2026 trade package #6: Johnny's Trading Spot

I skipped going to my monthly show today in favor of going tomorrow, mostly out of laziness, but the weather's not exactly cooperating either (lots of fog and rain). Instead, I'll put that time towards showing off my final February trade package.

As it happens, that came to me courtesy of John of Johnny's Trading Spot. This was the first time we swapped cards, and that started when I threw some John Elways into a package Angus brought across the border for me to send John's way to make shipping easier. John was nice enough to return the favor with a package that looks pretty similar to others I've seen across some blogs (in a good way!), but with a distinctly Detroit flavor.

I'm starting off with these 1990 Panini Stickers since they're the oldest items from the mailer, and also because everything else comes from one manufacturer, making for a very nice sampler. I can still remember ripping packs of these stickers as a kid and filling up my album, hoping for the Tigers and nicer items, such as that foil helmet card. Henneman and Lemon are also PC guys and are most definitely welcome here.

Everything else you'll see here is a Fleer brand, largely from the 90s but with some aughts thrown in as well. This group represents all of the Ultra cards he sent my way. Fleer's first "premium" brand debuted in 1991 but started using its more typical full-bleed photo/foil combo the following year. The product's run from 1997-2001 has some of my favorite design elements I associate with the set, especially the neon lettering look.

This group includes single cards from 1995 (Fryman) and '96 (Williams), four from 2000, and a trio from 2006. Fryman, Palmer, Bondo, and BInge are all PC guys, plus like I said, I really favor a certain era of these, so those 2000s look amazing to me. 

A 90s Fleer product that was even higher-end than Ultra was Flair. These cards were released on thicker stock with even more gold foil elements, and they retained the full-bleed photo greatness of other products like Topps's Stadium Club.

The set made its debut in 1993 and is represented here by the complete first scan plus first two cards of the second image. It's awesome for me to see PC favorites like Fielder, Fryman, Gibby, Henneman, Phillips, Froot Loops, and Sweet Lou. Still, for as bad as that decade's teams were, I've deployed the "1990s Tickers SUCKED" tag tonight.

The remaining seven cards from the second scan represent the '94 set, one that was fairly similar in design to the previous year's, including dual front images, while adding lots more gold foil in the form of the larger player name plus team. Gibby and Phillips are the highlights of these for me, as is one of the inserts added in '94: Hot Gloves.

Up next is a quartet from 1995's E-Motion, a product under the SkyBox name. These are very 90s Fleer-coded with an experimental design that's kind of busy, one that's most noteworthy for the "emotion" on each card. I don't think anyone's ever associated the word "delighted" with the ultra-competitive Gibson, but I'm still happy to see guys like him and Whitaker in this set. It may be weird, but it's of its time.

Keeping that word "experimental" in mind, another fun 90s Fleer offering was Metal Universe. This fusion of metallic elements and comic books debuted in 1996, and the first five cards you see here were found in that set. There's a big emphasis on crazy foil backgrounds that highlight the crazy imagery. Fryman represents my PC guys from the '96 set while Tony Clark (who recently resigned as MLBPA chief) and malcontent Bobby Higginson's cards were inserted into the '98 version.

I kind of mashed up a bunch of products in these two images, and we'll start with 2000 Skybox Dominion. Those feel like fairly textbook examples of a a Skybox product from around then, and I recall busting a decent amount of packs of those chasing some fun inserts. E-X always looked great, including the 2000 product represented here by another malcontent, Juan Gonzalez. And Encarnacion's a huge creep who's a great candidate for Chris's "Bad Guys in Sports Tier List" post, but Gamers was a fun rip back in 2000 thanks to the chase for relics.

Leading off the second scan, I suppose I could have included Weaver's beautiful 2001 Flair Showcase card with the earlier Flair items, but I think Showcase was in a league of its own and really showed how nice cards could look. Then, a couple years after Fleer released a pretty nice product called "Focus," they put out a "Jersey Edition" of the same name, chasing the hot trend of relics. Dean-O highlights the group for me, and well-known collector Dmitri Young is also among the group. Lastly, a lone example of 2004's Sweet Sigs stars Pudge, a Tiger for parts of five seasons who made his debut with the team that same year and helped bring the franchise back to the playoffs on 2006. The base set looks great and the relic and autograph cards are top-notch as well.

And now we've come to the final pair of images, ones that feature some of Fleer's best efforts over its storied but relatively brief existence. The manufacturer did a fantastic job of highlighting some of the game's HOFs, legends, and fan favorites in a number of products, but I think the product most synonymous with the idea is Greats of the Game. These always had beautiful, artistic designs with classic photos, and like Topps's Fan Favorites, they didn't limit admission to HOFers, which I've always appreciated.

A few Greats products are represented in these two scans. The recently deceased Lolich plus Jack Morris, a couple World Series heroes, start us off with the debut 2000 set, one I love for its amazing aesthetics. HOFers Cobb and Kell show off the 2002 design, one with an even simpler retro look that suits the photography well. Cochrane (listed as a Tiger!) is our third Mickey of this post, and he joins Mr. Tiger from Flair Greats, released in 2003 as a great fusion between the two brands. And lastly, Cochrane makes a repeat (including photo) appearance in the 2004 Greats set along with the previously seen Morris, plus Wolverines/Tigers Freehan and Gehringer, as the product went back to a very cool framed look. What a great collection of, well, greats, on great designs!

John, thanks for sending these to complete our first trade, I really appreciate it! I'm sure anyone reading here knows your blog well so I'll just mention that they should also find you over on TCDb. Good luck to your Braves this year and also to you making some headway on your wants of your favorite team!

Tomorrow I plan on heading to my usual show and then I'll probably put in some work readying my next post which should cover last month's show.

2025 trade package #6: Topps Cards That Never Were

Hey, look, I've finally made it to the last trade package I received in January! It was a busy month for my mailbox as this was #6 for the first month of '25, and it was a PWE from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were.

He and I tend to send envelopes back-and-forth without warning, which is a lot of fun to do in this hobby of ours. I certainly wasn't expecting this one but enjoyed its contents as usual. Here's what Jeremy gifted me this time:

Not many managers get much more Classic than Sparky, and he still owns the Tigers record for wins with 1,331, exactly 200 more than fellow HOFer Hughie Jennings, the only other skipper in franchise history with more than 700 victories (Jim Leyland hit that number exactly).

Fielder and Fryman, seen on a pair of '92 issues (Big Daddy's a Gold Hologram version), were the main corner infielders in Sparky's twilight years in Motown. They manned those spots together from 1990-96, when Fielder was traded, a year after Anderson's last dugout appearance.

Keith (Topps Holiday) is tonight's only active MLBer but he still looks very promising despite struggling a bit to get his bat going for the surging 2025 Tigers.

When (not if!) I hit 1000 unique cards of Barry Larkin, it'll be thanks to many of you who've contributed, like this Donruss Orange parallel/'24 Panini Prizm pair from Jeremy. As of this post I need just 19 more.

Robson's the only recent guy besides Keith in this post but the OF and 2016 Tigers draftee (8th round) hasn't been in the organization since 2022.

Pudge joins Sparky in this post as a Tigers HOFer and he has something in common with Fielder above as well: the card you see above is the tougher to find Gold Hologram variant. It's really nice getting those knocked off my wantlists!

Big Daddy makes one more appearance featuring the star of my last post, Mickey Tettleton. The Cecil/Mickey pairing posted 35 and 32 HR in 1992, then 30 and 32 the following season when the UD card above was released.

Last up tonight is a 2014 Panini Golden Age Mini Hindu Back of Red Wings HOF C and current GM, Steve Yzerman. He's come in below expectations in terms of getting the franchise back to the playoffs but may still get there with a bit more time. If nothing else he'll always be a franchise icon and "The Captain" that led the team to three Cups.

Jeremy, thanks again for treating me to this fun PWE. I may actually be returning the favor relatively soon once I decide to pull the trigger to mail the small stack I've put together for you.

With that, January '25 trades are done and I should be mixing things up a bit with January's show recap next time.

2025 trade package #5: Scribbled Ink

(No image to identify the sender of tonight's package since his blog is now defunct and he wisely dumped his Twitter account!)

Back in late January I received an early contender for the best trade package item I'll get all year. And now here it is, almost mid-April, and it's still appropriate to think that way.

Check out this mystery box sent to me by buddy of the blog Paul, formerly of Scribbled Ink:

WHAT COULD IT BE? So, yeah, I knew what it was, but not what it was, if you know what I mean. This isn't the first time Paul's sent me something of this sort as I posted this package from him a couple Octobers ago that included a Dean Palmer gamer.

Well, Paul struck again, and once again he gifted me an amazing item:

This fine looking Rawlings bat appears to be signed! Let's enhance that image a bit:

This autographed bat is so fine you might even say it blows my mind because, hey, Mickey signed it! That's none other than former Tigers slugging catcher Mickey Tettleton, a favorite of mine from those terrible 90s Detroit squads. The man they called "Froot Loops" added that very inscription to his interesting signature, plus a couple other notes: "3x Silver Slugger" (1989 with Baltimore, 1991-92 with Detroit) and "2x All-Star" ('89 again and '94 in Motown).

I don't know how he does it but I'm impressed that this is the second time he's sent me a full sized whole-ass bat that I immediately love.

Thanks again for thinking of me, Paul! I'm looking forward to getting you back when I have a reasonable stack of cards (if not non-cardboard items, since you like to be so unorthodox!). For now I'll work on getting this displayed along with the Dean-o gamer, and who knows, maybe that'll inspire me to chase one or more myself so I don't have to rely on you for all of my signed memorabilia needs. As always I appreciate your generosity and hope you and your family are doing well, including the future Ohtani (or at least Skenes) you're raising.

2022 Sportlots purchases: 90s and 2000s Tigers PCs

I'm back this evening with the last of my Sportlots purchases from late last year. Yep, it only took me until ::checks:: mid-March to cover my 2022 purchases!

Anyway, as we just did this past weekend it's time to spring forward and look at some cards starring players that are younger than those in part 2. Tonight's subjects are Tigers and Tigers-related PCs from the 90s and 2000s (including a small number of 2010s):

Cecil is one of the players in this post that got a very nice bump to his collection with some 19 additions, giving me a pretty nice total of 225. Since I'm not supercollecting him (as in, I'll take what I can get but I'm not actively chasing everything) I put my focus on affordable but cool looking base and inserts. There's plenty of cool to go around here with Collect-a-Books, a hologram, Sportflics, fun inserts, and more. Fleer's EMotion product is a precursor to the bordered/framed cards you still see these days.

You'll see a bit more of Big Daddy down below but the '96 foursome up top is quite cool if you ask me. Yep, we're back in the days when I loooooved Topps' products!

Two Grandersons does not equal too many Grandersons, but they're always welcome in any quantity. I think the Unique Unis insert could have been less bland but I do like the recognition for Detroit's olde English "D." The shiny Lineage parallel was a fun add too, even if it's from his time with the Evil Empire.

BInge is a Tiger I've come to appreciate a bit more lately, but I think what spurred me to collect him a bit more recently was when he joined UM's baseball coaching staff for a short time. Two of his three additions are on display here from Diamond Kings and one of Topps' many parallels.

As for Dean-o I count a massive 30 new items for his collection giving me a TCDb-dominating 469 cards. I'm now more than halfway through the wantlist I put together on the site, where I've excluded a number of issues that don't really fit my collection. This group includes some fun 90s inserts such as a '97 Studio Silver Press Proof and Ultra Gold Medallion plus a '98 Finest No-Protector parallel. The Flair Showcase card is certainly a highlight in terms of base design quality.

There's even more 90s insert-age to see here, like four different versions of his Topps Stars card, numbered between 2299 and 9799 copies. The die-cut Paramount Team Checklist is also a beaut, and who wouldn't love to see Pacific back in the game in this time of bland, thoughtless designs?

There's a few more Palmer cards below but this scan gets us through the rest of his vertically oriented stuff. The die-cut Black Diamond Reciprocal parallel and Topps Gold insert were of particular interest to me, but it was also nice to track down a cheap copy of his '01 Topps Limited base as well.

Underappreciated spark-plug Tony Phillips gets a bit more love in a scan below but right here you see him with the Angels on his '98 Score Showcase parallel, an insert that brings me back to a fun era of chasing such cards.

This purchase also boosted my Mickey Tettleton collection a bit. I'm over half the number of Froot Loops' cards documented on TCDb and maintain a huge lead when it comes to him as well. This time it was all parallels of the slugging catcher, with a pair from Stadium Club, a Collector's Choice Silver Signature, and the '97 version of Score's Showcase, another personal favorite.

Then we have the remaining six Fielder cards, all of which are landscape style. The Leaf Power Brokers and Donruss Bomb Squad inserts, the latter pairing him up with NL counterpart Andres Galarraga, highlight his ability to mash dingers. Denny's provides his second hologram card of the post. '95 Pinnacle's Museum Collection is a top 10 all-time parallel for me. I nabbed one more Sportflix issue from '95 because I've always enjoyed that product. And why not a third Score parallel as well?

We can just about (but not quite) close things out with this scan. Inge gets one more addition in the form of an Emerald parallel, appropriately from his brief tenure in Oakland in 2012. I only scored one AJax this time but I made it count in the looks department since it's a Topps Chrome Refractor. Palmer gets a couple more interesting UD items and a '95 Pinnacle Museum Collection card of his own. I have 21 cards from that parallel and another four on my list! And Tony Phillips gets three more added to his total (257, again, a TCDb lead) thanks to Stadium Club parallels.

We're not quite done though because there's still this oversized item:

Palmer joins Barry Larkin as having one of these cards in my collection from 1994 Upper Deck All-Star Jumbos. While a chunk of the cards focused on one player, this one pairs up Dean-o with ex-Giant and new teammate for 1994 Will Clark. Palmer's fellow corner IF put up five straight All-Star seasons between 1988-92 in San Fran, and he'd make his final Midsummer Classic team in '94. Dean, for his part, put up 19 homers during that shortened campaign but wouldn't reach the All-Star game until 1998 with the Royals.

Hooray, I've finally covered all of these Sportlots additions! Next time I expect you'll be feasting your eyes on a very generous trade package from one of the coolest bloggers around, and then I'll get to my backlog of other stuff (eBay, a show, and TCDb trades, at least). Happy almost baseball season, y'all!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 4: a Tettle-ton of Froot Loops

Previously: Quick summary and set wants; Big and small we have them all!; Better off Ted

While I received my highly anticipated recent eBay purchase this afternoon I'd already scanned the cards for this post, so I'll be going back to the Sportlots well before showing those off.

Looking over at my desk where my "in-process" cards sit, I see eight stacks of Sportlots pickups that need to be posted, currently split evenly between single players and groups. The post you're reading right now focuses on one specific PC: Mickey Tettleton.

Thanks to this latest Sportlots haul I scored 56 55 new cards of the player they called "Froot Loops". There should have been 56 but I appear to have misplaced one. Oh well, it happens.

As usual I ended up with a nice bunch for his collection, spanning pretty much his entire career and encompassing lots of brands, inserts, etc. It's definitely a cool group of items with an added bonus of lots of great catcher cards, which are always nice to add to a collection like mine.

Here's a quick look at what I added to his PC:

1985-1989: we start with a pair of "XRCs" out of '85 Fleer Update and Topps Traded, his first two mainstream cards after a trio of Minor League issues. Then we have two of what are considered his "true" RCs: '86 Donruss and Fleer. I own the Topps first-year by way of a complete set. The rest here are shiny parallel versions of junk wax products: '87 Fleer Glossy, '88 Fleer Glossy and Topps Traded Tiffany, and '89 Fleer Glossy and Topps Tiffany. For those of you who are curious, '88 Topps Tiffany is the card that seems to have walked away. These leave me with a relatively reasonable '80s wantlist of mainstream Tettleton items, mostly other Tiffany/Glossy cards.

This is the most catcher-heavy scan at six cards plus it includes the second highest percentage of Tigers issues. The years 1991-93 are covered here, and the first of those three is represented by a couple items that are more oddball than anything: 1991 Classic and Collegiate Collection Oklahoma State. Tettleton was born in Oklahoma and named after another Mickey from that state, Mr. Mantle (who was named after HOF Tigers catcher Cochrane. Full circle, man!) He wasn't exactly a star for OK State but Oakland picked him in the fifth round in '81 (one pick after hobby favorite Bip Roberts, who didn't sign with the Pirates that year) and he produced a very respectable career.

1991 was the first of four seasons he played in Detroit after the O's flipped him to the Tigers for the somewhat forgettable Jeff Robinson. That year's stats appear on his 1992 cards like the Bowman and Fleer All-Stars insert you see above. The rest of the items you see here are from 1993: Pacific Spanish, Stadium Club Members Only, and a trio of Topps versions: Gold plus both the Marlins and Rockies inaugural factory sets. Like I said, lots of great catching action!

So, uh, did the number of brands increase again in 1994? How come nobody told me?! This whole scan is just enough to contain the new items I acquired from that year. Premium products like Flair, Leaf Limited, and SP combine with Bowman, Score (Gold Rush parallel), Stadium Club (Golden Rainbow and Members Only versions), Ultra, and Upper Deck's Fun Pack to give you a nice sampler for what could be had back then. Here I'd award Flair the best looking card, but photo-wise I'm a bigger fan of the orange Detroit chest protector on the Bowman and Score pieces.

That creative explosion (which admittedly led to a biiiiit too many products) continued into 1995, as you can tell here by the fact that one scan wasn't enough to corral everything new to his collection from that year. A pair of Collector's Choice issues, Donruss' CCG, Fleer, and Pacific, aren't much to write home about design-wise, though the latter includes a nice play at the plate image that would be light years better if the card was done horizontally. A quick search has me thinking he's attempting to tag former Tigers first-rounder and current Oakland manager Bob Melvin at the dish.

Anyway, for me the other four cards here are highlights to some degree. 1994 was Mickey's final year in Detroit before heading to the Rangers as a free agent, so he began to appear with the latter team the following season. A pair of Finest cards cover both franchises nicely, and that year's Leaf, which is still one of the brand's better designs in my opinion, has a great shot of him at the plate with Texas. Then we get to my all time favorite Pinnacle flagship product and the final card I needed for the "rainbow"--base, Museum Collection, and the very coveted Artist's Proof parallel you see above. I was happy to splurge on a good few of those APs in this purchase for around a buck each because they're often hard to track down for cheaper than that. You'll definitely be seeing more of them in this series!

Before we can move on to another year we need to finish off '95, and the top row here does just that with parallels from Score (Hall of Gold) and SP (Silver, or "Superbafoil" to some), plus a very cool frozen-in-time shot of a ball about to get socked!

The six-pack of 1996s to kick off that group here is right up my alley. Fleer's E-Motion XL was a very interesting experiment that did a great job of evolving over its existence instead of sticking to one thing. That year's Finest is one of the better ones in my opinion, and I'll be happy when I can land the Refractor to go with it. The Fleer item looks like a Tiffany parallel but is actually from a Rangers team set. A Metal Universe Platinum parallel unintentionally looks pretty similar to the Pacific Prisms base next to it. And Score's down-to-earth design looks extremely plain next to the rest here, but I'm still a fan.

This scan finishes up the vertical stuff, starting with two more '96s: Stadium Club and Ultra. Hey Tim, if you're reading this, were you aware of this "guy holding a cup in the dugout" card?

1997 was the last year Tettleton appeared on cards produced while he was still playing; Collector's Choice and Upper Deck included him in '98 but he was done by then. The '97 contingent offers another good mix, such as three very different brands down the middle in Metal Universe, Pacific, and Stadium Club. It also is responsible for three of my favorite cards in the package. #1 is a '97 Donruss Silver Press Proof. That was a fun affordable product I busted a good amount of back then, and those cards "limited" to 2000 copies look sweet. The other two are excellent examples of Topps designs I still admire from that era: Chrome and Gallery. They're both works of art in their own ways, and I need to add to them an eye-popping parallel at some point--Refractor and Players Private Issue.

We're not quite done until we include these two horizontal cards that didn't fit nicely into the groups above. I mentioned being done with one small '95 rainbow above, and here's another: the Gold and Silver Signatures I needed from 1995 Collector's Choice. As a matter of fact, if you include the Collector's Choice SE product, the only one I'm lacking is that version's Gold Signature.

Other than possibly misplacing the previously mentioned '88 Topps Tiffany, I'm very pleased with the progress I made on Mick's collection here. I crossed the 200-card mark and vaulted into first place on TCDB with a new total of 239 out of 441 he has listed. My wantlist there currently includes 146 items, but a good number of those are minors and oddball items I wouldn't miss nearly as much as the mainstream stuff, which I estimate at closer to 100.

I hope you all enjoyed another fun romp through the mid-80s and -90s, and as usual I'm curious to see what everyone's favorites and dislikes were, so please leave a comment if you're so inclined.

I expect to be back next with the much-hyped eBay purchase unless I happen to go to a show this weekend and get the urge to post those. Either way I should be here with another post soon!

2021 Sportlots purchases part 2: big and small we have them all!

Previously: Quick summary and set wants

Today's post is filled with all kinds of crazy oddball stuff: minis, oversized cards, discs, coins, and even a sticker dump from Topps and Panini that has nothing to do with Henry Owens. After initially opting against picking up many of these items I decided I'd enjoy filling in some of the odder parts of my player collection checklists with the zany offerings you see below. And better yet, I realized it would be a blast posting them all at once instead of going player by player, so you can get a look at great examples of unorthodox collectables from the past 40 years--especially the earlier half of that run.

I'm curious to see how many of you collected some of this stuff in your younger days, and to see what everyone's favorite type of item in this post is, and why.

And now, on to the gallery of weirdness!

Stickers (and stamps):

Stickers were and are a great way to get kids into collecting. My brother and I enjoyed working on filling in our Panini albums for a good chunk of their run, but we never really collected the Topps versions, maybe because they weren't as available as Panini's. Either way, you'll find both brands here (and O-Pee-Chee), and a couple stamps as well. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but regardless of whether or not I have a player's sticker stuck in a Panini album, I've been buying them intact for player-collecting purposes.

Jim Abbott: 1990 Topps (with Vince Coleman, and Darryl Strawberry on the back); 1991 Panini, 1994 Panini

That '91 Panini design was definitely an outlier for the product!

Hal Morris: 1992, 1993, 1994, and 1996 Panini

I definitely get the '94 and '96 Panini designs confused from time to time. '94's has the player's name in a pennant and '96's is a bit smaller.

Dean Palmer: 1992, 1993, and 1995 Panini

I definitely remember the first two versions here but '95 doesn't stand out to me (though '96 does) so I don't recall if I actually worked on the album in 1995.

Tony Phillips: 1985 O-Pee Chee and Topps (with Dave LaPoint); 1988 Panini; 1988 O-Pee-Chee and Topps (with Kevin McReynolds; Ryne Sandberg on the OPC back, Jeffrey Leonard on the Topps back); 1991 Panini French

Multiplayer stickers were a great idea, especially when OPC and Topps included a player on the back that made these even more collectable. The '88 Panini design is definitely one of the best in my opinion.

Chris Sabo: 1989 O-Pee Chee (with Ozzie Smith on the back); 1992 Panini x2; 1993 Panini

If you were a kid ripping Panini sticker packs back then maybe you'll remember the excitement of pulling one of those super shiny versions used to highlight team and league logos and the All-Stars. Years before X-Fractors were a thing, these looked totally badass!

Lary Sorensen: 1984 O-Pee-Chee (with Larry Gura)

Geoff Zahn: 1983 and 1985 O-Pee-Chee

I scanned these together because why not? You'll see a number more from the early and mid-80s in the next couple scans. I think it's pretty cool how OPC had you peel the '85 version out of the rest of the image, which would have made them more fun to add to whatever scene you were imagining.

Ted Simmons: 1982 Fleer Stamps; 1982 Topps; 1983 Fleer Stamps; 1983 O-Pee Chee and Topps; 1984 O-Pee-Chee; 1984 Topps x2; 1985 Topps (with Mike Fitzgerald); 1986 O-Pee Chee (with Ken Oberkfell); 1986 Topps (Simmons half only)

Lots of fun examples here! I've got just a few stamps (I believe all are from Fleer) so it's cool to add the odd one here and there. The '86 Topps here is one of six or so where one of the sellers (or whomever they got the stickers from) cut some two-player stickers in half. That wasn't clear in the way they were listed on Sportlots but it's not a big deal to me. I may try to replace them at some point but more likely I'll just decide I don't care. It's a bit more annoying when there's another player on the back, but all I'm really interested in is the player I collect! Anyway, like the shiny Panini sticker above I also chased after other "premium" versions like the foil you see here from 1984.

Mickey Tettleton: 1989 O-Pee-Chee (Tettleton half only, Joe Carter on the back); 1989 Panini; 1989 Topps (with Dave Smith, Harold Reynolds on the back); 1990 Topps (with Andre Dawson on the back); 1990 Topps Superstar Backs (with Kirk Gibson(!) and Teddy Higuera on the front); 1991 Panini French; 1993 Panini

We have another half sticker here, but the bigger story is that Tettleton's 1990 Superstar Back filled another need for me in the form of a Kirk Gibson sticker!

(snagged from TCDB because I was too lazy to scan mine)

No need to grab an extra copy of either since I was able to kill two birds with one stone here.

Lou Whitaker: 1983 O-Pee-Chee; 1985 Topps x2 (Whitaker half only on second sticker); 1986 O-Pee-Chee and Topps (Whitaker half only on both); 1987 O-Pee-Chee; 1987 Topps x2 (Whitaker half only on second sticker); 1988 O-Pee-Chee (Whitaker half only, Paul Molitor on the back); 1989 O-Pee-Chee (with Doc Gooden on the back); 1990 Topps Superstar Backs (with Bob Walk and Tom Candiotti on the front); 1991, 1992, 1994, and 1995 Panini

Well damn, that's a good way to beef up my collection of Sweet Lou stuff when most of what I'm left chasing is relatively rare! It was nice gaining three more foils among this huge variety, plus I didn't miss out on anyone I cared about on the five that were cut up.

Coins (and a pin):

Topps tried the coin thing back in 1964 and '71 and then went back to the well from 1987-90. Just like stamps the format makes them very collectable so they were a natural fit when it came to baseball collecting. It seems like pins were less common but they're so oddball that they're pretty much off my radar except for the odd examples in my collection.

Sweet Lou represents my fourth 1984 Fun Foods pin (Lance Parrish, Kirk Gibson, Alan Trammell), and they're kind of fun to collect when you find them for cheap like I did here. Morris' coins were made by Topps in 1987 and '88, with the latter being my only example from that year's version. Lastly, Larkin, Tram, and Tettleton are all from the 1990 set, though I'm not sure why Barry's has more of a silver look to it while the others are gold.

And here's the backs. I like the way the pin uses a comic book-like font.

Minis, micros, and more!:

If you only like your cards to be 2.5x3.5, look away now! Most of this stuff has dimensions smaller than that, making them a pain to store but interesting to look at. Also, it's easier to fit lots more of them on a scanner.

Up top we have Chris Sabo on an '89 Topps UK Mini, a reasonably well known set. Humpty Dumpty appears to be (or have been) a Canadian snack food brand, and in 1993 they offered diminutive cards like the Abbott you see above. It came shrink-wrapped but I was happy to open it up now that it was safe from any greasy (a.k.a. delicious) food. Freehan appears in a playing card-type set made in 1969 by Globe Imports, and the black and white "card" is printed on fairly thin paper stock, making me think I could pretty easily print up a whole set of those if I wanted! Hal Morris finishes up the top row with a 1992 Donruss Cracker Jack mini that could be found in boxes of that snack. Those were made a year after the snack maker teamed up with Topps to do the same.

Then we go even smaller with a trio of '93 Topps Micros for three players whose collections I focused on bigtime in this purchase. They're followed by more traditional minis from the last decade out of Panini's Golden Age and Topps' A&G and GQ. I'm happy to note that this isn't the last you'll see of Horton and Kell in this series.

I've had some fun loading up on those cool Kellogg's cards from the 70s and 80s that so many people are into, and for good reason! Here you see a Simmons from 1980 along with Morris versions from 1982 and '83. What a consistently excellent food issue!

I probably could have included Ted Simmons' 1983 Fleer Star Sticker with the group above but as it was still joined to the same piece as the Reds logo, which made it larger, I thought it was a good fit here. A 1990 King B disk of Chris Sabo and '94 Oscar Mayer Round-Up of Jim Abbott seemed to make sense in this group as well. Maybe I'll take the plunge and "pull" on the Abbott disc's tab if I get another one I don't mind opening up and potentially damaging.

Most of the rest of the group here is shorter and wider than your typical trading card. The first three are from a Crown/Coke Orioles team set that reminds me a bit of the Target Dodgers set from the same era. This one is made up of 501 perforated cards sorted alphabetically, and I scored my first three in Tigers great Kell, former Wolverine Maddox, and PC guy Tettleton. Below them are Tettleton and Phillips from the slightly smaller (physically, but not set size) 1988 Starting Lineup Talking Baseball electronic game (which you can read a lot more about here). And breaking up the combo here is 1981 Topps Scratchoffs of Ted Simmons that will remain unscratched in my collection.

Oversized oddballs:

These can present a storage challenge of their own but sometimes bigger really is better when it means more room for creativity!

We'll end things today with the biggest stuff because that's what I scanned last. I'm pretty sure Donruss' Action All-Stars jumbos like Simmons' from 1984 above are pretty well known at this point. Maybe a bit less known are the All-Star-related Pop-Ups, with examples of Morris (1986) and Whitaker (1987) seen in this scan. I didn't realize that two Midsummer Classics in a row were held in dome: Minnesota in '85 and the Astrodome the following year. The stadiums can be seen in each card's background plus the home team is mentioned on the back.

Today's largest item by far is a 1990 Topps Heads Up of Jim Abbott. These originally came with suction cups so you could stick them up on your wall or elsewhere, but I don't think the disembodied head thing proved too popular.

And we'll close out tonight's post with a more mainstream oversized item: Dean Palmer's entry from Fleer's 1994 Extra Bases set. I've snagged a number of these now and have resorted to keeping them, along with lots of my other larger card items, in a graded card box, where they fit quite nicely without having to worry that I'll accidentally bend and crease them in a standard monster box. That's where everything else in this scan will probably reside as well.

That was definitely a fun bunch of weird stuff to look through and post about. While I'm working on getting everything put away safely I hope at least a few of you reading this will let me know which of this stuff you collected and/or what you liked/hated.

And I'll be back soon-ish with another stack of Sportlots stuff from this order once I figure out what I feel like scanning and writing about!