2/6/26 card show report: February fun

I did end up going to my monthly show yesterday (as opposed to Friday) which was kind of a nice change of pace. You'll get to hear all about that eventually, but before then I'll be giving you a look at what I brought home earlier in February.

My total spending on that Friday was $98, split almost down the middle between my usual seller ($50) and one I've checked out a few times lately for some more oddball stuff ($48), especially the 6/$5 tubs.

Speaking of the latter, I picked up a lot of 14 of the 1967 Topps Posters for $23:

This isn't all of them as I set a few aside for other collectors, but I do have these available for trade. If it isn't obvious, there are dupes of Campaneris and Wagner. If you'd like to claim these, please do so and we'll work out a trade!

Next up is the baseball bunch from the usual guy. I believe the Briceno came from his box of cards that are $1 each or 6 for $5, and though it's not a RC, I thought it might be a good time to pick up something of one of Detroit's better catching prospects. The Bunnings all came from the dime box, and I didn't mind that all four picture him with the Phillies instead of the Tigers. There's three great brands plus Gypsy Queen in the quartet. Speaking of HOF pitchers, the Red Prizm of Maddux is a bit of a color match for his Braves.

And then there's the biggest card I scored for myself this time: a Jack Morris auto from 2004 Upper Deck Etchings. Numbered to 375 up front, it's obviously a sticker-graph, but a cool one in my opinion since it's not the boring old clear sticker that often gets signed. The card itself looks great too, not that I'm surprised given UD's output of classic looking vintage-themed products during that decade. I'm also happy to keep up a streak of autos of Morris with the Tigers instead of his other well-known teams (Minnesota and Toronto), with that count now at five. This was a great way to round out my purchase at that seller's tables for a reasonable $10.

Before we go back to my loot from that seller in football form I'm going to show you my other keepers from the second seller. Once again I scored some of the previously mentioned 6/$5 bin items, and you'll get to see one in a minute, but in addition to that and the Topps Posters above, I grabbed these:

For a combined $20 I scored a trio of 7-11 Slurpee coin sets. These lenticular "coins" are among my favorite oddball collectibles and I couldn't pass them up! Also, I know I'll definitely be getting a comment from Fuji on this post!

Scan #1 shows off the complete 1984 Central Region set. Per TCDb, these have an "E" suffix for the card numbers (which are Roman numerals) as opposed to "H" for the East and "K" for the South. There are 24 total and you see each of those above, with plenty of stars mixed in with other favorites. Lou Whitaker and Ted Simmons are my PC guys here but I'm happy to have the whole set!

The second scan starts with 15 of the 16 coins from the 1986 set (also the Central Region, which you can tell since the fronts have blue borders and the backs are yellow). I didn't realize until I got home that while what I bought came with 16 coins, one of them was a dupe and I was missing probably the best one: Steve Carlton/Nolan Ryan/Tom Seaver. No biggie, I may be able to score that on eBay soon. Anyway, this set is even more reminiscent of the very similar Sportflics cards as it opts for trios (except for the Dwight Gooden that leads the set). Those obviously work well on this style of card and I like how they look. PC guys for me include Cal Ripken Jr. (on an MVPs coin with Keith Hernandez and Don Mattingly), Jack Morris ("Ace Pitchers" with Bert Blyleven and Rick Sutcliffe), Lance Parrish ("All-Star Catchers" with Carlton Fisk and Tony Pena), Chet Lemon ("Star Outfielders" with Brett Butler and Willie Wilson), Darrell Evans ("Home Run Hitters" with Tom Brunansky and Cecil Cooper), and Kirk Gibson ("Big Hitters" with Paul Molitor and Greg Walker).

The last set here is the Detroit Region version made in 1987. From what I can see, Detroit is the only area that had its own team represented by itself. Chicago got a 16-coin Cubs/Sox split, the East got Mets/Red Sox/Yankees, Mideast got Orioles/Red Sox/Cubs/Mets, and West got Angels/Dodgers. This set was made close enough to the '84 World Series team that the biggest stars are still present, and there are only two players (Darnell Coles and Dwight Lowry) that I don't collect. Gibby, Tram, Sweet Lou, and others are all there, plus relative newcomer Frank Tanana, in the 12-coin set. Cool!

Before getting to the final item from this seller I thought I'd grab an image of an example back of each coin.

Besides those, like I said, I kept one of the 6/$5 items for myself. That was the complete 12-card set of 2015 Topps Update's Pride and Perseverance. Thought it wasn't in the greatest of shape since its team bag got bounced around in the tub plenty, I thought it was worth it for less than a buck. While the design is typically fairly boring in the usual Topps way, the idea was a great one: examples of players who overcame adversity. It's inspiring to read about how these guys defeated obstacles that could have prevented them from playing. Former Detroit Tiger Curtis Pride and Jim Abbott feature in this set, and I'm glad to have it in my collection.

And now we'll close things out with some football, mostly from I believe the dime and quarter boxes. Score-A-Treat and Donruss feature heavily, but I did manage to find a colorful Absolute parallel of Corum, a Mosaic of Moody, and Topps Resurgence base of Woodson as well.

This could have been a decent trip if I'd stuck to my usual guy's tables, but the 7-11 coins definitely upped the experience to an excellent one. And I'm glad to say I had an enjoyable time yesterday as well, but like I said, you'll have to wait a bit for that. I still need to show off a couple TCDb PIFs, a pair of eBay purchases (with one on the way), and at least one March trade envelope. Until then, may the weather continue going in the right direction as we get deeper into spring training!

2026 trade package #6: Johnny's Trading Spot

I skipped going to my monthly show today in favor of going tomorrow, mostly out of laziness, but the weather's not exactly cooperating either (lots of fog and rain). Instead, I'll put that time towards showing off my final February trade package.

As it happens, that came to me courtesy of John of Johnny's Trading Spot. This was the first time we swapped cards, and that started when I threw some John Elways into a package Angus brought across the border for me to send John's way to make shipping easier. John was nice enough to return the favor with a package that looks pretty similar to others I've seen across some blogs (in a good way!), but with a distinctly Detroit flavor.

I'm starting off with these 1990 Panini Stickers since they're the oldest items from the mailer, and also because everything else comes from one manufacturer, making for a very nice sampler. I can still remember ripping packs of these stickers as a kid and filling up my album, hoping for the Tigers and nicer items, such as that foil helmet card. Henneman and Lemon are also PC guys and are most definitely welcome here.

Everything else you'll see here is a Fleer brand, largely from the 90s but with some aughts thrown in as well. This group represents all of the Ultra cards he sent my way. Fleer's first "premium" brand debuted in 1991 but started using its more typical full-bleed photo/foil combo the following year. The product's run from 1997-2001 has some of my favorite design elements I associate with the set, especially the neon lettering look.

This group includes single cards from 1995 (Fryman) and '96 (Williams), four from 2000, and a trio from 2006. Fryman, Palmer, Bondo, and BInge are all PC guys, plus like I said, I really favor a certain era of these, so those 2000s look amazing to me. 

A 90s Fleer product that was even higher-end than Ultra was Flair. These cards were released on thicker stock with even more gold foil elements, and they retained the full-bleed photo greatness of other products like Topps's Stadium Club.

The set made its debut in 1993 and is represented here by the complete first scan plus first two cards of the second image. It's awesome for me to see PC favorites like Fielder, Fryman, Gibby, Henneman, Phillips, Froot Loops, and Sweet Lou. Still, for as bad as that decade's teams were, I've deployed the "1990s Tickers SUCKED" tag tonight.

The remaining seven cards from the second scan represent the '94 set, one that was fairly similar in design to the previous year's, including dual front images, while adding lots more gold foil in the form of the larger player name plus team. Gibby and Phillips are the highlights of these for me, as is one of the inserts added in '94: Hot Gloves.

Up next is a quartet from 1995's E-Motion, a product under the SkyBox name. These are very 90s Fleer-coded with an experimental design that's kind of busy, one that's most noteworthy for the "emotion" on each card. I don't think anyone's ever associated the word "delighted" with the ultra-competitive Gibson, but I'm still happy to see guys like him and Whitaker in this set. It may be weird, but it's of its time.

Keeping that word "experimental" in mind, another fun 90s Fleer offering was Metal Universe. This fusion of metallic elements and comic books debuted in 1996, and the first five cards you see here were found in that set. There's a big emphasis on crazy foil backgrounds that highlight the crazy imagery. Fryman represents my PC guys from the '96 set while Tony Clark (who recently resigned as MLBPA chief) and malcontent Bobby Higginson's cards were inserted into the '98 version.

I kind of mashed up a bunch of products in these two images, and we'll start with 2000 Skybox Dominion. Those feel like fairly textbook examples of a a Skybox product from around then, and I recall busting a decent amount of packs of those chasing some fun inserts. E-X always looked great, including the 2000 product represented here by another malcontent, Juan Gonzalez. And Encarnacion's a huge creep who's a great candidate for Chris's "Bad Guys in Sports Tier List" post, but Gamers was a fun rip back in 2000 thanks to the chase for relics.

Leading off the second scan, I suppose I could have included Weaver's beautiful 2001 Flair Showcase card with the earlier Flair items, but I think Showcase was in a league of its own and really showed how nice cards could look. Then, a couple years after Fleer released a pretty nice product called "Focus," they put out a "Jersey Edition" of the same name, chasing the hot trend of relics. Dean-O highlights the group for me, and well-known collector Dmitri Young is also among the group. Lastly, a lone example of 2004's Sweet Sigs stars Pudge, a Tiger for parts of five seasons who made his debut with the team that same year and helped bring the franchise back to the playoffs on 2006. The base set looks great and the relic and autograph cards are top-notch as well.

And now we've come to the final pair of images, ones that feature some of Fleer's best efforts over its storied but relatively brief existence. The manufacturer did a fantastic job of highlighting some of the game's HOFs, legends, and fan favorites in a number of products, but I think the product most synonymous with the idea is Greats of the Game. These always had beautiful, artistic designs with classic photos, and like Topps's Fan Favorites, they didn't limit admission to HOFers, which I've always appreciated.

A few Greats products are represented in these two scans. The recently deceased Lolich plus Jack Morris, a couple World Series heroes, start us off with the debut 2000 set, one I love for its amazing aesthetics. HOFers Cobb and Kell show off the 2002 design, one with an even simpler retro look that suits the photography well. Cochrane (listed as a Tiger!) is our third Mickey of this post, and he joins Mr. Tiger from Flair Greats, released in 2003 as a great fusion between the two brands. And lastly, Cochrane makes a repeat (including photo) appearance in the 2004 Greats set along with the previously seen Morris, plus Wolverines/Tigers Freehan and Gehringer, as the product went back to a very cool framed look. What a great collection of, well, greats, on great designs!

John, thanks for sending these to complete our first trade, I really appreciate it! I'm sure anyone reading here knows your blog well so I'll just mention that they should also find you over on TCDb. Good luck to your Braves this year and also to you making some headway on your wants of your favorite team!

Tomorrow I plan on heading to my usual show and then I'll probably put in some work readying my next post which should cover last month's show.

2026 trade package #1: Chronicles of Fuji

Tonight let's party like it's 2026 since, you know, it is, by taking a look at my first trade package of the year before the calendar flips to February.

Sender #1 this year was one of the blogosphere's favorite people: Mark of the Chronicles of Fuji. Just after the start of the new year I got this envelope in my mailbox:

Oooooh, this is big enough to hold some interesting items! Side note: do yourself a favor and buy postage on a site like PirateShip so you don't have to pay nearly this much when you're already being very generous in sending cards and paying to ship stuff.

Ok, well this is a good sign--that's my name. This portends good things!

And good things were indeed within! That's the January 1991 issue of Beckett Baseball with that year's sensation Cecil Fielder grading the cover, not to mention 1990 World Series champ Barry Larkin on the back, a hell of a two-fer. There's also a very nice Christmas card from my "blogger buddy" that was a nice touch. And then we have a couple taped up things of cards to open up.

The old nine-pocket page: a tried and true method for shipping cards, especially in PWE format. Fuji picked some very nice stuff and also packaged these in expert fashion. Let's have a better look:

Baseball begins with Tigers old and new. Baez is a Sepia Refractor and the Miggy pair is quite nice: a Triple Threads base and manu-"medallion." Carp's Topps Holiday card is a Green Plaid parallel that still feels appropriate for the season. The two Clarks bring me back to when cards were more fun, especially the Black Diamond parallel numbered /1500 on the back. Evans is a box bottom card and you actually just saw the whole bottom in my TCDb recap post.  And there's Big Daddy again, on a playing card (naturally he's a king in that set).

Card #1 in this scan is great since I'd say I share Fuji's love for collecting Mr. Padre and 80s boxed sets. I wasn't familiar with Jimenez but see that he's the player Detroit flipped to Minnesota for pitchers Chris Paddack and Randy Dobnak during their lackluster trade deadline last year. Lipcius and Meadows are both good old regular Refractors, though given how briefly the former was with Detroit I have no idea why Topps bothered putting him in their sets. Finest isn't what it once was but I won't say no to a RC of Mize! Nunez has been out of affiliated ball for years now but is still kicking in a few indy and foreign leagues, which is very cool. Cal joins Miggy above with a gorgeous Triple Threads card. If I'm not turning down Mize RCs I'm definitely happily accepting any Skubal RCs that come my way! And that Tork is a very nice Bowman Draft Invicta insert I don't think I'd seen before.

And we've still got plenty of baseball items left. York, a '45 Series champ as the team's starting 1B (though as the card implies, he did catch more than 200 games early in his career) appears on a card from the fantastic Conlon product distributed in the 90s. We'll get to the hits in a minute but first we have some other interesting stuff including horizontal cards of Miggy (a Topps Golden Giveaway code card), Colt Keith, and a Heritage team checklist. Then there's a cool five-pack of minis. The first two are from 1993 Humpty Dumpty and both Jim Abbott's and Jack Morris' cards are still in the plastic wrap. Nice! The other Minis, meanwhile, are from 2006 A&G. World Series guys Bondo and Polanco are regular backs and Chris "Red Pop" Shelton is a Black Border.

Fuji also treated me to a trio of Chrome autographs. 2015 Tigers first-round pitcher Beau Burrows' signature is from '21 Topps Chrome, and it remains to be seen if he can work his way back to health and a spot with an MLB team. Kubitza, also a pitcher, was a 2013 4th-rounder out of Rice who apparently flamed out a couple years after his 2015 Bowman Chrome auto was packed out. Lastly, Lugo's name is probably the most infamous to Tigers fans as he was half of the deplorable return for JD Martinez in a 2017 deal with Arizona. Here you see Dawel's 2019 Topps Chrome autograph, signed by a guy I actually got to see play in single-A ball for Lansing way back in 2015 when he was still in Toronto's system.

The final baseball items, which you saw way back in the first image of all the stuff together, are these 1977 Dover reprints. I actually snagged the book they came in (as panels) at some point, but it's very nice to have the singles as well. Both of these are reprints of 1912 Hassan Triple Folders, also known as T202 cards. The top one is "Ty Cobb Steals Third" starring the Georgia Peach and manager Hughie Jennings while the bottom is "Jim Delahanty at Bat" which includes that former Tiger (among other teams) from a big baseball family, and OF Davy Jones (get your "locker" jokes out of your system now), who appeared in parts of eight seasons with the Tigers. This is the only way I'll ever be able to afford anything that looks like one of these cards so they were a fun inclusion here.

The basketball content included RCs of two very notable Michigan hoopers, Juwan Howard and Glen Rice. I hope this year's squad can repeat the latter's heroics and win it all to cap a season that's going extremely well so far! Joining them is another big name, literally and figuratively. The late Robert "Tractor" Traylor was another Detroiter that starred at the program and went on to the NBA, resulting in some cool cards around the end of the 90s. Besides a very of-its-time UD Ionix RC, the '98-'99 Fleer Brilliants Illuminators insert looks fantastic, and believe you me, this scan does not do it justice!

And we'll close things out with football. Corum's Rams put up a good fight, but Fuji's Seahawks prevailed with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. Not that I'm complaining since Seattle has a bunch of Michigan Football connections as well, and I'll be rooting for them in the Big Game in less than a couple weeks. As for the new card of Blake, it has a nice shot of him on his way to score again with the Wolverines so I love it.

He's joined by a guy Fuji knows quite well due to his time with the Packers: Charles Woodson. I believe Mark actually commented on a recent post of mine that he had some of these piled up with plans to send them my way, so that's likely what happened here, much to my benefit. I love the mix of designs and years, and of course that two of them (Panini Contenders Draft Picks) picture him with the '97 champs.

Fuji, thanks so much for this early year treat which I obviously enjoyed very much. I hope your return to the classroom has gone well and that you still manage to find some time to blog--you know I love those flea market recaps! And while we're at it, good luck to your Seahawks in the Super Bowl.

I should be back relatively soon with my second of three January trade posts. That's right, I received a third today just before the calendar flips! After that I'll cover my January show purchases, and then maybe I'll be caught up in time for next Friday's show. Wait, caught up? Is that even possible?

12/5/25 card show report: Christmas show-ping

Welcome back to another show recap as I near the end of my collecting from 2025. As you can tell by the date this was early in December, and I headed to my usual monthly show in Taylor.

I got a nice amount of Christmas card shopping done here, spending a yearly high of $153. $20 of that went toward some vintage Topps SPs for a deserving TCDb member, and the rest was at the tables of my usual seller.

First up is a bit of trade bait, which I hadn't come home with for a while:

I decided these were a pretty good value for the prices, which I think were generally $2 and under. As always, please drop a comment if you want to work something out!

And now for my keepers:

Baseball was well represented with a Purple paralle of Cronenworth, Donruss-related base of Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken (no Gwynn this time, sorry!), a Kinsler parallel, and a cool Griffey insert from UD's awkwardly-named HoloGrFX. With 630 bombs, Ken certainly earned his Longball Legacy!

As I've done a few times recently, I went through the seller's boxes of unpriced stuff that he hadn't put out yet, and I came up with a few including the two biggest cards you see here. He gave me a price I thought was great, so I was happy to take home a couple '84 Tigers hits! First is a 2005 Donruss Classics Stars of Summer jersey of Gibby. Numbered /250 on the back, it's my seventh relic of the '84 World Series hero (who may have appeared in one other one?) and I love the photo of him wearing the old-school uniform.

Joining him is another 1984 hero, Jack Morris, on a 2005 Donruss Leather & Lumber Leather Cuts signature card. This was one of a number of products that made things interesting by having players sign swatches of real or manufactured stuff like baseballs, wood, leather, and more. Black Jack's autograph looks excellent on a manu-leather piece, and of course I love seeing him pictured with the Tigers instead of one of his other teams as well. I now own four cards with Jack's signature, and this one is numbered /128 on the back.

When it came to basketball it was all about some cheap colorful stuff. THJ, Jett Howard, LeVert, and Poole all got new items added to their collections for what I think was less than a quarter each.

As for football, a Kwity Paye Prizm parallel was the only non-hit, but that's ok because I found a couple relics to boost that collection's numbers. First is a 2023 Contenders jersey relic of transfer (to UCLA) RB Zach Charbonnet, representing my third hit of my favorite half of Seattle's running back duo. Unfortunately his excellent season ended in the Hawks' win thanks to a torn ACL, so he won't get to appear in a hypothetical Super Bowl.

He's joined by a nice bold red jersey swatch of former Michigan also-transfer (Tennessee) QB Joe Milton, pictured with his former team that drafted him--the Patriots. He's currently with the Cowboys and stuck behind another entrenched starter, but if he can keep earning paychecks as a backup, that's not exactly the worst case for a guy not known to be accurate enough to be a starter. By the way, this is relic number two for the gunslinger's PC.

I'll be back soon with a few eBay pickups from the second half of '25, and in the meantime I'll be rooting for Indiana to cap off their magical NCAA football season with their first title. Go Hoosiers!

2025 trade package #16: the Angels in Order

Happy October, all! Though I don't love the decrease in temperature as we head towards fall, at least we get some nice colors...and playoff baseball!

And speaking of my favorite sport, I received a very nice surprise package from Tom of the Angels, In Order, back in July that was all baseball, all the time. And as a nice little bonus, because we're both members of TCDb, he sent me a bunch of wantlist matches I needed, so everything in the envelope was new to me.

Here's the contents from his latest mailing:

Hey, we've got a few playoff teams in this scan, at least for now. One of the two Reds representatives is Griffey out of 2008 Upper Deck X and 2016 Donruss. His most memorable postseason experience was 1995, though his Mariners never made it past the Series-bound Indians. Seattle fell in the '97 ALDS to Baltimore, then he was part of the '08 White Sox that would lose to a pennant-winning Devil Rays team. Here's hoping the Reds pull off an upset of the juggernaut Dodgers!

Gwynn (1986 Fleer Star Stickers and 2012 Gypsy Queen) got to play in the World Series near the beginning and end of his career. Of course the former was a tilt against the magical '84 Tigers, which went five games, and the latter was a sweep at the hands of the '98 Yankees during their dynasty back then. I hope Mr. Padre's team, including Michigan alum Jake Cronenworth, makes a deep playoff push this year.

Inge (2012 Topps Update) is mostly known for 12 seasons with the Tigers, and that includes their surprise Series appearance in '06 (a loss to St. Louis) and a 4-2 2011 ALCS defeat at the hands of Texas, who lost that year's Fall Classic to...St. Louis. Though he's a lower priority PC guy for me I'm happy to track down even base cards of his like this Update issue that notes his 2012 signing with the A's.

With Larkin (1990 Donruss Best of the NL), we start a nice streak of guys that did get to celebrate a Series victory. Though he'd have to take his '95 NL MVP as a consolation prize for losing to the eventual champion Braves in that year's NLCS, the surprising 1990 Reds buzzed through the Pirates (4-2) and swept Oakland to win it all, and with a roster featuring three former Wolverines (Larkin, Hal Morris, and Chris Sabo).

Maddux (2008 Bowman) was no stranger to the playoffs, getting to play October baseball in 13 of his 23 seasons, though none with the Padres. His three World Series appearances were the aforementioned '95 Braves, who defeated Cleveland, then losses to the Yankees in '96 and '99. His playoff record of 11-12 (1-2 in the World Series) isn't as impressive as his regular season numbers, but he was a big part of the reason Atlanta was a mainstay in October between 1995 and 2003.

Morris (1992 Topps Gold Winners) is the guy with the most postseason success of everyone seen here tonight. The ace of the '84 Tigers went 3-0 in that year's playoffs, including a pair of World Series wins. While 1987 proved to be a disappointment for the Tigers, who lost 4-1 in the ALCS to the eventual champion Twins, Morris would return to the Series in '91, with the Twins, and '92, with the Blue Jays, and earn a ring with both, including MVP honors with the Twins (to offset an 0-2 record the following year) bolstered by his legendary game 7 10-inning shutout of the Braves.

And Petry (1986 Leaf) contributed to the '84 Tigers as well with 18 regular season wins, though he didn't earn a decision in the sweep of the Royals and was the pitcher of record in Detroit's lone loss in game 2.

Detroit somehow has a chance to continue in the playoffs tomorrow after needing a superhero effort from Tarik Skubal in game 1 to paper over a left-on-base epidemic that finally caught up to them in game 2 earlier today. I don't expect anything different tomorrow but can hope!

All but one of the players in this scan is a repeat from above but I thought it would be fun to group the 1993 UD Fun Pack cards together since the ones in the first scan formed a perfect group of nine. While Fun Pack was never one of my favorite products, it did include some great photography.

Ripken is the lone player we didn't cover above, and his appearance marks another successful grouping of my big four player collections! His Orioles went all the way in '83, just his second full season. His regular season MVP performance carried over into the 3-1 ALCS victory over the White Sox, though his numbers in the main event were mediocre. He'd have to wait until 1996 for a return to October ball, and that involved a 3-1 ALDS win over Cleveland but a 4-1 ALCS loss to the storied Yankees. The following year they repeated with a 3-1 ALDS win over Griffey's Mariners, but this time Cleveland avenged their loss in six games to earn a matchup with the Marlins, which they hilariously lost.

The last card in this bunch is a Topps mini insert of Maddux where he's appropriately depicted as a member of the Braves. During that 1995-2003 run, he piled up 158 wins, his fourth straight Cy Young (and four other top-five finishes), beginning on a high note with that ring in '95.

I should also mention Griffey's Mariners put together a nice season to earn themselves a first-round bye as they await the winner of the Detroit/Cleveland series.

Tom, thanks again for this great bunch of cards which, again, were all needs, so I extra appreciate it! I'm not sure when I'll be sending you cards next but I do have a little stack going for you.

To everyone else, whether or not your team is in the playoffs, I hope you're enjoying some postseason baseball, and in the meantime I'll be back soon with what I think is my final trade package of July.

2025 TCDb trade roundup: January through April

I recently hit the 200 transaction mark on TCDb which is pretty cool to me since I first started trading there way back in 2019. Today I'm showing off the goods from my 2025 deals made there before I took a hiatus to get my trade list updated a bit. All of these were completed between January and April:

deadhead11:

A couple former Tigers including a cool food issue of the versatile Tony Phillips, plus plenty of help for my Michigan Football RC project (and a sweet Michigan uni insert of Tai Streets!).

heattreat:

This one was all baseball with some great looking parallels, numbered cards, and combinations thereof. Of course I was super excited to add a new Rich Hill!

ILLRIMESAYA:

This deal saw two cards go in each direction but one of the two I got went to another one of my trade regulars. The one for me was this sweet die-cut Maddux insert. 90s inserts rule!

jasongerman9 (PIF):

Jason's one of my oldest friends on the site and he sent me some very cool stuff in early January. The ("Christan," not "Christan") Bullock is my first of the former Michigan Baseballer, a Leaf Perfect Game auto with a huge jersey swatch. His cards are limited to this product so I really appreciated him tracking one down for me.

 

Football-wise, the '60 Topps of Barr and '61 Fleer of Smith are both second-years of guys who appeared on very few cards, so not only are they great looking vintage pieces, but they're rare appearances of guys I collect!

 

Those are joined by my first signature of LB David Bowens, a two-year Wolverine who transferred to Western Illinois, then played in the NFL for 12 seasons. Just my second card of him, what you see above is a 2005 Topps Turkey Red auto. I love adding new players to my hits collection so this one's exciting too!

 

Last up is some sort of collectable coin of Tom Brady, one that was made around 2005 or so. It's certainly a cool item of the GOAT QB.

 

Thanks as always to Jason for the amazing stuff he sends me! 

Ymmat (PIF):

Joe's another good dude I love dealing with on the site, and besides trades we've sent a number of PIFs back and forth as well. He surprised me with this one back in April, a PWE that included some baseball and football from my wantlists.

I've since returned to active trading on the site and completed more than 20 trades with more likely on the way so I'll probably have another trade roundup to catch up on those sooner than the end of the year (unless I want to have a ton to cover in December!).

I should be back relatively soon with my eBay purchases for the first half of '25. Until then, just one week until Michigan Football kicks off its season. GO BLUE! 

2025 trade package #1: Baseball Cards Come to Life

When it came to the first blogger trade cards I received in 2025, it was a case of last in, first out. Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life was the sender of the last envelopes I received late in December and then the first that hit my mailbox this past January. As it turns out, there was a reason for this: the January envelope should have been delivered with the earlier ones, but it decided to go off on its own adventure.

That didn't bother me, though, since I still ended up with some very cool cards that pretty much held up the same themes as the post-Christmas ones: vintage, oddball, and Tigers. Oh, and also, Bo identified everything as a want from my TCDb lists. I highly, highly recommend getting yourself organized there for many reasons including this one.

Here's the contents:

"Big Daddy"'s last Studio card as a Tiger was in the fantastic '96 set with one of my favorite designs. Fryman was gone from Detroit before appearing on the Absolute card you see, but those look terrific and I collect him in any uniform anyway.

The run of vintage Lolich cards was especially nice for me as it brought four news from '73, '76 (x2) and '76 Traded. By the way, Lolich has since been surpassed in strikeouts by a lefty by Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, CC Sabathia, and Clayton Kershaw. Also, he was flipped to the Mets in December of '75 in a deal that brought "Le Grand Orange" Rusty Staub to Motown.

Speaking of outstanding pitchers, Bo filled a couple Maddux needs with his '93 Fleer Final Edition and '94 Fleer Sunoco cards. And Mad Dog's fellow 80s/90s HOFer Jack Morris came along for the ride with Fleer boxed set issues from 1988: Exciting Stars and Record Setters (first card of next scan). I love that there are still so many of those 80s oddballs for me to chase that include my many PCs.

Gwynn and Griffey didn't make the trip this time but Junior Ripken sure did thanks to cards from '91 Classic and a '94 Donruss checklist. I can't remember for sure but I may have had one of the Classic games/trivia sets that included those cards at one point.

A couple other MLB HOFers close out the baseball content. The first is a '76 Topps NL batting leaders card that includes PC guy Ted Simmons in the #2 spot with #s 1 and 3 held by Bill Madlock and Manny Sanguillen. 1975 was the first of four seasons Madlock won the batting title, and his .354 clip beat an also excellent .332 that was a career best for Simba. Meanwhile, Tram joined HOF teammate Morris from the '88 Fleer Exciting Stars set after an insane '87 season in which he was jobbed out of the AL MVP by enough voters that preferred George Bell.

Former Wolverine Jim Smith is all by himself in terms of the football content this time, though combined with the other envelopes Bo sent he would have been one of four. The '79 Topps card you see above of the WR who played six seasons with the Steelers was essentially last regular issue I needed for his collection which is now short just some oddball-ish stuff. Very cool of Bo to find that and send it my way.

Bo, thanks again for the slightly delayed additional Christmas cards! You know I'll be keeping an eye out for cool stuff for you at upcoming shows, especially any help I can give you for your vintage set builds.

I'll be back with more January trades soon, but in the meantime, it's nice to be done with 2024 and finally covering 2025 pickups!

5/3 and 5/11/24 show reports: May the shows be with you

This past May was another two-show month for me--technically three if you count the first day of the June Taylor show being on Friday, the 31st of the year's fifth month.

First, as usual, I headed east to Taylor and dropped $80 mostly on some nice trade bait for packages that have since been sent out. I did snag a small handful to offer up here:

I'm pretty sure both jerseys were a buck and I'm relatively short on baseball trade bait compared to football, so I thought the jerseys repping the Texas teams were worth it. Claim 'em in the comments if you want 'em!

And now here are my May Taylor keepers, largely from the cheapo boxes like I like them:

Nothing crazy, just some of my usual favorites. Cronenworth is a natural when it comes to blue inserts. I was happy to find a high-end Larkin base for what I believe was either a quarter or a time. Three new Maddux cards? Not too shabby! A pair of fellow HOF pitcher Jack Morris was a nice find. And lastly there's one of two Ripkens I dug out this time.

That '96 Score Ripken you see above is specially numbered "2131" and had been on my wantlist for quite a while so I was happy to come up with it. A trio of Pudge closes out the baseball stuff.

When it comes to collecting basketball-playing Kobes, Bufkin's definitely my guy, and the lone basketball entrant here. But I did find a cool trio of non-UCLA cards of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet, including my first relic of him, making him member #252 of the football collection.

Here's some great looking football inserts including one of recent alum Ronnie Bell along with cool QB chase cards of Elvis Grbac and Jim Harbaugh. The former gets the Dufex treatment while the latter feels more like a Donruss insert to me than Pinnacle, though it looks great either way.

And here's the last of the football including dumbass LT Taylor Lewan and talented d-man Kwity Paye on parallels, a couple Absolute Retail RCs, and two more of GOAT DB Charles Woodson.

That was it for Taylor but I wasn't done for the month just yet!

Eight days later I made the 90-ish minute drive west to Kalamazoo so I could meet up with some great hobby friends. I knew Jeff and Kevin (Sluggo) would be at that big show selling, plus Jason from TCDb and John planned on attending as well. I got there in the early afternoon and met up with the Sluggo's guys, catching up with them first. Jason appeared a little later, and then John. As always it was great to catch up with everyone.

Here's a pic John got of the two of us, and clearly only one of us knows where to look when taking a picture. Anyway, I spent a total of $100 at this show between four or five sellers, I believe. Kevin gave me another outstanding deal and I snagged some quality stuff from a few others I may look for again the next time I head that way.

Once again most of my purchases were destined for mailers, but my combined haul looked like this:

Give me new Gwynns any day, horizontal or vertical. Haskins was let go by the Titans but just joined the Chargers and reunited with coach Jim Harbaugh. Higdon was another successful college back, just not in the NFL. Ruiz is one of a few recent talented centers the program has produced. And I found what ended up being my fifth auto of DB David Long Jr. (not to be confused with the LB from WVU) who was released by the Giants and doesn't appear to have joined their practice squad or another team just yet.

I also found this nice little six pack of Michigan Hockey guys in a dime box, of all things, which was a surprise given the star power here. Beniers just got paid big time by the Kraken and Fantilli, as I've mentioned a couple times, won the Hobey Baker after an outstanding '22-'23 campaign.

Many thanks again to Jeff and Kevin plus Jason and John for another quality show meet-up, and I hope we get to do it again soon, though not in September as that conflicts with Michigan Football's big matchup with Texas.

In the meantime I'll continue to play catchup as I now get to move on to June with still a TON of great pickups to cover.