2024 trade package #10: Bob Walk the Plank

It's always a treat when I get cards from Matt of Bob Walk the Plank since we send stuff back and forth maybe once or twice a year, but there's always a higher-end aspect to it. Back in May he treated me to quite the birthday present with these:

Current/future star Riley Greene is a nice looking Museum Collection parallel numbered to just 50. Both Griffeys are from that decade or so in the late 90s/early 2000s when everything was numbered. His Topps Stars goes to 9799 while the gorgeous team color parallel from Leaf Certified Materials is much rarer, /200!

Hill ('23 Chrome Update Orange) is even more limited at just 25 copies, plus that color could be considered a team parallel too. I've mentioned that Miller was quite useful to the Tigers as trade bait, and his 2007 UD Masterpieces card is quite the looker. I have a crazy 83 cards of Casey Mize right now, and one of the rarest of those is the '22 Select Cracked Ice you see above, which is limited to 25 copies just like the Hill (don't worry, Gavin, neither is a 12/25!).

Neither of those is the rarest card of the bunch, though, thanks to a '22 Topps Mini Red of my favorite recent Tigers catcher, Jake Rogers, that's numbered 2/5. Wow! Speaking of "wow," how about another 2007 UD Masterpieces RC of a former Tigers pitcher, this time future HOFer Max Scherzer? That's a beautiful card of the three time Cy Young winner and owner of two World Series rings. Last up is another Red parallel that's not quite as rare as the others in this scan--299 copies--of former RP Joel Zumaya, whose legacy is looking iffy due to being connected to some very troubling allegations about former player and TV guy Craig Monroe.

And here you'll see the contents of the package I was the most excited about. First up is no big deal, just a Miguel Cabrera autograph from 2005 Upper Deck Pros & Prospects. I don't think I can emphasize just how generous Matt is--though I encourage you to look through all my trade packages from him here, containing flat-out amazing cards of current and future HOFers like Kaline, Verlander, Larkin, and others--but maybe this will help: this is my fourth signature of Miggy, and aside from the one I pulled from a pack myself, the other three have come from my collecting doppelgänger in West Virginia. Seriously, my hat's off to him.

Continuing the goodness, next up is a bat relic of a guy I just mentioned above: Barry Larkin. I'm as sick as everyone else of seeing the boring 80s designs beaten to death by Topps, but I'll always be happy about a new hit of a favorite player, such as #25 of the Wolverines SS that became a Reds star!

And for something even more timely, not only is it amazing that Tarik Skubal is the front-runner for the AL Cy Young on another tire fire of a "rebuilding" team, but Matt managed to score a '22 Chrome Refractor auto (numbered /499) of his on Twitter for under $20 and have it delivered to me. What a great card to have of a guy who'll presumably be around for a bit more after the team thankfully didn't give him up for another underwhelming prospect package (see: Flaherty, Jack) at the deadline.

On the football side of things, a pair of Tom Brady cards serves as an appetizer to the main course: a brand new Chad Henne autograph, which is something I haven't been able to add for quite a while. The 2009 Gridrion Kings card you see above (#d /50) is my 144th hit of one of my favorite UM QBs, putting him six behind collection leader Rich Hill. That number is bonkers and I'm grateful for folks like Matt who've helped build that collection.

And finally tonight, this surprise quintet is a fun way of wrapping things up. Representing the Pistons, Lions, Wolverines, and Red Wings are a great mix of Starting Lineup cards showing off several different designs. Hill and Osgood are examples of partnerships with Topps and Fleer, respectively, while Batch, Griese, and Woodson have designs I'm much more familiar with when it comes to those collectible figures and their cards. As for the title-winning Wolverines pair, Griese's from the 2000 product while Woodson's from the '98 Extended Series released during his rookie season.

That's another Bob Walk the Plank package in the books and man was it a great one! I'm fortunate to trade with some very generous folks and Matt is most definitely among the best when it comes to high-end dealing. I appreciate it as always and am working on a return worthy of this to send back to Morgantown as soon as I can. Thanks, Matt!

I believe I have two more May trade packages to get to followed by some show recaps and then it'll be on to June. Stay cool, enjoy the Olympics, and join me in looking forward to the college football season in just a few weeks!

2023 COMC purchases: check out my last post for 2023

That's right, this post will finally wrap up 2023 for me. At least it only took a third of 2024 to get there!

I'm going to take a quick run through the cards I picked up for myself so I can get ready to finally get started with 2024 stuff. Here's what I scored this time around the Black Friday weekend:

90s inserts rule! Three numbered Gwynns? Don't mind if I do! The first is "limited" to 3000 copies and you'll see the back in a bit. The other two had just 5000 copies made of each. As a reminder, that seems pretty high these days, but these were still pretty rare back then, way before today's era of "absolutely garbage boring insert or one of 200 parallels."

Tigers PCs Dean-o and Phillips each get a tougher parallel for their collections, and I splurged a little for the UD Amazing Greats Ripken, a definite top 10 insert for me since I pulled my first one way back then.

One insert I went all-in on was '97 Pinnacle Inside's Dueling Dugouts. You've seen at least one of these here, but basically the double-sided cards feature two players with a wheel you can spin that will show those players' stats in a given year. These four of some of my favorite player collection guys leave me short just Griffey's card (shared with Andruw Jones) in terms of what I want to collect.

And here's a few backs for you. Gwynn's paired up with the solid Brian Jordan. The other three are guys I really don't care for: Jeter (Ripken), Clemens (Maddux), and A-Rod (Ripken). One-time Pirates prospect Jose Guillen was on the flip side of Gwynn's "Great X-Pectations" insert, and the back of Cal's Amazing Greats (a fun pun of a title to go along with an elite design) is also worth a look.

They don't make 'em like they used to but there's still so much 90s greatness to chase that I may never have to worry about the absolute nosedive inserts took after the 2000s.

And now it's time for the (mostly) hits! I don't count manurelics as I consider those inserts for the purposes of my collection, but they're still fun to pick up on the cheap. My second Blomgren auto is another Michigan uni special and it's die-cut too. Brewer joins the hits collection with his first auto. I now have five signatures of Criswell after picking up a cheapie Heritage Minors auto. How could I pass up a large Granderson swatch? Framed Ginter cards still look miles better than the regular ones, and the signed cards are even better, so I scored my fifth sig of pitcher Tommy Henry. Kauffmann also gets his fifth auto on a great looking Elite Extra card. Larkin's manurelic is a reminder that he was a nine-time Silver Slugger as a SS, and that bat relic is pretty cool too.

No, I'm not going all-in on Rogers as Detroit's catcher of the future, but including the last card in the previous scan, I found three signatures of his that I really liked: Diamond Kings with a couple of swatches plus the top-notch Stadium Club design and the Chrome version. Stewart is also a newbie to the Michigan PC, a rare Michigan State-to-Michigan (grad) transfer drafted by the Angels in the 9th round in 2022

One of my two basketball pickups, which unfortunately didn't scan well, is my first autograph of "Sauce Castillo" himself, Nik Stauskas. While I owned 10 hits including a crazy five plates of the ex-Wolverine, I hadn't scored a signature until now.

And now it's time to talk about football stuff I picked up before the team beat Alabama and Washington to become National Champions. Anthony transferred to Oklahoma for the 2023 season but spent 2021 and '22 in Ann Arbor, highlighted by a six-catch, 155/2 TD performance against his hometown Spartans in the suspect '21 loss. The Darboh is my 49th hit, all but 15 of which are signed, but I wasn't passing up a cheap one! Eubanks was a fun TE who bounced around the NFL the past few years after going undrafted. Kinnel played DB from 2015-18 and appears to be out of the league now. LB Cam McGrone played in 2019 and '20 for Michigan and was drafted by the Pats, though so far he's only appeared in NFL games with the Colts.

Cade was the guy that somewhat rescued Michigan during that weird/hapless 2020 season, bringing the team back from the brink of a terrible loss to Rutgers. He transferred to Iowa and said some stupid stuff, and there are rumors he gave successor at QB JJ McCarthy the could shoulder while they were teammates, but he was a key part of the 2021 Big Ten champs who defeated Ohio State, so I'm happy to have him in my collection. Nordin was a huge big-legged kicking prospect and Jim Harbaugh famously slept over at his house during his recruitment. He could be as inconsistent as any other kicker, booming some and missing easy ones, and he kind of had a Rickey Vaughn vibe. I thought the multi-piece Toomer jersey looked badass even if I don't really have any love for the Giants these days. And I finally scored a certified auto of Vaughn, the RB/FB who bravely spoke out about the sexual assault he and many of his teammates suffered at the hands of team doctor Robert Anderson. I continue to commend his courage in coming forward despite his trauma to make people aware of this monster's horrible acts and how the athletic department did nothing.

Last up in this scan is a lone hockey player joining the collection, center Cooper Marody. A native of nearby Brighton, the three year Michigan icer was drafted by the Flyers in 2015 and got a couple very small cups of coffee with Edmonton, though he's mostly toiled in the AHL since leaving school.

And last up we have the horizontals. Like I said, if they're cheap enough, I'll pick up the occasional manurelic like the Larkin above. Mo Taylor is the other new basketball auto I added this time and it's from back when those cards could look really cool (no surprise it's from Bowman's Best). I don't know if two counts as this kind of volume, but I scored more bunches of Funchess in the form of a jersey auto and sick five-piece relic card. Those put him at the 25-card mark, so, not bad! My third hit of Buckeye-destroyer Hassan Haskins is a cool patch (or prime jersey) auto. And last up, I believe the last card I added before shipping everything was one of the best looking Jake Longs in his (currently) 97-card collection of hits: a true patch/auto.

And with these I'll call it a year on 2023. As always I had a blast trading with so many people, getting out to shows, buying elsewhere where I could, and sharing stuff for those of you who are nice enough to follow me here.

I'll also take a brief moment to celebrate a big milestone I hit at some point last year even with some reshuffling of categories: 2500 Michigan sports hits! My official count appears to stand at 2570 and includes

• 38 baseball subjects
• 32 from basketball
• 248 representing football
• 61 hockey folks
• 4 from other sports

You might be able to tell from how I described my haul above that I put more effort into guys I'm missing in my hits collection with a special focus on trying to get at least one certified autograph of as many as I can. Once again, thank you to all who've contributed to this chase, one I'll be happy to continue for however long I keep collecting, which I expect to be a long time!

I'll try to be back soon to get started on 2024, for which I believe I already have something like four blogger trades received (and a bunch from TCDb too), a few shows, one eBay purchase, and two cool Facebook Marketplace buys. Thanks to those who've stuck around while I've dragged my feet on posting, and I hope to be back with more soon to keep everyone interested.

9/1 and 9/16/23 show reports: Social September

It's showtime! With October's even just a couple days away I thought I should get around to recapping the two I hit up last month.

First up was the usual monthly trip to Taylor on the first of September. With Michigan Football due to open its season the following day I made sure to take Friday off so I could head east and take my time. It's been long enough that I can't remember the exact breakdown but I do know I scored LOTS of dime cards and then a few in the $1 and $2 categories for a total of $40 spent.

I'll get the usual disclaimer out of the way that much of what I picked up is destined for trade packages, but first we'll start with the available trade bait, almost all of which hails from the dime box. When you're like me and you see stacks of numbered cards for $0.10 you don't put 'em back in the box! As always, please claim anything you'd like in a comment below, via email, or on TCDb.

All of these are numbered and all are available as of my posting this.

The Johnson jersey set me back a buck. Most everything else is numbered besides the Butler and Young in the upper-right. Palmer is pending on TCDb.

Here the Westbrook/Galloway, Harrison, and Housh are spoken for or pending.

McKenzie and Rowe are pending a TCDb transaction, everything else is still up for grabs.

Last one! D. Thomas and Ricky Williams are gone.

As for my keepers this time, it was a good mix of baseball, basketball, and football dimes:

Dingler is an interesting catching prospect for the Tigers even if he IS a Buckeye. Big Daddy and Hammerin' Hank show the evolution of Diamond Kings from the early 90s to today. I also went 90s/recent with a couple cool Gwynns. The Palmer First Day Issue was a huge find for me in a dime box. The Diamond Kings inserts like the Ripken you see tend to look ridiculous to me as the players are depicted in an old-timey fashion, but hey, new Cal! And Rogers is the Tigers' catcher of today, doing a solid job as the only player of any value Detroit kept from its deals of players such as Verlander and J.D. Martinez.

While I don't tend to go out of my way for Scherzers I won't turn down some fun ones for a dime each. Logoless or not, old action shots of '84 Tigers like Tram are great! Gallery offers a masterpiece of an image of pitching Maestro Verlander. Pudge and Yadi make for a pretty good pair though the latter's HOF case is much less obvious number-wise, though his many accolades certainly help.

On the court side of things, we go way back to current UM coach Juwan Howard's rookie year, and I  join the UM community in wishing him the best on his recovery from heart surgery. Current guy Caris LeVert looks great on a Red Cracked Ice Prizm, one of the parallels I can actually ID without help.

The football bunch opens with this sweet five pack of '22 Donruss Premium Press Proofs. They're not the numbered Gold versions but they still look terrific in hand, and a stack of them has a pretty impressive heft to it. I was thrilled to find this quintet of Wolverines including Collins, who's finally benefitting from a functional QB in Houston, and Gary and Paye, who are making noise on the defensive side of the ball.

Clark's still a jackass but that Red Score parallel looks good with his Chiefs uni. Collins has popped up a good number of times in those dime boxes recently, much to my benefit, and that acetate Playoff card looks awesome. Like Clark's card, I couldn't have asked for a better Prizm parallel color for Graham. Haskins just had his aggravated assault charge from earlier this year dropped, but he still has plenty to do to repair the rep he damaged. The SAGE card of him does look excellent short of lacking UM's iconic wings that were removed from the helmet. Jabrill was a serious Heisman contender thanks to his do-everything skillset, and I'm glad he's moved on from the disgraceful Giants franchise. He's actually a teammate of the final guy here, Josh Uche (Michigan uni card!), who's got 2.0 sacks in four games this year after piling up 11.5 in 2022.

That's it for Taylor for September, but I wasn't done because buddy of the blog Jeff and his cousin Sluggo (Kevin) were heading up to Kalamazoo on Saturday, the 16th for one of the many shows they do in the northern Indiana/part-of-Michigan-ish area. My previous experience with them earlier this year in Lansing was a very positive one, despite a super rainy day plus it being, you know, Lansing, and it's not like they're in reasonable driving distance from me very often, so I happily made the effort to drive a bit more than an hour and a half west. It also doesn't hurt that fellow buddy of the blog John and his wife would be driving down from nearby Portage. A chance to see that many collecting friends in person? I couldn't miss it! (Also, Michigan would be playing later that evening so I had all day to kill.)

You may have already seen this image recently but that's Jeff, John, me, and Kevin in a picture snapped by John's wife just before we all left. When I say we all had a great time talking cards and baseball for a while, I mean it, and I think you can tell here.

Speaking of John, he brought along a few cards for me, all of which I'm happily adding to a couple PCs:

Despite three of these being some cool Ripkens, my favorite is easily the Fleer/SI Gwynn insert, definitely the "90s inserts rule!" card of the day. Thanks, John!

So I enjoyed talking to the guys while flipping through the $3 and $5 boxes and 2/$1 cards (all sorted by team!) and $10 and up stuff. In the end I put together a stack I was happy with and Jeff gave me a price, then Kevin lowered it a bit based on some Braves stuff I brought him in trade. My total ended up being a very reasonable $50, and some nice cards are heading for trade packages soon!

I also kept these two for myself:

The Stadium Club Gwynn insert (second place for "90s inserts rule!" today) looked too cool to pass up from the $0.50 box. And the Funch jersey, which is bordering on prime/patch territory, was $3, I believe. I was a bit surprised that it got past Jeff's hands, but in the end it worked out because I already had a copy I'd mis-IDed on TCDb, so I corrected that and ended up with an upgrade, and Jeff gets his own copy on my dime!

Thanks again to Jeff and Kevin for another outstanding show at one of the most well-run operations I've seen, and to John and his wife for hanging out and making it a great time as well. If any of you are ever in their area, there's absolutely zero reason not to go see Sluggo's Sports Cards at one of their many shows.

As I mentioned I'll be heading back to Taylor on Friday but before then I may try to recap a couple Facebook-related purchases that left me with a lot of misc. trade bait, though some will surely result from the show as well. Either way, expect double-digit trade packages to be heading out as soon as early next week!

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!

2021 trade package #15: Matt's Wonderful Blog Of Hobbies

In my last post I teased a trade package from a "reliable trade partner" and now you know exactly who I meant: Matt of Matt's Wonderful Blog of Hobbies! If the blog name sounds a bit unfamiliar to you that's because it had mostly been named "Sport Card Collectors" for a while. (Also, you probably know Matt's other project, Cards Over Coffee, especially if you follow him on Twitter.) I know a bit about changing up a title for various reasons, and in Matt's case I think it was part of a fairly comprehensive refresh of that blog, which is pretty cool.

Anyway, he'd recently lamented not having sent me anything yet this year in a comment on one of my posts, though I don't think he should feel particularly bad about that after the bonanza he sent me around Christmas! But either way, he managed to put together a brand new PWE for me that arrived just the other day, another Tigers/Wolverines special that hits the spot on this lovely mid-May evening:

Let's start with the Tigers, comprising three parallels and an insert. First up is Castellanos, who had a bit of at professional baseball-ruiner Rob Manfred's expense recently. It took me a bit to confirm it to be the Black Foil version of his 2019 Stadium Club issue, with the main difference between it and the base being, not surprisingly, the small amount of foil up front done in black. It's a typically nice Stadium Club look, though I'm not a huge fan of the font used for the player name. Compare that to the brand's Chrome version from last year and you'll see team/name design elements I like a bit more. Also, that happens to be an X-Fractor of C Jake Rogers, one of, I dunno, 10? backstops currently with the team. He called a nice game in a strong start by top prospect Casey Mize last night, and that connection may allow him to stick around even if his bat fails to develop.

Speaking of pitchers, moving down to the second row we go all the way back to 2014 with a Topps Chrome Gold Refractor of Anibal Sanchez (#36/50). After parts of seven seasons with the Marlins (including tossing a rookie-year no-hitter in '06) he came to Detroit and put up a pair of good-to-great seasons in 2013-14 before steadily declining. Here you can see him in gold, the color of the ring he earned with the Nats in the 2019 World Series. His former teammate from 2012-17 when they both left the club, Verlander, also knows something about no-hitters and World Series rings. But that was all in the future when his 2005 Topps Chrome auto was packed out. That 2021 Topps Through the Years insert, which is a card of a card, is not signed by JV, but I'm fortunate to have grabbed the pictured item for something like $20 years before its price exploded, and it's served as the background image for this here blog for a while, though you can't really see it since I widened most of the blog elements at some point. Trust me, it's back there! Here, it'll be easier to see this way:

Aaaahhhh, nothing like a real image instead of a mock-up to get the full effect.

Anyway, now we'll switch mascots over to the Wolverines for a pair of football cards. #1 is a Glossy parallel of former LB/DL Tim Jamison (UM 2005-08) out of 2009 SAGE HIT. I know the scan doesn't show it but this thing is super glossy, which is nice since sometimes that type of parallel can be questionable. Anyway, Jamison managed to appear in 56 career games for the Texans, which is not bad for an undrafted guy. A player with a bit better draft stock is OL Cesar Ruiz, a former top C recruit who put in three very good years for Michigan, pretty much living up to the hype. The Saints nabbed him 24th overall last year they seem to see him as a guard, which I'm sure he has the talent to play. Matt sent me my first card of his, a 2020 Donruss Optic RC that features the man in his college uni, which kicks all kinds of ass. According to my checklist I have another five first-years of his to track down, which isn't surprising since I haven't made much headway with the 2020 draft class yet. I hope to build on this initial card soon!

Just six cards to scan, plus a few of them needed images on TCDB, so here's the backs.

Matt, thanks for getting a new PWE out to me, not to mention one as exciting as this one! I have a few things set aside for you from the show I got to a few weeks ago and will be waiting until I get to one or both of the ones coming up over the next few weeks before sending them out to you, but I think you'll appreciate this fan of "go blue" sending you some "big blue".