2022 trade package #18: My Sports Obsession

Well it's already August--hell, almost halfway through it!--though today's felt more like a late September kind of day, 60s and rainy.

I've kept plenty busy with card stuff, especially TCDB as usual, and non-card activities (almost done with the new Lego Star Wars, reading, starting up Better Call Saul), and all of that has put blogging on the back-burner for me.

That said, I do have some stuff to cover, and most importantly I owe a very cool person a trade package post.

Longtime buddy of the blog Jeff of My Sports Obsession, a fellow Michigan fan who I know is also looking forward to the upcoming football season, hit me with a mailer last month that went above and beyond in quality. Check it out!

Jeff and I have a lot of player collections in common so it's fun to swap cards of them back and forth. I was really happy to see the four above cards of Cronenworth as many of his cards are still beyond reasonable/affordable prices. I've snagged a few through TCDB trades and I'm grateful to Jeff for sending more! My favorites are the Diamond Kings card (even sans logos) and Bowman Chrome insert since it's a Refractor. TCDB tells me I have exactly 50 of him logged so far, not bad!

My biggest PC remains one Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr., and he's another guy Jeff collects bigtime. Because I have over 1100 Ripken cards I looked at the above (and below, as you'll see in a second) base items Jeff sent and though, "Thanks, buddy, but these are all dupes." WRONG! Somehow I needed all but one of the Cals he sent me (seen in the next scan). That's a pretty big surprise because besides the volume of cards I have of the Iron Man, these pretty much all came from when I was going crazy buying all kinds of boxes/packs without any kind of focus. They're a terrific mix and I'm happy to have them.

Here you see seven more of Ripken, and the lone double is the Pinnacle Inside card right down the middle. If nothing else I'm shocked I didn't have the UD Starquest insert that opens this scan. The '98 Ultra base is the last of the older bunch and then we have a 2018 Topps Silver Pack card that came out two decades later. Maybe someday I'll have as many Ripkens as the number of consecutive games he appeared in: 2632. Thanks to folks like Jeff maybe I'll get there.

Oh yeah, and then we have the biggest surprise of this package. Out of nowhere popped out a 2016 Panini Pantheon Milestone Scripts Bronze autograph of Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline. Wow! Al had a beautiful signature, of which I'm well aware thanks to owning seven of them now, and let me tell you, it doesn't get old at all each time I get a new one. This one is from a set that celebrates certain marks, and as you can see it highlights Al reaching the 3,000 hit plateau with a total of 3,007. He achieved that count in his final season, 1974, his 22nd in the bigs. Interestingly enough those extra seven came from his 30-game cup of coffee in 1953 over 30 plate appearances. He's currently #32 overall in the category, with fellow great Roberto Clemente the last in the club with 3K exactly. Now that Miggy has joined elite company (he sits at #25 as of this post) it's hard to say how long we'll be waiting for the next member.

Anyway, this is a stunner of a card and I was absolutely floored to find it. And then I turned it over and it got even better:

Yep, it's limited to just 15 copies. Just amazing. Thanks so much for your generosity, Jeff!

That's not all there was by a long shot, though, because as I mentioned, Jeff and I both chase Wolverines as well. From the growing group of basketball alumni we have a shiny twofer of three-point machine Duncan Robinson, who just got paid, and a great college action Michigan uni card of Mo's bro Franz Wagner.

Football begins promisingly with a Gold Zone parallel of star CB Leon Hall's 2007 Score RC, #d 532/600. I do love numbered parallels from this era. Joining him is former 5* QB recruit Brandon Peters, a guy who looked like as sure of a future star as anyone. Things didn't work out that way and he transferred to Illinois, in whose uniform he appears in the above Bowman University card. One of Jim Harbaugh's earliest and most promising recruits at the position, it's a shame things didn't go differently but I'm happy he was able to get his chance with the Illini.

On the hits side of things, first up is another Michigan uni card, this time a great autograph out of Panini's excellent Contenders Draft product. Zach Gentry was a QB recruit who successfully converted to the TE position and got himself drafted by the Steelers. Next to him is a guy with whom the word "success" most certainly applies, at least during his career in Ann Arbor, Chris Perry. The insanely talented RB ended his four-year Wolverines career all over the record books and as a Heisman finalist in 2003. I love the 2004 Fleer Sweet Sigs Copper auto (#011/160) Jeff was nice enough to include here because I thought the trend of signatures on all kinds of manufactured materials was very enjoyable. I believe this is the fourth such card I have of him out of 56 hits. Very cool!

Jeff, once again, thanks very much for being so generous with this latest envelope! I was already going to appreciate the Cronenworth and Ripken cards and the Michigan additions were excellent, and then you blew me away with the Kaline! Hopefully I'll have some great stuff to send back your way before long, plus maybe at some point we really can get together for a show?

All of you should get on over to My Sports Obsession while I work on my next post covering last weekend's show. After that it shouldn't be too much longer before I start catching up on my latest batch of TCDB swaps. Until then, keep enjoying summer as those of us who watch look forward to the return of college football!

2019 COMC purchases: 2019 was an a-maize-ing year!

It's the second Sunday in February, 2020, and I'm finally ready to close out my 2019 pickups so I can move on to this year!

Today's post will cover Michigan Football guys that I consider PCs in the sense that they have their own albums, though I may change how I present those soon to make things a bit easier for everybody.

Let's get to the cards:

QB #7 Chad Henne had himself a day (or a sale weekend, as the case may be) with this seven spot of new hits.  I scored a new auto out of the 2008 UD Icons product I'm not exactly in love with (but a signature's a signature!) and two relics from 2011 Panini brands:  a Gridiron Gear "prime" piece and a normal Dolphins green swatch from Limited.  Those photos look preeeetty similar....

On the horizontal end I came up with three more 2008 SPx cards from the Rookie/Winning Materials sets that have multiple configurations.  The first two are /75 and the last is /50 but all three are dual swatch versions.  A quick check tells me I have 15 different cards featuring Henne from this product, 11 of which are from the two inserts I mentioned.  They're joined by my third example of a 2008 UD Premier issue, all of which include four swatches and an autograph.  This is the Silver and is #d /60.

These additions are fun on their own but they also happen to bump my Henne collection over 300 to 306 total cards, second only to Charles Woodson, not to mention 136 hits, tying him with baseball leader Rich Hill!  I look forward to adding more of his stuff this year.

I think I promised a good showing in my posts leading up to this one, and maybe you'll agree that I delivered between the Hennes, these vertically oriented offerings, and the horizontals in the next scan.  Here we start with my second "A" and third letter overall in Jason Avant's 2006 Donruss Threads nameplate.  I'll keep looking for the "V" and "T" I need so I can have another completed project to show off.  His former teammate Alan Br--

--ANCH KILLS QBs!

Branch, gets a 17th auto to his collection, and we'll see him again shortly.  The final 1/1 this time is a 2011 Inception Yellow plate of Braylon Edwards, and I love the border that makes it abundantly obvious which version it is.  Leon Hall and David Harris help maintain the offense/defense balance in this scan with signatures from 2007 Bowman Sterling and 2011 Prime Signatures.  I was able to sneak in a fairly cheap Manningham in the form of a dual signature with Marcus Monk from UD's 2009 sticker dump SP Signature, which works for me!  That's hit #94 of my former blog namesake.  Denard, who we'll see again in the next scan, can be seen on a rookie year 2013 Topps Triple Threads Purple parallel /27, with cutouts for the swatches spelling out his various positions.  I wish he'd been given a shot to play QB in the NFL just for fun.  Last up is Gabe Watson, who I forgot isn't one of my PC guys since he's only at 30 cards.  Oh well, that 2006 Absolute auto (his 8th) is still pretty cool!

The horizontals start with a cheap Avant relic and then a 2007 UD Premier dual auto that pairs another couple guys we've already seen in Branch and Hall, who were fellow rookies in the stacked '07 class.  Jake Long gets his own 2008 SPx appearance, joining fellow '08 Dolphins draftee Henne, and this dual jersey /99 is my 10th of Long from the set and 8th from the Rookie/Winning Materials versions.

Then come three new 2013 Denard autographs.  His prices are low enough that I can pretty much pick up stuff like the ones you see above for under $3.  The Prominence card includes a helmet thing but I don't think I filed it as a manurelic; Panini's Totally Certified came with a nice jersey swatch; and Topps Platinum called the third card a patch auto, so that's what I'll go with.  Those additions plus the Triple Threads above were enough to put Shoelace right at 50 hits, making him just the 10th player in my collection to hit that mark!

The last card of the last post for 2019 is a cool rookie auto of yet another star defensive guy from 2007, LaMarr Woodley.  It's funny to end with this card because it's the very first one I bought toward this last shipment, way back on September 8, or almost three months before the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales responsible for the rest of my purchases.  I couldn't let this Ultimate Collection signature slip away after it went on sale for just $1.75.

2019 was yet another great year of collection for me, and maybe I'll go back to that well one more time with a summary post soon (or maybe not!).  Either way, I finished it with fewer than 25 hits to go for 1500 in the football collection, and I'm fairly close to fun milestones in the other sports as well.  Although I may revise my definition of "hits" for those collections, for now I can say that I began the year with more than 2200 such cards of former Wolverines, which is a great place to build from in 2020.

Whew!  With those finally done I'm excited to show you my first trade package of 2020, eBay pickup #1 of the year, and recaps of both card shows I hit in January, plus I have a couple other interesting ideas in mind.  It may be February, but happy new collecting year!

2019 COMC purchases: preposterous PC pickups

I'm back this evening to end this latest COMC series, which is good since it won't be long until Black Friday/Cyber Monday time when I'll be loading up once again.

Today's the big finish for this haul, with cards scanned in groups because I originally planned to split them up into smaller posts before realizing that would just drag things out unnecessarily.  On a day that mark's the birth of one of college's top 10 players of all time, Charles Woodson (who's not included in this post) let's have a look at the remaining Michigan Football hits:

Scans 1 and 2 include WRs and RBs, with this one covering the verticals.  Outspoken wideout and guy who can't keep his foot out of his mouth Braylon Edwards gets three new jersey relics added to his total (now 85, good for third place), including a multi-color swatch from 2010 Epix.  

You'll see A-Train again in a minute (with his partner in crime), but for now have a look at a simple jersey card from 2002 Pacific.  

And another wideout also gets one of multiple appearances in Marquise Walker, who shares a 2002 Playoff Honors card with Bucs RB Travis Stephens, a guy that outshone Walker by catching his only pass in one NFL game.

And now for the horizontals.  Sure-handed receiver Jason Avant leads things off with a simple jersey from 2006 that I would have sworn I had if I hadn't checked.  Nope, it's new to me and it's hit #60 in his collection, one of a few fun milestones today.  Also, you can ignore the Chris Perry jersey, which looks great and would be nicer if I didn't already own it.  Oh well, trade bait!

Next is 2001 Bears duo David Terrell plus Thomas again, each on 2001 Playoff Honors jersey RCs numbered /725.  A-Train goes for a third score, as he often did, with a 2002 Gridiron Kings Gridiron Cut Collection ball relic (#317/550) on one of that brand's many cool designs.  Terrell now sits at 44 hits and 148 overall cards while Thomas pulls away a bit at 53 and 150.  Milestone #2!

Last up in this bunch is jersey this time of Walker, hailing from 2002 Leaf Rookies & Stars.  Again, we've got a simple design but a nice, bold jersey swatch, and you know I pick these up super cheap; I pretty much aim for $1.50 and under when it comes to "game-used" stuff.  The guy who wore #4 gets his 24th hit out of 63 overall cards.

Now we'll shift gears a bit with a scan that covers defense and QBs.  I rarely get enough of the D side of the ball to justify its own post anyway so I have to group them in somewhere!  As far as those go, we'll start with Leon Hall on an acetate auto out of 2007 Upper Deck Trilogy (#40/99).  This is one of those cards that's difficult to scan so if I didn't point out that it's clear you wouldn't know.  An autographed parallel of his RC from the product, it gets me to 39 Halls.

Joining him on defense is tackling machine David Harris.  We just saw the star LB in the inserts post, and how he's back with relics designed in both orientations.  Up top is a shiny 2012 Limited Threads jersey (#92/99) while a 2010 Topps Peak Performance Relic sits in the bottom-right corner.  Autographs are always better but I take what I can get with defensive players, and I'm happy to move up to a solid 31 hits (84 cards overall) of the former Jet/Patriot.

Though he played RB late in his college career and during his short NFL tenure, I still count Denard Robinson as a QB, so here he is.  Above you can see a pair of 2013 Absolute Rookie Premiere relics I scored featuring Shoelace, with one being the Oversize Jersey Number variant (#57/99) and the other spelling out "NFL" (#68/99). I now count 44 hits in my Denard collection, and a milestone-worthy 101 overall cards thanks to this pair!

Moving on to a guy who enjoyed a longer NFL tenure, you can see three horizontal Brian Griese relics along the right side of the scan.  All of them hail from Fleer brands:  2001 E-X and Ultra and 2002 Ultra.  Griese's relics that I find tend toward basic designs since he wasn't a big factor when those cards got a bit more interesting.  He's still a pretty big deal in my collection, though, at 23 hits and an almost-milestone 198 overall items.

The last two scans fall into the category of "the great 2008s," my favorite Michigan draft class, rivaled only by the guys chosen a year earlier.  I couldn't tell you which scan I prefer because both are amazing, and anyway, I don't have to!

Starting us off is a new 2008 SP Threads manu-letter auto of WR Adrian Arrington.  I haven't been able to complete his base set, last name nameplate yet as I'm short three of the nine cards, but I now have my second letter from the College Autographs version, which--get this--spells out the college's name.  I can add this "N" to an "I" I'd previously scored, putting me a quarter of the way toward that one.  It'll also reside in double-A's PC, which stands at 55 hits (#7 overall) out of 89 cards.

And then there's blog favorite QB Chad Henne with three new signature items.  First is a 2008 SP Rookie Edition auto that honors the '93 SP design.  I'll need to chase down the other three at some point.  Next is a signed version, featuring a cut out window for the main event, of his 2008 Stadium Club rookie.  I now own one of these for all five Wolverines in the set:  Henne, Arrington, Jake Long, Mike Hart, and Mario Manningham.  Maybe I'll show off all of them together at some point.  For now, though, the showstopper is a 2008 Upper Deck Premier quad patch/auto (#15/30) of the journeyman QB.  My purchase history says I plunked down a measly $4.21 for this beauty, and I'm glad I did!

Henne continues to the the charge with a crazy 128 hits (still the only guy above 100 for now) and an almost-milestone-ish 296 overall pieces.

Speaking of crazy, today's big winner has me celebrating too many Manninghams!  That's eight, count 'em, eight new hits of the super WR.  We'll take a run through them in a few groups.

The first two pairs all include some sort of jersey relic:  2008 Bowman Sterling Refractor, Leaf Certified Materials ("prime"), Donruss Threads, and one of those nifty LCM Souvenir Stamps stamp/jersey relic.  Pretty cool!

Next is a 2009 SP Signature triple auto card starring the man himself, former teammate Adrian Arrington, and...Lavelle Hawkins.  I guess the latter was also a 2008 draftee with the letters "A", "I", and "N" in his last name?  Anyway, I love cards with multiple Wolverines, and this one fits the bill.

Last up is a trio of 2008 SPx multi-jersey cards, adding to my huge collection from that product.  A quick check tells me I have 41, covering the vast array of variants like these three:  "Star and Position Dual 25," "Unique Shape Triple 15," and "Jersey Number Dual 25."  That's right, UD came up with a design and didn't know what the hell to call it either!

This was an insanely fun way to close out another fantastic haul for my collection, and it makes Manningham just the second player to hit the 90-card mark at 93 hits (216 cards overall).

As always I had a blast hunting down and scoring new pieces for my collection and I'm looking forward to doing it again in just a few weeks.  But before then I have lots more to cover, so be on the lookout for more posts here soon!

Weekend roundup: a Blowout trade, more You Complete Me and BCS and eBay rants

From Friday up until this evening I had an eventful few days of collecting.  Besides a couple forthcoming eBay purchases about which I'm pretty excited, there was this stuff:

BCS rant:

I'll keep this quick because it doesn't exactly relate to collecting, other than my foolproof comparison between the BCS and Topps:

• It completely ignores what the consumer wants
• It turns out a consistently terrible product
• It claims to value tradition, but blatantly ignores it in favor of the same old shit
• I want no further part of it until it's fixed

The fact that Alabama is playing in the NCAA football title game is a complete travesty and should mean the immediate abolition of the BCS for its failure to determine the two best teams that deserve to play each other for the national championship.  It's an inherently flawed system that has only once produced a reasonably satisfying champion in its history, and the corrupt human element of it has made it worse.  

But more than that, the hypocrisy of it kills me--Michigan was in the same boat in 2006 and we fans called for a rematch with Ohio State after losing by such a close margin on their field, our only loss.  We figured we deserved the rematch on a neutral field, but some people correctly pointed out that we hadn't won our conference title, not that it was officially mandatory for playing for the national title.  That was fine, but then the SEC and their propaganda factory, CBS, put on a shameless display of self-promotion that will forever be an embarrassment to anyone who isn't a NASCAR-promoting, Larry the Cable Guy-loving redneck with an IQ lower than the number of teeth in his gums.  The relevant point here is that the SEC was the loudest opponent of the rematch game.

Flash forward to 2011 and would you look at that?  Suddenly a rematch looks a bit more attractive to those Southerners--not as much as their sisters, but it's up there--and they finally have something to loudly and ignorantly yell about that doesn't involve Obama being a "seekrit muslin communist that weren't born in 'murica cuz I dun sawed it on the Fox News."  The hypocrisy is staggering, as is the fact that a one-loss Oklahoma State team was a perfectly reasonable candidate for the title game, as was Stanford, really.  For a formula that uses some complicated math, the BCS sure does benefit one specific region whose biggest numerical accomplishment was counting to potato.  The title game basically has an autobid for the SEC, and now apparently it has two.  Guess what?  They ALREADY PLAYED THAT GAME.  ALABAMA LOST.  END OF STORY.

So even though it won't happen, largely because Bubbas and Cleatuses would form an unruly mob hell-bent on seeing birth certificates of every NCAA executive, it's past due that we get a playoff going, even if it's only something as simple as four teams.  There's just not enough of a sample size to let a bunch of biased, corrupt and uninformed coaches and media select the two "best" teams to meet for the title.

End of that rant, Go Blue in the Sugar Bowl!

eBay:  the BCS of online auction sites:

Anybody else get one of these in the mail?:

Whiskey.  Tango.  Foxtrot.  This is why I hate class-action suits.  What's funny is I'm not sure how I even became eligible--I didn't sign up to be part of this because I rarely get in on these, and the whole $0.17, which eBay obviously spent more on to ship to me, isn't even enough to cover their exorbitant and extortionate fees.  Like the 20th Gio Gonzalez autograph you pull from a $300 Topps box, this is literally not worth the paper it's printed on.  Screw you, eBay, you dumb bastards.

On to lighter topics:  You Complete Me!:

I made another productive purchase through the always-reasonable Sportlots, so I thought it was time for another YCM post.  For under $15 shipped I got cards from these sets:

• Baseball:
• 2000 7-11 Coins (5)
• 2000 Upper Deck (24)
• 2005 Fleer Tradition (7)
• 2008 Topps Series II set 2 (5)
• 2008 Topps Co-Signers (3)
• 2008 Upper Deck Heroes (2)
• 2009 Bowman (2)
• 2009 Topps Update (6)
• Football:
• 2001 UD MVP (5)
• 2008 Topps (4)
• 2008 Upper Deck Heroes (8)
• 2009 Topps (1)

Total cards:  72

Sets added to:  12

Sets completed:  2

All of these cards were from one seller (the way to go with Sportlots) and all started with the 2000 7-11 coins, a set I've been wanting to finish for a while.  The guy had all five I needed, so I proceeded to pick up literally everything else he had from each of my set lists.  A nice consequence of that was also completing 2008 UD Heroes football, but I also made some strides in plenty of other sets, as you can see from the list.

No scans of these today, but I'm planning on getting up a post of the 7-11 hologram coins if I can figure out how to get them scanned/photographed so they look good.

Blowout blowo--wait, I actually completed a trade:

You read that right--I got through a Blowout thread without buying something and was able to complete a deal instead.  As I was looking through the mass of post-Black Friday box breaks there, I found a guy complaining about his bad luck with a cheap box of 2007 Playoff Contenders.  His three autographs were a guy I can't remember, Anthony Gonzalez (not too bad, plus he was able to sell it) and one that I thought was a great pull, but he lamented the quality of the hits, so I told him I'd take the third off his hands.  A couple of trade bait Aaron Rodgers RCs I no longer wanted later and this was in my possession:

This is Leon Hall's 2007 Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket auto RC.  It's a great autographed rookie of one of my favorite Wolverines who's gone on to success in the NFL, and it pairs well with another I have from the set, Hall's college teammate David Harris.  I now have 18 hits of the budding star CB, every one of them an autograph.  This card also puts me 12 away from a nice, round 400 in that PC.

That's not all I got in the deal, though, since we both threw in a few extras.  As such, I ended up with this assortment:

It includes a 2008 Topps Chrome RC of Mario Manningham, Steve Breaston's 2007 Bowman Chrome RC, a 2007 Playoff Contenders Round Numbers insert of Hall and Reggie Nelson (#0241/100) and three Tom Bradys:  2006 Topps Draft and a couple 2008 Topps Chrome NFL Dynasties Tribute inserts.

I'm definitely happy with this trade, especially since no money actually changed hands and we both got something we really wanted, which proves that is possible once in a while.

Stay tuned for the previously-mentioned eBay pickups soon as they're both key cards as far as my PCs go.