7/31/26 card show report: Whatever

The past few weeks have been a bit "whatever" sports-wise, what with Michigan Football struggling with its transition to a new coaching staff that was supposed to help; the Tigers' season going out with a whimper and the Red Wings starting with one, proving once again that the Illitch family needs to sell both teams; and the NFL is in full swing but it's hard for me to find any team actually likeable, so I just root for individual former Michigan players.

That "blah" kind of feeling has sort of carried over to my blogging, even though they're not really related. I just don't get the itch to post very often, though don't worry, I don't intend to leave anytime soon because I still really appreciate the trading aspect blogging brings, and I have plenty to show off.

And more importantly, that stuff hasn't dulled my interest in the hobby at all. As a matter of fact, on the last day of July, for what would technically be August's show, I headed east to Taylor and tied my high for show spending for the year at $170.

A large chunk of that money was spent on higher-dollar cards, including a few for myself, but then again, "whatever," right? I haven't been spending like crazy this year (or even the past few years) so a splurge every now and then is fine, especially if I enjoy what I'm bringing home. The results of that thinking are below:

To start with, my 381st Rich Hill card may look somewhat plain, but it's actually the Vintage Stock version of his 2018 flagship base, and is therefore numbered /99. I'm glad to add anything new of his, but a numbered card is even better!

Speaking of pitchers I love to collect, one of my absolute favorites this time was the 2001 Stadium Club Capture the Action Game View of Maddux that you see above. It's not quite a 90s insert as it was made in 2001, but the creativity it brings is certainly in the spirit of the golden era of chase cards. Stadium Club offered some gorgeous insert designs in addition to the perennially awesome base looks, and the addition of the embedded slide is a winner. This is also numbered to just 100 copies. Would you rather have something like this or a slightly different colored variant of the usual Fanatics junk? That's what I thought!

A couple cheap Pudge inserts (which actually demonstrate Topps' most recent lack of design) give way to my first relic of young Tigers IF Colt Keith. It's from 2024 Select and the crazy pattern you see is called a Flash Prizm. No, I can't keep track of all of those either. Colt hasn't turned into the star people hoped he would after promising years in 2024 and '25, but he's still just 25, is versatile, and is locked up on a reasonable contract, so he's got time to become a long-term guy.

Another former Tigers IF, George Kell, made the trip home from this show along with the Maddux above, and I think one or two other cards. His 2002 SP Legendary Cuts bat relic caught my eye and I know I didn't pay as much for it as I thought. The addition of the olde English "D" on the bat chip was a nice touch! That appears to be my first relic of Kell, which surprised me.

Last up from baseball is a relatively understated but pretty solid Cal Ripken Jr. relic. As I march closer to 1500 of his cards, my most significant recent addition to his PC is this 2000 Skybox E-X Genuine Coverage jersey, which is a lovely orange Orioles swatch. There's not a whole lot going on with the design but sometimes that's a good thing. That's relic #10 of the Iron Man in my top player collection.

The football content goes just as hard, if not harder, if you can believe it. The Select base of former Vikings QB McCarthy was from the cheap boxes, but the rest certainly weren't! I'd seen two or three of the big cards in this scan in this seller's "as priced" boxes for quite a while (I'm talking more than a year at least!) and finally said to myself, "whatever," and asked for his best price on them along with the rest of the stuff I picked out. I was satisfied with what he asked and now I own them.

First up is my 78th card of Amara Darboh, and hit #52 (yep, I sure like that ratio!). Hailing from 2017 Rookies & Stars, it's a Longevity Signatures Green auto, and since the serial numbering is right up front you can see why I was especially interested in this one. At just five copies it's my lowest numbered Darboh aside from a printing plate, not to mention the 37th that includes his signature.

Keeping up the WR theme--he was a "TE" briefly in name only at Michigan--is Devin Funchess on a variation of his 2015 Panini Contenders auto/RC. This is the "facing forward" version while a "facing right" front image also exists. This one wasn't nearly as pricey as the others here but was still a fun addition as it joins 36 other cards in my bunches of Funchess.

The last WR in the group is possession guy Jason Avant, a sure-handed receiver for Michigan and then the Eagles. The card you see of him above is from 2006 Leaf Limited, way back when the Leaf name still meant something other than "Endless garbage 1/1s and stupid Trump shit." The bright foil you see is due to the card being a Gold Spotlight parallel of his RC, and it comes with both Avant's signature and a nice two-colored jersey swatch. Though you wouldn't know this by the front, it's almost as rare as the Darboh above, limited to just 10 copies. Just another gorgeous piece of one of my best looking football PCs, now sitting at 67 cards strong.

Last and kind of least, since it pales in comparison to the others--but is still much appreciated--is my third relic of ex-Minnesota QB J.J. McCarthy. The national champ shares a 2004 Donruss Rookie Holiday Dual Sweater insert with former teammate Dallas Turner. As always, these are kind of gimmicky, but also no worse than "event worn" cards, and at least the multiple colors make them more interesting. I'm hoping JJ gets more of a chance with the Giants (or someone else) than he did with the Vikings, who cut bait on him pretty early, at a time when it's become clear a number of young QBs need years to develop. But that's fine since I have no love for the Vikes anyway. "Whatever" again, right?

And that's another successful show in the books. I've got two more to recap and will get to them whenever I feel like it along with the other stuff that's hit my collection since then. Until I do, I hope many of you are doing better than "whatever" when it comes to the teams you root for. Unless you like the Yankees, in which case I'm not sorry!

2026 TCDb trade roundup: May through August smaller trades

Happy September, all! School is back in session for many or will be soon. As far as my interests the Tigers...uh...well they don't matter, but Michigan Football kicks off their season tomorrow night, and that's a big reason to celebrate.

Tonight I thought I'd finally take a quick run through a chunk of my TCDb trades from this year. I've completed 36 official transactions through the site (including a PIF or two) and most of those ran from May, around when I re-enabled trading on my profile, and the end of last month.

In this post you'll see the smaller trades, as in the ones that required just one or two scans. I'll give a bit of context where it makes sense, but otherwise I'll try to let the cards do the talking. Enjoy!

AdamD

Since you don't see him here too often, Brian Simmons is a Michigan Baseball guy, and when this member offered me that '99 Pacific Crown Royale Opening Day parallel (numbered /72), I couldn't accept quickly enough. I own 26 of his 45 listed cards and most of what I need at this point is lower-numbered or Minor League stuff. That made this deal an exciting one for me!

b14rebel

Reed is another Michigan Baseball guy who played for the Tigers. That Robinson/Oliva/Kaline was a really nice addition too!

Billsfan560

These Rookie Sweaters are a bit goofy but just as good as any "worn for a second" relic, and that's my fourth such card of transfer QB Joe Milton III.

davidandrew21

A bit of help for multiple sets here: '95 Finest, '15 Topps Cal Ripken 2632, and '16 Topps Tribute to the Kid. After all the deals I'll eventually post here, I need the following total from each set, respectively: 6, 0, and 9. Yep, I'm all set with that Ripken set, which is pretty cool!

Dmbramer

drew_engquist

Hershey

Hubbard is the guy of interest for me on the three-player basketball card as it's a RC of the Michigan Basketball product. Speaking of multiplayer cards, the Topps sticker that includes PC guy Mickey Tettleton (along with Astro Dave Smith) has another interesting guy on the back:

Sweet Lou! That's an excellent combo if I do say so myself.

immmike

JBurrow9

The Jenkins here is a True Blue parallel from '24 Rookies & Stars and is numbered /149 on the back. The Perry was supposed to be a Chrome Silver parallel from '06 Topps Draft, but this member accidentally mis-IDed what's actually the unnumbered Black version. That was fine since I needed it as well.

JerPie69

Junk_Wax_Junkie

leftyscore

I love that Call to the Hall Gwynn, another example of a '90s insert ruling, as they do. It's bookended by a couple of multiplayer '06 Topps Co-Signers numbered parallels. Dunn's paired with teammate Griffey on a Bronze numbered /150, and Maddux was a natural comparison for Prior on a Silver Bronze (confused? I am!) limited to 125 copies.

Maximus

The Delgado might look a bit out of place here and in my collection, but it closes the book on my '94 Pinnacle Series 1 set chase. Meanwhile, the McGary tri-color jersey/auto was a nice reward for a couple Cowboys autos I was glad to get rid of. It's my second signed relic of his and 9th hit overall.

MichiganFan9

It sure is nice to make at least a little progress on the Michigan TK Legacy set, even if it's a single card. Lund indeed starred on the gridiron for the Wolverines, but he decided baseball was his sport in the end, and split his career with Brooklyn and Detroit (with a short stop between the two as a St. Louis Brown).

mvs0219

pcantara (trade 1)

One of my two trades with this member included an '88 Topps Sticker featuring ex-Wolverine Dave Brown of the Packers. In case you're interested, he's joined by Larry Kinnebrew of the Bengals on the front, and the back stars HOF RB Eric Dickerson.

pcantara (trade 2)

The other deal I made with him looks even nicer in comparison. Nico looks awesome on a Blue Prizm wearing his college uni. And though I'm sad that the NFL hasn't worked out for him after an injury, I loved getting my first hit of K Jake "Money" Moody, an autograph out of '23 Absolute. Here's hoping he can work out his kicking issues and earn another job nailing PATs and FGs!

RaymondC15

rneagle2

If you couldn't tell, the player on the bottom sticker is former Wolverine Jabrill Peppers. I didn't feel like adding another scan just to fit it in because I'm lazy.

RoyalCornhusker

The numbered Horton is quite cool, but I was also happy to add my second auto of Wolverine David Ojabo after this member was willing to work with me to find something he could use. Hockey alum Stiver and the five ladies from '25 UD World of Sports are all making their debuts in this post, and it's especially cool to have some representation of less common sports involving some of my fellow Wolverines!

smitha1

There's plenty to like here but the biggest addition for me was the '98 SPx Finite Spectrum parallel of PC guy Dean Palmer numbered /2250. And if you were as much of a fan of the slugging 3B as I was, then you'll especially love the next deal...

TpocketT

This may be the most fun bunch of cards in this post. I acquired around half of what you see here in one trade for five cards (all pretty much just junk autos), and then sent him $25 for some of the nicer ones, including the Larkins and everything numbered. Speaking of the latter, Barry's '03 Topps Chrome Refractor is SN699; The Matheny '06 Chrome Red is good for just 90 copies; Dean-o has one from the same set as the Larkin plus a Gold version limited to 449. This is just a beautiful bunch of cards that hits some of my favorite baseball PCs. Refractors rule!

wireguy66

I'll cover the remaining trades in one or more future posts, though first I'm planning on getting back to more important stuff including trades, shows, an eBay purchase, and a few more Facebook Marketplace finds. Yep, I've had even more luck with the latter lately. Stay tuned for those, and until then, GO BLUE!

6/5/26 card show report: the appetizer

I'm back from a quick vacation down south (possibly more on that in a future post as it did involve a baseball game and related card purchase), and tonight I'll be posting my pickups from the first of the two shows I attended in June. This was the usual monthly one at Taylor Town Trade Center, whereas next time I'll recap the big meetup in Kalamazoo.

If May's $170 spending made up for the paltry $25 I threw down in April, June was a regression to the mean (which I made up for a couple weeks later!) as I exchanged a decent $53 for what you see below and more:

A new Grandy! Did you know I now own 300 of his cards, good for #1 on TCDb as the first to reach that milestone? 1000+ guys Gwynn, Larkin, and Maddux all came along for the ride on some fun inserts too.

No Griffey, but the other Junior at least rounds out the big PC guys, and my Pudge PC continued to skyrocket this year thanks to another trio here.

A Pistons THJ Refractor represents the lone basketball item, but I did make up for that a bit this month.

A couple nice looking Nicos kick off the football content, including a die-cut Select parallel and insert from Topps Chrome, a product you'll see a good amount of tonight. I also came away with a couple new cards of national champ RB Blake "The Great" Corum, one of which sports Donruss's Rated Rookie logo that I value above Topps's All-Star Rookie cup.

This football scan brings a great mix of color, some of which was from Panini brands, but most of which hails from Topps Chrome. The Peppers Red Ice looks great with the Giants' unis, but the Oluwatimi is the card I'm most excited for here because the transfer C who led the OL for the 2022 Big Ten champs doesn't appear on much cardboard.

Hey, how about six total cards of GOAT DB Charles Woodson to wrap up the non-hits? The Heisman-winner is four cards away from becoming football player #3 to join the 400-club in my collection, and not that far behind leaders Brian Griese (431) and Jim Harbaugh (400 even).

I managed to snag a few fun hits as well without breaking the bank. The Select jersey of "Gift from the football gods" DL Mason Graham represents his debut in my hits collection, which is pretty exciting. Meanwhile, the Pink Prizm (but red jersey swatch) of transfer (out) QB Joe Milton III is, appropriately enough, #3. And last up, not only did I land a second relic of #1 WR Roman Wilson, I also lucked into finding a beautiful Prestige auto of Graham's fellow national champ. It's foil, it's Prestige, and it's a Michigan uni card, so I love it...even if it uses a photo from before he switched to the #1 jersey!

Ordinarily that would be it, but I wasn't spending a ton and noticed some interesting oddball stuff on one of my usual seller's tables. In the end, I decided adding $10 to my total was worth it for this:

Does anyone else who grew up during the 80s or who collects the decade recognize the name "Topps Gallery of Champions"? If you do, then you already know what to expect:

This is the 1988 set of 12 mini aluminum "cards" representing some of the award-winners from 1987. The set, also available in bronze and silver at much higher prices, replicates each player's 1988 Topps card.

Hopefully you can get a decent idea from these images, but I've also included the checklist here:

As you can see, each player is represented only once, even if they won multiple awards (Dawson, McGwire, and Bedrosian). Of course the big draw for me was Tony Gwynn, but I also thought it was fun picking up such an oddball item in its complete, boxed form.

Of course Topps wanted you to buy the more expensive versions too, for about $134 and $484 delivered--and that was in 1980s dollars! Those prices equate to about $378 and $1366 today. Whoa!

Nope, I'm totally good with the $10 I spent for the 12-piece aluminum set, thank you very much.

It was another good Taylor show, but as I said in my last post covering the trade package Jeff brought along, the Kalamazoo meetup a couple weeks later was an absolute blast, and I'll plan on covering that next, so stay tuned!

2026 trade package #14: My Sports Obsession

It sure does make your day that much nicer when you're already excited to go to a card show and then you get to meet up with a bunch of friends too! I'll cover more about the show in particular in an upcoming post, but today I'm covering cards that were gifted to me by one of those very cool people.

Here's a look at all of us at the 6/20 show in Kalamazoo. I'm on the left, followed by John, Jeff, and Samantha, who's now married to Jason from TCDb (congrats to them!), followed by the Army/Reds fan himself.

Jeff, whom I think everyone reading this knows from My Sports Obsession, brought me a box packed with stuff he knew I'd love, and as always, he was correct. My fellow all things Michigan/Barry Larkin/Cal Ripken Jr. collector does an amazing job of sorting through cards for a local shop, getting to keep some as payment, and sending me some of the spoils, because he's cool like that.

Here's a look at all the goodies he brought with him:

Lots of good Tigers, especially Miggy, Cobb, and 2026 All-Star Riley Greene. Once again I'm reminded that Topps' Flagship cards look quite nice compared to their actual flagship output. Elliott is one of a few Michigan Baseball PCs Jeff and I have in common, and thanks to him I now have six cards of the 2022 A's second-rounder who's still in their system. Oh, and Riley with just the 'stache looks hilarious!

This scan is a nice one for my Mr. Padre collection. Pacific Prism Invincible remains undefeated thanks to cards like that, and of course I love 90s stuff like Pinnacle Mint. The more recent cards from Topps Gold Label, Platinum Anniversary, and Archives look quite nice too. And I don't get to add to my collection of UM guy Tommy Henry (the pride of Portage Northern!) as much as I'd like, so I appreciate Jeff sending me the Bowman Draft Chrome card above.

Rich Hill may be retired but thankfully I get to enjoy a card of his final MLB team, the Royals, who were #14 for Dick Mountain. I love seeing Kaline and Kell together again. I think Barry Larkin would have to be the player with the second largest combined total between our collections, second only to Ripken. Yep, I just looked, and by about 700 cards! Barry's the fifth player I've gotten over the 1K mark, along with the Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken big four. Verlander's next with 730+, and Miggy hasn't even hit 600 yet, so I would imagine my blog's namesake will be next to hit the mark. Anyway, this is a great assortment of cards of the former UM/Reds SS.

And Maddux has just a five-card lead on Larkin, with 1020 as of this post. The 90s SPx card plus a recent Stadium Club are very nice highlights of great additions to his PC. A Topps High Tek of former Tiger J.D. Martinez was a fun throw-in here. As for the Iron Man, Jeff hit me with a Leaf base from 40 years ago (wait, '86 was that long ago?!) and last year's Stadium Club. Stewart didn't work out, but Skubal sure did!

Sure, Tarik's likely to be traded in the next few weeks, and that's probably the right move given that his free agent asking price was going to be exorbitant and the cheap-ass owners wouldn't have paid him half that anyway. It was nice when the team was able to keep a home-grown superstar ace like Verlander for longer, but those days are good and done. At least I have some really nice cards of Skubal's to enjoy, like the bunch Jeff sent here that give me a solid 82 of the repeat Cy Young-winner. And speaking of Verlander, he ends this scan...

...and ends the vertical orientation baseball stuff with another six-pack. The soon-to-be-retired legend adds eight to his collection thanks to Jeff, and those made a good dent towards the 750 mark. I really can't have too many cards of his, and I enjoy a good number of the brands/designs you see here, especially Stadium Club and Archives.

And finally for baseball, some horizontals plus an oddball. 2000 has to be the classiest look for Pacific's Aurora brand. Mad Dog goes back for one more appearance thanks to '23 Archives. Then we have a couple Tigers team cards: '79 Topps, the year before Sparky would take over, plus 2006 Heritage, showing off the team a year before they'd shock everyone by racing to the World Series. Lastly, the lenticular card is from '87 Sportflics, and the back of this one lists the team's leaders in average, HRs, and RBI each year from 1977-86.

Now we have a few basketball scans, mostly thanks to Jeff's ONIT Timeless subscription. Also, this is apparently when scanning went off the rails for me, but to be fair, I did have a cold at the time and probably just didn't check to see how these came out. No disrespect intended to the pictured athletes!

Anyway, this first group puts me at 10 of the 14 cards in the Timeless set covering the 2025-26 women's team. Jeff also included a Compass insert of Te'Yala Delfosse.

Additionally he gifted me more of the men's team set. There are 16 cards of the eventual champs, and I now lay claim to 13 of them, needing star first-rounder Aday Mara along with Malick Kordel and Ricky Liburd. The other big names are here and in the next scan, including Most Outstanding tournament player Elliot Cadeau, #9 overall pick Morez Johnson Jr., and #11 selection Yaxel Lendeborg. It was pretty cool seeing Johnson, Lendeborg, and Mara go #9, 11, and 12 overall a few weeks ago!

Besides the base cards, he included a Johnson insert called Stained Glass, plus a Classic Game Card of Juwan Howard from 1994, and a Bowman Chrome U of star women's player Syla Swords.

Jeff has given me a whole bunch of basketball and football ONIT Timeless cards so I'm glad I was able to give the '25 ONIT team set I bought for him on Facebook when I saw him at this show. Just like that set, the Timeless version is 79 cards in size, and he's given me 27 of them, including a rare-ish appearance of Justice Haynes with the Wolverines (he's since moved on to Georgia Tech after his brilliant '25 campaign was shortened due to injury). Also included: a Black Compass insert of DB Rod Moore, numbered to just 25. There are apparently 10 in this set so it's crazy he pulled two of one card limited to 25 copies!

The final ONIT card was a regular Compass insert of this year's QB with limitless potential (if he can put it all together), Bryce Underwood. That's just my third of the true sophomore who could show leaps in development thanks to a new head coach and an actual QB coach. Joining him in the top row is a great pair of shiny inserts of two recent UM stars in Nico Collins and Blake Corum. 

Johnson is a quality CB who did make an instant impact for the Cardinals, and also shouldn't have green anywhere near his cards! My 9th card of TE Sean McKeon is his Crown Royale entry from 2020 Panini Chronicles. Mullings' card hails from the college-friendly Bowman Chrome U, which happily didn't have to edit out uniforms. And my latest Michigan card of GOAT DB Charles Woodson is a 2025 Panini Prizm Draft Silver Prizm, which looks fantastic and puts him just 5 cards away from the 400 mark.

And last but not least is a surprising hockey item, since Jeff and I don't usually deal in that sport. I certainly do appreciate it, though, since I'm working on a project to track down certain cards of Michigan alumni across sports and non-sports. That makes the '93-'94 Upper Deck RC of Kevin Hilton extra valuable to me, as it knocks one guy off the list. The Trenton, MI born C put up some very good offensive numbers in four seasons in Ann Arbor (1992-93 through 95-96) and was on the under-20 World Junior Championship roster as well for the last two of those seasons.

Again, I want to extend a huge thanks to Jeff for making the trip all the way up to Kalamazoo from his Indiana home, hanging around and talking cards for a bit, and of course, for bringing me this big stack of great new stuff! He's one of my oldest blogging buddies (not literally, Jeff!) and I'm thankful to know people like him in this hobby, not to mention live near enough to get to meet up once in a while!

I think the two June show recaps will follow this post but we'll see what I feel like. Until then, I'm going to enjoy putting away a whole bunch of new stuff!