1/5/19 show report: lots of hits for two bits

If last Saturday's show is any indication, I'm gonna have another great year of pickups from my usual guy at Taylor Town Trade Center!  It was a nice day all around with the sun shining as I headed east and then spent a couple hours digging through quarter boxes.  Also, props to Tigers legend Willie Horton who was there signing autographs when apparently a gas leak caused an evacuation (after I left, I guess?).  Horton ended up continuing to sign for folks in the parking lot.  What a guy!  (HT to Paul for letting me know about this)

Anyway, my efforts once again paid off handsomely as I headed home with 175 total cards for $47.  170 of those were $0.25 per and the other five were a buck apiece.  Not much of a discount this time, but it all evens out.

I'd say the personal keepers vs. trade bait percentage was around 40%/60%, but regardless I ended up with a ton of new stuff to enjoy.  That includes a pair over on TMM this evening, plus this bevy of stars:

My take-home largely comprised the big guys, starting here with Junior Griffey.  This first bunch includes his '94 Finest base, a quartet of '97 inserts, and a shiny offering from 2000 UD.  I still remember pulling some of those Pitcher Perfect cards from packs of '97 Score!

Griffey part 2/3 here.  I guessed a bit when sorting these and got the years wrong because like Donruss/Leaf, UD didn't always use the actual year as the copyright date.  So you get to see, out of order, Ovation Curtain Calls inserts from 1999 and 2001, then a 2000 PowerDeck Magical Moments CD (no, I'm not gonna try to play it), and a cool Superior Sluggers insert from the 2003 flagship set.  Now that I'm looking at all of these and the next scan, I realize I grabbed a lot of UD stuff, but that makes sense since they made a ton of great inserts during their run while Topps mostly opted for boring stuff.

And the horizontals.  The SI Covers insert is my favorite here because I've always loved those, but four UD inserts spanning 1994-2000 and a 2000 Fleer Gamers subset aren't bad either.  Black Diamond was a favorite of mine one year, and we get another appearance by PowerDeck.

This little haul of Gwynns has me pretty close to a total of 600, which (spoiler) I'll be achieving soon thanks to Sportlots cards.  You'll also see a few more starring Gwynn in a later scan in this post.

A Diamond King and Sportflix insert from '95 have me pining for the good old days of the 90s, while there's plenty more cool chase cards like 2000 Fleer Gamers' Change the Game and '99 Pacific's Team Checklists.  Pacific sure knew how to make checklists anything but boring.

By the way, that '96 Circa Access insert was new to me, and I had fun scanning all facets of the booklet-like card:

He's right, too--I bet Tony would have hit .400 given the chance in '94.

I went three-for-four on the Larkins I pulled out of these boxes so a certain Jeff will be getting the dupe of the group in a future trade package.  As for me, I scored a pretty interesting mix, including a 1994 Score Dream Team Sample (samples are fun!), a Century Stars insert from 2004 Throwback Threads (#d /1500...for a quarter!), and an example of one of my favorite chase cards, Select's 1996 Team Nucleus.  These acetate cards look badass and the trios are pretty interesting.  Here the '95 NL MVP is matched up with Reggie Sanders and Bret Boone.  The former would play eight seasons in Cincy, putting up an All-Star '95 in which he recorded a career-high bWAR of 6.6, while the latter spent most of his solid career with the Reds and Mariners.

It was another good day for my Maddux collection thanks to this lucky seven (plus one!).  Most of what you see here is from my favorite cardboard era--the mid-90s through the mid-aughts.  Respect was a cool insert from '96 Ultra, and next to that is a successfully exchanged UD Predictor from '95 (again, guessing on the years when scanning).  Those are followed up by a '99 Skybox Molten Metal "Don't Call Me Leaf Preferred Steel" Xplosion card and a much more recent Topps Gallery Insert from 2017.

The horizontals feature my second copy (one that hasn't been peeled) of Donruss's '95 Dominators insert, another from Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders Gold, a 2000 Pacific team insert, and one of a couple Donruss Estrellas Spanish cards you'll see today.

Ripken's group ended up being a pretty interesting one as it paired him up with a couple other PC guys.  The solo offerings include a Score Dugout parallel and Ultra Checklist from the mid-90s, another Ultra insert, a second Estrellas card from the early 2000s, and the "Auxiliary" (read:  non-CD) version of a 1999 PowerDeck insert.  He then gets matched up with a couple other good shortstops on a '94 Triple Play Medalists insert, one being Tony Fernandez and the other, Hall of Famer Alan Trammell.  The final three cards are from a Ripken/Gwynn insert from 2007 Upper Deck that celebrates both entering the Hall that year (I attended that induction ceremony!).  There's apparently 50 of these and I may eventually try to chase them down.

How about starting the year off 100% on-brand with too many Verlanders?  I didn't mind paying a quarter apiece for 18 new cards of his from 2007 Topps Moments and Milestones, which also let me earn a few points but uploading their scans to TCDB.

Here's the other nine, giving me one from his "wins" version and 17 of the "strikeouts" cards.  Taking a quick look in his folder it would appear that I now have two of the former and 22 of the latter "base" versions (plus two Black parallels of just the strikeouts).

I also came away with these two Topps Chrome Generation Now cards from the same year, then found that I actually completed his run of that version because the only offering #s 1, 10, 15, and 16 in Chrome for some reason.  I'd previously knocked out all of the base versions from Flagship, so that's pretty cool!

Last up is mostly a mix of buybacks plus another PC checklist card.  Elliott Maddox ('74 and '79) and a badly miscut Lary Sorensen ('79) are 2015 Topps Originals Buybacks.  Sabo's is the Gold version of his 2017 Bowman Buyback of his '90 Bowman base.  Finally, I found a pair featuring Geoff Zahn from Topps' 2014 75th Anniversary Buybacks:  his '75 Topps RC(!) and his base from the following year's set.  Not bad!

To those I can add retired 2B Chris Getz's Yellow parallel from his final flagship appearance, 2014 Topps.  That leaves me needing six more versions from the flagship/Mini rainbow.

It was indeed another great show for me, and I may just be looking to replicate that success in the western part of my state as weather (and getting my ass up in time) permitting I might be meeting up with John for a show in his neck of the woods, the Kalamazoo area.  Here's to another blogger meet-up!

2017 Sportlots purchases: Rich on the Hill (and other guys)

For a huge number of baseball fans like myself, Christmas came early this past Saturday when the World Series-bound Houston Astros gave us all the gift of Yankees Elimination Day!  Houston celebrated its fifth year in the AL by taking home the pennant, largely thanks to this here blog's namesake, Justin Verlander.

But I don't have any cards of him to show off today, and as a matter of fact I'll be pulling for JV's opponents, the Dodgers, this Series--even though they (rightfully) left former this here blog namesake Curtis Granderson off the roster.  Why?  Just look at L.A.'s starter for game 2--one Rich Hill, he of the incredible comeback a couple seasons ago that culminated in consecutive playoff appearances with his latest team.

In his first taste of the postseason since 2007, Hill went 1-1 in three playoff appearances last year, winning his lone start--game 3--of the NLDS to the eventual champion Cubs.  Now he's taking the mound for the favored Dodgers in game 2 of the Fall Classic--crazy!

That made me do some quick digging to find out the last time a Michigan alum

• ...made it to the playoffs (Hill, 2016 Dodgers)
• ...made it to the World Series (Barry Larkin, Hal Morris, Chris Sabo, 1990 Reds)
• ...won a World Series (that same Reds group)
• ...participated in the World Series as a pitcher (Steve Howe, 1981 Dodgers)
• ...won a World Series as a pitcher (Howe, 1981 Dodgers)

So this is a pretty significant game for one of my favorite PC guys and you know I'll be watching!  To celebrate, I have some Sportlots pickups of both Hill and Howe, plus some of a few other guys who came in at four or fewer cards in my enormous 1000-ish card haul from the site:

In grabbing these flagship and Archives issues I finally got my first 2017 cards of Hill, and therefore my first of him in a Dodgers uniform, because why would Topps have done that in last year's Update set?  Or even Series 1 this year?  God I miss those idiots having competition.  I'm back up to around the 2/3 mark of his run though that doesn't include his Chrome Sapphire releases, which I haven't been able to checklist yet.

While filling my cart with loot of the other PC guys you'll see in this series, I dug deep for everyone I collect just in case, hence the appearance of a few guys today such as Dransfeldt, the former Texas farmhand.  I turned up a couple minor league issues from 1999:  Baseball America Diamond Best Gold and Just.  Both were decent products and I've always liked the look of the BA set (not to mention the magazine and its excellent prospect coverage).

Here's the other World Series-winner I mentioned (as a Dodger!), Steve Howe.  Throughout this post and the rest of the series you'll see a good number of oddball items, mainly from the 80s and early 90s, after I let loose and grabbed almost literally everything of my PCs that was $0.20 or under.  Such is the case here as we have a couple 1983 Fleer offerings:  a Star Stamp (you can kind of make out the perforations in the scan) and a Sticker as well.

Getting back to mainstream issues for my supercollections, here's my favorite card of the post:  David Parrish's 2001 Topps Chrome Retrofractor.  A parallel of a RC he shared with fellow catching prospect Scott Heard of the Rangers, this is one of the best Refractor-type cards Topps produced, and that's saying something!  It features the typically excellent parallel finish, which looks great with that shade of green, plus it includes an old-school cardboard texture on the back to give it that "retro" feel.  My 20th card of the son of former Tigers backstop Lance leaves me just two shy of his run!

I belatedly discovered that Powell was a Michigan alum around this time last year, and in the roughly 12 months since, I've tracked down all but one of his seven cards.  The '94 Score Gold Rush parallel on the right was no problem as I could have nabbed it several times if I didn't mind paying more, but the Pinnacle Artist's Proof from the same year is one of those issues I was beginning to think didn't exist!  I was so shocked when it turned up that I immediately made sure to buy it before it disappeared, either in a sale or as a mirage.  Now I'm just left chasing his '94 Score Boys of Summer insert, a copy of which I've seen online so I know it's extant!

Just as I was happy to see Rich Hill finally appear in 2017 flagship Series 2, I was also pleasantly surprised that injured White Sox RP Zach Putnam also gained admittance, his first in a flagship product, not to mention his first mainstream issue since 2010!  I now get to chase his rainbow from that set while I try to lock up the final three cards I need from his earlier cardboard appearances.

By my reckoning Putz is the made the next most recent appearance by a Michigan alum in the playoffs, Arizona's 2011 NLDS loss to the Brewers.  As with Putnam I only tracked down one card of the former closer, a 2014 Topps Wal Mart Blue parallel made the same year as his sunset season.  It's my ninth from that rainbow with a good number of parallels still to go.

Howe's not the only player for whom I went all oddball, all the time.  I'd long since completed the checklist of Sorensen, a late 70s/80s pitcher for seven different teams, when I managed to come up with these fun additions:  another 1983 Fleer Sticker (we're not done with those yet!), another sticker from Topps' 1984 version (shared with Royal Larry Gura), and a standard-sized 1990 Swell Baseball Greats.  Man did people in the 80s look weird....

We'll finish at the end of the alphabet with another pitcher whose checklist I've had completed for a while:  Geoff Zahn.  Another former Dodger, Zahn appeared in the 1982 postseason with an Angels squad that lost to Milwaukee, who'd lose in seven to the Cardinals.  I added three more stickers to my collection in the form of Zahn's entries from 1983 Fleer and Topps and 1985 Topps.  Then I went big--literally--with Geoff's 1985 Donruss Action All Stars, a large 3.5 x 5 inch release from a 60-card set.  Adding these four boosted me to a nice even total of 40 Zahn cards.

And with that I'm off to watch two of my favorite PC pitchers duke it out on baseball's grandest stage!  Good luck to both in what I hope continues to be a classic Series.