6/20/26 card show report: meetup mania!

It took me until early August to post this but tonight I'm finally giving you a recap of the much-hyped June show and meetup!

It was another amazing one, as you can tell from this picture of me, John, Jeff, and Jason, plus Jason's wife Sam. I headed west to Kalamazoo, picked up John, and got us over to the Wings Event Center, a place that's hosted this show a number of times. This one was actually down in one of the ice rinks instead of the expo space, which was weird but ultimately fine.

When we got there we were able to meet up with everyone else, then we headed to the tables run by the Hollister family, some very nice folks Jeff knows well from previous shows when he and his cousin were also dealers. They were nice enough to take the above picture, and I spent plenty of time at their tables piling up some great cards.

This was almost like a mini National for me since I'm used to spending most of my time and money at one person's table thanks to my monthly show. There was a lot more variety to check out here, and Jason pointed me to a number of sellers who had stuff I could most definitely use. I think I bought stuff from around four or five dealers there, and I could have probably spent more time and money if I had any of either left!

Here's what my box looked like when I got home to give you an idea of just how much I picked up. That's one of those graded card boxes, and it works perfectly for me at my monthly show, but in this case it wasn't nearly enough to transport my haul! I spent $140 that Saturday in late June, making up for the small amount I'd thrown down a couple weeks prior, and I'm thrilled at some of the big items I found for myself and others. Most of the latter have already been sent out in trade packages, but tonight you get to see my goodies:

Not a ton of baseball stuff, but some good ones for sure. I think Jason might have picked up that Clark for me. He's been a bit of a spark for the Tigers post-trade deadline, which is very cool. That second Gwynn is numbered out of 2001, the Ripkens look great, and Pudge #1 is actually a sample version of a favorite 90s insert (they rule!) of mine, Great X-Pectations.

That Pepsi Palmer is a bit beat up but is something I'd never seen before--a 2000 collab with Upper Deck comprising 15 Tigers. And lastly for baseball, I think the Bondo bat is another card Jason scored for me. It's always funny getting bat relics of pitchers in the DH era, though at least we got to see some of these guys at the plate before both leagues succumbed to the designated hitter. Baseball-Reference says that Jeremy had 31 plate appearances over 15 games, and he was lucky enough to tally one hit in that time. He singled to lead off the top of the 5th against Jon Lieber and the Phillies on June 15, 2007, and a couple singles got him to third before a Gary Sheffield sac fly brought him home for his only career run scored.

The baseball stuff was nice, but football clearly won the day here in terms of my keepers. More specifically, I came home with tons of inserts, color, and RCs of Michigan gridiron stars--enough to need six scans to capture everything! I won't bore you with details, so feel free to just admire these if you feel like it.

I'm enjoying continuing to build out my Corum PC, and I've been surprised by how reasonably affordable Graham's cards are, but I guess that's what happens when you play defense.

When I said lots of color, I meant it! A good chunk of these came from the Hollisters' 3/$1 boxes. The cards were originally a buck each and for me they would have been overpriced at that level, but they worked fine when they were 67% off.

That Prestige Gold of Kwity Paye, numbered /99, was one of my favorite pickups of the show. Gold is a nice parallel color when you're wearing the maize & blue.

By luck this scan contains most of the numbered football cards I scored. Peterson's 2001 Chrome Refractor is limited to 999, Denard's Topps Platinum goes to 99, and Terrell's Pacific chase card is also SN999. I guess these three were dressed to the nines!

The last football scan includes a few more inserts before getting to the hits, including a '97 Pinnacle Inscriptions V2 card I already owned, allowing me to peel the protective coating off of this one.

To those I added a third auto of OT Trezelle Jenkins (third hit), a jersey relic of the A-Train (#55 overall), and football relic of Thomas's positional counterpart Tyrone Wheatley (#8).

My haul didn't quite end there, though, as I picked up this Pacific jersey relic of Wings legend Nick Lidstrom from the same seller that had the above relics (and some other nice cards I scored for trade packages). I think this one was something like $3-$4 so I was happy to add it to my small collection of Wings hits.

As you can tell I had a blast, not only because of my pickups, but especially because of the great time I had seeing Jeff, John, and Jason & Sam. It's a treat to hang out with all of them and I'm glad I've been able to do so a few times now! I don't know if we'll be able to do it again this year, or at least maybe not all of us, but if it can even become a yearly tradition I'd be over the moon. A big thank you again to everyone that made the trip, you're the best!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be back with next but I've still got plenty to cover, if not the attention span and energy to do so. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of my pickups, your recent show experiences, or anything else that makes you want to comment.

TCDB trade: CraigM

With no other cards in-hand to cover at the moment I'm going to start recapping all of the TCDB deals I've made over the past few months since the last time I got caught up on them.

Today's will likely not be too wordy due to the large number of cards and images, so I'll mostly just let you enjoy some cardboard.

I proposed this transaction to member CraigM back at the end of July and he accepted it the next day without any counters, which was pretty cool. It probably helped that I offered to send him 200+ cards in return for closer to 100. It mainly involved a lot of lower end/common stuff going both ways which I was totally happy with as I've got plenty of gaps in my collection to fill and I'm glad to continue clearing out my set-fillers. The bulk of what I sent him came from '89 Bowman, '95 Stadium Club, and 2006 Topps, and in return I got the following, broken down over 14 images:

I said "mainly" low-end stuff because, I mean, come on--that '65 of the Gator is awesome! I don't even own double digits of the '68 champ and former PH star. I did add 10 of Cecil "Big Daddy" Fielder, though.

His teammate from the opposite corner of the diamond was well represented in this one too, also getting a 10-spot added to his collection. I crossed the 200-card mark for Fielder and Fryman's not far behind, thanks to deals like this one.

This packaged scored me five cards produced before 1980, which I currently categorize as "vintage", and the pre-Tigers '78 Topps base of Herndon was one of them. Craig helped me fill in a good number of cards of Morris with the Jays. And you'll see lots more of Nokes in the next couple images.

I think I've explained before that I don't really put much effort into chasing Nokes' cards--he was only briefly a star and wasn't a Tiger for very long either--but he's been a reasonable throw-in when working on some of these deals, so why not? As of this post I have 80 of his cards, or almost a quarter of the 331 he has to his name on TCDB.

I didn't do this on purpose but I love that this scan ended up being 100% catchers. Before Nokes there was the Big Wheel, who played for a few teams after leaving Detroit. I'm getting closer to 150 cards of Lance, and that's pretty cool. While those two guys were playing, Pudge was just getting his career started, and of course he eventually made his way to Detroit as well. I love the design of Score's 1993 Dream Team subset (not insert, though the insert that became was great as well!).

I wish Rogers had been healthy this year so Detroit fans didn't have to suffer through subpar play from Tucker Barhnart. Tanana is another nomad who suited up for a few different teams (six total), equaling his run with the Angels by spending eight seasons in Detroit. I now own 85 cards of the Michigan native who won 240 games over 21 seasons.

Here's the horizontal versions of the Tigers players in the package, with Petry's card the only one starring a player not seen above. 1981 was the second of six straight seasons Peaches would win 10+ games as he'd go 87-59 with 43 complete games from 1980-85.

Besides the usual PC guys, something that stood out to me on Craig's tradelist was a nice bunch of 1991-93 Conlon cards. It's great that legends like Cobb and Greenberg figure in, but so do many guys who make few other appearances, if any. At some point maybe I'll figure out how many I'm missing of the teams from the first half of the 20th century in those sets.

And another nine, with Jennings probably being the most notable, though I believe at least Veach and Walker have some name recognition too.

I was happy to tack on some earlier Tigers from '94 Topps Archives and UD All-Time Heroes as well. Chalk up another example for just how diverse this trade was!

The baseball items conclude with six non-Tigers PC cards. Former Michigan Baseball guy Kostro ties Gates Brown above for the oldest card in the bunch out of the '65 Topps set. That's just my third of his issues and the oldest I've found from his limited run. I believe the '95 Leaf of Bichette sewed up the Series I set for me, entirely built from the Facebook collection I bought last year and TCDB trades. And the '97 Score Hobby Reserve of Spiezio gets me one step closer to re-completing that set with cards that have the correct numbering (HR###), which is down to just two.

The first of two football scans offers this nice mix of cards from multiple decades. Hicks is the Wolverine repped on the Niners card, Higdon's a RC and McRae hails from Topps' 1970 football set.

And the second includes a pair of Fleer's oversized Gameday cards, of which I now own a solid number!

And lastly I came away with a pair of legendary Wings D-man Nick Lidstrom, including a RC, plus former UM icers Jeff Norton and Aaron Ward, a WolverWing I love to collect.

With this many cards to show off I think you'll all understand why I gave this deal its own post. But the quantity was part of the fun here and I couldn't have been happier with how things went overall. Many thanks to Craig for being a great member and making this deal with me--I highly recommend working with him myself.

Depending on what shows up in the mail you can likely expect another TCDB recap soon, probably covering multiple smaller trades as I once again work through my folder of scans.

TCDB trade roundup: Hebron Reds Fan, LakeShow, Awesomo1389, and bravefan1

This evening I have the results of four smaller TCDB deals from earlier this year. There's lots of cards to look at so let's get right into it!

First up was a PWE deal with Hebron Reds Fan. No surprise here--he wanted a few of my Reds, mostly some dupes that came from the big collection I bought on Facebook. In return I got these:

As you can tell I took advantage of trading on the site to fill in some 1984 Tigers PCs, especially their earlier 80s issues, some of which show them as members of other teams. The two Sportflics cards in the first scan star Tony Gwynn (on a best NL RF trio card with Dave Parker and Kevin Bass) and Willie Hernandez. Morris and Lemon feature on items of vastly different sizes. The Reds at the bottom of the second scan weren't in the greatest shape but HRF made that clear in our communication and I didn't give up much anyway so I was pretty happy with this deal.

Next was another PWE deal, this time with member LakeShow. He requested just four of my cards, two of which were basketball and of zero interest to me. His offer of nine items was good enough that I didn't even need to send a counter:

Up top we have a pair of 1985 Topps Stickers including a foil of leading PC guy Cal Ripken Jr. plus an 80s Donruss offering and two 90s pieces of the Iron Man. If I don't have 'em I need 'em to bulk up his collection so I'll take whatever! I do like the National Packtime card from '95 quite a bit.

The other group helped me knock a couple '96 Ultra Gold Medallions (the only year they were all gold foil like that) off my wantlists for PC guys Hal Morris and Tony Phillips. The envelope also included the first of a good few #CroneZone cards you'll see this evening, this one from 2021 Topps Heritage, and the first of two UD Comic Ball cards, this one a new addition to my Jim Abbott PC.

Overall once again I was happy with the deal and everything involved when it came to this member, no surprise since he has almost 350 positive feedback comments to his name.

Awesomeo1389, a.k.a. Aaron from Grand Blanc, Michigan, is next. It turned out that I could help feed his Jim Abbott and John Smoltz PCs with a good number of dupes I had on hand, and it was nice being in a position to aid a fellow player collector like that. I sent him some 29 cards of the two star pitchers from the state we call home, and in return I got some baseball and hockey (plus one each of basketball and football):

When I said I loaded up on some '84 Tigers I wasn't lyin'! Bergman and Lemon appear on pre-Tigers cards while Parrish is seen with one of his post-Detroit teams, the Angels, but Brookens and Herndon rep the team that won it all in '84 on Fleer cards from the year before they went wire-to-wire.

Everson and Finken look somewhat out of place here on their 1991 Line Drive issues but they're actually new additions to my Michigan Baseball PCs. Everson was a pitcher from my hometown of Livonia and signed with the Tigers as a UDFA but never made it above AAA. Finken, an IF drafted by the Dodgers in '88, also never made the bigs after five seasons in the minors, but like Everson, was able to appear on a handful of minor league issues. It's great to welcome two new members to the collection!

There's not much comparing two Gwynn cards made literally 30 years apart! The "Printer Proof" stamp on Ripken's Topps Gallery insert still means something to a 90s kid like me. On a related note I thought the photo on Fryman's '94 UD subset card looked awesome. And Griffey the elder and younger share a goofy UD Comic Ball card with Yosemite Sam.

I tend to check for just about everything I collect when I'm trading with someone so I added these non-baseball items. Rose and Harbaugh represent Michigan from their sports while hockey saw me add four of legendary Wings D-man Nick Lidstrom to go with three former UM icers. The gold Tim Hortons card of Connor is particularly nice given the success he's had this year.

Given my positive experience here, Awesomo1389 is another trader I can recommend on the site!

Last up tonight is my first of two deals with Scott from Ohio who calls himself bravefan1 on the site. His feedback is over 1400 so he's both prolific and great to work with, plus you know exactly what you need to have on hand to make a deal with him. In return for some '96 Flair dupes and a few nice inserts from the decade I got the cards in the below scans, which offered a nice boost to two up and coming stars of the game:

My collection of rule 5 phenom Baddoo is paltry so I thought it would be fun to add him here. Chalk up two more Larkins to my collection of the Michigan/Reds SS thanks to this pair from 2021 Gallery. Tigers P Mize, who's temporarily on hiatus but likely not for too much longer, was one of the two big winners here, and I'm certainly glad to add cards of him cheaply via trade instead of overpaying for them. The Panini-branded cards were of special interest to me. Ripken's from the super ultra thick 2021 Chronicles base set and his card makes the stack look bigger than it is!

And here we go back to the #CronZone with an excellent seven new items! Honestly his checklist has gotten out of hand like any young star in the current era of collecting, but I can't complain too much when I can add this many cards in a trade without having to give up anything I'll miss. The Panini Black out of Chronicles that you see up top is very cool though I was especially pleased to land the 2021 Topps Gallery Blue parallel on the right as it's numbered to just 75. Hopefully I can keep building my collection of him through deals like this one!

I added fellow Michigan guys Tommy Henry and George Sisler to this scan because they worked well as a theme. Henry, the pride of Portage, Michigan, appears 2021 Bowman Platinum Ice Foil parallel, and Gorgeous George makes a cameo by way of 2021 Diamond Kings on a very classy base card.

Once again I can highly recommend trading with this member as a ton of other TCDB traders have done so to their satisfaction, and now I can add myself to that number.

I'll be back with more soon as I continue trying to clear my card desk of TCDB trades!

2019 trade package #2: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

I know what it's like to worry whether or not I sent a good enough trade package to Doug of Sports Cards From the Dollar Store considering the amazing stuff he always sends me, but I'm not sure why he'd ever have to fret about that.  Once again he's termed the latest envelope he sent my way as "quantity over quality" but in typical Doug fashion there was both.  To the great benefit of my favorite collections a good amount of the quality tilted towards what I'm showing off on TMM this evening, but there's also plenty of great stuff you get to see right here:

Soon-to-be former Tiger, probably-not-for-a-while former Tiger, and recent former Tiger.  I'm curious to see if the Tigers get smart and put Castellanos at DH where his bat can do plenty of harm to opposing teams and his glove won't do the same to his own.  A full return to health could portend a return to form for Fulmer this year.  And JV is always welcome back to these here parts!

Here's a very good group of quality prospects as all but Gibby's son Cam can be found in the team's top 30 according to mlb.com.  As has been the case for a system that's struggled to produce quality hitters for a long time, the pitchers lead the way here with Alexander (24), Burrows (5), Hall (23), and Manning (2).  Burrows (86) and Manning (53) both also crack the site's top 100 prospects list.  Those two were Detroit's first-rounders in 2016 and '15, respectively.

As for the hitters, Lugo checks in at #15 for the organization and Paredes is the next best hitter at 13.  The former came over in the correctly maligned J.D. Martinez Deal while the latter was paired with fellow infielder Jeimer Candelario in return for Alex Avila and Justin Wilson at the deadline in 2017.  The Heritage Minors cards look especially nice here!

Doug also sent me a pile of Red Wings to rival or even outpace the Michigan Hockey cards he included this time.  I decided to start things off with the nine Hockeytown stars from 2018-19 O-Pee-Chee that I found in this envelope.  Glendening is a favorite since he's a Michigan guy, and I'll always remember Zetterberg fondly even though he's career is pretty much over at this point.

Cleary and Draper both played roles on Cup-winning teams as the former enjoyed the success of the 2008 champs while the latter was part of all four recent titles.  Hall of Famer Alex Delvecchio was a nice find here after his amazing 24-year career in Hockeytown that produced three Cups.

Plenty more winners to see here.  Fedorov scored exactly 400 goals for the Wings over his 14 years in Motown and was a blast to watch as one of the most talented of the Russian Five.  The recent HOFer was part of all of the Cup-winners except for the 2008 squad.  Holmstrom was an absolute pest in front of the net and joins Draper in the four-Cup club.  Mr. Hockey enjoyed both accomplishments:  the Hockey Hall and four Cups himself.  And so did another recent star:  my all-time favorite D-man, Nick Lidstrom.

I don't know that Osgood will ever be enshrined in Toronto but I sure am glad he spent 14 years with the Wings in his two stints and won three of those Cups.  So did franchise icon Steve Yzerman, who'll hopefully get a chance to right the sinking ship in Detroit as GM at some point.  Zetterberg "only" won with the '08 team but had a great 15-year run here.  And for some reason I remember being a big fan of Sheppard, though he was gone before the team turned things around in the late 90s.

As always Doug, thanks!  This huge bunch of Tigers and Wings and Wolverines was a great start to 2019 for another year of trading with my most prolific partner and I'm looking forward to hitting you back before that notable birthday of yours.

2018 trade package #11: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

Now that I'm back and rested from a much-needed vacation to visit friends I have one from a pair of trade envelopes to show off to you before I get back to the eBay goodness.  Today's is a two-parter, naturally, as it's from Canadian good guy (as if that wasn't redundant) Doug of Spourts Cards Froum the Doullar Stoure.  As is tradition he sent me a great pre-Expo package, which I'm guessing will soon be followed up by a post-Expo package, though I wouldn't be surprised if I received a "while I'm at the Expo!" package from him as well.  Dude's awesome, is what I'm saying.

So make sure to check out the great goods on TMM this evening after you peruse these nice additions:

We'll start with this pair of Michigan baseballers, Jim Abbott and Chris Sabo.  These guys never got to play together in college--they missed each other by about three years due to their age difference--or in the pros, but I'm happy to have them side-by-side here!

Doug also sent a bunch of Wings stuff, a nice assortment that I have to imagine he accumulated through his trademark repacks.  This first scan includes a few fan favorites in Datsyuk, Franzen, Holmstrom, and Lidstrom.  Those Score cards that dominate the scan are mostly from the 12-13 set, and I think they look great.  I hope you do too because there's more where that came from!

Alongside a few other players the clear star of the show here is The Captain, Steve Yzerman.  I'm not sure what's going on with the photo on the Zenith card, especially the coloring, but it's an otherwise great shot of the Detroit legend.  Meanwhile a Parkhurst issue from 92-93 offers a cool landscape shot of "Stevie Y" in action.  That playing card starring the whole team is a great way to wrap up most of the base.

I said "most" because of this nice pile featuring a pair of notable Wings goalies: Jimmy Howard and Chris Osgood.  I've probably mentioned a million times that I got to see my Wolverines defeat Howard and his Maine teammates in the NCAA regionals years ago, and he's served as a solid if unspectacular netminder in Motown.  Osgood, of course, won three cups, two as a starter, in Hockeytown, and I especially like his selection here.

The first of the three hockey hits going into my Wings collection is this jersey relic of Wolverwing Luke Glendening from 2016-17 SP Game Used's Stadium Series Fabrics offering.  It highlights Detroit's victory over the Avalanche in a game played at Coors Field on February 27, 2016.  Five different wings scored in the 5-3 win, and Glendening (on just my second hit of him), pictured here, picked up an assist.  The slightly larger than average jersey swatch is a beautiful red straight out of the team's colors.

Wings hit #2 is this jersey relic of former grinder Tomas Holmstrom from 2010-11 Zenith Winter Warriors Materials.  The Swede was part of four Cup-winners in Detroit, and "warrior" certainly describes his style of play, a fearless force in front of the net who never gave a goalie a moment of peace and was often in the right place to bang home a rebound.  He left as a fan-favorite and I'm happy to have something of his for my collection.

Last up is my third card of Wolverwing wunderkind Dylan Larkin from 2015-16 Upper Deck Champ's, with all three coming courtesy of Doug.  This time I got a Rookie Jerseys relic to go with the autograph and insert he'd already sent.  Here's the pair of hits side-by-side:

At some point I'll track down the base RC to go with it and make it a proper trifecta.

Once again Doug, thanks a ton for your generosity!  Not everybody gives up hits of young stars like you do, or puts in the time to hit my favorite PCs.  I hope you had a great Expo and I look forward to hitting you back at some point, but for now I'll sit here and complain to myself about how this country's shipping rates are higher than yours for no reason!