6/20/26 card show report: meetup mania!

It took me until early August to post this but tonight I'm finally giving you a recap of the much-hyped June show and meetup!

It was another amazing one, as you can tell from this picture of me, John, Jeff, and Jason, plus Jason's wife Sam. I headed west to Kalamazoo, picked up John, and got us over to the Wings Event Center, a place that's hosted this show a number of times. This one was actually down in one of the ice rinks instead of the expo space, which was weird but ultimately fine.

When we got there we were able to meet up with everyone else, then we headed to the tables run by the Hollister family, some very nice folks Jeff knows well from previous shows when he and his cousin were also dealers. They were nice enough to take the above picture, and I spent plenty of time at their tables piling up some great cards.

This was almost like a mini National for me since I'm used to spending most of my time and money at one person's table thanks to my monthly show. There was a lot more variety to check out here, and Jason pointed me to a number of sellers who had stuff I could most definitely use. I think I bought stuff from around four or five dealers there, and I could have probably spent more time and money if I had any of either left!

Here's what my box looked like when I got home to give you an idea of just how much I picked up. That's one of those graded card boxes, and it works perfectly for me at my monthly show, but in this case it wasn't nearly enough to transport my haul! I spent $140 that Saturday in late June, making up for the small amount I'd thrown down a couple weeks prior, and I'm thrilled at some of the big items I found for myself and others. Most of the latter have already been sent out in trade packages, but tonight you get to see my goodies:

Not a ton of baseball stuff, but some good ones for sure. I think Jason might have picked up that Clark for me. He's been a bit of a spark for the Tigers post-trade deadline, which is very cool. That second Gwynn is numbered out of 2001, the Ripkens look great, and Pudge #1 is actually a sample version of a favorite 90s insert (they rule!) of mine, Great X-Pectations.

That Pepsi Palmer is a bit beat up but is something I'd never seen before--a 2000 collab with Upper Deck comprising 15 Tigers. And lastly for baseball, I think the Bondo bat is another card Jason scored for me. It's always funny getting bat relics of pitchers in the DH era, though at least we got to see some of these guys at the plate before both leagues succumbed to the designated hitter. Baseball-Reference says that Jeremy had 31 plate appearances over 15 games, and he was lucky enough to tally one hit in that time. He singled to lead off the top of the 5th against Jon Lieber and the Phillies on June 15, 2007, and a couple singles got him to third before a Gary Sheffield sac fly brought him home for his only career run scored.

The baseball stuff was nice, but football clearly won the day here in terms of my keepers. More specifically, I came home with tons of inserts, color, and RCs of Michigan gridiron stars--enough to need six scans to capture everything! I won't bore you with details, so feel free to just admire these if you feel like it.

I'm enjoying continuing to build out my Corum PC, and I've been surprised by how reasonably affordable Graham's cards are, but I guess that's what happens when you play defense.

When I said lots of color, I meant it! A good chunk of these came from the Hollisters' 3/$1 boxes. The cards were originally a buck each and for me they would have been overpriced at that level, but they worked fine when they were 67% off.

That Prestige Gold of Kwity Paye, numbered /99, was one of my favorite pickups of the show. Gold is a nice parallel color when you're wearing the maize & blue.

By luck this scan contains most of the numbered football cards I scored. Peterson's 2001 Chrome Refractor is limited to 999, Denard's Topps Platinum goes to 99, and Terrell's Pacific chase card is also SN999. I guess these three were dressed to the nines!

The last football scan includes a few more inserts before getting to the hits, including a '97 Pinnacle Inscriptions V2 card I already owned, allowing me to peel the protective coating off of this one.

To those I added a third auto of OT Trezelle Jenkins (third hit), a jersey relic of the A-Train (#55 overall), and football relic of Thomas's positional counterpart Tyrone Wheatley (#8).

My haul didn't quite end there, though, as I picked up this Pacific jersey relic of Wings legend Nick Lidstrom from the same seller that had the above relics (and some other nice cards I scored for trade packages). I think this one was something like $3-$4 so I was happy to add it to my small collection of Wings hits.

As you can tell I had a blast, not only because of my pickups, but especially because of the great time I had seeing Jeff, John, and Jason & Sam. It's a treat to hang out with all of them and I'm glad I've been able to do so a few times now! I don't know if we'll be able to do it again this year, or at least maybe not all of us, but if it can even become a yearly tradition I'd be over the moon. A big thank you again to everyone that made the trip, you're the best!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be back with next but I've still got plenty to cover, if not the attention span and energy to do so. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of my pickups, your recent show experiences, or anything else that makes you want to comment.

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!

5-2-26 card show report: now THAT's more like it!

I've got July's monthly show coming up tomorrow so it's about time I covered the one from May!

I haven't had much interest in blogging lately, partly thanks to coming back from June show #2--a fantastic meetup with friends, more to come on that--with a ton of cards but also a cold. Also, I got a Switch 2 and Donkey Kong Bananza is amazing. Oh, and I picked up a pair of fun Facebook lots last weekend that have kept me busy.

But I need to cover these at some point, and with the calendar flipping to July, I think now's the time.

So I headed back to Taylor on Saturday, May 2 (instead of my usual Friday), coming off an April where I dropped just $25. However, this time I really made up for it! I spent a whopping $140 at my favorite seller's tables, scoring a lot of nicer mid- and high-end stuff for myself and friends, in addition to paying $30 for an item that will be going out in a trade package. That adds up to my biggest show spending this year, and it was at that point the only time I eclipsed $100 (until Kalamazoo a couple weekends ago).

You'll have to stay tuned to some other blogs to see some of the items I grabbed for others, but here are my keepers for this show:

Baseball. The single non-hit was a '95 Ultra All-Star Gold Medallion of Ripken. I like that Fleer paralleled some of their inserts back then (with a single parallel, Fanatics and Panini!), and this was an easy add. The Pudge relics were fun additions to my collection of the HOF catcher, hailing from an Upper Deck Legends product I bought a decent amount of, plus Donruss's 2005 Leather & Lumber product. I'm pretty sure that the relic combo you see above is a bat plus batting glove. That's a reasonable guess based on the feel of the material, but for whatever reason, Donruss didn't differentiate the serial numbering for the batting glove and fielding glove plus bat combos--they're both SN25. Either way, cool card! While I was at it I grabbed a Tork Heritage bat relic for what I think came out to $4 (one of five cards I got for $20). It's probably a bit of an overpay for a guy who may not be long for the team, but why not?

I found some fun, cheap basketball color in the cheaper boxes, not that I can recall the prices here (likelier 5/$1 than dimes). There's just so many parallels of cards these days that it's pretty likely I need these when I find them, and at worst I can put them up for trade.

Football also got to join in the rainbow fun a few weeks before pride month. Some of these look especially nice, including Nico's and Gary's color match-ish parallels, plus Schoonmaker with a college photo.

A couple more cheapies open the last football scan. Former Cowboy Mazi's blue looks great there, and I was happy to snag another RC of national champ WR1 Roman Wilson.

When it came to the hits, I was quite pleased too. Corum's Contenders relic is somewhat plain, but it's a nice blue Rams swatch, and I think I paid $2 or less for it to make it Blake relic #3. I was especially excited to find a new Henne hit since it's been a while. Donruss' 2008 Gridiron Gear product produced endless variations of relics and autos for the players featured, and I lucked out with what I think I've correctly IDed as a Next Generation Jerseys Combos Prime card, numbered /50. Chad still holds a dominant football collection lead with his new total of 147, 59 of which are relics like this one.

And then there's my most unorthodox card of the day: Ty Wheatley's appearance in 2001 Fleer Hot Prospects' TD Fever insert. The tiny relic included is a piece of goal post cover. It's a bit weird, but it counts! Ty was no stranger to the end zone, going for 40 rush scores and six more through the air in college, plus a nearly identical 40 and 7 with the Giants and Raiders. This was a fun pickup to mark his seventh overall hit, four of which are now relics.

I now have two more shows to cover from last month in addition to July's that I'll be attending tomorrow, but first I'm planning on recapping two trade packages I received in June, one of which was delivered to me at that second show. Stay tuned!

4/3/26 card show report: $25, no foolin'

Well this should be a pretty quick one, even if it took me too long as usual to get to.

I headed over to my usual monthly show in early April only to find that my favorite seller hadn't had much time to sort stuff into his sale boxes, meaning there wasn't much new for me to flip through. I ended up spending a year-low $25 because I'm not the type to throw down cash just for the sake of it. And it worked out well because I certainly made up for it this month. More on that in a few posts.

Anyway, that $25 was easily split between 100 dime cards and a trio for which he wanted $15. Here's a look at the loot:

The juniors Griffey and Ripken came from the dime boxes and those cards hail from last year's Topps Archives. Griffey's is from the '64 Topps portion while Cal's is done up in the style of the then-20-year-old '05 Topps set; '96's design can also be found in this product.

And then we come to the day's biggest pickups that account for the three-for-$15 portion: a trio of beautiful 90s Pacific die-cut inserts of Ivan Rodriguez! I noticed these in the guy's showcase and happily accepted the price. In order, above you can see 1999 Pacific Crown Collection's In the Cage followed by 1999 and 2000 Paramount's Fielder's Choice.

Both of these insert sets are among my favorites from the decade--one whose chase cards obviously rule--and are part of the fantastic history of the Pacific brand. The In the Cage cards simulated batting cages, though other versions also replicated foul poles in more examples of the manufacturer's ingenuity. Better yet are the glove-themed Fielder's Choice die-cuts, which are not only cut to conform to the shape of a fielder's most important equipment, but even simulate the webbing! Pudge is a natural fit in these sets as won 13 gold gloves, good for first place among catchers and three better than second-place star Johnny Bench.

The Cage card is my first from that set while the '99 glove joins Greg Maddux and the 2000 card gets added to the Ripken and Gwynn I previously snagged. I can't wait to add more of these, especially if I can find them at these outstanding prices.

We'll finish up with some basketball and football dime cards. Bufkin, LeVert, Robinson, and Wagner are all examples of some colorful inserts of hoopers I was glad to snag for 10 cents each. LeVert's Pistons are actually battling his former team, the Cavs, as I write this, and that's because they managed to overcome a big deficit against Mo's Magic.

As for football stuff, I turned up last year's Score base of former Packer/new Cowboy Rashan Gary to go with a pair of '25 base of national champion QB JJ McCarthy out of Donruss and Panini's Mosaic.

This could have been a bit of a downer of a show but I was able to turn that around with some "90s inserts rule!" goodness, plus I didn't regret having a bigger budget available this month, so once again, it was a good show.

I'm anticipating that my next three posts will be blogger trade packages, followed by the May show recap, a May trade, and my first TCDb deals of the year. I certainly have plenty to recap, even if I'm slow and lazy about doing so. I'll try to get motivated to at least show off the trades soon to thank the senders for their generosity.

2026 trade package #5: Batting Out of Order

Many of you may have heard the phrase "many happy returns" before. It's usually said in the context of celebrating something like a birthday or anniversary. But in this case I'm using it literally to express my happiness that Tom, who formerly blogged as "The Angels, in Order" is back at it with his new blog, "Batting Out of Order." I love the blogosphere and the people that make it fun, and Tom is most definitely one of the collectors I've enjoyed following over the years. So here's to your return, Angels/Patriots guy!

As for how that relates to tonight's post, well, I actually received cards from Tom in February thanks to posts he'd put up. This ended up being two PWEs but I felt like just combining them into one trade recap. You guys still get to see how generous he is and what he was nice enough to send my way, both earlier in the month and on the final day of February:

The football cards were actually the ones that inspired these PWEs but I'll start with baseball first as usual. Card #1 is Riley Greene's base from '24 Heritage, and he looks great on the classic '75 Topps design. The second is a great example of the tomfoolery you'd find in Upper Deck Fun Pack: a '93 All-Star Scratch-Off card that folds out to let kids play out an All-Star matchup. Gwynn and Puckett make for a terrific pair! After that, we return to Heritage with Brandon Inge's 2009 base card, which increases my count of the versatile Tiger to 81. And last up is a card that initially looked to be a double, but I should have known better since Tom and I are friends on TCDb. While the front appears to be a '99 Topps base card that includes Mike Piazza and Jason Kendall along with Pudge, it's actually a 2011 Topps 60 Years of Topps insert. Nice!

As for football, I asked for each of these cards in the comments of Tom's posts and he was nice enough to send them right away, which he definitely didn't need to do! I appreciate that he did, though, while also including the cool baseball stuff above.

The most recent two were the result of him breaking a fat pack of 2025 Absolute Retail Football. I noticed that he'd pulled two of my Michigan guys: Dolphins rookie DL Kenneth Grant and Vikings QB JJ McCarthy. You can tell these are retail because Grant's card doesn't include a serial number and JJ's doesn't have a holofoil front. I'm pointing that out here because lots of people mislabel these on TCDb and I have to get the incorrect images removed. Anyway, retail or hobby, I collect 'em all, and I was happy to get this pair from Tom, with Grant's card arriving as my third RC of the big man.

And then we have the card he sent me earlier in the month. Tom found some cheap Uno Elite Core Edition football cards at Target and was willing to send me the blue version of kicker Jake Moody that he pulled. Jake's the only Wolverine I've seen pulled so far but Charbonnet and Hutchinson are out there as well. Maybe I'll find them in a quarter (or cheaper) box at a show while I also see if I can help Tom fill out his Patriots team set in the various colors.

Tom, thanks once again for the PWE times two! I'm also always happy when you have something I can use (and vice versa) and thank YOU for always being cool too! I really appreciate you going the extra mile to send these out after I asked about them even though you didn't have to. Hopefully I'll find some stuff at the next show to return the favor. Until then, I'll be continuing to enjoy your new blog. Welcome back!

10/3/25 card show report: scary cheap October cards

Catching up on these posts has gone decently well since I've actually put some effort into writing more often! Here we are with the last post I have planned for October.

Tonight we'll take a look at what I picked up at that month's show. I spent a paltry $50 that day, my low for the year by $5 (April), but that's ok because I definitely made up for it over the final two months. Plus I brought home some fun stuff for myself:

The baseball scan includes a fun mix of 90s/ish inserts and relics-ish. Gwynn's card is a 2002 Topps Gold, back when you could tell it was that parallel (and not "gold toile redgold waveblue"). It's numbered /2002 on the back and represents just the second year Topps printed that parallel after it began with the excellent 2001 set. I really like how these look, especially compared to the doldrums of the 2010s and 20s designs.

Next is Pudge on a 2000 UD Ultimate Victory Lasting Impressions insert. UV was the higher-end Chrome-like version of the budget Victory brand, and Rodriguez was one of 10 superstars found in this set. He'd just won the '99 AL MVP as well as his 7th straight Gold Glove (out of 10 in a row and 13 overall) and 6th straight Silver Slugger (of 7) and made his 8th of 10 consecutive All-Star appearances, with four more yet to come. So yeah, he made a lasting impression and fits right in with this set!

The unfolded Maddux card is the reason for the "90s inserts rule" tag tonight, though the others are close enough to be honored too. He's seen here on a 1998 Circa Thunder chase card called Limited Access, which includes a typical front and back but folds out so you get even more content inside. That includes another image and some stats in various situations from his first five seasons with the Braves:

(It took me a minute to figure how what these numbers represented until I checked just his Atlanta stats!) Pretty cool, eh?

As for the other interesting cards, first up there's a manupatch of Griffey from 2003 UD Patch Collection's MVPs insert. This one represents his '97 AL MVP win. It's a fun manufactured relic and came to me relatively cheap, so I'm quite happy with it.

Next is a 2005 Bazooka Blasts Relics bat of former Tigers SS Carlos Guillen. Don't ask me why he's listed with the Angels there since he only ever suited up for Seattle and Detroit. This looks to be my second relic (first bat) of the three-time All-Star who was quite productive for some 2000s Tigers teams.

And going alphabetically saves the best for last: a Greg Maddux 2003 Fleer Tradition Milestones Game Used Gold jersey (numbered /100 on the back). I snagged this with a few other cards in this scan and one or two in the next one for a very good total price. Mad Dog's 15 seasons of 15+ wins was a very impressive feat, and he achieved that in consecutive seasons (actually 17, in the end), plus an 18th in 2006 (and missed by one in '07). From 1988-2007 his average record was 17-10, and that's how you get to 355 career wins! This cool relic marks my 20th such card of Maddux and 21st hit overall.

With most of the attention on the baseball stuff, we'll quickly switch over to basketball and football to close things out. The former includes some nice color of Trey Burke, Caris LeVert, and Jordan Poole, and I continue to be able to find stuff like this in the dime and quarter boxes decently often. They grab my attention enough even though they're from my least favorite sport, and I'm happy to add them, plus cool stuff like Juwan Howard's '98-'99 Bowman's Best base.

As for football, RCs of Seattle RB Zach Charbonnet and Washington DB Mike Sainristil were nice finds for my chase of first-years. Harbaugh's a '97 Collector's Edge Extreme Foil insert, though there's not much of that feature on the card besides the swoosh running along the left and curving around to the bottom. And last up is one of my favorites from this month: my second of what amounts to three Charles Woodson entries from a 1998 Press Pass insert called Triple Thread. The '98 Heisman winner as well as QBs Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf each got a trio of cards in this set, naturally, and the versatile Woodson was the one true player who could claim the set's name. The three cards fit together kind of like Stadium Club's Triumverate, and I'll show those off once I nail down his card #7.

That's it for the month of October, at least for now. I may show off a non-card Facebook purchase from then if I feel motivated enough, but I'm really more interested in finalizing my blogger trades, shows, eBay pickups, and eventually, TCDb deals from the second half of the year. So I would expect my next post to dip back into trades, in this case from November. Maybe even soon!

6/6/25 card show report: June boon

So, yeah, I went the traditional route and you're getting my June show recap tonight. It's another short one but still filled with cool stuff so I hope you all enjoy it!

According to my spending tracker, that monthly Taylor Town show on June 6 was my only spending for the month, though I certainly made up for that in July! More to come on that.

Anyway, I dropped $110 on some quality stuff, and some of that included some choice 90s inserts. My usual guy had recently bought out a collection with a good number of those found therein, and he invited me to flip through a big box of those (mostly baseball, some football). They were all unpriced, so I was somewhat careful about what I chose, but in the end I was very pleased with the price he gave me after looking them up. You'll see a few of those below and possibly more in trade packages as they get dispersed.

No trade bait this month, so let's get to the goods!

Now this is my kind of scan! And yes, the "90s inserts rule!" tag is in full effect here. First up is a '96 Sportflix Double Take insert starring Ken Griffey Jr. and then-bigtime prospect Ruben Rivera. The two year run of Pinnacle's Sportflix product remains undefeated when it comes to inserts (and we'll get to another one in a minute) including this one that pairs up a couple stars on an extremely cool lenticular design. That particular Griffey card is paired with another one of my favorites from the era: '98 Studio's Freeze Frame. I think the J. Geils Band would approve of this photograph-themed chase card that's numbered /4500 on the back.

An Al Kaline Iconic Card Reprint from 2019 Topps is the lone exception to the 90s greatness in this scan (besides the two hits, of course), and it gives me yet another tribute to a RC I really need to track down one of these days.

Back to the 90s fun and the decade's other notable junior. Dress For Success is a '97 Leaf offering with a faux jersey feel and even slightly raised lettering that makes the card live up to its theme quite nicely. This one's numbered /3500 and yet another example of the kind of stuff we're denied in this era's creative doldrums. The second of three Cals is a '98 Leaf Rookies & Stars Pennant Edition MVP insert, which is also numbered (/5000), and this one picks a top player at each position on the back, with the Iron Man slotting in at 3B. Finally, we get our other look at '96 Sportflix and its Hit Parade insert. Sure, the scene in the background doesn't change per card, but the motion is still extremely cool and I continue to have a fondness for cards that look like this.

And then we have the pair of baseball hits, both of guys that spent at least some time behind the plate. The first is a 2016 Ginter jersey relic of Victor Martinez, who caught over 850 games, mostly with Cleveland and Boston. It was nice getting him on a card where he's pictured with Detroit, for whom he played the final seven years of his career. He's joined by HOF catcher Pudge Rodriguez on a 2004 Donruss Elite Career Best bat card (#d /200). The bat relic version of the card has a back with a COA statement instead of the base insert's explanation of the titular career best number, in this case his 1999 MVP season total of 113 RBI (he never did reach 100 again), plus becoming the first catcher in the 20/20 club (35 HR/25 steals, both also career bests). The bat chip may be relatively tiny but it's still a pretty cool card to me!

On the basketball side of things I did end up with a single new card: an autograph of Moussa Diabate. My second such card of the French C and former Wolverine (2021-22 only) is a rookie-year insert from 2022-23 Prizm called Sensational Signatures. While I don't think you can describe this one that positively, it's still a fun addition for me.

I scored a football hit as well, but first we'll look at the single 90s insert I purchased from that sport. Collector's Edge was certainly prolific during that decade, and that includes 1998, Charles Woodson's rookie year. What you see above is his second base card in the product, which is numbered /5000 like the rest, but is from the "Super Masters" subset which has a different design than the rest. Rookie year and numbered? Sounds like something I'd like to add!

And finally we have this evening's lone football hit. That ended up being auto #2 of UM and Dallas Cowboys TE Luke Schoonmaker. Found in 2023 Panini Contenders, this very reflective foil card is the Playoff Ticket parallel of his base auto, and it's numbered /149. Hopefully the third-year TE is more successful with the Cowboys than fellow ex-Wolverine/Cowboy at the position Sean McKeon.

That's it for June's show but stay tuned for July's recap which includes a fun cameo! Also I'll be back soon with one of the other posts I promised last time.

2025 trade package #6: Topps Cards That Never Were

Hey, look, I've finally made it to the last trade package I received in January! It was a busy month for my mailbox as this was #6 for the first month of '25, and it was a PWE from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were.

He and I tend to send envelopes back-and-forth without warning, which is a lot of fun to do in this hobby of ours. I certainly wasn't expecting this one but enjoyed its contents as usual. Here's what Jeremy gifted me this time:

Not many managers get much more Classic than Sparky, and he still owns the Tigers record for wins with 1,331, exactly 200 more than fellow HOFer Hughie Jennings, the only other skipper in franchise history with more than 700 victories (Jim Leyland hit that number exactly).

Fielder and Fryman, seen on a pair of '92 issues (Big Daddy's a Gold Hologram version), were the main corner infielders in Sparky's twilight years in Motown. They manned those spots together from 1990-96, when Fielder was traded, a year after Anderson's last dugout appearance.

Keith (Topps Holiday) is tonight's only active MLBer but he still looks very promising despite struggling a bit to get his bat going for the surging 2025 Tigers.

When (not if!) I hit 1000 unique cards of Barry Larkin, it'll be thanks to many of you who've contributed, like this Donruss Orange parallel/'24 Panini Prizm pair from Jeremy. As of this post I need just 19 more.

Robson's the only recent guy besides Keith in this post but the OF and 2016 Tigers draftee (8th round) hasn't been in the organization since 2022.

Pudge joins Sparky in this post as a Tigers HOFer and he has something in common with Fielder above as well: the card you see above is the tougher to find Gold Hologram variant. It's really nice getting those knocked off my wantlists!

Big Daddy makes one more appearance featuring the star of my last post, Mickey Tettleton. The Cecil/Mickey pairing posted 35 and 32 HR in 1992, then 30 and 32 the following season when the UD card above was released.

Last up tonight is a 2014 Panini Golden Age Mini Hindu Back of Red Wings HOF C and current GM, Steve Yzerman. He's come in below expectations in terms of getting the franchise back to the playoffs but may still get there with a bit more time. If nothing else he'll always be a franchise icon and "The Captain" that led the team to three Cups.

Jeremy, thanks again for treating me to this fun PWE. I may actually be returning the favor relatively soon once I decide to pull the trigger to mail the small stack I've put together for you.

With that, January '25 trades are done and I should be mixing things up a bit with January's show recap next time.

2023 eBay purchases: rockin' around the Christmas Tariks

With 2023 blogger trades all wrapped up I'm moving on to my eBay purchases from the last four months of the year.

We'll start back in early September when I happily spent a bit more than $12.50 delivered for my second plate of Denard Robinson. This particular Shoelace 1/1 is his magenta plate used to make his 2013 Absolute RC, specifically the "base" version and not the variation where he's carrying the ball in his other hand. You all know I love me some Denard, and I hope he's one of the holdovers on new Michigan coach Sherrone Moore's staff.

A bit less than two weeks later I was quite happy to win this Trey Burke plate for a little under $10 shipped. The 2016-17 Contenders Draft magenta plate you see above is my third 1/1 of the former college star, but it's my first of him pictured as a Wolverine instead of with the Jazz so it's my new favorite. This one puts Burke one away from joining the double-digit hit club in basketball as the fifth member, though a couple others are also getting close.

At the end of the month I was thinking about how well Tigers P Tarik Skubal had pitched after returning for the season's second half. He started off a bit slowly but ripped off four straight wins in the final month to end the year at 7-3 with a solid 2.80 ERA. I decided I wanted a nice card of his and landed on this 2021 Absolute Rookie Leather Signatures Tan auto for about $13. Maybe I'll get something with actual team logos on it in the future, but I'm a sucker for fun gimmicks like this and was more interested in jumping on something before he possibly develops into a higher-end starter. And even if he doesn't, I've got a pretty cool card of one of the team's solid core of starters.

Next, early in October I found a bunch of stuff for myself and others all from one seller and took advantage of low auction prices and combined shipping. The three cards you see above are the ones I grabbed for myself. First up is a Pudge jersey that I thought was worth a flier at $1.50. He'd joined the Yankees in '08 so UD listed him with them, but he's pictured as a Tiger and I'm betting the swatch is from a Detroit jersey, not that it matters too much to me since I collect his non-Tigers cards too. That appears to be relic #10 and hit #11 of the HOF catcher.

To that I added a pair of Leaf-branded cards of former UM WR Tarik Black, our second Tarik of the evening! Black was a top-200, 4* recruit coming in to Ann Arbor in 2017 but he'd compile just 50 catches for two scores in 18 games over three seasons before transferring to Texas, where he put up similar numbers in the shortened 2020 COVID season. I was very happy to add a couple Wolverines uniform autographs of him to my collection (as subject #240) even though they're from the wish.com iteration of Leaf, which is part of the "way too many parallels with ridiculous names" problem. That said, I have enjoyed the State Pride design over the years.

I included the backs to show that the top card is numbered just 4/4 while the other is #19/20. As best as I could tell, these are from 2021 Leaf Metal Draft Flashback Base Autographs Mojo (even though the provided checklist SNs don't match) and 2021 Leaf Metal Draft Flashback State Pride Autographs Wave Blue. For just $4 and $3, respectively, I was satisfied with what I got.

The next time I spent money on eBay on something for myself it was the first day of December and I was able to score this 2012 Bowman yellow plate of Michigan WR Steve Breaston for a cool $8 even. That year's design has always been an outlier when it comes to Bowman but not in a bad way in my opinion. Then again, it's fairly familiar to me as I already had purchased the magenta plate of the same card! Breaston is therefore one of a number of PCs for which I have multiple 1/1s.

That distinction is true of former Reds prospect Ryan LaMarre as well. The 16th hit in his collection is also the 5th 1/1, which is quite a ratio if you ask me. And this design is also well known to me because the black plate you see above from 2010 Bowman Draft is the third one I now claim ownership of from the set! I've checked off the black, magenta, and yellow versions and just need the cyan, making this one of five plate sets where I have three of the four (others are Chad Henne 2014 Prestige; Clayton Richard 2011 Topps; J.J. Putz 2012 Topps Mini; and Rich Hill 2006 Topps). That was worth a bit under $12.50 shipped as far as I was concerned!

Finally, with Christmas just five days away and having barely crossed the $1800 mark in spending for the year, I decided to treat myself to an upgrade. My copy of Kirk Gibson's 2001 Topps Archives rookie reprint auto was one of my favorite cards in my entire collection, but it was somewhat faded when I bought it, and leaving it and some others out where too much sunlight got to them didn't do it any favors:

That's a recent pic I took of what's essentially an auto-less Gibby and a very faded 1999 SP Signature auto of Griffey (that I pulled myself and regret ruining this much all the time!). So I was very much on the hunt for a much better copy despite the cost of Kirk's signature going up quite a bit.

And you know what? For the nice, bold blue signature you see above on my new copy, I didn't think twice about plunking down $53. It's great having such a nice version of that piece in his collection and I'd do it again if I had to. But I probably won't because I'm not letting that sucker get any regular sunlight!

And those nine cards are how I finished up 2023 when it comes to personal eBay pickups. I still have lots more to show off from the end of last year but I'm at least making some headway, and I'll be back soon with more!

8/4/23 card show report: dozens of dimes

A couple Fridays ago I headed back to Taylor for my favorite monthly show and as usual I wasn't sure what to expect. Sometimes the guy whose tables I spend about 98% of my time at has lots of great dime stuff and on other occasions the $1 and $2 stuff ends up being more worth my effort.

This time the more expensive boxes were a bit crowded so I joined a few guys on the other end by the dime boxes. There were tons to look through and as usual I passed on the stacks of more recent base from all sports plus most of the basketball. But I started having luck finding card after card for myself or others and quickly amassed a healthy stack.

Eventually the other end freed up and I picked up some fun stuff there, then headed back to the dimes to finish up my day, until I found one last big item in his "as-priced" box that I didn't want to pass up.

Here's what I believe the breakdown was this time:

• 190 dime cards = $19
• 8 "dime" cards in toploaders @ 8/$1 = $1
• 6 $1 cards = $6
• 8 $2 cards = $16
• 1 card priced at $20 minus a $7 overall discount = $13

That's a total of $55, right in my usual range; this year I've spent as low as $40, as much as $85, and an average of about $66, so this was a pretty average day for me, though the variety made it very interesting.

And now here's what you came to see: the stuff I'm showing off today (trade bait and personal stuff).

First up is trade bait, starting with baseball. As usual, please comment/email/propose something on TCDb if you see anything you like.

The Bonds insert was a solid dime box find. The Abreu manu/auto was $2 and is numbered /99. The large Jones jersey was #d /299 but has been traded already on TCDb.

(Mostly) numbered football 1/2: lots more fun finds in the dime box! Anderson and Filani are /999. Evans is just a cool die-cut. Forte is /199. Hardman is /460. Jackson is /250. Lundy is /699. McGary is /199. Milloy is /400.

Numbered football 2/2: Rice is /249. Rogers, Switzer, and Thomas are /299. Willis is /1000. And Gates is /1250.

And now my keepers:

Baseball 1/3: just about everything here was a dime, though I think the Braves insert may have been a buck, I forget. Griffey, Gwynn, and Maddux? Check. New Cronenworth? Check. The Cash was a fun find, and I happily snapped up a BInge Bowman Chrome RC too.

Baseball 2/3: it was obviously a great day for dime box Ripkens (and check for him as well)! I think this seller tends to put cards in those boxes when they don't sell for $0.50 or a quarter and this time I benefitted from that nicely. The newest stuff is mostly boring as usual but I'm happy with the '83 reprint and Gallery card, and the '94 Donruss parallel was a fun throwback.

Baseball 3/3: lots to like here! The front of Posey's Team Pinnacle insert is Dufex and I grabbed it for the guy on the back:

Meanwhile, Skubal joined Mize is current rotation guys in the dime boxes. A Verlander base plus a parallel rep the guy whose name's on the blog. Gwynn and Ripken come back from encores. Pudge gets another very cool multiplayer insert add, this time from the 90s. Piazza and Daulton were both very good company, plus 90s inserts rule!

And then we have the card that was marked as $20. I thought it would be very cool to have a card with such a nice looking patch plus autograph of one of the better recent Tigers catchers in Jake Rogers, a.k.a. the only guy left from the Verlander deal (much less J.D. Martinez and Justin Wilson/Alex Avila). $20 felt like too much but I decided that if he came down closer to $10 I'd go for it. As I mentioned above, he knocked $7 off my total of $62 including everything else to make it $55 and I felt like that was fair. So there's my first hit of the guy keeping the team afloat behind the plate!

Football 1/2: and now we're down to the final 11 cards, which of course I had to split up into two scans because 11 > 9. I was thrilled to find more Michigan RC help for Collins and Ojabo, both of which I think could be in for big seasons this year (Collins with a potentially functional QB, Ojabo if he's 100% healthy). As usual Panini reused the same Ojabo photo in at least two products, but that's nothing new. Finding these in the dime box was great news as far as I'm concerned.

Football 2/2: parallels and a hit. I found the Rookies & Stars parallels of Paye, (transfer guy) St-Just, and Thomas among a stack of them in the dimes, and they were eventually joined by a Blue (what other color could be better?) Donruss Press Proof of DPJ.

And last up for today is my 94th hit of former stud WR Braylon Edwards. I can't remember if I paid $1 or $2 for this numbered 2007 UD Artifacts jersey, which is the usual plain white swatch, but I'm always up for a new item for the collection so I was happy to snag it.

Another nice show day in the books! And with that I need to get back to logging, scanning, and posting so much more stuff that came in, including a simply incredible trade package (among several other really good ones), eBay stuff, and a quick recap of a garage sale I hit up yesterday that ended up being fruitful.

I hope everyone enjoys the last bit of their weekends and is looking to the return of college football in a few weeks as much as I am!