TCDB trade roundup: Hebron Reds Fan, LakeShow, Awesomo1389, and bravefan1

This evening I have the results of four smaller TCDB deals from earlier this year. There's lots of cards to look at so let's get right into it!

First up was a PWE deal with Hebron Reds Fan. No surprise here--he wanted a few of my Reds, mostly some dupes that came from the big collection I bought on Facebook. In return I got these:

As you can tell I took advantage of trading on the site to fill in some 1984 Tigers PCs, especially their earlier 80s issues, some of which show them as members of other teams. The two Sportflics cards in the first scan star Tony Gwynn (on a best NL RF trio card with Dave Parker and Kevin Bass) and Willie Hernandez. Morris and Lemon feature on items of vastly different sizes. The Reds at the bottom of the second scan weren't in the greatest shape but HRF made that clear in our communication and I didn't give up much anyway so I was pretty happy with this deal.

Next was another PWE deal, this time with member LakeShow. He requested just four of my cards, two of which were basketball and of zero interest to me. His offer of nine items was good enough that I didn't even need to send a counter:

Up top we have a pair of 1985 Topps Stickers including a foil of leading PC guy Cal Ripken Jr. plus an 80s Donruss offering and two 90s pieces of the Iron Man. If I don't have 'em I need 'em to bulk up his collection so I'll take whatever! I do like the National Packtime card from '95 quite a bit.

The other group helped me knock a couple '96 Ultra Gold Medallions (the only year they were all gold foil like that) off my wantlists for PC guys Hal Morris and Tony Phillips. The envelope also included the first of a good few #CroneZone cards you'll see this evening, this one from 2021 Topps Heritage, and the first of two UD Comic Ball cards, this one a new addition to my Jim Abbott PC.

Overall once again I was happy with the deal and everything involved when it came to this member, no surprise since he has almost 350 positive feedback comments to his name.

Awesomeo1389, a.k.a. Aaron from Grand Blanc, Michigan, is next. It turned out that I could help feed his Jim Abbott and John Smoltz PCs with a good number of dupes I had on hand, and it was nice being in a position to aid a fellow player collector like that. I sent him some 29 cards of the two star pitchers from the state we call home, and in return I got some baseball and hockey (plus one each of basketball and football):

When I said I loaded up on some '84 Tigers I wasn't lyin'! Bergman and Lemon appear on pre-Tigers cards while Parrish is seen with one of his post-Detroit teams, the Angels, but Brookens and Herndon rep the team that won it all in '84 on Fleer cards from the year before they went wire-to-wire.

Everson and Finken look somewhat out of place here on their 1991 Line Drive issues but they're actually new additions to my Michigan Baseball PCs. Everson was a pitcher from my hometown of Livonia and signed with the Tigers as a UDFA but never made it above AAA. Finken, an IF drafted by the Dodgers in '88, also never made the bigs after five seasons in the minors, but like Everson, was able to appear on a handful of minor league issues. It's great to welcome two new members to the collection!

There's not much comparing two Gwynn cards made literally 30 years apart! The "Printer Proof" stamp on Ripken's Topps Gallery insert still means something to a 90s kid like me. On a related note I thought the photo on Fryman's '94 UD subset card looked awesome. And Griffey the elder and younger share a goofy UD Comic Ball card with Yosemite Sam.

I tend to check for just about everything I collect when I'm trading with someone so I added these non-baseball items. Rose and Harbaugh represent Michigan from their sports while hockey saw me add four of legendary Wings D-man Nick Lidstrom to go with three former UM icers. The gold Tim Hortons card of Connor is particularly nice given the success he's had this year.

Given my positive experience here, Awesomo1389 is another trader I can recommend on the site!

Last up tonight is my first of two deals with Scott from Ohio who calls himself bravefan1 on the site. His feedback is over 1400 so he's both prolific and great to work with, plus you know exactly what you need to have on hand to make a deal with him. In return for some '96 Flair dupes and a few nice inserts from the decade I got the cards in the below scans, which offered a nice boost to two up and coming stars of the game:

My collection of rule 5 phenom Baddoo is paltry so I thought it would be fun to add him here. Chalk up two more Larkins to my collection of the Michigan/Reds SS thanks to this pair from 2021 Gallery. Tigers P Mize, who's temporarily on hiatus but likely not for too much longer, was one of the two big winners here, and I'm certainly glad to add cards of him cheaply via trade instead of overpaying for them. The Panini-branded cards were of special interest to me. Ripken's from the super ultra thick 2021 Chronicles base set and his card makes the stack look bigger than it is!

And here we go back to the #CronZone with an excellent seven new items! Honestly his checklist has gotten out of hand like any young star in the current era of collecting, but I can't complain too much when I can add this many cards in a trade without having to give up anything I'll miss. The Panini Black out of Chronicles that you see up top is very cool though I was especially pleased to land the 2021 Topps Gallery Blue parallel on the right as it's numbered to just 75. Hopefully I can keep building my collection of him through deals like this one!

I added fellow Michigan guys Tommy Henry and George Sisler to this scan because they worked well as a theme. Henry, the pride of Portage, Michigan, appears 2021 Bowman Platinum Ice Foil parallel, and Gorgeous George makes a cameo by way of 2021 Diamond Kings on a very classy base card.

Once again I can highly recommend trading with this member as a ton of other TCDB traders have done so to their satisfaction, and now I can add myself to that number.

I'll be back with more soon as I continue trying to clear my card desk of TCDB trades!

TCDB trade: FiresNBeers

Tonight's post is the first in a series of unknown size that will cover around 30 (and still growing!) trades I've made on TCDB over the past few months. A few of the larger deals will probably get their own posts while I'll group smaller ones together so it doesn't take forever to get through these.

First up is FiresNBeers, a.k.a. Brian from Wisconsin. Brian's one of my favorite people on the site and someone I talk to pretty often because we both do some work maintaining it by handling inaccuracy reports (IRs) for missing checklists, wrong images/other info, etc. There's a group of dedicated folks who put in a ton of effort to make sure TCDB is as useful and accurate as it is and Brian is one of those people.

That's one of the reasons I decided to send him a nice trade package of stuff from his wantlists at some point last year, largely to say thanks. A bit later, he was the one to whom I sent a Robin Yount relic I found at a show in return for a Paul Goldschmidt manurelic I sent to Daniel, and he was generous enough to let me pick some stuff from his trade list as well.

The items below comprise everything he sent me, including the cards I picked plus a few surprises:

Not too surprisingly, Brian is a big Brewers fan, and over his years of collecting he's compiled quite a few Milwaukee police team sets. Above are some of the cards I picked out, with some bonuses he added. Basically the photos stay the same for a given year with only the various suburbs' names changing. 

I was interested in scoring cards of two former UM alumni, Jim Paciorek and HOFer Ted Simmons. Jim has just two MLB cards to his name--1987 Fleer and its Glossy version--so oddballs like these help grow my collection of the brother of the more well known Tom. All of his cards here are from 1987.

Simmons, meanwhile, never played baseball for UM but attended school here so he fits the parameters of my collection. Brian had cards of him from each year of 1982-85, 12 cards in total. Pretty cool!

I'll just have to figure out how I want to store these as they're larger than standard trading cards and therefore won't fit will in my 5000-count player collection boxes.

Most of the rest of what you'll see tonight consists of '84 Tigers, other well known former Tigers from during my fandom, and a few other PCs. Here Bergman and Evans represent the wire-to-wire champs of 1984 on pre-Tigers issues. MLBPA prez Clark's late 90s offerings are shiny and cool. Philly/Detroit legend Cochrane won two rings with the A's and one with the Tigers (1935) and was also the manager for the latter (as well as their pennant-winning club the year before). Big Daddy oddballs are always fun. And you can't have too many Grandersons, especially when they have awesome photos like this one.

Henneman joins Fielder as one of the better early 90s Tigers of my youth and one of the best at the closer position. Hernandez was a standout himself in the role in '84, winning the AL Cy and MVP awards, and I scored two pre-Detroit cards of him plus one of '84 OF Herndon. I've been growing my Inge collection a bit since he joined Michigan's coaching staff. And Jackson was sometimes the next best thing to Granderson, so I ended up with four cards (one more below) of him, including a Finest Refractor as the last card of this scan.

Parrish and a sticker of Morris represent the last of the '84 champs here while bookending the rest of the baseball stuff, and the sticker is a good reminder that Jack was a Series hero for another team as well! Simmons gets two more oddball appearances and I have to say that the 1992 Carlson Travel '82 World Series card really pops. The Brew Crew didn't take home the win that year but you can't exactly blame Simba who put up 2 HR and 3 RBI in the loss to the Cards. Cobb, seen here in miniature form, never won a ring himself despite three trips to the Fall Classic, losing to the Cubs twice (1907 and '08) and Pirates ('09).

Brian also had a good selection of football to choose from so I grabbed 10 cards of 10 different players, starting with the three above: WR Derrick Alexander, RB Tim Biakabutuka, and OL John "Jumbo" Elliott.

And here's the rest of the football stuff: QB Elvis Grbac, LB David Harris, WR/KR Desmond Howard, DL Maurice Hurst, OT Jon Runyan (senior!), RB Derrick Walker, and TE Jerame Tuman.

I owe a big thanks to Brian for all this great stuff, not to mention all the times he's made my life easier on TCDB, and I'll be trying to score some new stuff for him at future shows. If you're on the site and haven't traded with him, he comes highly recommended from me so go send him a proposal!

TCDB trade: randylaw, part 1: Roar of '84

All the way back in April I completed what was just my third TCDB deal that wasn't with Paul, and it ended up being my largest until a couple months later. This awesome trader was Randy (randylaw), a fellow Michigander who hails from Lapeer, a city northeast of me starting to approach the thumb area of the state.

Over the course of three transactions (it was easier to create new ones when adding more cards to the deal), I ended up with almost 450 cards in exchange for about 750. The best part was that a large majority of what I sent Randy came out of the ridiculously cheap $10 Facebook lot I'd grabbed the previous month. Since I was pretty much playing with house money I didn't mind throwing in more cards since I could help him with his set wants and clear out some piles of stuff from those boxes.

Before I get to the cards I wanted to say that Randy was great to deal with and I'd highly recommend doing so yourself if you have the opportunity. He mentioned some health issues that might slow things down but I have zero complaints about how our deal went. We had an easy back-and-forth getting things added to the transactions, shipping went just fine, and I got everything I was expecting safely. What more can you ask for?

So I'm breaking this deal down into three posts since I'm inclined to show everything I scored for myself (I believe I picked up some trade bait as well). While I'm not usually the type to split things up like this I think it'll be worth it overall.

Still, the volume of cards means I went with photos instead of scans (I hope they're good enough to show off what I got), and that I'll probably be less wordy than usual in hopes that these posts don't take forever to finish.

Today's theme is the 1984 Tigers. The last of the franchise's squads to win it all (just a year after I was born!), it featured lots of players I enjoy collecting, and in this case it would appear that I landed at least one of each subject except Alan Trammell, since Randy didn't have any I needed.

Here are the 12 subjects in today's post and their stacks, some of those larger than others. Minus Tram, this covers the manager, the starting lineup (if you swap utility infielder Brookens in for future Mets slugger Howard Johnson at 3B), the top two starters, and the AL Cy Young/MVP-winning closer. What a team!

Image #1 covers the two subjects with the fewest and most new items in this group, and they form the bookends, which is pretty cool. How can you go wrong with a smiling Sparky on a Studio checklist? I added a solid 11 cards to the late Bergman's collection, spanning most of his Tigers career. I'm glad he was around long enough to make it onto Stadium Club and Ultra cards after those products pulled the industry kicking and screaming from the boring 80s. The previously mentioned Brookens' stuff is all from that decade but at least there's a good mix of brands. And Evans was the big winner today, though you'll see why in the last scan of the post. Here you can see I started with Donruss' '81 debut and went all the way through to '89 with a super eclectic bunch that includes some of the many OPCs you'll see today, plus a Sportflics cameo!

The second group begins with of two Gibby items you'll see today, a 1993 Metz Baking oddball I definitely hadn't see before. Then it's on to smiling closer Guillermo "Willie" Hernandez, the bullpen ace who was a shrewd pickup (along with Bergman) from the Phillies just before the '84 season. Naturally I was thrilled to add a Sportflics card of him as well! We already covered Gibson, so why not add his outfield teammates Herndon and Lemon back-to-back? I tracked down some OPC of both along with some other 80s needs like Donruss, Fleer, and Score. Those are low-end enough that I wouldn't have bought them in the past and just hadn't had them show up in trade packages yet, which is fine since TCDB ended up being a great resource for them! Finally, there's HOFer Jack Morris on all four teams for which he pitched in the Majors, even Cleveland, not to mention a Reds photo that must have been Spring Training action since he never pitched for them. These span 1982 (Donruss!) to 1995 (Collector's Choice) with a couple fun oddballs in between. Morris' haul was second to Evans, tied with our next subject,

...slugging catcher Lance Parrish. The eight-time All-Star socked 200+ homers in his 10 years in Detroit before appearing for the Phillies, Angels, Mariners, Indians, Pirates, and finally, Blue Jays. I managed to get almost all of those teams here, and even better, got a lot of shots of him in action behind the plate. As with Morris his haul spanned a large percentage of his career, going from '82 Fleer up to '95 Stadium Club. Meanwhile, his battery mate from 1979-86 Dan Petry was the next biggest beneficiary. Due to his career mostly taking place in the 80s, most of his cards here are from that time, with some nice early appearances from '81 Donruss (pre-facial hair!) and its sophomore version, and going on up to '91 UD and his sunset season. He has a few cards from his brief tenures with the Angels and Red Sox (mostly found in complete sets I already own) and you won't see any of those here.

Last up today are the minis and stickers. Evans appears on a good chunk of these, adding to the cards you saw earlier to give him an easy lead with 23 items. There's even a sticker of him with the Giants, though the rest are with the Tigers, including a couple 1988 back variations in row 5. Gibby got one sticker from '85, making Sparky the lone Tiger with a single item, and the back notes that the Tigers were 1984 AL Champions. Yep, that too. Hernandez and Morris round out the Topps Mini Leaders cards. Whitaker's only appearances are seven different variations from 1988 where the stickers on the front are different in each case. Herndon and Parrish hail from the '84 Topps Stickers product, and Lemon and Petry each share multiplayer stickers from the same set.

That's it for today but I assure you I have lots more to share from the other two piles, so look for posts on those fairly soon!

2019 trade package #38: Nachos Grande

Way back near the end of November Chris, who runs Nachos Grande, announced his Season of Giving giveaway in which people could sign up for some free cards of their favorite teams, with Chris trying to oblige as best as he could.  He's always been a good dude to trade with and I appreciated the dual goals of finding good homes for unwanted cards and sending things out for the holiday season, so I put my name in, and he was nice enough to send a stack of Tigers (and a few other things) my way.  If that's not the epitome of holiday giving I don't know what is!

Here's what Chris sent this time:

We'll lead off with possibly my favorite card of the whole package, a '98 Paramount Team Checklist card featuring Tony Clark, kind of the Tigers' Nicholas Castellanos of his day.  Detroit developed him as a high draft pick and he put up some good numbers on some awful teams before being cut loose in his seventh year.  At least he made the playoffs a couple times after that!  This card is another pefect example of how fun Pacific was back in the 90s.

Encarnacion was Clark's teammate for a few seasons and went on to win rings with the Marlins in '03 and Cardinals in '06 (against the Tigers!).  Fulmer's Bunt insert from 2017 was new to me, and I'll continue being a broken record in hoping he returns to health and effectiveness next year.  Hunter gave the team a couple quality seasons before retiring after a one-year return in Minnesota.  Kaline looks great on a 2002 Fleer Fall Classic base.  Kinsler (also '17 Bunt) was one of my favorites in his three-plus seasons in Motown and 2B hasn't been the same since he left.  Playoff hero Magglio appears on a 2008 UD Heroes Charcoal parallel #d 352/399.  Palmer's big bat was a rare highlight on some bad 90s teams, and '99 UD retro was a highlight of that year's releases.  And I somehow didn't have the base version of Phillips' '94 Collector's Choice base where the underappreciated multi-position player can be seen going airborne turning two.

And now some horizontal cards and more!  I didn't arrange things like this on purpose but the cards down the left side are all new to me while the other two are dupes.  While Granderson's redundant thanks to my '08 Topps complete set, I needed two of the '14 Topps base:  Miggy's 2013 AL RBI leaders base and an issue of V-Mart sliding into home in better times for him and the franchise.  '84 champ Larry Herndon's '88 Topps Big card was also new, and I'm sure I'm lacking a bunch of Tigers from the three-year(?) run of the product.  And then there's my co-favorite item today, an '85 Topps Rub Downs piece that includes Lou Whitaker along with Carney Lansford, Mario Soto, and John Denny, plus a glove and a couple of balls.  Chris had it in a penny sleeve with the instructions card, which was cool from a collecting perspective, and also wise of him since the other piece is so thin.  It's a very cool oddball item to add to Sweet Lou's collection, now sitting at 290 different items.

Lots more Tigers to get to!  Casanova had a great name but not a bat to match, and he was one of many players the Tigers acquired from the Padres or Astros in the 90s.  Higginson's act wore thin for me toward the end of his tenure, but that '98 Flair Showcase card is a thing of beauty.  The Bowman Chrome card (2012) is of RP Matt Hoffman, a 26th round pick that found his way into the set for some reason.  I'll always appreciate Robinson for being just good enough to entice the Orioles to send Mickey Tettleton to Detroit.  And while the humorous Sparks didn't put up great numbers, I do appreciate the fun design of 2003 Studio and its cool background photo of one of the entrances to Comerica Park.

Ok, now we're done with the Tigers.  Knudson's not worth mentioning but the 2011 Topps Attax cards of the park and mascot Paws are fun.  The former is actual a foil version but it was hard to get that to come across in a scan.

And last up today is a trio of non-Tigers cards, in this case Barry Larkin, a guy Chris also collects for some reason.  He sent a nice mix in the form of 2005 Throwback Threads, 2015 Contenders, and 2016 Topps Archives.  Those of you who know me at all shouldn't be surprised that I'd rank them 2, 1, and 3, in that order--Michigan uni cards almost always win--but all three look great no matter what.

Chris, thanks again for including me in your Season of Giving, and I'm glad you liked your own Christmas cards from me!  Let's do more trading in 2020, especially if I can hunt down more set-fillers for you so you can continue the completion momentum you've got going in your latest series of posts!

Complete sets: 2019 Topps Detroit Tigers 1984 Topps 35th Anniversary

Thanks to some lucky timing, today's post is even a bit more relevant.  As I mentioned in yesterday's trade recap covering the cards (and book!) Paul from Scribbled Ink gave me a couple Saturdays ago, we met up at that day's Tigers game since he had a ticket with my name on it.

Make sure to check out his post from this afternoon where he gives another quick recap of our rain delay experiences (and shows off the stuff I brought him, as well as some eBay and TCDB envelopes!).  That includes a quick look at the Topps '84 Tigers team set I nabbed for each of us using a gift card I got for Christmas last year.  Paul mentioned how difficult these were to find--he struck out at a previous game and we had to check multiple fan shops in the park multiple times before we lucked out and he spotted the last two we could find in the whole stadium.

This is a 10-card set starring members of that amazing '84 title-winning team, though unfortunately it lacks obvious choices like Lou Whitaker and Sparky Anderson (licensing issue or just Topps being Topps?).  That was enough for Paul to leave his sealed for now, but I was happy to bust mine open to post them here and add a checklist and scans on TCDB.

The sets are $12 apiece at the park (if you can find them) or $13 if you go to the team's shop on detroittigers.com, and they're sold in taped plastic cases.

They're based on Topps' 1984 design, naturally, but appear to have different photos, which is nice.

These are also super, super glossy, which is kind of a nice touch--though at this price it's the least they can do!

As for the backs, they fit as many years of each player's stats as they can, a bit tricky since a few enjoyed long careers.  The only guy that gets the original set's "Dateline" blurb is P Dave Rozema, whose career was short enough to allow plenty of room (so, again, why is he included?).

Questionable checklist aside, most of the players here are guys I love to collect, especially Gibby and Tram, not to mention C Lance Parrish, OF Larry Herndon, SP Jack Morris, and '84 AL Cy/MVP Willie Hernandez.

Tram and Morris are recent HOFers that had their numbers retired by the team so their inclusion here makes all kinds of sense.

Berenguer was a decent piece of the rotation that year but it still escapes me how you could omit Trammell's double play partner Whitaker, or the first manager to win the Series in both leagues.

Given Topps' love of all things reprints I'm glad these are numbered "DT-#" so they're easy to tell apart.

CF Chet Lemon is also an annoying omission, but I can't argue with his outfield partner Larry Herndon making the cut--he had a good Series at the plate and caught the final out in game 5.

While $12 per set sounds a bit steep--I thought so too--I figured these would be difficult to find online at least for a while, plus I had a gift card, so I wasn't spending my own money.  Plus, it's hard to go wrong with anything celebrating Detroit's most recent Series win.

Next time you can look forward to a hot-out-of-the-mailbox trade package from Seward's Folly!