2022 Sportlots purchases: the Michigan stuff

We've hit February and I've got a show to get to in a couple days so tonight I've decided to start covering the Sportlots cards I purchased at the end of 2022. I've split them up into three groups so I don't drag out getting them posted for too long, and tonight you get to see the Michigan Baseball and Football PC cards I nabbed from there:

Scan #1 starts with my 12th different Jeff Criswell. You also see four of the six Cronenworths I picked up there (with two way down below), from a few different variations of '21 and '22 Topps. At some point I should compare how many Drew Henson baseball cards I have versus football, out of the 100+ in his collection. And it feels like I pick up lower-end cards of Hill far less often than I should be able to, so these two and the pair in the next scan felt like a win for me.

The other two Hill cards joined the Rainbow Foil parallel out of '20 Update, and those are Royal Blue and Yellow inserts. Also, as you can see, I definitely didn't neglect my Larkin collection (930 cards strong!) with the seven cards you see here to go with three more near the bottom. Sometimes I think '96 Topps Chrome doesn't get as much love as it deserves compared to the initial version of Finest but maybe that's just a nostalgia thing for me. Speaking of loving Chrome, the '21 Stadium Club card looks excellent as a perfect combo of the two.

Sportlots has been a good source for parallel versions that seem overly expensive elsewhere, like the Topps Limited and First Edition cards of Matheny above. Hal Morris demonstrates some fun options we had back in the 90s out of Leaf Fractal Matrix, Pacific Online (Web Card! Yep, the ones with the codes), and the Gold version of '99 Topps Stars, #d /2299. Putz's sickly green parallel came out of the 2014 product. And Clayton Richard gets in on the parallel fun with Rainbow Foil, Limited, and 582 Montgomery Collection cards, plus another one in the next scan.

Another Richard parallel and another team too as the Blue Jay appears in Topps' 150th Anniversary insert. Meanwhile, my collection of Branch Rickey is very small at just eight cards, but it was much smaller before these additions so I was glad to bolster the collection of the former Wolverine and innovator of the game. How could you possibly go wrong with products like SP Legendary Cuts and TCMA?

There ends the regular sized vertical stuff but I added a few oddball items as well, and I'm happy to report you'll see similar items scattered across the other two posts. To Larkin's collection I added an '89 Panini Sticker, which I probably pulled from a pack and stuck in the album when I was about six, plus a couple tiny Topps Micro cards. Then I got full-on oddball with a 1984 7-11 Coin of Ted "Simba" Simmons. While I'm much more familiar with the most recent offerings from the convenience store, namely the 2000 set, I have just a few of the coins from the 80s so I love adding fun pieces like this one!

The baseball group is complete with this six-pack of horizontals. My tiny collection of Bourque increases by one thanks to another Rainbow Foil parallel. A shared Padres card that includes Cronenworth gets a couple appearances thanks to 582 Club and Star versions. My Tommy Henry PC nears double digits with a Heritage Minors issue from 2020. It's pretty rare to find new items of Ryan LaMarre that I need right now, but I did track down a '17 Topps All-Star Game factory set version. And Rickey gets one last look on a classic UD card depicting him with recent birthday boy and monumental baseball innovator Jackie Robinson.

To those I added nine football cards, all of which are rookies except for the Collins, which I must have added by mistake since his '22 Prestige card would be a second-year (but is still much appreciated). Other than that, let's pretend I scanned the rest in order. QB Scott Dreisbach has four RCs I'm chasing and I picked up my first two out of '99 Leaf Rookies & Stars and Score Supplemental, so I'm happy to welcome him to the Rookie Blue project. Floyd's Playoff Momentum Retail is the 10th card in his collection and seventh of eight first-years that I need. Fellow '98 guy Griese is down to just five missing rookies out of 39 with the addition of the shiny Upper Deck Encore you see above.

Bengals rookie DB Dax Hill is the first of two Michigan uni cards, and his '22 Panini Legacy RC is my second such card of a guy who just missed out on a rookie-year Super Bowl appearance. Transfer RB Jon Ritchie is yet another '98 guy and I'm chasing four of his 12 rookies after picking up his '98 UD base. Saints OL Ruiz is the other college uni guy tonight, and the '20 Playoff of #51 is the third of seven cards I need, which is actually a decent number for an offensive lineman! Finally, Pats LB Josh Uche, who had two three-sack games this season, sees a '20 Donruss Optic RC added to his bunch, number five of the 13 I need to complete his run.

I'm quite happy with the variety I picked up that you see before you this evening and I'm looking forward to seeing what people think of the other two groups as well, so watch for those soon!

2022 trade package #3: Bob Walk the Plank

This evening's trade package comes from a guy who blogs maybe slightly less than I do--I mean, come on, it's March already! Matt, who used to blog at Bob Walk the Plank, and now can be found more commonly on Twitter, hit me back in our longstanding back-and-forth dealing by directly shipping a package of goodies from COMC. They even arrived in the same year he requested his shipment! (Seriously, they do seem to be getting better on that front.)

Matt surprised me with some quality stuff (as usual) including a couple deep cuts that show how much he pays attention to the players I collect.

Here's two pages of some outstanding additions to my collections!:

Scan #1 opens with six cards from Brett Adcock's 2016 Bowman/Chrome Draft rainbow. Adcock, a P drafted by Houston in 2016, never made it beyond AA and was seen pitching in indy ball last year. He has just 31 cards to collect according to TCDB (making him today's deepest cut), with five of those being minor league issues and 10 more that are 1/1s, so my collection of 11 is pretty solid (#1 on TCDB, baby!). Up here you can see the Blue Border /150; Chrome Gold /50, Green /99, and Purple /250; and Gold Border /50 and Green Border /99. The remaining five I need for the rainbow are #d /150, /25 (x2), and /5 (x2). Well done, Matt!

Next up is a lone Hal Morris, but given that I'm at 302 of his 469 (#1 on TCDB, baby!), anything new is a good find. Better yet, this is a numbered '90s insert: 1997 Circa's Rave parallel, which is limited /150 copies, quite rare for the time!

Right after him is another pitcher, though one that's not quite as obscure as Adcock. Murray pitched for the Padres, Tigers, and Indians, and trades like this one keep me inching toward his 39 cards. Thanks to these I have 29 (#1 on TCDB, baby!), including his '97 Bowman Blue Ink auto and '98 Bowman Chrome International Refractor. The latter's especially nice as, besides being a Refractor, it's a somewhat tougher find given the era. I need to track down two more of his '97 Bowman signatures and another '98 Refractor /5 to sew up his non-minors (and others, including a buyback) collection, which is pretty cool.

Scan #2 beings with a bit more baseball before veering off into other sports. First up is card #218 in my collection of former Mariners/D-Backs closer J.J. Putz (#1 on TCDB, baby!) a surprisingly rare 2014 Topps 1st Edition. Hit the link to see how those were inserted and you'll see that just 10 copies were made of each card! They're not serial-numbered but at least have the obvious logo up front. This is a very rare card I was unlikely to get myself so it was perfect for this envelope.

Speaking of rare and former Michigan pitchers, next is a numbered pair of Clayton Richard, who's near a milestone at 147 cards (#1 on TCDB, baby!) out of his 437. On the left is a beautiful 2008 Bowman Draft Chrome Gold Refractor /50, and its diminutive partner is the Pink parallel /25 from 2019 Topps Mini. Very cool cards of the former QB-turned-pitcher.

Speaking of QBs, heading over to the gridiron I was very happy to see a new Chad Henne for one of my larger football PCs. I currently count 313 cards of the former UM gunslinger in my collection (#2 on TCDB...CRAP!) and few are as rare as the 2014 Rookies & Stars Longevity Black (#d /10) parallel you see above. Then again, I do have a cyan plate to go with that. Well, I did say "few", didn't I? This is certainly a nice addition to one of my favorite PCs.

And next we have a pair of talented college wideouts in David Terrell and Amani Toomer. The Terrell is card #157 in his collection (also #2 on TCDB...for now), a 2002 Pacific Adrenaline base with a "Pacific Nights Special Edition" stamp and digital serial numbering /10, making it one of the rarest cards in his bunch. I don't know much about that promotion that looks to have appeared across a number of Pacific's products, but I love the rarity and am happy to have the card.

Meanwhile, Toomer's card, #318 (good for a distant 3rd on TCDB, maybe I should stick to baseball) is somewhat similar, from a set called 2002 Playoff Honors Player of the Week Panelists. The backs are numbered, also to just 10 copies, and the write-up about each player's qualifications is pretty nice, if Amani's card is any indication:

Hail, hail, indeed!

And we'll finish up on the ice as Michigan Hockey heads into conference tournament play before hopefully securing a #1 seed and eventual Frozen Four appearance. One guy who was no stranger to those was former WolverWing and head coach Red Berenson. My 39 cards (tied for second on TCDB by just one card!) of the Wolverines legend include this amazing pair. On the left is a 2004-05 In the Game Franchises US East card depicting him with the Rangers, one of his four NHL teams, albeit the one he spent the least time with. It's #d /10 with a Chicago National Convention stamp that seems to be more accepted than some of the random ones you'll see pop up at times. That's joined by a card from one of the cooler hockey products in recent memory: 2012-13 In the Game Motown Madness. The Gold parallel you see of the five-year Red Wing isn't numbered but is said to be limited to just 10 copies. Sweet!

Last up this evening is a technical Michigan uni card of a goalie who almost took the team all the way to the top in 2011. Shawn Hunwick was out of his mind that year and eventually made an emergency appearance for Columbus in the pros, leading to a few cardboard appearances. I own 37 of them (hey, #1 on TCDB, baby!), and the one you're seeing today is a Sapphire parallel #d /85 of his 2012-13 Upper Deck Artifacts RC. It's been tough sledding finding his cards at reasonable prices so I really, really appreciate Matt including this one as much as anything else in this envelope.

Matt, thank you once again for a very thoughtful mailer that clearly shows how much effort you put into finding some great cards for my Michigan PCs, even chipping in towards the ones where I'm clearly #1 on TCDB (baby!). I always love our deals because we both value sending some top notch stuff to each other, and I promise that'll continue from my end after I build up enough to send a package your way.

Up ahead: lots more trade packages and eventually cards from TCDB deals!

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!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 2: big and small we have them all!

Previously: Quick summary and set wants

Today's post is filled with all kinds of crazy oddball stuff: minis, oversized cards, discs, coins, and even a sticker dump from Topps and Panini that has nothing to do with Henry Owens. After initially opting against picking up many of these items I decided I'd enjoy filling in some of the odder parts of my player collection checklists with the zany offerings you see below. And better yet, I realized it would be a blast posting them all at once instead of going player by player, so you can get a look at great examples of unorthodox collectables from the past 40 years--especially the earlier half of that run.

I'm curious to see how many of you collected some of this stuff in your younger days, and to see what everyone's favorite type of item in this post is, and why.

And now, on to the gallery of weirdness!

Stickers (and stamps):

Stickers were and are a great way to get kids into collecting. My brother and I enjoyed working on filling in our Panini albums for a good chunk of their run, but we never really collected the Topps versions, maybe because they weren't as available as Panini's. Either way, you'll find both brands here (and O-Pee-Chee), and a couple stamps as well. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but regardless of whether or not I have a player's sticker stuck in a Panini album, I've been buying them intact for player-collecting purposes.

Jim Abbott: 1990 Topps (with Vince Coleman, and Darryl Strawberry on the back); 1991 Panini, 1994 Panini

That '91 Panini design was definitely an outlier for the product!

Hal Morris: 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1996 Panini

I definitely get the '94 and '96 Panini designs confused from time to time. '94's has the player's name in a pennant and '96's is a bit smaller.

Dean Palmer: 1992, 1993, and 1995 Panini

I definitely remember the first two versions here but '95 doesn't stand out to me (though '96 does) so I don't recall if I actually worked on the album in 1995.

Tony Phillips: 1985 O-Pee Chee and Topps (with Dave LaPoint); 1988 Panini; 1988 O-Pee-Chee and Topps (with Kevin McReynolds; Ryne Sandberg on the OPC back, Jeffrey Leonard on the Topps back); 1991 Panini French

Multiplayer stickers were a great idea, especially when OPC and Topps included a player on the back that made these even more collectable. The '88 Panini design is definitely one of the best in my opinion.

Chris Sabo: 1989 O-Pee Chee (with Ozzie Smith on the back); 1992 Panini x2; 1993 Panini

If you were a kid ripping Panini sticker packs back then maybe you'll remember the excitement of pulling one of those super shiny versions used to highlight team and league logos and the All-Stars. Years before X-Fractors were a thing, these looked totally badass!

Lary Sorensen: 1984 O-Pee-Chee (with Larry Gura)

Geoff Zahn: 1983 and 1985 O-Pee-Chee

I scanned these together because why not? You'll see a number more from the early and mid-80s in the next couple scans. I think it's pretty cool how OPC had you peel the '85 version out of the rest of the image, which would have made them more fun to add to whatever scene you were imagining.

Ted Simmons: 1982 Fleer Stamps; 1982 Topps; 1983 Fleer Stamps; 1983 O-Pee Chee and Topps; 1984 O-Pee-Chee; 1984 Topps x2; 1985 Topps (with Mike Fitzgerald); 1986 O-Pee Chee (with Ken Oberkfell); 1986 Topps (Simmons half only)

Lots of fun examples here! I've got just a few stamps (I believe all are from Fleer) so it's cool to add the odd one here and there. The '86 Topps here is one of six or so where one of the sellers (or whomever they got the stickers from) cut some two-player stickers in half. That wasn't clear in the way they were listed on Sportlots but it's not a big deal to me. I may try to replace them at some point but more likely I'll just decide I don't care. It's a bit more annoying when there's another player on the back, but all I'm really interested in is the player I collect! Anyway, like the shiny Panini sticker above I also chased after other "premium" versions like the foil you see here from 1984.

Mickey Tettleton: 1989 O-Pee-Chee (Tettleton half only, Joe Carter on the back); 1989 Panini; 1989 Topps (with Dave Smith, Harold Reynolds on the back); 1990 Topps (with Andre Dawson on the back); 1990 Topps Superstar Backs (with Kirk Gibson(!) and Teddy Higuera on the front); 1991 Panini French; 1993 Panini

We have another half sticker here, but the bigger story is that Tettleton's 1990 Superstar Back filled another need for me in the form of a Kirk Gibson sticker!

(snagged from TCDB because I was too lazy to scan mine)

No need to grab an extra copy of either since I was able to kill two birds with one stone here.

Lou Whitaker: 1983 O-Pee-Chee; 1985 Topps x2 (Whitaker half only on second sticker); 1986 O-Pee-Chee and Topps (Whitaker half only on both); 1987 O-Pee-Chee; 1987 Topps x2 (Whitaker half only on second sticker); 1988 O-Pee-Chee (Whitaker half only, Paul Molitor on the back); 1989 O-Pee-Chee (with Doc Gooden on the back); 1990 Topps Superstar Backs (with Bob Walk and Tom Candiotti on the front); 1991, 1992, 1994, and 1995 Panini

Well damn, that's a good way to beef up my collection of Sweet Lou stuff when most of what I'm left chasing is relatively rare! It was nice gaining three more foils among this huge variety, plus I didn't miss out on anyone I cared about on the five that were cut up.

Coins (and a pin):

Topps tried the coin thing back in 1964 and '71 and then went back to the well from 1987-90. Just like stamps the format makes them very collectable so they were a natural fit when it came to baseball collecting. It seems like pins were less common but they're so oddball that they're pretty much off my radar except for the odd examples in my collection.

Sweet Lou represents my fourth 1984 Fun Foods pin (Lance Parrish, Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell), and they're kind of fun to collect when you find them for cheap like I did here. Morris' coins were made by Topps in 1987 and '88, with the latter being my only example from that year's version. Lastly, Larkin, Tram, and Tettleton are all from the 1990 set, though I'm not sure why Barry's has more of a silver look to it while the others are gold.

And here's the backs. I like the way the pin uses a comic book-like font.

Minis, micros, and more!:

If you only like your cards to be 2.5x3.5, look away now! Most of this stuff has dimensions smaller than that, making them a pain to store but interesting to look at. Also, it's easier to fit lots more of them on a scanner.

Up top we have Chris Sabo on an '89 Topps UK Mini, a reasonably well known set. Humpty Dumpty appears to be (or have been) a Canadian snack food brand, and in 1993 they offered diminutive cards like the Abbott you see above. It came shrink-wrapped but I was happy to open it up now that it was safe from any greasy (a.k.a. delicious) food. Freehan appears in a playing card-type set made in 1969 by Globe Imports, and the black and white "card" is printed on fairly thin paper stock, making me think I could pretty easily print up a whole set of those if I wanted! Hal Morris finishes up the top row with a 1992 Donruss Cracker Jack mini that could be found in boxes of that snack. Those were made a year after the snack maker teamed up with Topps to do the same.

Then we go even smaller with a trio of '93 Topps Micros for three players whose collections I focused on bigtime in this purchase. They're followed by more traditional minis from the last decade out of Panini's Golden Age and Topps' A&G and GQ. I'm happy to note that this isn't the last you'll see of Horton and Kell in this series.

I've had some fun loading up on those cool Kellogg's cards from the 70s and 80s that so many people are into, and for good reason! Here you see a Simmons from 1980 along with Morris versions from 1982 and '83. What a consistently excellent food issue!

I probably could have included Ted Simmons' 1983 Fleer Star Sticker with the group above but as it was still joined to the same piece as the Reds logo, which made it larger, I thought it was a good fit here. A 1990 King B disk of Chris Sabo and '94 Oscar Mayer Round-Up of Jim Abbott seemed to make sense in this group as well. Maybe I'll take the plunge and "pull" on the Abbott disc's tab if I get another one I don't mind opening up and potentially damaging.

Most of the rest of the group here is shorter and wider than your typical trading card. The first three are from a Crown/Coke Orioles team set that reminds me a bit of the Target Dodgers set from the same era. This one is made up of 501 perforated cards sorted alphabetically, and I scored my first three in Tigers great Kell, former Wolverine Maddox, and PC guy Tettleton. Below them are Tettleton and Phillips from the slightly smaller (physically, but not set size) 1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball electronic game (which you can read a lot more about here). And breaking up the combo here is 1981 Topps Scratchoffs of Ted Simmons that will remain unscratched in my collection.

Oversized oddballs:

These can present a storage challenge of their own but sometimes bigger really is better when it means more room for creativity!

We'll end things today with the biggest stuff because that's what I scanned last. I'm pretty sure Donruss' Action All-Stars jumbos like Simmons' from 1984 above are pretty well known at this point. Maybe a bit less known are the All-Star-related Pop-Ups, with examples of Morris (1986) and Whitaker (1987) seen in this scan. I didn't realize that two Midsummer Classics in a row were held in dome: Minnesota in '85 and the Astrodome the following year. The stadiums can be seen in each card's background plus the home team is mentioned on the back.

Today's largest item by far is a 1990 Topps Heads Up of Jim Abbott. These originally came with suction cups so you could stick them up on your wall or elsewhere, but I don't think the disembodied head thing proved too popular.

And we'll close out tonight's post with a more mainstream oversized item: Dean Palmer's entry from Fleer's 1994 Extra Bases set. I've snagged a number of these now and have resorted to keeping them, along with lots of my other larger card items, in a graded card box, where they fit quite nicely without having to worry that I'll accidentally bend and crease them in a standard monster box. That's where everything else in this scan will probably reside as well.

That was definitely a fun bunch of weird stuff to look through and post about. While I'm working on getting everything put away safely I hope at least a few of you reading this will let me know which of this stuff you collected and/or what you liked/hated.

And I'll be back soon-ish with another stack of Sportlots stuff from this order once I figure out what I feel like scanning and writing about!

TCDB trade: jmswyo

As it turns out warming up to both Twitter and the TCDB have paid off in my collecting life.  One recent example:  I noticed someone on the former posting a mail day arranged on the latter from Paul.  Since my trading experience with TCDB is in its early stages it was nice to have feedback from someone I trust that this person was good to deal with.  It also helped that the post told me exactly what he collected.

That trader was my fellow Michigander Matthew, of Grand Rapids, who can be found on both sites I mentioned with the handle jmswyo (Twitter, TCDB).  Not only is he a team collector, but he chases a franchise whose cards I've piled up for a while for lack of a trade partner: the Royals.  I had a pretty good sized stack that was mostly base with a few inserts, plus a couple relics I'd picked up at past shows.  So I was more than happy to send them his way, for his #RoyalsCardQuest, since he'd appreciate them, plus I could get a few things back as well.

That included a few trade bait items that'll be going out in future packages, plus this stuff that's staying right here with me:

We'll start with five 2020 Topps Tigers, all of whom could be on the roster if there's a season this year.  I've got more than 300 cards of Miggy but my collections of the other guys are small to minimal, though I do have a growing pile of Stewarts.  For what it's worth, at the moment Demeritte appears to have a brighter future in the Tigers outfield than Stewart, but maybe that'll change.

Next is a trio of former Tigers, not all of whom are pictured in Detroit unis.  I've gotten back in to chasing cards of some of the stars and favorites I watched growing up, and TCDB is a great source for picking those up without paying a thing (besides shipping).  One of those is the well known Cecil Fielder, seen on a pair of '92s:  the oddball MooTown Snackers, plus O-Pee-Chee's last set that paralleled Topps' flagship.  Speaking of that brand, the late Tony Phillips represents the '93 version, and he's another guy I've started appreciating more as I've gotten older, though the poor man's Rickey Henderson is a guy I certainly rooted for in my younger days.

And it's no surprise that Matthew had a dupe of '85 Series champ Pat Sheridan ('86 Fleer), an Ann Arbor native who went to nearby Eastern Michigan and eventually played in Detroit from '86-'89, making him another name I remember from my youth.

This next scan includes a couple more Tigers in smaller, stickier form.  Miggy's joined by another recent favorite, 2B Ian Kinsler, on 2018 Topps Stickers.

I also managed to grab a new Hal Morris item from '95 US Playing Cards, getting him closer to 300 cards.  Keeping up with the oddball theme is PC leader Cal (960 cards) on a 1992 Score/Proctor and Gamble collaboration.

   

And we'll end the post with the oddest--and coolest--item of all.  This product, made in 1989 by Topps, was called Doubleheader All-Stars, and it's basically a plastic stand (in my case slightly broken but easily fixed) that encases a thin, double-sided magazine paper-like piece that shows the player on his '89 Topps card and Topps RC on the reverse.

   

Here's a look at the paper outside of the case at what's pretty much actual size.  It's definitely a cool piece, not to mention something I hadn't seen before, and I may eventually have to display it since it's designed for just that.

Many thanks to Matthew for another great TCDB experience!  I'll go ahead and spoil that it led to a pending deal with another collector in the state, a trade that's huge in terms of the number of cards going back and forth.  So consider this post my thumbs up to using Twitter and TCDB for trading purposes.

More trade and other pickups to come soon!

2019 trade package #39: Cards on Cards

In the end the Citrus Bowl went about as expected, even if it took longer than I thought for Alabama to put it away.  Still, I loved watching my Wolverines and am looking forward to the 2020 season as eagerly as usual.

Speaking of 2020 let's open up the year with a trade post as I continue to catch up on 2019 acquisitions.  I'm going chronologically--in the order these envelopes arrived--and I love that I get to start 2020 off with a bang.  Kerry of Cards on Cards sent me one of the finest packages I've ever received, which is saying something considering some of the gems that made their way to me from some of the greats of blogging.

As Kerry celebrates Oregon's thrilling Rose Bowl win, enjoy this celebration of some of my favorite collections!

We'll open things today with an eight pack of future Tigers.  These hail from 2019 Topps Pro Debut and pretty much every guy is in the team's 20 prospect rankings.  Pitchers Manning and Mize are the jewels of the organization and could form a killer 1-2 in the rotation if both beat the odds and reach their potential.  It's also nice that a few offensive prospects are rated highly since the team could use them ASAP, such as outfielders Cameron and Meadows.

And some more Tigers of the near future and/or now.  Boyd may not be long for Detroit if they can get a good haul for him (sorry, John!), and Greiner hasn't shown much, but we should see a good amount of the others, such as Paul's dude JaCoby Jones.  Kerry tossed in another Mize to bolster his tiny collection.

Speaking of current Tigers, here's a nice five-pack of LF Christin Stewart, who hopefully has a better season this year because he could be a mainstay here for years.  Between what Kerry sent me and what I already had I finally felt like I had enough Stewarts to enter them on TCDB and came up with a total of 15 thus far.  Not bad!  My favorite is the Panini Chronicles card that reuses an older Certified look that I've always loved.

I was able to pair up most of Miggy's cards with those of free agent Nicholas Castellanos in one scan, and that made me think I should look up how well they did as teammates.  From 2013 until Nick was traded last season, they combined for 260 HR, 995 RBI, and 27.9 bWAR.  This bunch of (mostly) 2019 cards is a great reminder of how much fun they were together.  The Cabreras also pushed him past the 300-card mark, which is awesome.  Donruss' Optic is a highlight here multiple times.

I challenge you to find one boring scan in this post, just one.  Can't do it, can you?  This one includes some nice base of some important Tigers from the aughts, Ty Cobb, a numbered Torii Hunter, and two fun McLain inserts.  2013 Hometown Heroes is one of Panini's best products of the last decade and I liked both cards you see here:  the stamped States parallel, and even more so, the round Sportdiscs lenticular insert.  I've had my eye on Jim Abbott's card from the latter and now I really want it having seen this McLain in-hand.

Here we'll finish up with the non-PC Tigers.  The Miggy is from 2015 Prizm and is numbered /100 which is pretty sweet.  I also checked J.D.'s and V-Mart's combined Tigers stats and came up with 214 HR, 825 RBI, and 21 bWAR (though as opposed to Miggy and Nick, I combined their entire Tigers careers, not just the years they coincided).  Soto is another potential future piece and I'm not sure why I didn't include him in one of the earlier scans.  And lastly, Kerry surprised me with a pair of Miggy jersey relics from 2017 Topps flagship--one from each series.  It looks like these give me 15 hits of one of the greats of the past decade, broken down into three autos, 10 relics, and a manurelic.  Not bad at all!

The Tigers half was outstanding but where things got really interesting for me was how well Kerry hit my player collections.  I'm not sure if he took the time to check my wants via my PCs page, or on TCDB, or what, but he managed to hit a ton of players with new stuff, and I needed every last card you'll see, starting with this bunch.

The Abbott is the same Hometown Heroes States parallel you saw above, and I really like it, though it would have been fun, as I usually say, for "hometown" to refer to that player's birthplace, meaning Abbott could have had a Michigan stamp himself.  All three cards of Astros pitching prospect Adcock from 2016 Bowman Draft/Chrome are new--Refractor, Sky Blue Refractor, and Silver (/499)--and give him a nice bump.  Granderson and Griffey appear on 2019 Topps-branded base, with Junior a single card away from 900!  I claimed the 2019 Topps Walgreens Yellow parallel of Hill after Kerry pulled one back in November because I'm your friendly neighborhood Hill supercollector!  And the LaMarre 2016 Topps Gold parallel is the first of his I've added in a long, long time, getting me up to 30 of 54 cards I've got checklisted for now.

I can't emphasize enough how impressed I am with what Kerry picked out here because not only did I need everything in these scans, but they're also not just a handful of common base cards I can check off of a list.  This group is a great example, beginning with a trio of Hal Morris issues:  an '89 minors card, '95 Pinnacle Nth Degree parallel, and an oddly named '98 Pacific variation called Red Threatt (the extra "T" is for "threat!").  Putnam finally gets a new addition thanks to the beautiful 2017 Topps Chrome Sapphire Edition and its beautiful blue background.  Putz gets an insanely nice triple play of 2005 Prestige Xtra Bases Red (/150), 2006 Upper Deck Gold (/299), and 2007 Upper Deck Predictor Blue (the last of the Predictor versions I needed!).  And lastly in this scan is a 2009 Topps 206 base of George Sisler that I thought I had until I found out this was a short print--wow!

With this scan we're almost done with the baseball stuff in the package.  The first six star PC leader Cal Ripken Jr., who stands alone in consecutive games played and cards in my collection (the latter number:  946).  I have to say that the Gallery Preview up top looks quite nice, even if much of the artwork in the final product wasn't really up to par.  The other three cards here are of blog namesake guy Justin Verlander-Upton.  While the 2019 issues are nice enough I'm oddly a fan of the 2009 Topps card since it's the Target parallel with the cool retro back texture.  I don't like the idea of retail exclusives at all but at least once in a while the execution is good.  Justin gets up to an almost milestone-worth 396 items.

I saved the best of the baseball stuff for last because I was floored to find these two cards in the package.  On the left is a 2009 Topps 206 Mini Framed auto of former blog namesake guy Curtis Granderson.  As I always say, these mini framed cards look terrific and Grandy's is no exception.  The artwork does a great job of capturing his enthusiasm and joy for the game, and I would love to see him return to Motown to mentor some of the young players on the team.  Anyway, well done by Kerry to surprise me with my 10th Granderson hit and third auto.  In case you were wondering, I still don't have too many!

The other card is one I'm also very excited about as it's just my second of Michigan pitcher Karl Kauffmann, and this one's even cooler as it's a Wolverines uni shot.  A few different Michigan draftees made it into several Panini-branded products in 2019 and I'm looking forward to capitalizing on those, though fortunately I didn't have to wait thanks to Kerry's generosity.  This 2019 Prizm Draft auto looks great, and if it's a sign of things to come then I think I'm going to enjoy chasing more of the 2019 College World Series runners-up!

That's right, we're still not done because there's still football stuff to get to!  The '95 Finest Everitt is the other card in this post that I asked Kerry about and again he was nice enough to send it my way.  Few Michigan fans can top his level of intensity in supporting the maize & blue, I'll tell you that much.  As for Jake Ryan's card, the 2015 Crown Royale base is his lone RC that qualifies for my Rookie Blue project (his other rookie is an autograph), so I can cross his name off the list and continue hoping that he can stay healthy long enough to earn himself a good shot in the league.

Everything else in the scan features one of my larger football PCs, especially in terms of hits, Jake Long.  The first two are 2008 Panini brand inserts from Rookies & Stars and Contenders, and they both bring that signature Panini shininess (and numbering-- /1000 and /500, respectively) from the late aughts that gets me every time.  Blue is a great color for a parallel version of an insert, such as the Icons card, also numbered (/250).  And my favorite Oregon fan even threw in a relic I could have sworn I had (but didn't) out of 2008 Bowman, highlighting that year's #1 overall pick.  That brings him up to 84 hits, good for fourth behind Henne, Manningham, and Braylon.

I was able to give our last subject of the day his own scan, even if I noticed later that I didn't remotely put these on the scanner in any sort of order (and didn't feel like fixing it).  WR Amani Toomer's career spanned a good run in the hobby meaning he earned a ton of cardboard appearances, and Kerry didn't disappoint with these six.  There's Ultra Gold Medallion parallels from 2006 (the die-cut one) and 2006, plus numbered parallels in the form of a 2001 Pacific Impressions Hobby Red Backs (/280) and 2008 Bowman Blue (/500).  Yep, the former is pretty much as described with all text and effects on the back in red.  And after a 2006 Turkey Red base we get to the day's final surprise, a 2004 Prestige Game Day jersey of the Super Bowl-winning wideout.  It's pretty much right in my wheelhouse in terms of the kind of thing I'd be chasing on COMC and it marks his 25th hit, making him the 16th football player to reach that mark.

Kerry, I can't thank you enough for the obvious effort you put into such an incredible trade package other than to say that you more than earned the last couple envelopes I sent your way!  Enjoy the afterglow of your guys' Rose Bowl win as you await St. Louis' Spring Training date and I'll work on putting together a return when I can.

The rest of you can stay tuned for two more trade packages (one in-person!) plus a larger than expected show haul from the end of last month, and possibly another show report from my usual monthly location I'll likely hit up on Saturday.