2024 TCDb trade roundup part 1: the goods

It's about time I get an actual card post up this month so I'm able to put more stuff away.

My TCDb transactions stats tell me I completed 41 deals last year (not including PIFs), which is my second best so far (76 in 2022) and a couple better than '23. Tonight I'm highlighting a few of those for various reasons--favorite members, interesting cards, or whatever else. I'll have a part 2 up soon that covers "the rest" with probably very little commentary.

So without further ado, here's some cool cardboard I made deals for in '24:

BaltOrioles:

This is mostly here because of the Sparky relic--my second of old George--but the minors cards of some of my more obscure Michigan Baseball PCs and the oddballs are quite cool too!

cynicalbuddha:

I worked out a deal with Mark of Collector's Crack late in the year because we had a lot of matches including some items I could use for Christmas packages, plus he's always been a good dude. Since some of it indeed made it into holiday envelopes, this isn't nearly everything I got from him, to give you a good idea of how fun this deal was. The auto of the late Mallett is my fifth while I accidentally grabbed the rookie auto of DT Mike Martin because I apparently hadn't logged it on the site. Oh well, more trade bait! Thank you to Mark for an awesome deal.

firesnbeers (trade):

Brian's one of my closest friends on the site so the stuff I got from him would have been here regardless, but this was a super fun swap. The Action Packed cards aren't the standard ones you usually see as they have a little (I'm assuming fake) diamond in them. He found a couple partial sets of those at an antique store-type place, I believe. I also loved getting all of the former Wolverines/Brewers from the beer set, and there's lots more to love here too.

firesnbeers (PIF, 1/24):

Yeah, no big deal at all, just a trio of VINTAGE KALINES! The '58 he shares with slugger Harvey Kuenn and the '59 solo card are now the oldest cards of Mr. Tiger in my collection, and the '64 League Leaders card that includes Yaz was a great treat as well. You'll see more of ex-Wolverine Paciorek in a bit but he's one of a number of Brewers and Packers police cards I've acquired thanks to Brian.

firesnbeers (PIF, 11/24):

I think I may have asked him for the Miggy you see here but the other two were HUGE surprises. The Maddux jersey looks terrific, and boy is that Daz Cameron jersey number piece sweet! WOW!

firesnbeers (PIF, 12/24):

I knew these other Pacioreks were coming at some point but had no idea the rest would be included in this Christmas gift! We already had Mr. Tiger, so why not Mr. Padre on a nice relic? And speak of the devil, there's a beautiful Kaline relic (piece of pants) from one of Upper Deck's superlative Baseball Heroes sets. Last up in this very generous mailing to close out a year in generosity is a Topps Archives Purple auto of Alan Trammell, numbered to 150 on the back. Whoa! Tram has a gorgeous signature and fits in well on a design used during his playing career: 1993 Topps.

Thanks so much, Brian!

HamPstr88:

Speaking of Brian, I was glad to be introduced to one of his friends and fellow Wisconsinites on the site, Jeff. Though I handsomely rewarded him later, Jeff sent me the items above in a deal that was heavily in my favor. It starts with a '71 Topps RC of HOF Michigan alum Ted Simmons, a huge get for me. The 2020 Heritage Buyback of another Michigan Ted, Sizemore, also from the '71 Topps set, is next. And how about just my second Simba auto from '22 Heritage's Real Ones Autographs set? Oh, and the jumbo of Riley Greene ('23 Update Oversized Combo Box Topper) was a pretty slick throw-in.

This kind of deal only assures that I'll continue trading with Jeff in the future!

jasongerman9:

Jason, a fellow Michigander and another of my best buddies on the site, is no stranger to these posts as we've dealt a few times, often in blind trade form, though I think in this case I mostly picked out stuff I wanted. He was nice enough to grab the top three cards for me on COMC to finish up the 2008 Topps and '21 Topps Series 1 near sets I grabbed at a garage sale last summer. I think he may have had the rest of these in his port as well and shipped back to himself. Among the great stuff you see is a minors card of former Michigan icer Milan Gajic, a guy I enjoyed watching play in Ann Arbor. The Burnaby, BC native's four years with the Wolverines matched mine and I liked seeing his skills on display, which led to the saying "Gajic is Magic."

Thanks, Jason!

Mjprigge:

It definitely feels like there's a Wisconsin bias to this post but that's unintentional. Matt's always been a fun Twitter follow and my trades with him have always gone well. This time I got more help with my '95 Finest set (22 more to go!), a cool trio of Tigers, and a full set of the cards that were a bonus addition to his book Opening Day in Milwaukee. It's very cool to know collectors that have produced content like this, and I'll be reading that at some point.

Puckfiend (Secret Santa):

I once again participated in TCDb's Secret Santa event late last year (run by Dan/vrooomed, mentioned below) and the person who drew my name was an LA Kings fan named Paul. He did a nice job by sending me a card of a player I collect, a 2024 Topps Pristine Green Refractor of Ripken, then made things more interesting by including David Wells' book and the note you see above. I'll be reading it at some point and then passing it along as requested (though I'm not sure that I'll do the picture thing).

Rayeveryplayerand76e:

Ray in Philadelphia was super easy to work with as we had no problems making a one-for-one basketball auto swap. My prize was my first hit, an autograph, of former Wolverine Tariq Abdul-Wahad. The French SG was born Olivier Sant-Jean and played college ball for Michigan in 1993-94 and 94-95, then transferred to San Jose State for his final two seasons. He was the 11th overall pick by Sacramento in 1997 and played parts of six seasons with the Kings, Magic, Nuggets, and Mavs. Fleer included him in their cross-brand Autographics signed insert in 1998-99 and now I can add another name to my list of Wolverines for whom I own a certified auto!

tucha:

Way before Canada Post went on strike I made a fun PWE trade with Al in Langley, BC. To absolutely nobody's surprise, my return included OPC and hockey! The Bird and Simba cards are great and I love the look of both of the Larkins, but I really appreciated getting the buyback of Michigan icer Jeff Norton limited to "just" 25 copies. It probably doesn't seem like a big thing but I made sure to thank him for including it without asking a lot.

vrooomed (PIF):

Five-time member-of-the-year (including 2024!) Dan is another TCDber I count as a close friend on the site which is why you see his name along with Brian's and Jason's here a lot. When he's not efficiently running something like a fantasy league, giveaway, or Secret Santa, or working on inaccuracy reports to correct things on the site, he sometimes finds time to trade as well. We've sent lots back and forth, and this time he mailed me a few things I asked him about (most of the stuff in the first scan) plus a couple nice stacks of cards from 1987 Hygrade. Thanks to what he sent I now own 51 of the 114-card set and will likely chip away at it slowly. It's definitely a classic product that you still see all over the place.

Thanks, Dan!

Ymmat (PIF, 4/24):

Ymmat (PIF, 8/24):

Joe and I flip stuff back and forth quite a bit too, so even if we're not formally trading we're sending each other PIFs. This is one of two occasions last year where he played on my TCDb username of FreehanSolo. He covered the first part of the name with a pair of Tigers catcher Bill: his '63 Topps RC plus an SP Legendary Cuts jersey. Wow! I already had my own copy of the rookie, which is of course also a favorite of John's, so I passed this one on to fellow Tigers fan Paul to enjoy. I'll be keeping the relic, though, because it was new to me!

In terms of the "Solo" portion, well, Han's Star Wars card is obvious but I had to look up the other. From a 1965 set covering the TV series it's Napoleon Solo ("...and 2 beautiful women," which, yep!) from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He was played by Robert Vaughn on the 60s spy show and Henry Cavill in the 2015 movie remake. Very clever of Joe!

Ymmat (trade #1):

For our first trade of the year, closed out last July, I got some 123 items from him in return for just 49 (though I threw in some extras, namely Legends Sports Memorabilia card sheets and a few magazines to even things out). A large chunk of my end went to Brian, Dan, and Jason, especially a bunch of '86 Topps football for Brian's set build, but I got some fun stuff for myself too as you can see above.

Ymmat (trade #2 + PIF):

If I recall correctly, the contents of this trade arrived in three PWEs. The first two included the items that were part of the transaction while a third contained what you see in the last scan, which I'm treating as a PIF as they were a nice surprise! The main deal included some fun new stuff including my first card of recent Wolverine pitcher Connor O'Halloran, a 2023 fifth-round selection of the Blue Jays who was born in nearby Mississauga, Ontario.

As you can see, the second group includes another Freehan/Solo pairing, a couple more vintage Tigers, a Dingler and pair of Greenes, and lastly, two surprise autos. The first is a Blue Topps Chrome of pitching prospect Sawyer Gipson-Long, the guy Detroit got for Michael Fulmer from the Twins at the '22 trade deadline. His signature looks cool, the parallel color is nice, and this one's numbered /150 to boot. It's joined by a Stadium Club auto of another guy with a sweet sig, SS Zack Short. He came to Motown at the 2020 deadline for Cameron Maybin (after his second stint with the Tigers) and played parts of the 2021-23 seasons. He's since bounced around to the Mets, Red Sox, Braves, and most recently, Astros.

Obviously Joe is a very generous guy and I can assure you we'll be hitting each other's mailboxes again this year!

Thank you to everyone in this post for continuing to make TCDb the best place to organize your collection and trade, and here's to more of the same in 2025! I'll be back soon with part 2, though I haven't decided if I'll mix it up with content from somewhere else first. We'll see!

2024 trade package #27: Baseball Cards Come to Life

And now we've come to my final trade package of 2024. This one arrived just after Christmas and was a fun surprise from Bo over at Baseball Cards Come to Life. He and I had previously made a trade via TCDb a couple years ago but this was our first "blogger" trade outside that site. Bo asked for some of the beat-up vintage I made available a few weeks ago and I came up with a pretty solid group of those for him in addition to some other stuff that I found on his wantlists.

He was nice enough to return the favor with some extremely cool stuff he must have pulled straight from my own wants as all were new to me:

The top group here represent my favorite items in the entire package. I wasn't familiar with the 1969 MLB PhotoStamps because their combination of vintage and oddball-ness made me unlikely to notice them. So I'm grateful to Bo for gifting me four of the Tigers that could be found: PC favorite Bill Freehan and fellow Detroit greats Willie Horton, Denny McLain, and Jim Northrup. I love the fact that these came out the year after that team won it all, and receiving these inspired me to add the others to my wants: Kaline, Cash, Stanley, McAuliffe, and Lolich.

The vintage action didn't stop there, though, as he included two '72 Topps base that I needed: Ted Simmons plus Darrell Evans' In Action subset appearance. That's a second-year of Simba and it puts me very close to his full Topps base run. Technically it's a second-year of Evans as well; His RC came out two years earlier instead, then he got consecutive base sports in '72.

Going back to oddball-ish stuff, the bottom row includes a Superstar back of Mr. Padre, a Topps Sticker of Willie Hernandez (shared with HOFer Steve Carlton), and a UK Mini of Jack Morris. There's enough of these one-offs that despite being common still represent holes in my collection, though not if someone like Bo can help it!

Next, he included a trio of Brandon Inge needs. Though I've long since had the '07 Topps base, I did indeed lack the Red Back seen above (I didn't scan the reverse, so trust me, bro). From that same year I was also treated to a horizontal photo of him attempting to make a crazy diving play in the stands (found in that year's Upper Deck product), and then Brandon's appearance in Topps' throwback 206 product released in 2010.

The last of the baseball content was one of a number of 2001 UD Vintage team checklists I've been chasing for a while because they include one or more guys I collect. In this case, Cal's the lone Oriole in my PC, but I do remember this team well, one that included ex-Cleveland star Albert Belle, Jeff Conine, Brady Anderson, and more.

Did Bo's generosity end there? Most definitely not! Also tucked into this envelope were three former Wolverines I needed from 1975 Topps football: longtime NFL O-linemen Dan Dierdorf and Reggie McKenzie, plus 10-year NFL CB John Rowser, who suited up for Green Bay, Pittsburgh, and the pictured Broncos. I now have 12 cards from this set, partially thanks to Bo, and just need #s 203 (an All-Pro card that includes HOF G Tom Mack) and 395, which is Giants RB Ron Johnson.

Bo, thanks for sending all of these needed cards my way! I hope we can increase the frequency of our trading in the new year and fortunately that shouldn't be too difficult with you making your wants available on my favorite trading site!

And once again thank you to everyone who contributed to TMV as a reader, commenter, and trade partner. I appreciate you all and will keep going in 2025--as long as none of you try to hold me to a three-post-per-day pace. I can't promise I'll put up six posts in a single month! But please do keep in mind that I still have a good amount of 2024 content to cover in the form of pickups from Facebook, TCDb, eBay, and shows, plus at least one other surprise source.

I'm not sure how long it'll take to catch up on those, so for now, I'll wish a happy new year to everyone who took the time to read this. May your 2025 be filled with good news, good friends, good food, good health, and everything you could want!

2024 Facebook Marketplace purchase: garage SOLD!

My card room is a mess and I also dragged my feet putting together this post because I kept looking at both, thinking of the amount of work that needed to be done, and went off and did something else. Did I chip away at each a bit at a time to make things easier on myself? HA! Nope, but I finally lowered my standards enough to snap some bad pictures (no scans here!) so I can finally cover my last June pickup (here in early October).

So briefly, a family posted a garage sale in a city not far from me on Facebook, and the amount of card stuff piqued my interest. I couldn't make it out there the first day but the following day I got there mid- or late-morning. The husband saw me eyeballing the card stuff (fortunately a good amount of what I saw in the photos was still there), and told me he'd be happy to take $100 for everything left. I don't think I even pretended to think it over before I said "Yep, let's do it."

The guy helped me fill up my car, and let me tell you, it was a HAUL. As usual I had a blast sorting through everything, and most anything of interest to some of my most common trading buddies has been mailed out. But in this post I'll show you some of my keepers and also leftover stuff to give you a small taste of what I took home here. I'll be leaving a lot out because it was that or pretty much never get to this, and it was holding up the rest of my posting. So here we go.

First, my keepers:

A bit of baseball.

A basketball trio. Campy!

A football foursome.

Lots of Wings, especially the Russian Five.

There was a box of cut up vintage baseball stuff for $10, which I was going to grab regardless of whether or not I took everything home. I'm not counting any of these in my collection because they're so incomplete, but I'm extremely happy to have playing days cards of the likes of Carlton, Clemente, Koufax, and others.

A couple large HOFers I happen to collect.

There were a bunch of factory sets in the lot, and here's two I kept for myself: 1990 Sportflics and 1992 Donruss. That's my first Sportflics complete set, though I do own Pinnacle's 1996 Sportflix (not to be confused with these). The '92 Donruss box has the shrink-wrap removed but the cards themselves are still in their bricks.

See? Also, the Sportflics cards include a bunch of trivia holograms.

Here's some other sets I kept. The discs are particularly fun 80s oddballs, and in one or two cases I believe I own full sets represented here that I'm upgrading to boxed form.

Have you ever seen all 20 Topps Screenplays from 1997? Now you have! This was one of the main draws for me and I was thrilled they were still available.

All of them include the tin, informational disc, packing foam, and cards, and some of the cards (like the Gwynn above) still have the protective peel on them. I may give these their own post in the future, and either way I'll probably peel all of them to enjoy them that way.

Here's a couple near sets. The '92 US Playing Card Co. Tigers Playing Cards set is missing only PC guy Mickey Tettleton (King of Hearts) and Scott Livingstone (3 of Spades). The '21 Topps 1952 Redux set came with a near set of '21 Topps Series 1 that you'll see below, and it was short just Dylan Carlson's card (#T52-33), which I'll likely procure in the near future, and then I'll probably keep the set.

There were a couple tubs of magazines and similar items and these were my keepers. The Legends Sports Memorabilia issues were extremely cool since they included sheets of cards and postcards you could collect. I tore a bunch of them up trying to get those items out safely and then cut them by hand, relatively poorly (as those of you who received some of these from me already know--sorry!). More on those shortly. You'll see more examples of the magazines below, but besides those, sticker books, and Becketts, there were some Topps magazines and I pulled cards (individual and panels) from those as well.

Here's a look inside the two Topps sticker books and the two Legends Sports mags from above.

These are the Legends Sports and Topps magazine sheets I'm keeping intact.

Here are the postcard sheets and individual postcards I opted to hold onto.

I also scored a fun mix of individual (if poorly cut) cards of some of my favorites.

This Cal Ripken Jr. streak newspaper, nicely preserved, was a fun find! Meanwhile the mini pennant is one of a bunch also found in the lot, and some of you were lucky enough to get one of one or more of you favorite teams.

As for stuff I'm less likely to keep and more likely to trade or get rid of somehow:

More factory sets! I left the price stickers on some of these for some reason. The four Topps sets on the left are all pretty much unopened (slightly torn shrink-wrap in some cases), and are from 1988, 1989, 1991, and 1992. I may decide to keep the factory sets I don't have (all but '91) and ditch the hand-collated sets I have, we'll see.

Meanwhile, the 2006 set was opened but it did include the bonus pack of five rookie inserts (the first five in the set, so nobody good). 2008 didn't include any bonuses and a note indicated it was missing Paul Konerko's base card for some reason, which I've since acquired. Lastly, '21 Topps Series 1 was missing a total of four cards; I had two from previous pickups and landed the other two in a recent trade. That's the box that came with the '52 Redux insert set missing a single card. Yeah, I'd pay $3 for that!

Here's the rest of the low-condition vintage stuff, which, as I mentioned, was all of $10 if I bought it by itself. I gave a few of these out but may be willing to donate more depending on interest.

There were a few of this Topps Mini set, and I kept one for myself and included a few in trade packages, but I still have four left.

A box that said "vintage basketball" on it included a mix of 1981-82 Topps cards, with a lot of dupes.

Speaking of vintage, how about some cool old hockey cards?

Here's some other small complete or near complete sets from the lot.

I was able to consolidate the remaining magazines down to one tub after keeping what I wanted, sending some out in trades, and sacrificing some for their card/postcard content. Leftovers include some Sports Illustrateds, Becketts, Legends Sports, and more.

This small stack of Legends Sports mags mostly still have their card sheets and/or postcards intact.

But like I said, I did cut a lot of them up and ended up with some leftover card sheets, postcards, and individual cards.

Here's the baseball mini pennants I didn't send out, plus the tiny selection of football (with way too many outdated Washington flags!) plus a Joe Montana Starting Lineup.

One of the most useful items that came as part of the deal was this beat-up but still fine to use sorting tray. Cool!

Items not pictured include a few albums with empty pages, a random sheet or two of stamps, a few comic books that weren't really notable, and I believe a couple other boxes of random cards.

This is about the best I can do covering enough of what I came home with to give you an idea, but regardless, it was a blast as always and I came away happy that I basically bought out the card portion of the guy's garage sale for $100.

I hope those of you that received some of these items enjoy them as much as I did digging them out for you!

I believe next time I'm back (hopefully much sooner this time) I'll be back to covering trades from July until I catch up on those, then you'll see other pickups from the month.

Until then, EAT 'EM UP, TIGERS!