2026 trade package #9: Topps Cards That Never Were

My next April trade package came courtesy of Jeremy from Topps Cards That Never Were. He's primarily a fan of a couple teams: the Rays and Tigers. His Rays are currently sitting atop the American League with 34 wins. Meanwhile, the Tigers are...not. They're tied in dead last with the Angels, whom they're somehow leading in tonight's game as I write this. To describe the quality of this year's team as "cheeks" is probably being kind.

That's frustrating as a fan, but then again it's not entirely new to me. I was born in 1983 and between then and last season they made the playoffs just nine times, winning one title in three tries (in '84, of course). Other than that, they've finished below .500 in 24 of those 43 seasons, losing 100+ games five times. in 2002 and '03 they earned a combined 98-225 record. And they're well on their way to another one of those seasons that feels like it time traveled straight from the 90s. These guys SUCK.

But that hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for collecting cards of Tigers new and old. Because of that, I'm thankful to Jeremy for the Tigers-centric mailer he treated me to last month, one that also included some other fun items for my collections:

Baez is one of a few Tigers who've been on the shelf for a good part of this season, though the streaky IF/OF wasn't playing well before going on the IL, and his All-Star '25 campaign looks like another random positive season for the enigmatic "El Mago." Bondo was part of Detroit's historically terrible 2003 campaign but I'd still take him over Jack Flaherty right now. In his prime Miggy would have led this team to maybe a few more wins, but it's largely a AAAA roster right now, and things will need to change for the record to improve significantly. I don't know that OF prospect Roberto Campos will be part of that growth, but top-10 CF prospect Max Clark, the 3rd overall pick in 2023, has the makings of a potential star, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he can do whenever he gets called up.

Former Wolverine Jake Cronenworth is one of the non-Tigers who made the trip up north to my mailbox. The former Ray appeared four times thanks to a pair of Topps Rainbow Foils, a Padres team set card, and a Heritage parallel. The foils look great, but especially appreciate the team card because those are sometimes harder to find than they should be.

Heading back to the past for a moment, we have a cool pair of former 1B/DH types. Darrell Evans' '85 OPC contains his stats from the 1984 World Series season, while my newest card of Cecil "Big Daddy" Fielder is from last year's Panini Prizm set.

Then we're back to a current guy in Riley Greene, who has a tendency to be a bit streaky, but has been one of the top three or four hitters on this year's team. The Archives card is a nice throwback to the 2005 Topps set, one with a design I appreciate a bit more in throwback form.

The late Hernandez takes us back to that same '85 OPC set as Evans above, and man was he a beast in 1984. Jobe, Jung, and Keith are all current Tigers, though the pitcher's still recovering from injury, Jung's spent most of the season in AAA, and Keith's scuffling a bit trying to repeat his solid past two seasons.

Larkin is another ex-Wolverine in this package and I love his Purple Holo Donruss card.

Speaking of parallels, former Tigers IF Scott Livingstone features on a Stadium Club Golden Rainbow insert from 1994. He played his first 3+ seasons in Detroit before being one of many Tigers flipped to the Padres in that decade. Utility guy Zach McKinstry is unfortunately hitting about as well as Livingstone did back then after an All-Star 2025. Montero's been one of the not-as-bad rotation options this year, though that's not saying a lot. And 2024 11th overall pick Bryce Rainer, a SS, is another very intriguing prospect that I hope gets called up in the next couple years in place of washed up FA signings.

It's nice to see three instances of ace P Tarik Skubal here as he chases his 3rd straight AL Cy Young, though between injuries and the team's lost season, it feels less likely that he'll win, and if so, he may not do so with the Tigers. I'll just enjoy his talents as long as he's here. Sweeney hasn't been with the big club since a rough '25 season. And JV's return hasn't been what fans had hoped as he's appeared in a single game: a loss in which he allowed 5 ER in 3.2 innings. At 43, his chances of getting to 300 wins are on life support. But if he can come back and pitch a bit more, it'll be a nice enough story. The trio of cards Jeremy sent of him look great, including an All-Star throwback.

One last scan concludes my recap of the goods, though I should note that I only scanned what was new to me. I'm mentioning that to give Jeremy credit for even more generosity as I'm showing off about half of what he actually sent.

A couple recent Tigers team cards close out the baseball content. When it came to basketball, a couple Fab-Fivers were natural fodder for this package. Jimmy King stars on a Signature Rookies issue that pictures him with this year's national champs, while HOFer Chris Webber appears on a shiny foil Hoops insert celebrating 1993-94's top rookies. His inclusion makes sense since he was the league's ROY over Penny Hardaway and Jamal Mashburn.

In terms of football, Jeremy sent me a nice bunch of Charles Woodsons (speaking of HOFers), several of which were rookie year cards like the above '98 UD Choice. That's a subset card while his RC (which I do own) can be found earlier in the set. That was joined by what I'd consider the most exciting card in the package: a TTM/IP-signed 1999 Bowman of school legend RB Tim Biakabutuka. This was an exciting card to pull out of the stack and I already expressed my thanks to Jeremy for sending it back up to Ann Arbor.

Jeremy, thanks once again for thinking of me with this latest envelope--I obviously enjoyed all of these new PC additions! I'm not sure when I'll be sending a stack back your way, but I will say I'm at least working on it.

I'll try to be back soon once again with my final April trade package, one that had a distinct Canadian flavo(u)r!

7/4/25 card show report: fireworks on the fourth

I guess Saturday night's alright for blogging after enjoying watching your favorite college football team emerge victorious on a lovely fall day.

But for tonight let's go all the way back to July and the monthly show I made it to on the Fourth! I dropped $130 on some very nice stuff, a high so far this year, and some of that was thanks to the presence of some cards from my favorite decade. I also enjoyed another blogger meetup:

John and his wife made the trip all the way from the western part of the state and it's always great to see him when it's possible. Side note--we may be able to meet up at another show next month, fingers crossed! Anyway, as you can see we were repping our favorite teams.

I've slowed down my acquisitions of unassigned trade bait not destined for specific folks as I have a good amount I still need to move if possible on TCDb, so once again tonight it's all keepers. And yes, the "90s inserts rule" tag is in full effect!

CF Max Clark, the #3 overall pick from 2023, is one of Detroit's absolute top prospects, so I thought to snag a few Bowman Chrome inserts of him. Then I went much older school with Cobb on a GQ Framed parallel, which makes a set I don't otherwise care about look better.

Oh hey, it's the first of our awesome 90s inserts, Griffey-style! #1 is a '97 UD chase card called Long Distance Connection, one that notes Junior socking his 200th career HR the previous season thanks to a then-career high of 49. He'd go off for 56, 56, 48, and 40 bombs over the next four seasons. And speaking of a guy who could flat-out Play, how about a Pinnacle Epix insert, one of the cooler offerings from the 90s, with multiple colors and designs? This one mentions his '95 ALDS-winning run, which was probably the high point of the franchise until 2001, and maybe this season as well.

Maddux's 2008 Topps Gold parallel isn't a 90s insert but I do enjoy a good numbered card like this one numbered to the year it was made. I'll say it again: Gold is a good parallel but we don't need 74 others every year.

Also back when things were simpler, 2001 Bowman Chrome had exactly two parallels: Gold Refractors and X-Fractors, like the Dean-o you see above. I also happen to think modern X-Fractors look very ugly compared to the original ones from the 90s/2000s.

And would you believe I didn't own an '83 Fleer second-year of Junior Ripken? Well, I previously lacked that but can now lay claim to all of his regular issue '83s.

Speaking of the Iron Man, another sweet 90s insert I dug up this time was his '96 Flair Diamond Cuts. Nope, the scan doesn't do it justice at all as this one combines holofoil, a diamond-like background, and a simulated "cut-out" of the player. Sweet!

Next, Pudge isn't one of the guys I put much effort into collecting since his time with the Tigers was relatively brief, but I wasn't going to pass up a Refractor from the original iteration of Stadium Club's Chrome insert back in '99 (before it became its own product the following year).

I do believe the 2001 UD Vintage RC of HOFer Ichiro came from a $5-ish box, and the value was too good to pass up. Besides, I really respect the hell out of his game and still feel like he doesn't get enough credit for how good he was coming over from Japan.

We'll finish up baseball stuff by going back to the 90s one more time. Griffey makes one more appearance on the Radiance parallel of the 100% numbered '98 SPx Finite set. While the base cards were numbered /7000, Radiance came in at 3500, and Spectrum were limited to half that. Hooray for more numbered cards!

And Gwynn closes out the hallowed quartet with a shiny die-cut 1999 insert out of the awkwardly-named HoloGrFX product called Future Fame Gold, a parallel of a relatively easier-to-pull six-card set. Four of the subjects are the big four that I collect so needless to say, I'm a fan.

As for basketball stuff, well I did get some, but my write-ups above went kind of long and I'm not huge into the sport anyway. So I'll just say I nabbed the seven inserts above, probably from dime or quarter boxes. Cool.

Ending with football, here's four guys that were part of the '23-'24 National Champs who beat today's opponent, Washington. Corum (SAGE HIT) was the automatic short-yard back who rewrote the record books. Sainristil (Absolute Retail Red parallel) was the WR-turned-DB who led the defense.

And then we have two RBs represented on autographs to introduce them to the hits collection. Ben Hall ('24 Leaf Trinity) played a little during the regular season behind the dynamic duo of Corum and Donovan Edwards. He transferred to the dumpster fire in Chapel Hill with bowl star Jordan Marshall returning and stud RB Justice Haynes transferring in from 'Bama. His two TDs this season are hopefully softening the blow of being on a 2-4 Tar Heel squad led by a senile grandpa who's dating a girl that's barely older than a teenager.

Mullings (SAGE HIT), meanwhile, picked up a few carries in the title game as back #3, spelling those two guys after a position switch from LB over the summer. He then became the main guy in '24 and was a bit of a bright spot on a not-so-great team, going for almost 1000 rushing yards and scoring 12 TDs. The Titans grabbed him in the 6th round this year but he's been on IR with an ankle injury and hasn't played yet.

Both of these guys are very welcome to the hits collection which now stands at 269 subjects and growing.

That's it for the July show but I still have more pickups to share. Until then, RIP to the Tigers season and all of its squandered chances, happy belated Yankees Elimination Day, and thanks to John for the meetup!