2023 trade package #4: Dawg Day Cards

In the days since I last posted I've received even more amazing stuff from some very cool people, so it's about time I cover something else on my card desk.

This evening's envelope arrived earlier this month from Angus who I mostly think of as the writer of Dawg Day Cards, though he can also be found on TCDb (user ID armac). The Canadian fan of the Browns has been around for quite a while but we've only ever really interacted once, not quite four years ago when he and Night Owl met up at a show and they teamed up to send me some fun cards.

Angus may have had my address handy from that effort or he might have gotten it from someone I've dealt with on TCDb, but either way, he was very generous with the envelope he sent across the border:

In addition to a very nice note we'll start out with the baseball stuff. I love trading with Canadian folks because they have much easier access to stuff we don't down here, such as older Leaf cards (including the '85 Tram above) and the Canuck version of Panini's stickers. The trio of '90 stickers are as American as they team and players depicted, but the three '92s beneath them come straight from America's friendly northern neighbor. And boy do those crazy pixelated rainbow foil versions take me straight back to being a kid and ripping packs of these while trying to fill up my albums. Fielder was obviously an excellent choice for such a sticker that year.

On the football side, I suppose it would make a ton of sense that Angus would have some dupes of the guys who have been part of the Michigan-to-Cleveland pipeline. The four Braylon items are great, especially the trio from '05 Topps Heritage, including both variations of his RC, plus a foil (more like Chrome) parallel. Hoard was drafted by the Browns and spent his first six-plus seasons with the franchise, including their sneaky move to Baltimore. Long is a Michigan uni card and that made it a natural throw-in.

Here's where things got really impressive: this six-pack of autographs! Wait, let me be more specific: six Michigan uni autographs! Hell yeah! Angus did an amazing job picking them out so let's look at them one by one.

QB-turned-WR-turned-QB-again Devin Gardner earned himself a ton of respect on the field after gutting out wins (and losses) while often injured during some of the program's low years. He turned that resilience into a very respectable analyst career after the NFL didn't work out. But before that he made his way onto some very cool cards like the 2015 Upper Deck Inscriptions auto you see above. Though the super reflective foil doesn't lend itself to good scans, the in-hand item looks great with his signature and an all caps "GO WOLVERINES!" inscription atop a great college action shot. That's my 10th hit of DG and I'm happy to have hit that milestone, hopefully with more in my future.

Speaking of cards with tricky-to-scan reflections, next up is CB Marlin Jackson's 2005 SAGE Autographs Bronze auto. You can just barely see his very nice signature on the sticker, and this one is hand numbered 322/650. It's my 24th hit of the 2006 Super Bowl champ who picked off fellow Wolverine Tom Brady's pass to seal the Colts' win over the Pats in that season's AFC title game.

We'll proceed alphabetically with Mike McCray's 2018 Panini Elite Draft Picks auto. One of those products that's obviously geared toward collect collectors like me, it's a great one for finding hits of the less known guys like McCray, a LB that's made the transition from player to coach, joining former UM DC Don Brown at UMass. His autograph isn't much to look at but at least the card looks cool. I'll happily keep it with the other auto in his collection.

Guinea-born DE Kwity Paye is next, and he's the youngest player in this bunch, still playing for the Colts, who took him 21st overall in 2021. A force on the D-line (like a good number of guys the Wolverines have sent to the league recently), Paye put up some nice sack and TFL numbers in Ann Arbor. He certainly looks fearsome on the outstanding pair of autos Angus sent out of '21 Score, which I of course love thanks to the college action they capture here. The top card is the "base" version of the autograph while the one below it is the Gold Zone parallel. The pleasing pair jumps his collection up to three signed cards, and it was fun to receive them together in one envelope.

Heading back to the offensive side of the ball, we'll wrap up today's post with prolific #1 jersey-wearing WR David Terrell, whose three years in the Big House ended a year before I headed off to Ann Arbor myself. The 8th overall pick by Chicago in 2001, he was an NFL bust, but his college career meant the hype was off the charts when it came to cards. That's why you can see him on such items as the above 2001 Crown Royale Rookie Signatures auto, which is both signed on-card and numbered /250 (in that goofy but sort of endearing digital print way instead of foil stamping). He looks like he's about to run another route that finishes with him in the end zone, and the large signature goes nicely with the whole package. It's my 46th hit of Terrell, which along with the 56 I have of teammate and fellow '01 Bears draftee Anthony Thomas, gives me exactly 100 of a pair that will be forever linked in my mind.

Angus, once I again I want to thank you and say how much I appreciate the effort and generosity that went into sending this envelope over to me. And I'm happy to report that I'll be able to pay you back in kind relatively soon, though I'm thinking of waiting to hit up one more show in case I can sweeten the pot even more.

Everyone else, please stay tuned for some more excellent trades and PIFs, show pickups, eBay buys, and more, which I may actually get caught up on at some point!

2019 COMC purchases: non-PC football and hockey hits

A quite satisfying Michigan thumping of Rutgers (52-0) has me in the mood to post some cards from my most recent COMC shipment comprising purchases from earlier this year.  It looks like this will be a four-part series, and today's kickoff will cover hits I scored of guys who don't have their own PC albums and play(ed) football or hockey:

Two players dominate today's post, and that's cool since I often pair them up mentally the way I do with David Terrell and Anthony Thomas.  The first is WR Jehu Chesson (click his name to go to my TCDB gallery for him, plus the other players in today's post).  Considering his playing time in the NFL has been minimal it's been easy finding nice stuff of his at low prices, such as the four autographs you see above.  Jehu's got an interesting signature, with his name somewhat reasonable to make out, and he includes the "II" in his name, which is pretty cool.

In terms of what you see above, Leaf Metal Draft includes a Michigan uniform-ish picture (hey, what are you gonna do?) and Panini's Unparalleled is a super shiny design, plus it's #39/49.  The middle two are from Panini's Preferred (using the Crown Royale design) and Prizm.

Numbers-wise, Chesson's hit count nearly doubles from three to seven after these additions, and I'd surely be happy to land more when I can.

Chesson always brings to mind position pal Amara Darboh, and vice versa, so naturally I have a bunch of his cards to show off today as well.  As a matter of fact, this scan of four vertical designs is just the tip of the iceberg!

The relic in this group is a nice Mirror Orange jersey card from 2017 Certified and is numbered 122/399.  To its right is a jersey/auto/RC (#095/299) from 2017 Limited, and that interesting swatch has the slightest hint of green stitching, so it looks like it probably came from the jersey numbers on his chest.  Then there's autographs from Origins' Rookie Signatures and Playoff's Rookie Autographs (#107/199), also 2017 Panini products.  Like Chesson he has a pretty decent signature.

Yep, five more cards of the nomadic WR, all horizontal this time.  Relics from Panini Contenders Rookie Ticket Swatches, Origins Rookie Jumbo Jerseys (#026/199), and Vertex Startup Jerseys (#89/99) comprise a nice jersey trio, with the latter two being my favorites, especially the Vertex card and its enormous swatch.

Those are joined by the base (#04/99) and Orange (#15/25) versions of Amara's 2017 Panini XR Luminous Endorsements autos.  The super cool design here is kind of a thinner shadowbox idea, with the image framed by the border underneath a clear acetate cover that the player signs.  That makes it great to look at, plus it gives players a very large surface to cover with their signatures.  Too cool!

Darboh has been one of my more productive recent collections and this big haul jumps him all the way up to 29 hits (and 39 cards total), a number I'll look to increase soon.

This last football scan includes three miscellaneous players.  Funchess is well known around these parts, and here the former TE/WR stars on a 2015 Panini Contenders Rookie Ticket Swatches jersey.  As usual I find the Contenders design simple and appealing.  That's hit #11 and card #54 of the injured Colt.

Next is one of two new players debuting in the Michigan Football hits collection today.  Mike McCray was a two-year starter at LB in Ann Arbor who put up fairly similar numbers in 2016 and '17, though that's where his career ultimately ended as he retired last year.  That makes me grateful for a product like Contenders--in this case 2018 Draft Picks--that allows me to chase an autograph of a guy that wouldn't otherwise have one, even if that autograph is a bit on the "???" side.

Last up is QB Jake Rudock, the Iowa transfer that came to Ann Arbor in 2015 and led Jim Harbaugh's first team to a 10-3 record, including a thumping of Florida in the Citrus Bowl.  Harbaugh was able to elevate his play enough to get Rudock drafted by the Lions in the sixth round the following year, which I guess isn't exactly an ideal fate.  Fortunately he's escaped that vortex of suck, only to be encompassed by a worse one down in Miami!  Anyway, my first hit of his is this beautiful (if poorly scanned) 2016 Panini Black Gold Golden Prospects Signatures White Gold auto (#92/99).  Like the Darbohs above this one has a bit of a shadowbox effect, though the image of the player you see is on the top layer, and the autograph was on a sticker placed on the other acetate piece.

I'm happy to welcome McCray and Rudock as the 220th and 221st players in the football collection, and even happier that they contributed to today's big milestone:  1400 football hits and counting!  1402 to be exact, with more to be posted soon.  Right now I doubt I'll hit 1500 before the end of the year, but you never know.

With hockey season (both college and pro) starting up soon, today seemed as good of a day as any to post my lone pickup in that sport:

I love it when I can get 1/1s for cheap prices, and this plate of Steve Shields from 2017-18 Leaf Masked Men certainly qualifies:  I grabbed it for just $4.85 way back in April.  As you can see, it's the cyan plate from the goalie-centric product's Jumbo Goalie Patch insert, and I'd sure love to add one of those actual cards to my Shields collection as well!  For now this plate goes with the seven autographs I have of the former Michigan netminder, and it becomes 1/1 #122.  I don't have any more such cards from COMC to show off, but an upcoming eBay post may just blow your mind.

Here's hoping I'm in the mood for posting next weekend after another one, this time against Iowa.  In the meantime stay tuned for a few more COMC posts, plus another Sportlots run.