2022 trade package #9: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

When today's post is in the books I'll be able to say I'm finally caught up with blogger trade packages, at least temporarily! And given the sender, Doug of Sports Cards From the Dollar Store, is one of my most prolific trade partners, it's no surprise that this one is a doozy. All four major sports, sweet inserts, autos and relics, and more! Let's get down to it:

The baseball and non-Michigan hockey portions were small but of high quality. Miggy's 2021 Stadium Club card, a nice reminder that Detroit opens up the season in just a couple days, is an image variation from 2021, a horizontal issue of him sliding into a base as opposed to a vertical shot of him standing safely on base holding his helmet. I hope he reaches 3000 hits early in the season to get the pressure off himself early!

Moving to the ice we have two Wings, whose season is bad enough that the less we talk about it the better. Besides a very nice OPC base of supremely talented Swede Zetterberg I was surprised to find a lovely signature from his countryman, defenseman Gustav Lindstrom, out of 20-21 UD Allure. Doug's sent me other cards from this product and they all 100% live up to the name! The young D-man played a bit the past couple years with the Wings before becoming a regular this season and we'll see what his future is for a team that can't seem to win a damn thing right now. Beautiful card, though!

Representing the UM basketball team, which did well to make it to the Sweet 16 after an inconsistent season, we'll start things off with some great looking cards of one of the longest tenured NBA Wolverines in Crawford, who finally retired this year, and current head coach Juwan Howard, bookending a new base of THJ. Crawford appeared in at least one game (which happened only in his final season, 2019-20) every season starting in 2000-01 and suited up for nine teams. And that Howard insert in the bottom row's center spot looks great, right out of the 90s!

Continuing on the court there's one more Howard to enjoy along with some 90s love for vets like Tarpley, Vaught, and Webber. But the recent Hoops trio is definitely where it's at thanks to a nice base of 3-point wiz Duncan Robinson and RCs of Isaiah Livers and Franz Wagner. Livers was fun to watch as a four-year Wolverine who became a key contributor over his last two seasons, and then the local guy (Kalamazoo) was taken by the Pistons, which was very cool. Wagner followed the trail his brother Mo blazed from Germany to Ann Arbor for two seasons and then was a first-round pick for Orlando last year, teaming up with his bro and another Michigan alum in Ignas Brazdeikis.

After two more cards of recent HOFer Webber, we start to get into the real goods with some hits out of basketball and football. Old man Jamal Crawford represents the former with a pair of 2016-17 Panini-branded relics. On the left is a Select Swatches relic from Select and to the right is a Catalysts jersey from Spectra. Both cards are from his 2012-16 run with the Clippers and each includes a bold red swatch. The Spectra card is also numbered on the back to 149. Jamal now has nine hits in his collection, good for fourth place among basketballers as he attempts to join the double-digit club.

The gridiron card count was small but definitely no worse for it with two high quality pieces! First up is a 2018 National Treasures jersey of new Patriots defensive weapon Jabrill Peppers. He was of course taken by Cleveland in the first round of the 2017 draft and is now free of the tire fire organizations there and in New York with the Giants. His brown jersey relic is numbered to 99 on the front and it marks hit #3 for him. Fellow versatile "weapon" and new member of Michigan's recruiting staff Denard Robinson gets an even cooler card to add to his tally, a 2013 Triple Threads Ruby parallel numbered to just 15 that includes three Jags swatches--one of which has three colors and some stitching--plus an autograph, making it one of the best cards in the envelope. It sure is sweet and I'm very happy to have it as hit #53 of the newly employed Robinson.

Now we head to the ice as Michigan Hockey prepares for its record 26th Frozen Four appearance tomorrow evening against Denver in Boston. The Wolverines still have the most national titles with nine but Denver and North Dakota loom nearby with eight each, and UM hasn't won it all since 1998. This team with a plethora of first-round NHL picks has me hoping for a new banner hanging in the rafters of Yost this winter.

Anyway, on to the cards. Cammalleri, Connor (among the league leaders in goals this year), Wings captain Larkin, and Pacioretty are all well known names while Hagelin and both Hunwicks (unrelated, as always) are guys I got to see play live in Ann Arbor. While the Larkins look great and I do love adding to his collection, I was the most excited for the Mirror Emerald parallel of Shawn Hunwick's 2012-13 Certified RC. It looks terrific and includes that same shot of him playing for Columbus in his Michigan gear that I've seen a million times, but even better, it's numbered 4/5, making it the rarest card in his collection that isn't a plate. It was a huge surprise and I'm thrilled to knock another one off his wantlist!

Fellow Blue Jacket Zach Werenski, who's put up some good numbers with the team this year as a defenseman, sews up the base and inserts with a nice pair--those OPC Platinum cards sure are sharp, aren't they?

And lastly we'll look at a quartet of big hits. We're going alphabetically here but the first one is about as good as it gets: a Yellow Printing Plate of former Duck Andrew Ebbett that was inserted in super high-end product 2008-09 Upper Deck the Cup. The plate was used to produce the former Wolverine's SP Game Used base card that year, and I love what Upper Deck did back then in kind of framing the plates they inserted, making them look even cooler. What a great addition!

Card #2 stars the previously seen Pacioretty, a guy I got to see play a bit in his one year in Ann Arbor before jumping to Montreal. He's put up over 300 goals in parts of 14 seasons and is a key piece on the Golden Knights when he's healthy. What you see above is a jersey relic from 2020-21 SP Game Used celebrating his appearance in 2020's NHL All-Star Skills competition. It's hit #9 for his collection and one of the newest ones I own of him.

Single-year Wolverine defenseman Jacob Trouba is the subject of the last two cards tonight. #1 is a draft banner jumbo relic from the year he was drafted by the Jets #9 overall, 2012. The card would have been pulled from 2019-20 SP Game Used and I believe it's my second banner-related relic from the sport, which is not something you see every day so I think it's pretty cool! Joining that is my eighth card that includes his signature, hailing from 2019-20 Upper Deck Chronology's Franchise History Autos. It's a very classy looking card of a guy whose current count of 10 goals has equaled his career high established in 2013-14, his rookie season. This outstanding pair puts him up to an excellent 17 hits, good for a fourth place tie with Shawn Hunwick among the 59 subjects in my hockey PC. These are a great way to close out another banger of a mailer from Doug!

Given the abundance of goodies you can see above, many of which are of such high quality that I'm happy I've worked as hard as I have recently to hit him back, I'm happy that I've finally done a show and tell post to share them with those of you that follow me. After a few more items arrive I'll be sending my first salvo of 2022 to Doug and look forward to his reaction. In the meantime I may just be able to start getting caught up on my TCDB trades. But before then, in honor of my favorite Canadian (or just in general?) trade partner...

And there you have it!

6/4/21 card show report: That's Bait

As much fun as I had at last month's show where I made good use of my favorite seller's $1 box, my enjoyment and loot were both doubled yesterday. How do you top a take-home like that? Cut prices in half! All of his cards that were previously a buck were now $0.50, and friends, I went nuts. The box you see above is the haul I brought home: 124 $0.50 cards and 130 dimes ($75, for those of you that are as math-challenged as I am). A few of the dimes went towards my collections, I found a ton of great stuff for upcoming trade packages, and I landed a ridiculous amount of general trade bait figuring I'd either find takers here or throw them on TCDB. At those prices I was much less likely to toss something back in the boxes, though I did tend to ignore the minors/low-end college hits. I grabbed so many cards thinking "This is only $0.50?!"

So have a quick look at my personal dime pickups and then settle in for a trade baitapalooza!

Just a reminder: almost everything here cost me a dime. Gwynn's first card is from the pre-Chronicles/Optic combo product 1998 Donruss Collections and is a chromed-out version of his Leaf base from that year. Flagship Donruss, Elite, and Preferred could also be found in those packs. Speaking of Donruss, I also found Mr. Padre's base from last year's product, at least the one that uses his more common name instead of an "Anthony" variation.

My lone personal pickup from the $0.50 was the '96 Studio Bronze Press Proof of Cal, and I was pretty excited to nab that parallel, one of "just" 2000 copies made! The foil's a bit messed up on the back but that doesn't bother me as I'm a huge fan of that year's design, and the product in general. To that I added a 2019 A&G Ginter Greats insert and 2020 Donruss base (I already had the variation of this one) for a dime each.

I've mentioned him enough here for all of you to know that I love collecting HOF former Wolverine George Sisler, and I snagged the 1999 UD Century Legends card you see above out of the dime box because I wasn't sure if I had it. As it turns out I didn't because it's actually an NNO (no number on the back) version with a Washington logo on something that looks like a circular sticker where the number would be:

Finally, on the basketball front I couldn't ignore a new Jamal Crawford insert for a dime. It's from 2012-13 Panini Prestige's Bonus Shots Gold parallel set and is numbered /249, which coincidentally seems like the number of years he played in the league!

I had even better luck when it came to football dimes, especially on the rookie card front. Card #1 is my first of TE Devin Asiasi, who played one season in Ann Arbor and then transferred back home to UCLA. He joins C Cesar Ruiz (RC #2) and LB Josh Uche (also #2, plus a Michigan uni!) out of 2020 Donruss. I was also very happy to find my third first-year of CB Jourdan Lewis, this one out of 2017 Playoff.

On the insert side of things, I believe the two Thomas Rawls parallels were pretty close together, if not back-to-back. The first is a 2016 Panini Sacrifice Die-Cut and is numbered /199 up front (and, yes, die-cut) while the other is an unnumbered Blue Press Proof from the following year's Donruss. Speaking of transfers, he also departed the Wolverines for his senior season, going up to Central Michigan before appearing in parts of four NFL campaigns.

One of my favorite recent guys, Denard Robinson, overlapped with Rawls' college career for a pair of seasons, and there was no way I was going to ignore his 2016 Prestige Xtra Points Green parallel you see above, because chances are good that if I didn't need it, Jeff would.

And then we have two more items of star WRs bookending Uche's RC. First up is a sweet Amani Toomer that isn't an insert but might as well be with its stylin' foil at the bottom. That's his 1996 Press Pass Paydirt base. On the other side is even more gold, specifically a Gold Medallion parallel of former #1 Derrick Alexander's '95 Ultra 2nd Year Standouts. I already had the regular version of that so I'm glad to have finished off the pair.

That was a pretty nice take-home for me, but obviously I'm even more excited about the cards I've already sorted into piles for future trade packages, plus this bonanza that I'm geeked to offer today.

Briefly, if you see anything that interests you, please leave a comment here, shoot me an email, or hit me up on Twitter, then I'll see about working something out with you. I'm being up front in stating that these cost me $0.50, so it's not like I'm gonna ask an arm and a leg. If you're already a common trade partner of mine, I may already have a stack going for you and will be happy to add to it. If we haven't dealt before I'll probably want to come up with a deal with you first.

Also, if anyone needs details on one or more of these (e.g. name, team, serial numbering, etc.), please let me know!

Baseball and football dimes. I leaned towards numbered stuff and parallels since those tend to be good items to have for TCDB deals. I don't know why most of the baseball ones were Twins, but maybe a Minnesota collector will want them!

Vertical baseball autos, auto/relics, and relics. (The Inscribed Overbay is actually a $1 card from last time, but I figured I might as well include it here.) A bunch of these (and the rest that you'll see) are also numbered.

Horizontal baseball autos, auto/relic, and relics. Beltre and Johnson hits for $0.50? Sign me up!

I even grabbed a few basketball autos (and one relic) to diversify my portfolio, as it were!

It wasn't on purpose, but football definitely overtook baseball in volume. Here's all the vertical autos and relics. Again, lots of numbered stuff.

And lastly, here's the horizontal football autos and relics.

I'm hoping at least a few of these result in deals here but if not I'll eventually get them added to TCDB and see what I can get done over there.

Once again I had a blast at a show, my second in as many months since it became possible to get back to them, and I'm already excited about the next one!

I believe my next post will cover the Facebook purchase I've teased a few times now, so stay tuned for that. While you're waiting, let's get trading!

The TCDB Michigan Box part 1: basketball

Although my Cardbarrel order arrived today I knew it was going to be delayed a bit from its original ETA so I finally got to work on something I'd been putting off for a bit.

As some of you may remember, last May I completed a TCDB deal with fellow Wolverines collector Chris (cjjt) in which I flipped him some dupe Michigan Football hits and maybe a few other things for a 5000-count monster box of his UM football and basketball extras. The not-quite-full box added 1600+ football cards to my collection and more than 350 basketball items to boot! Plus I came into possession to a bunch of extras I could use as traders, some of which have long since made their way to mailboxes around the country. In short, it was a huge boon to my collection and a blast making my largest TCDB deal by far.

So this past weekend I finally decided to start making a bit of progress on covering the contents. This evening, in honor of the UM basketball team going dancing as a #1 seed(!), albeit with a key injury or two, here's a quick look at the basketball content:

I took this shot to give you an idea of the sizes of the stacks for all 23 guys represented here. Glen Rice's pile (124 cards) led the way by far, with Juwan Howard (46), Loy Vaught (39), Jalen Rose and Terry Mills (26), and Chris Webber (25), the next highest. Gary Grant (18) and Rumeal Robinson (14) were the other two to hit double-digits.

In this scan and the next two I decided to grab one card to represent each player in the bunch, and in all but five cases (where I only received a single new card of a player) I had a choice, so I often opted for Michigan uniform cards where I could. Bullock, Burke, Calip, and Hughes were four of the five single-card guys, and I can't say Calip's name was familiar to me. The long-tenured Crawford added four new cards, Green got six, and Higgins five. Given the wide range of years represented here you won't be surprised that I got to enjoy a huge variety of brands and designs!

Here we have Jimmy King (2 cards), Mills, and Rose from some college-themed sets. McCormick (three), Riley (four), and Tarpley and Taylor (eight each) are guys I hadn't mentioned yet. I was absolutely spoiled with choice for Rice (don't worry, you'll see more soon) but had to go with the E-X Century card here. Flair and UD's Black Diamond were a couple brands I was happy to see plenty of, especially the version graced by Taylor.

Rudy T.! I had a pair to pick from for him and skipped the boring junk wax item for an SP Authentic base featuring a cool college shot. Traylor's Focus base was one of three to choose from, and since I like the baseball and football iterations of that design, why not go with that? Vaught's Flair insert was a natural choice for me, a basketball-appropriate set called Hardwood Leaders. Wade's another guy I wasn't familiar with and the Wild Card you see above (more familiar to me on the football side of things) was it. And of Webber's nice stack I thought the mid-90s Ultra insert pairing him up with a Lion was fun.

As I said a good amount of the stuff was somewhat boring base from the early 90s so I didn't have any desire to show off everything (and therefore need to resort to my terrible card photography skills), but still managed to come up with some very cool items to highlight. Take this nine-spot of Sporting News coach of the year Juwan Howard. Because he had 46 cards to choose from I easily came up with a page worth, starring some fun inserts and interesting base from products such as Topps Finest and Chrome plus UD's Black Diamond and SPx.

And then there's '89 champ Rice and his 124 cards, meaning I couldn't stick to just nine! Chris had each player sorted by brand and then year, which was weird for me as I was flipping through everything to determine what was new, and that's why you see things sort of grouped that way here. It's kind of fun seeing a trio of Bowman's Best designs with a three-peat, though, or a couple Flair Showcases bringing the shininess.

Look at the Topps and Upper Deck greatness on display here! The former includes Stadium Club, Finest times three, and Gallery while the latter brings it with SP, flagship, Black Diamond, and Encore. And I didn't even include the E-X Century card you already saw! The 1997 and '98 Upper Deck flagship baseball products are among my favorites and the hoops version lives up to the hype with interesting game-dated photos.

These four guys combined for 116 new cards, fewer than Rice by himself, but I didn't want to give them the short end of the stick. Rose leads the way with another Stadium Club look I've always appreciated plus the usually cool Ultimate Victory. Platinum's throwback designs can be fun but not as much as Taylor's resting dunk face. Mystique was another shiny brand I liked to collect, as was Topps Chrome in its older iterations, and here Vaught brings his own intense dunk face. Lastly, I threw in a retro Webber (one of several from that set) and a very representative 90s insert.

As a result of all this craziness Rice became the leader in my basketball PC with 187 cards, making him the second to hit the century mark after Webber, now at 136. Howard (84), Rose (63), and Vaught (53) all eclipsed the 50-card mark, and I count 11 players with at least 20 items. Not bad at all!

And now I can enjoy putting them away before moving on to my Cardbarrel cards, then possibly returning with the massive football side of this deal, which will probably take several posts. Until then, good luck to my Wolverines in the NCAA tournament!

2019 trade package #28: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

I'm back today with the third of the three trade packages that I'd mentioned arrived to me this month, meaning this is the "big" one, and in my experience, nobody does big like my #1 trade partner, Doug of Sports Cards From the Dollar Store!  This latest bubble mailer was absolutely packed to the gills and I'm impressed that he appears to have maximized the amount of weight he could send without the price skyrocketing.

This is another one of his signature envelopes stuffed with variety plus some heavy hitters, hitting many of my PCs all over the place, and I'm proud to be showing it off this evening:

We'll start with the Tigers content.  Pleasant surprise Niko Goodrum leads off this group with his base card from this year's GQ, and then we go on a five-card run of 2019 Heritage High Numbers' classic design, with only Paul's favorite, JaCoby Jones, still with the team.  This scan concludes with a trio of 2019 Bowman Draft Picks of three of the teams' better recent prospects.  RHP Faedo seems to be the consensus best of the three, with Roger's kid getting some consideration, and 2018 5th-rounder Wolf not as highly thought of for now.  I hope Clemens pans out as the big league club could use all the hitters it can develop!

One of these things is not like the others!  Three of this four are recent Panini issues, with an Optic variation of Cabrera and pair of 2019 cards of happy Cub Castellanos, with the Leather & Lumber die-cut a particular highlight for me.  The scan makes it difficult to tell but not only are these cut--they're much thicker than the base cards.  I'm definitely a fan!  I'm always happy to see Mr. Tiger in a trade package, even another reprint from Topps.  I really need to get me a copy of the original!

And we conclude the Tigers stuff with this beautiful Leather & Lumber auto of OF Christin Stewart, signed on a manu-lumber piece.  Doug broke a box of the product back in July and was generous enough to set this one aside from me.  It takes me back to the fun days of Fleer, Panini, and UD having players sign various pieces inserted into cards that simulated bats, balls, gloves, and more.  Stewart has an interesting signature and he's plenty young enough to remain an interesting prospect with potential to star in Detroit's outfield for years to come.  If that doesn't work out it's still a very cool card.

The baseball portion concludes with this pair of Michigan Baseball alumni, which is definitely a tale of two PCs.  Ignasiak's career was a short one and I have all 15 of his regular issues, plus this fun minor league offering.  Meanwhile, Larkin's Hall of Fame career led to plenty of cardboard appearances, and I own more than 750 of them!

We now go back to Motown for a minute, specifically Hockeytown.  The Alfredsson that leads off this scan calls to mind that recent Twitter post that was going around, asking people what clue they'd use to indicate they were being held against their will.  Doug giving away an Alfredsson?  Blink twice if you're being held hostage, buddy!

This first of two Wings scans is chock full of franchise royalty, especially Datsyuk, Holmstrom, Lidstrom, Yzerman, and Zetterberg.  Pavel's second appearance is a very cool throwback to fun looks Score produced way back in the early 90s.  And the Yzerman has me excited to see what the Captain can do to rebuild a team that's fallen on hard times lately.

And even more Wings.  Gallant had some nice years as a player and went on to become head coach of Columbus, Florida, and currently Vegas.  McCourt was the #1 overall pick in '77 and put up four-plus very good seasons with the team, averaging around 30 goals.  The three cards of Mantha, especially the two higher-end ones (Ice rules!) are very nice gets of the 2013 first-rounder who looks like he'll be a solid contributor again this year.  Russo also stars on an Ice card, and a numbered one at that, and we'll see if the former Notre Dame D gets another chance after limited action in the NHL.

The basketball content was limited but very effective, which is great since it's my least favorite of the four major sports.  The Grant was new to me and I especially liked the pair of Chronicles cards of recent Michigan guys LeVert and Wagner.  LeVert just got paid, a three-year, $52.5 million extension with Brooklyn, and I'm happy to see him succeeding.

After a short break from hits in this post, here comes a fantastic one-two punch from the hardwood.  Old man Jamal Crawford, going into his 20th(!) season, appears here from his rookie year on a 2000-01 SP Authentic Sign of the Times auto, giving me hit #7 of the former Bull but also my first signature!  He's joined by a beautiful 2010-11 Absolute Memorabilia Spectrum Signatures Gold auto (#76/99) of the doubly-nicknamed Campy "Mr. Moves" Russell (who, again, wasn't related to Cazzie).  Michael Campanella Russell signs his first initial and nickname here which is very cool, and I loved getting this as my first hit of the former Cav/Knick!

The Michigan portion this time was excellent as always.  Doug hit me with my second RC of tackling machine junior (David Harris will be #1 in my heart for a long time) Devin Bush II, from 2019 Panini Legacy, plus the only checklisted rookie of former UM DB Jarrod Wilson that I could find out of Panini's Unparalleled.  I owe him a special thanks for the latter since it doesn't appear on Beckett's OPG as a RC for whatever reason.

Joining those are a fun trio of inserts.  He added to my limited collections of these two players with an Orange parallel from Legacy of Rashan Gary (#129/199), who picked up his first NFL sack today, plus a Scorecard parallel of RB Karan Higdon from this year's Score, a couple more college uni cards, which are the tops!  A very shiny horizontal 2019 Score insert called Signal Callers of QB Tom Brady caps things off here.

And at last we've made it to Doug's specialty:  Michigan Hockey content!  Almost everything in this scan was new for me, including three of the four Dylan Larkins, which I happily added to his PC, getting him up to 26 items.  I wasn't aware until receiving this envelope that last year's MVP product had a blue factory set version, so now I'm glad to know about them so I don't toss out others thinking they're dupes.

The rest of the "regular" hockey stuff includes a player you'll see again in a minute, a pair of Max cards, a brand new Turco, and a cool horizontal Ebbett that goes towards his very small collection.  Like the MVP Larkin above, I thought this Turco was a dupe until I noticed the gold foil at the bottom, making this the base version of 2002-03 Titanium, and the one I already owned the retail version.  I've since updated my collection to reflect those and am glad for the second cardboard lesson of this post!

And here's the rest of the hockey with the big finish.  O-Pee-Chee's Platinum is another one of those products that looks outstanding when it gets chrome-ified, and Compher's auto (my second) above from 2017-18 looks even better in person, naturally.  I don't think anybody has sent me as many Aaron Palushaj hits (or any, for that matter) as Doug, and he upped the count with this 2011-12 SP Authentic auto/RC #d 693/999, making it the 11th hit (10 including signatures) in AP's collection.  

And the star of the show is the previously-mentioned Merrill, another guy I'm constantly fed by my Canadian counterpart.  Hit #9 is this flat out stunning 2013-14 Panini National Treasures Icy Inscriptions auto.  I enjoy cards featuring acetate as much as the next person, if not more, and am not bothered when players sign a piece of something instead of the card itself (like the Stewart above), so this is another design that reminds me why I love collecting, and getting envelopes from Doug.  The number of times he's sent me cards like this is off the charts as he continues to be a boon to my hockey PC.

Doug, not that you could tell at all by reading this post, I thoroughly enjoyed yet another mailer from you and have to thank you for continuing to send me great stuff.  I plan on hitting you back at least once more, maybe after going on a Black Friday/Cyber Monday COMC shopping spree to bulk up on some quality content for a return.  Until then, good luck to your Sens!