grandersons, six of them in fact. Although they represent three of his seven career franchises (both NY teams and the Marlins), the Tigers aren't one of them. Well played, Jeff! The group pushed his collection to 203 cards so I can officially say I have two hundred many Grandersons!

The other cards I decided to scan because they grouped together nicely were mainly 1985 Donruss and Fleer Tigers. These are a lot of fun for me since they feature stats from the '84 World Champs, so some of my favorites from the teams history are represented right here, in some cases twice.

Petry is the last of the players from the '85 sets but not the last card since the Tigers (and their '84 World Series foes the Padres) were represented on a checklist as well. Since this group is obviously all Tigers from a while ago I grouped in the three vintage stars you see here as well. Bunning, the HOFer who pitched a perfect game AND no-hitter, went into the Hall as a member of the Phillies but spent the first nine of his 17 seasons with the Tigers, so it's totally reasonable he's shown with Detroit on his Sweet Spot card. And Greenberg and Kuenn weren't teammates--they missed each other by a few seasons--but I'm glad to have the pair representing the Tigers in Diamond King products any day!

Here's the rest of the baseball group in photo form, and it's generally a who's who of current and relatively recent former Tigers. Represented above are Alex Avila, Matt Boyd, Daz Cameron, Jeimer Candelario, Nick Castellanos, Juan Encarnacion, Travis Fryman, Michael Fulmer, Joe Jimenez, Matt Manning, Victor Martinez, and Jake Rogers. A '90 Topps box card of Fred Lynn (generally known for his time with other franchises) rounds out the player group and then we also have some mascot cards of Paws, stickers, and team cards from the past few years of Topps flagship. There's some very nice stuff in the bunch, including a numbered Fulmer from Topps Hi Tek and a nice boost to my collection of young catcher Jake Rogers.

One sport I don't go out of my way to collect is basketball, but that doesn't mean I don't get excited when someone sends me some Wolverines hoopers in trades like this. Jeff hit a nice mix of former stars and fairly current players, really doing a nice job bulking up their numbers in my collection. The players above include Ignas Brazdeikis, Trey Burke, Jamal Crawford, Tim Hardaway Jr., Juwan Howard, Jimmy King, Caris Levert, Terry Mills, Glen Rice, Duncan Robinson, Glenn Robinson III, Jalen Rose, Nik Stauskas, Maurice Taylor, Mo Wagner, Chris Webber, and D.J. Wilson. THJ's count got a nice bump as did some of the Fab Five-ers, and even Glen Rice's total got a nice bump despite already being #1 in my collection for the sport. He joined Granderson above in eclipsing the 200-card mark at 203, with Chris Webber next at 151, and current Wolverines coach Juwan Howard taking the bronze with 99. There's a very cool mix of brands and designs here and while I'm not sure the photo does a good job of capturing it, some of these really pop! It's also nice seeing some of these players' collections grow since that generally doesn't happen on my account.

Last up today is football, and here I'll say I appreciate Jeff's efforts even more since I know he doesn't tend to collect some of the older former players that I do. My understanding is that a lot of these came out of boxes of stuff his cousin bought from collections to stock his future card shop, and there's obviously a huge alumni base to check for when sorting things out. So thanks, Jeff!

The mix of old and new here includes Tim Biakabutuka, Devin Bush, Jake Butt, Anthony Carter, Frank Clark, Braylon Edwards, Devin Funchess, Rashan Gary, Elvis Grbac, Jim Harbaugh, Desmond Howard, Maurice Hurst, Jourdan Lewis, Ryan Mallett, Mike Martin, Shea Patterson, Donovan Peoples-Jones, Jabrill Peppers, Thomas Rawls, Denard Robinson, De'Veon Smith, Amani Toomer, Josh Uche, Tyrone Wheatley, and Charles Woodson.

I loved seeing a few college uniform cards in there and was of course ecstatic to add to the collections of everyone listed. I wasn't too surprised by some of the players who were more represented than others like Funchess and Denard since they're big parts of Jeff's PC. But past greats like current coach Jim Harbaugh, beastly back Tim Biakabutuka, and GOAT Charles Woodson were nice surprises as well, especially the latter's super nice looking insert.

You might have been wondering since that first image what that jersey card was, and it turns out it's this nice 2015 Donruss Rookie Threads swatch of the already mentioned Funchess. The erstwhile Panther has played sparingly since leaving Carolina for Indy and hasn't seen game action since 2019 due to injuries and a COVID opt-out. I don't know if he'll be able to make his way back into the league but I'm happy to keep collecting him anyway. And I'm also happy to point out that this is my 20th hit of the former TE/WR! It's the 11th relic to go with four autographs, an auto/relic, two patches, and two plates. Not bad!

Jeff, thanks again for the huge box of Tigers and Wolverines goodness that arrived in plenty of time for Christmas, even if I'm only recapping it a few weeks after. I appreciate all the time you put into pulling that stuff for me, and as always I look forward to hitting you back with some Wolverines of my own, a few of your player collections, and (sigh) even some White Sox!

Looking over at my card desk I count four more blogger trade packages and a pair from TCDB with at least two more from the latter on the way, so next time look forward to another trade recap from another of the usual suspects.

The TCDB Michigan Box part 1: basketball

Although my Cardbarrel order arrived today I knew it was going to be delayed a bit from its original ETA so I finally got to work on something I'd been putting off for a bit.

As some of you may remember, last May I completed a TCDB deal with fellow Wolverines collector Chris (cjjt) in which I flipped him some dupe Michigan Football hits and maybe a few other things for a 5000-count monster box of his UM football and basketball extras. The not-quite-full box added 1600+ football cards to my collection and more than 350 basketball items to boot! Plus I came into possession to a bunch of extras I could use as traders, some of which have long since made their way to mailboxes around the country. In short, it was a huge boon to my collection and a blast making my largest TCDB deal by far.

So this past weekend I finally decided to start making a bit of progress on covering the contents. This evening, in honor of the UM basketball team going dancing as a #1 seed(!), albeit with a key injury or two, here's a quick look at the basketball content:

I took this shot to give you an idea of the sizes of the stacks for all 23 guys represented here. Glen Rice's pile (124 cards) led the way by far, with Juwan Howard (46), Loy Vaught (39), Jalen Rose and Terry Mills (26), and Chris Webber (25), the next highest. Gary Grant (18) and Rumeal Robinson (14) were the other two to hit double-digits.

In this scan and the next two I decided to grab one card to represent each player in the bunch, and in all but five cases (where I only received a single new card of a player) I had a choice, so I often opted for Michigan uniform cards where I could. Bullock, Burke, Calip, and Hughes were four of the five single-card guys, and I can't say Calip's name was familiar to me. The long-tenured Crawford added four new cards, Green got six, and Higgins five. Given the wide range of years represented here you won't be surprised that I got to enjoy a huge variety of brands and designs!

Here we have Jimmy King (2 cards), Mills, and Rose from some college-themed sets. McCormick (three), Riley (four), and Tarpley and Taylor (eight each) are guys I hadn't mentioned yet. I was absolutely spoiled with choice for Rice (don't worry, you'll see more soon) but had to go with the E-X Century card here. Flair and UD's Black Diamond were a couple brands I was happy to see plenty of, especially the version graced by Taylor.

Rudy T.! I had a pair to pick from for him and skipped the boring junk wax item for an SP Authentic base featuring a cool college shot. Traylor's Focus base was one of three to choose from, and since I like the baseball and football iterations of that design, why not go with that? Vaught's Flair insert was a natural choice for me, a basketball-appropriate set called Hardwood Leaders. Wade's another guy I wasn't familiar with and the Wild Card you see above (more familiar to me on the football side of things) was it. And of Webber's nice stack I thought the mid-90s Ultra insert pairing him up with a Lion was fun.

As I said a good amount of the stuff was somewhat boring base from the early 90s so I didn't have any desire to show off everything (and therefore need to resort to my terrible card photography skills), but still managed to come up with some very cool items to highlight. Take this nine-spot of Sporting News coach of the year Juwan Howard. Because he had 46 cards to choose from I easily came up with a page worth, starring some fun inserts and interesting base from products such as Topps Finest and Chrome plus UD's Black Diamond and SPx.

And then there's '89 champ Rice and his 124 cards, meaning I couldn't stick to just nine! Chris had each player sorted by brand and then year, which was weird for me as I was flipping through everything to determine what was new, and that's why you see things sort of grouped that way here. It's kind of fun seeing a trio of Bowman's Best designs with a three-peat, though, or a couple Flair Showcases bringing the shininess.

Look at the Topps and Upper Deck greatness on display here! The former includes Stadium Club, Finest times three, and Gallery while the latter brings it with SP, flagship, Black Diamond, and Encore. And I didn't even include the E-X Century card you already saw! The 1997 and '98 Upper Deck flagship baseball products are among my favorites and the hoops version lives up to the hype with interesting game-dated photos.

These four guys combined for 116 new cards, fewer than Rice by himself, but I didn't want to give them the short end of the stick. Rose leads the way with another Stadium Club look I've always appreciated plus the usually cool Ultimate Victory. Platinum's throwback designs can be fun but not as much as Taylor's resting dunk face. Mystique was another shiny brand I liked to collect, as was Topps Chrome in its older iterations, and here Vaught brings his own intense dunk face. Lastly, I threw in a retro Webber (one of several from that set) and a very representative 90s insert.

As a result of all this craziness Rice became the leader in my basketball PC with 187 cards, making him the second to hit the century mark after Webber, now at 136. Howard (84), Rose (63), and Vaught (53) all eclipsed the 50-card mark, and I count 11 players with at least 20 items. Not bad at all!

And now I can enjoy putting them away before moving on to my Cardbarrel cards, then possibly returning with the massive football side of this deal, which will probably take several posts. Until then, good luck to my Wolverines in the NCAA tournament!

2020 trade package #22: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

It's been another good month or so for trade packages, as today's post (and at least one that's upcoming) will prove.

Tonight's mailer showed up this past Sunday, a pleasant surprise to find on my porch a few days ago. What was in it? Even more Canadian bakin' from Doug of Sports Cards From the Dollar Store. Your friendly neighbourhood king of dollar store repacks had let me know about a few cards I could expect at some point, and happily it didn't take him very long to fill out another enjoyable envelope to send across the border:

No baseball this time so we'll get right into the hardwood stuff. Almost everything was from the glorious 90s so there's a huge variety of brands and designs to choose from. Coach Juwan Howard looks radical on one of Skybox's many era-appropriate looks. Brooklyn's LeVert gets a chance to put on a show as the NBA playoffs resume. I remember rooting for "Sugar" Mills as a Piston before knowing he was a Michigan alum. And Rice, Rumeal, and Tarpley are all pretty well known products of the program.

A trio of Loy Vaught and a lone C-Webb close out the basketball content, and then it's on to the gridiron. I needed all three cards of Brady in his old uniform, from 2020 Panini products Legacy and Score. I'm liking the Score base design as usual, and there's a good look at TB12's competitive nature on a Gold parallel of an insert called Game Face. Giants big back Jarrod Bunch also makes a couple appearances out of '93 Stadium Club and '94 Collector's Choice.

A cool horizontal UD Toomer is joined by the highlight of the football content for me: four more 2020 Score Wolverines. Gary's a second-year card so he's with the vets, then there's the trio of Wolverines from the set's rookie class. TE Sean McKeon ("Mc-KYOON") went undrafted but signed with the Cowboys after a solid career both blocking and catching at the position. Transfer QB Patterson's name was well known around the country as the signal-caller, but nobody was surprised when he went undrafted after a not-as-good-as-expected couple of seasons in Ann Arbor. Still, his name was big enough to get him into lots of products this year over others, such as first-round C Cesar Ruiz. Such is the hobby. Talented WR Peoples-Jones rounds out the group after he left for the draft a season early. He too failed to reach his vast potential in college but was explosive at times, and hard work and good coaching could make him a valuable wideout. I'm looking forward to snagging any other 2020 Wolverines as they show up in new products.

The start of the hockey content includes envelope stalwarts Cogliano and Knuble, whom I'm always happy to see, but young star D-Man Quinn Hughes, whom I got to see over his two years in Ann Arbor, is the big highlight here. The card on the left is a foil-y RC (/199) out of UD's high-end Buybacks product, one I saw broken a few times on Phil Hughes' Youtube channel. It's definitely got that super premium Upper Deck shine to it. The other is a cool horizontal insert called Rookie Science from UD Credentials, with the formula for "velocity vector" on the back. That's too much math for my English major brain, so instead I'll enjoy the colorful front. Colors are pretty!

This scan of the rest of the hockey starts out very strongly with two new Dylan Larkins. New WolverWing #1 is a sweet rainbow die-cut out of 2019-20 Allure called White Rainbow, which I know because the back literally tells you! Well done, UD. That's joined by his base card from the previously mentioned Credentials. Patch gets a textbook Ultra insert fro 2016-17 Fleer Showcase (made by UD) called Scoring Kings, which has a lightning background that didn't scan very well. I believe that SPA of Trouba is my first of him with the Rangers since he joined them, but I'll have to check. Werenski hails from the Rainbow parallel of OPC's Platinum product that I always enjoy seeing. Shiny!

And then we get to the three big hits of the package. If you thought I was excited about the two Hughes cards you saw earlier then you'll know I was geeked for Doug to send me my first auto of him as well! I'm fortunate to trade with someone like Doug who pulls so many ridiculously nice cards and is willing to trade them. I'll certainly be working on hard on trying to pay him back for this 19-20 Exquisite auto (/99). That alone would have made the envelope, but then there's also a sweet dual jersey of Patch, whom we also already saw, out of last year's Artifacts. This is basically a numbered (/165) relic version of the base card, and it looks great. And last up is the only non-Wolverine in the pile, but it's a card that looked great with the other hockey stuff. Like Larkin's card above, this one is from UD's Allure, and the back tells me you're looking at a Red Rainbow Jersey. You literally couldn't pick a better color for a Red Wings card, and I'd say the up-and-coming winger Zadina is a player to get excited about too!

Doug, thanks once again for another killer envelope! As I've told you in our usual back-and-forth I have a few things in-hand and elsewhere for you, and I'll keep adding to it until it's worthy of this greatness, and then send it back across the Detroit River. Until then, may your hot hand continue as your personal and group breaks go on!

2020 trade package #3: Chronicles of Fuji

I count myself among the people lucky enough to trade with Fuji and I'm always glad to hear when he's sending something my way since I know it'll be great.  That was mostly definitely the case when Mark played Santa last month and sent out a fleet of envelopes all over the country.  Even with my expectations high Fuji's generosity always manages to surprise me.  Check out this latest mailer:

Make no mistake, this package was a hit parade, and this isn't even half of it!  We'll start with Michigan pitching great Jim Abbott on a signature from UD's Goodwin champions.  As usual with the brand the artwork is suspect but the auto is top notch!  Then there's a whole mess of Tigers.  The first of two Miggy relics from 2019 Topps is a jersey from the set done up in the '84 design, which reminds me of the Tigers '84 set I grabbed at Comerica Park last year.  Next is a 2017 Topps Holiday jersey of Michael Fulmer which is somehow my first hit of the former ROY whom I continue to hope returns to full health.

Going a bit older school we have what I considered a pleasant surprise:  a 2000 Topps Traded autograph of former catcher/infielder Brandon Inge.  He could be streaky but put together a few nice seasons in the mid-aughts with his best year coinciding with Detroit's return to the Fall Classic.  That's my first auto of BInge and only my second hit overall along with a jersey, so this was a great inclusion!

Last up in this scan is a trio of nice jersey relics of Trashtro pitcher Justin Verlander.  I may cover this more in a future post but for now to answer what may become a FAQ:  yes I still collect JV, though I've soured on him as a player given his lackluster reaction to his team cheating its way to a title.  Anyway, these relics are quite nice and hail from 2017 Ginter and Heritage and '19 Donruss.

And the bevy of Tigers doesn't end there!  Up top is a very cool acetate auto out of 2002 Topps Pristine of '01 first-round bust P Kenny Baugh.  In a round one short on quality regulars (Joe Mauer, Mark Prior for a minute, Gavin Floyd, Mark Teixeira) Baugh was still a bad miss as he never made it out of the minors, plus he was selected ahead of, among others, David Wright!  That see through auto card is super cool, though, and I'm planning on keeping it for now despite the fact that I rarely hold onto cards of such players.

The other two here are somewhat similarly designed jersey relics of former teammates Miggy and V-Mart.  Cabrera's is from 2019 while Victor's was made the previous year.  I may have looked this up and mentioned it before, but as teammates from 2011-18 they combined for 454 HR while seeing their production fall off a cliff after 2016.  By the way, this is just my second hit of Victor and first of him as a Tiger, so again, nice job by Mark!

And now we're on to the "other sports" portion of the package.  I thought the Jimmy King/Ty Wheatley duo card made for a nice segue between the two games seen her, and naturally I enjoyed the college photos out of the terrific looking '95 Classic Five Sport set.  Biakabutuka's card is also very interesting:  a $20 phone card inserted into packs of '96 Press Pass.  They apparently also could be found in values of $5, $10, and $1996.  Remember phone cards?  That's so 90s.

And I'll give the best card of this bunch its own paragraph.  Glen Rice is probably the best player from the '89 champs and I'm always happy to get new stuff of his, especially when I don't have to buy it myself!  This 2016-17 Panini Excalibur Calligraphy card is a textbook example of how nice his signature can look, and he clearly lives up to the set's name here.  This is my fifth auto of Rice and of course I want to keep adding more.

Last up is the football hits portion, or what I'm going to refer to as the "Long haul" for obvious reasons.  I wonder if any of you can picture my face after I pulled card after card out of this package and thought, "How much great stuff did Fuji just send me?!"  I mean, take a look at the previous three scans and keep them in mind when you look at this bonanza.  Yowza!

Let's start with Touchdown Tim in the upper-left corner.  You wouldn't know it from the looks of it but that card was made by Fleer during his rookie year of '96, and despite the plain look it's nice to have since he doesn't have a ton of signed cards.  Then we have what's just my second auto of DL Ryan Glasgow of the Michigan walk-on Glasgows.  The reason it's difficult to see his name in that scan is the color of the foil--blue, appropriately enough--since it's a parallel version of his regular auto in the set.  As usual with Contenders/Draft I think it looks awesome and love the college action photo they went with.

Before we get to the guy who had the biggest day I can cover two of his teammates and fellow '08 draftees.  #1 PC guy Chad Henne is first with a jersey relic out of that year's UD product and then we jump forward two years for a sweet dual jersey out of Sweet Spot of another top guy in Mario Manningham, a.k.a. the namesake of my defunct sister blog.  The latter looks especially cool with, yep, a great college photo.

And now to the man of the hour, Jake Long, who represents a quarter of today's hits, with all of them being autographed!  Two of them--'08 Stadium Club and '09 Topps Mayo--include "just" signatures while the other three--'08 Leaf Certified Materials, Bowman Sterling, and UD Premier--come with relic bonuses.  Again, pulling these out one at a time was a crazy experience, and I'm humbled once again by Fuji's trademark generosity, not to mention the effort I like to credit when people go above and beyond to hit my preferred college collections.

Mark, thanks once again for this stunner of an envelope!  I'm not sure when or how I'll hit you back, but regardless of what you say I intend to do so one way or another.  And in the meantime I'm enjoying seeing the similarly amazing packages popping up on other blogs.  It's good to be a friend of Mr. Fuji!

2020 trade package #1: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

It's February 14 and that means one thing around here: celebrating the birthday of buddy of the blog Doug over at Sports Cards From the Dollar Store!  I think it's awesome that he collects cards of athletes, celebrities, and more, with whom he shares a birthday, and today's post is a good example of that fun, listing his top 10 2/14 cards from the last year.  I'm happy to announce that he has a few more things from me that he'll be able to show off whenever he feels like it.

Speaking of "whenever he feels like it," unforeseen circumstances delayed me from getting his latest package to me (delivered weeks ago!) scanned and ready so eventually I figured, why not show it off on his big day?  And "big" is appropriate when discussing this latest mailing, one that arrived in what I believe was a 600-ct box, meaning he shelled out good money to get it to me.  Such is the generosity of my Canadian neighbour.  And as I flipped through the cards, I felt that generosity even more!

That Miggy is from a 2014 set that was available (probably in packs?) at that year's National, and it's cool because I hadn't seen it before.  The other three hail from one of Doug's favorites: Panini's Chronicles.  I love the mix of brands/designs it offers, and those are on full display here with a pair of Christin Stewarts and my first auto of young IF Dawel Lugo.  Nice!

The baseball continues here with even more Panini goodness.  Griffey hails from 2012 Prizm, and that sweet shot of his sweet swing is new to me.  The not-so-outspoken-anymore Verlander also cameos with another example of a 2019 Chronicles design, this one from the super thick Spectra.  And then there's two of my favorites in the whole box:  2019 Elite Extras of former Michigan pitchers Tommy Henry and Karl Kauffmann, two guys that were key to the Wolverines' College World Series run last year.  I love that they're both college uni cards plus I was thrilled to get my first of Henry, hopefully card #1 of many.

When it comes to packages from Doug, hockey is always well represented, and this time I was treated not just to cards of my alma mater, but the local pro club as well.  The Wings may be terrible this year but they were fun to watch in the 90s and 2000s when they were like the Braves except they won more than one title.  You'll see O-Pee-Chee's 2019-20 base set quite a bit today, one I think looks quite nice, as is typical for the brand.

Wings content #2 of 3.  The star of the show here is PC guy Dylan Larkin, whom I scanned with both teams just because.  I was happy to need all three because I love growing his collection, and all the cards look nice, too, including the Artifacts red insert called Aurum, which is a bit short on gold, but that's fine for this Red Wings fan!

The last of the Wings stuff comes with a couple more 19-20 OPCs, but of course I'm more interested in cards starring The Captain--and now The GM--Steve Yzerman.  The mix of old and new photos, designs, and uniforms, makes those a fun trio!

On the Michigan side of things, the basketball team has had its highs and lows this year but have been pretty interesting under new coach Juwan Howard.  Representing that team, Doug hit me up with a new base of Rumeal Robinson, a jersey of weed entrepreneur (go figure!) Mitch McGary, and a ridiculously beautiful slide/auto of Robinson's '89 NCAA title teammate Glen Rice.  I believe the Rice is my second such auto from that set and, yes, it looks even better in person!

A very nicely balanced package continues with some excellent football content.  '99 Collector's Edge Masters makes four appearances throughout this scan with base cards (/5000) of PC guy Tim Biakabutuka and former QB Elvis Grbac, plus HoloSilver (with red stamps?) parallels (/3500) of '98 champs Griese and Woodson.  Touchdown Tim is also represented on a super cool '99 UD Retro base, also new to me.  I also loved the nostalgia for 90s inserts with '94 Score Gold Zone parallels of AC and OT John "Jumbo" Elliott.  And then we have my first card of another newbie to my collection, former LB/DL hybrid Craig "Death" Roh, a pretty good recruit who played in Ann Arbor during one of the team's worst eras, 2009-12.  While NFL success eluded him he's since done well for himself in the CFL, and made his way onto this Red parallel from UD's product for that league last year.

These two guys have been associated a bit more with winning, though, in college and/or the pros.  (Future former?) Patriot great Tom Brady features on a very cool horizontal Panini Gridiron base while blog favorite PC guy Chad Henne gets in on the fun with a card I surprisingly didn't have: his 2011 Plates & Patches base (/299).  I recently hit the 300 mark for the latter and can't wait to boost his collection even more this year as I make him my top football PC.

And now we get into the bulk of the package:  Michigan Hockey content!  19-20 OPC makes a solid seven more appearances over the next three scans, proving the Ann Arbor-to-NHL pipeline is as strong as ever.  There's also a couple example of the prior season's factory set blue version of UD's MVP which were also new to me, as was practically everything you'll see in these scans.

There's WolverWing Dylan Larkin again, and I promise my scan of the Aurum insert looks much better than the one used here, getting much closer to the actual red color.  Joining him is a fun AHL card of winger Brad Jones, PC guy Brendan Morrison, and a new 90-91 OPC offering of D-man Jeff Norton.

Before we get to the real fireworks of the box here's the last of the "regular" hockey stuff.  That includes another Norton, two more OPCs, and a card each of D-men Jacob Trouba and Zach Werenski that allowed me to provide scans to TCDB.  I'm noting that because very few cards in the box were missing images there, often thanks to Doug, which was very cool.

And now the part you've probably been expecting considering the source!  Up first is another autograph of the pride of Flower Mound, Texas, Chris Brown, and as usual I'll mention that Doug is almost 100% responsible for my collection of that player.  Next is a couple jersey relics of hockey Mike #1, Cammalleri, from 02-03 Be-a-Player, plus a 2012-13 UD Game Jersey set that was given away at the NHL Hall of Fame back in 2013.  I hadn't seen those before so learning about them was cool, plus I got the set added to the TCDB.

The other hockey Mike is Comrie, and his card happens to be more than just a normal BAP relic (from 03-04) as it got a 1/1 stamp at the 2004 All-Star game.  These aren't your standard 1/1s but I still like to label them that way, and anyway they sometimes make plain cards more interesting.  That'll become my first 1/1 of Comrie.

Another guy with twice the hits today is D-man Jon Merrill, a guy who's been with Vegas for the last three years but was drafted by the Devils, the team pictured above.  The designs of those relic cards are different but the Dominion and Titanium cards came out of Panini's Rookie Anthology, kind of an ancestor of Chronicles.  Doug's also been a major factor in my Merrill collection.

Last up in this scan is yet another defenseman, Jacob Trouba, who finally saw his tenure with the Jets end thanks to a trade to the Rangers, with whom he could possibly tie or best his career-high of 10 goals.  This relic with a fun design should represent hit #10, making him one of a select group of guys in the collection to hit that mark.

Two of the guys on these horizontal cards are also in the 10+ club.  One is Cogliano, whose Upper Deck Ice card is twice as nice thanks to dual swatches!  The other is possibly my favorite card in the whole package is a new Shawn Hunwick--something I haven't been able to say in a while--that includes an autograph plus an enormous Blue Jackets patch, plus, you know, his Wolverines helmet.  Hunwick remains my lone hockey supercollection and it was a nice surprise from Doug that I could finally add to it again.  And last but not least is a cool multi-swatch card of former Michigan star Tyler Motte, a guy that went off for 32 goals and 24 assists in his final year in Ann Arbor, then bounced around from Chicago to Columbus to his current team, Vancouver.  I like when manufacturers make relics more interesting with ideas like swatch windows that spell out something relevant.

Doug, once again, happy birthday and also thanks for all the effort (and money!) you put into this amazing package that was an excellent start to the year.  While I work on getting all of these scans added to my collection and my stats updated I hope you enjoy the little envelope I sent your way to celebrate 2/14, and I'll work on another one as soon as I can.

Everyone please head over to SCFtDS to check out Doug's work and send him some cards of 2/14 babies yourselves.  Then stay tuned for all the other posts I've been promising while I've been slacking this year!

2019 COMC purchases: superb basketball and football

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Chris Wormley (@Chris_Wormley43) January 29, 2020

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

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