The "OMG what did I get myself into?" lot part 1: I love the 90s

Well I guess it's about damn time I got around to this. "What?" you ask, "Posting for the first time in a couple weeks?" Yeah, that too, I guess. But I'm talking about finally digging into that "OMG what did I get myself into?" lot I picked up on Facebook Marketplace. As a reminder, it looked something like this before and during loading it in my car:

I know I mentioned a number of times that I was putting lots of effort into sorting through everything, and while I'm technically not quite done, I'd say I'm finally in a good place to show off generally what I'm keeping, making available, and dumping.

I may go into a bit more detail as these posts go on about what I found, but basically in terms of what filled those monster boxes in my trunk, it was baseball base and inserts from the late 80s to the mid-to-late 90s. And better yet it skewed much more toward the latter than junk wax crap that I have more than enough of. There was a LOT of cards stored completely randomly for some reason so it took lots of time to arrange them by set, but that ended up proving to be a rewarding enterprise as you'll see in a future post or two.

However, today I'm starting with the easiest items to cover: the base and insert singles I'm keeping for myself, mostly from 1995-97 sets I decided not to collect since there weren't enough in the boxes to justify trying to complete them. I was pleased to hit a number of my favorite PCs from 90s Tigers to the Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken quartet to a few Michigan guys. The base portion is pretty solid but I think some of you will be pretty blown away by the inserts I added (which only scratch the surface of what I came away with!).

So please enjoy this bunch of cards I'm adding to my collection from the hobby's best non-vintage decade:

Like I said, lots of former Tigers! Big Daddy and Pudge are from the super busy '95 Fleer, a set I probably wouldn't have put together even if there were enough cards in the boxes to justify it. From '95 Score we have well-known '90s Tiger Fryman, '80s dude and the "Big Wheel" Lance Parrish on his second-to-last team, and Mr. Padre on a typically fun Score subset. Repping that year's Stadium Club are Pudge again plus one of the franchise's best closers in Henneman. And finishing up the year is a trio (continued in the next scan) of Cecil, Junior Griffey, and yet another Pudge. The stacks of Stadium Club and Ultra definitely weren't near enough for a set chase but I'll spoil the fact that I did end up with a complete set of Score Series I, just not the second series that included the trio above.

Most of what you see here is made up of '96 Bowman, a set I hadn't really prioritized. I found a pretty nice chunk of the vets portion of the set in those boxes but there were a lot of prospects missing, and I'm not really interested in the set anyway. Ripken and Maddux make their first appearances in this scan while Pudge, Gwynn, Fielder, and Fryman can be seen once again. One other newcomer is SS Carlos Guillen on one of his RCs. He appears with the Astros but of course was swapped to Seattle in the Randy Johnson deal, then flipped a few years later to Detroit where he was a fun and effective contributor for around eight seasons. And don't be too surprised to see Pudge once more out of '96 Fleer, a set I have a lot of singles from because I love the design. The stack of those from the boxes is one of the smaller ones but maybe someday I'll own all of it.

The last of the vertical base (sort of, you'll see...) are from '96 Select and Upper Deck. That the former are oriented that way is funny since only the checklists were made that way that year; As you'll see below, the rest of the base set is horizontal! It was pretty common for the decade's biggest stars to grace end-of-the-set checklists and that's what we have here in Griffey and Maddux. Big Daddy is the lone representative from another set I have a lot of but would love to own, 1996 Upper Deck. Moving on to the horizontals, corner guys Fryman and Fielder were the two I pulled from a somewhat small bunch of '95 Stadium Club. And Fryman pops up one more time thanks to the credit card-inspired '95 Studio product.

See what I mean about 1996 Select? Relative to the size of the set the pile of cards wasn't bad but once again wasn't enough for me to want to work on it, so here's eight more base cards I pulled for myself. Griffey, Maddux, and Ripken (twice!) get even more additions to their PCs while Pudge and Fielder, who started us off, represent the Tigers once more.

As I looked through the various boxes, most of which were filled with randomly assorted run-of-the-mill 90s products, I was floored to find one stuffed with Finest cards from 1994-97! While I'll have more to say about those in one or more future posts in this series, you'll get to see lots here, with even more exciting items in the next section. Here you're looking at cards from the 1995-97 versions, all of which have one thing in common: protective peels. What's great is that between this purchase and what I already had in my collection, I was able to set aside this group of 29 cards so I would have both unpeeled and peeled copies.

It took a bit for me to get the peels started on each--I mean, they have been in place for around 25 years! It's great having copies in both states since you get the "original" aspect with one and the better looking "freed" version with the other. I thought I'd include the pile of peels in the shot for fun.

And that leaves us with two more scans, which may be the best part of the series already in just the first post. A couple of the boxes had some groups of inserts bundled together, with others found randomly throughout the bunch, and I came away with a few very nice stacks of cards that serve as a great reminder of why I have a tag called "90s inserts rule" here. Just feast your eyes on these:

Sure, the '96 Bowman Foils of Gwynn, Fielder, Fryman, and Tony Clark (his first appearance today!), all of which came out of a pretty large stack of that parallel, aren't much to write home about, but obviously the big draw here is one of the OG must-have parallels: Refractors! Shiny, colorful, and originally much harder to find than the watered down versions of today, the ones you see above are from 1994 and '95, with the former being the second you could find without peels on them. I was more than happy to add a Fielder to my collection from '94, but the PC duo of shortstops Tram and Larkin had me over the moon! What beautiful looking cards. The '95s aren't exactly chopped liver either, and again I was glad to pair a former Tiger in Fryman with another PC I'm having fun building in Froot Loops himself, Mickey Tettleton.

The fun continued with more '96s and some '97s to boot. Though it's technically part of the base set I included Cal's '96 Finest silver card here because those were tougher pulls. '96 Score and its inserts were very, very well represented in these boxes (again, more to come) and I dug out two chase cards of today's star in Pudge: a Dugout Collection Artist's Proof (from the Series 2 set) and a Gold Stars card, whose name I associate more with Leaf.

And lastly we have one of my all-time favorite products in '97 Donruss, which is right up there with the 2001 version for me. I came away with quite a few from some of the inserts you see above and I'm happy to say lots will be available for trade, but more importantly for me I scored six outstanding cards from that product where pretty much every chase card was a winner. Barry's from the numbered Armed and Dangerous set (#0836/5000) and therefore knocks a card off of his wantlist. Maddux is the second PC guy I've found from the color appropriate Dominators set (Larkin is the other). I've been chasing the Cal Ripken Jr. "The Only Way I Know" insert since I bought his book of the same name, and card #9 above (#4439/5000) is my fourth of the 10 I need to acquire, including the one exclusive to the book. Griffey is the front man on possibly my favorite of the available inserts, the double-sided Franchise Features, with Andruw Jones joining him on the other side of this one numbered 1963/3000 (and slightly damaged from having to peel it apart from another, unfortunately). And lastly we have examples of both the Silver (limited to 2000 copies) and die-cut Gold (just 500) Press Proofs: Fryman and Griffey, respectively.

So holy crap, what a great bunch of cards on their own, and that doesn't include the complete and near-finished sets, potential trade bait, and other items that were part of this purchase which, as a reminder, set me back just $30! I look forward to sharing more with you once I can summon the energy to find a way to present and summarize it in a way that makes sense, and that includes letting everyone know what I'll be making available for trades/giveaways.

Before then, expect a show recap if I make it out to my usual monthly haunt tomorrow, plus my latest eBay pickup.

2021 eBay purchases: still king of Dick Mountain

Card collecting for me is a fun hobby so I don't aspire to much there aside from completing some sets and chasing player collections. That said, I do put some extra effort into being the top of the heap when it comes to collecting Dick Mountain, a.k.a. Rich Hill. I have close to a 300-card lead on the second best member on TCDB, and nobody else has stepped up to claim the title, though as I've asked before, why would anyone else take it that seriously?

Anyway, I made four eBay purchases myself in the months of July and August with each of the results heading to my Hill collection, and now I'm showing them off in what I consider least to most impressive:

All four of these came from the same seller while I only purchased two of them. Some of you probably know what that means: they were sold by markaguirre22, a.k.a. Gary. Not only has he been selling Rich Hills (and some other recent Wolverines too) at great prices with free shipping, but he's also thrown in some bonuses a few times now, making him my favorite seller by far.

So what we have here is a quartet of Hills from 2017 and 2018 Heritage. The pair of 2018 cards represent my earliest purchase in this group, made the day before Independence Day. I dropped a hair under $1.50 for the one on the right, a 100th Anniversary parallel that features a cool gold foil stamp. Those were apparently limited to 25 copies, not that Topps could be arsed to number them. I decided the price was fair for a card that limited, and then Gary threw in the base version on the left, which I also needed, and which happens to be short-printed, so I certainly appreciated the generosity.

And then just a couple Saturdays ago I snagged the card you see in the upper-right for a bit under $2, a steal of a deal considering just five of them apparently exist. That's because it's the 2017 Heritage Reverse Stock version, with a glossy-ish back and matte-like front. And then I was pleasantly surprised to find the Bright Yellow Back version on the left in the same PWE, since I hadn't bid on that one, which is a tad easier to find at 25 copies. Again, no serial numbering here.

Here's a look at the backs to give you a bit better idea of what's going on, though the Reverse Stock card is much easier to discern in-hand. I doubt I'd notice the different shade of yellow on the back of the left card, especially if I was sorting through a box or case break, but I'm not Topps' target audience, so I'll just be glad the seller knew what he had and labelled them clearly for me.

Next up is yet another Hill entry from Upper Deck's 2007 Sweet Spot product. I know these are fairly polarizing in the hobby due to some of the autographs having a tendency to fade over time, especially the ones on the manu-baseballs. I've generally had good luck with mine, though, and this Bat Barrel/Red Ink version looks great to me! It's limited to just five copies, and I somehow managed to win it with a $3.61 bid plus tax and shipping, which made it $8.23, which is still ridiculous. Rich has 24 cards in the product, seven of which are 1/1s, and I have 12 of the remaining 17 now, with two of them being limited to just five copies. The remainders are numbered to 5, 5, 10, 15, and 15. I'll keep plugging away because I look forward to the day when I can show off the full run!

And to finish up, you had to know I tracked down another 1/1--my 25th of Hill--to top what you just saw. This Pure White autograph hails from, get this, UD Black. Rich could be found elsewhere in the product as part of the Illustrious Dual Autographs with fellow prospect Sean Gallagher on cards numbered /25 (which I own), /15, and /1. Besides those, it's this Pure White 1/1 and four plate versions. I haven't done a count lately but Hill--as with most players, I'd assume--has much fewer 1/1 autographs than other types of that card like plates and parallels. Of the 25 cards I own of the ultimate rarity starring Hill (that I have catalogued; still working on those 2008 Triple Threads...), only four (including this one) are autographed, and one of those is a plate. So yeah, this was definitely a big want for me, and that explains why I won the bidding war at a bit over $20 delivered for this beauty.

Though my overall spending is way down from recent years--I just passed the $800 mark thanks to Friday's show--I'm still throwing money around when it makes sense to bolster my favorite collections. And that's why I can continue to stake my claim as the king of Dick Mountain!

Stay tuned as I'll likely get that show report up in the next few days since I once again don't have much to show off.

Until then, if you have any, show me your Dicks! uh...Rich Hills that you have for trade.

TCDB trade: randylaw

While I haven't made a ton of deals yet in my time on TCDB, I've definitely made up for it in the sizes of the trades I've completed. That was once again the case with fellow Michigander Randy (randylaw), with whom I completed my second transaction a few weeks ago.

I showed off the results of our first deal last year (part 1, 2, 3) and it's funny looking back it at since my end this time was fairly similar: a nice amount of vintage, plenty of oddball, lots of Tigers, and multiple sports.

The similarities don't end there, either, since this was another instance where I sent him way more cards than I received--around 700 vs. 200--because I was so excited to clear out some space filled by commons/traders and to receive useful stuff in return. A nice chunk of that stuff is trade bait that'll be heading out in some packages at some point this year, but the vast majority will be staying with me.

Please enjoy this scan-heavy post where I prove once again how great it is to trade with one of the most reliable folks on the site:

Like I said, I was excited to get even more vintage Tigers, like this bunch here. The first five are '61 Topps with Cash being the biggest name, though the Dumbo-eared Don Mossi is a fan favorite as well. Jones is from '62, Fox and notable SS McAuliffe are '63s, and then we jump way ahead to '72 for a Billy Martin manager card.

And I still have a few more vintage pieces to show off! Pitcher Tom Morgan's '60 Topps represents the oldest one I acquired for myself though I did end up with a '52 that I'll be sending elsewhere. The photos on team cards from '61 and '62 look remarkably similar. And I was super happy to add another vintage Sparky to his collection, with the one you see above hailing from 1973 Topps, made a year after he led the Reds to the NL pennant for the second time.

Besides vintage I picked up a variety of oddball stuff like this quartet of Topps stickers. Evans shares his '88 sticker with Cards P Joe Magrane, and future Brewers stalwart B.J. Surhoff graces the "Super Star" back. Morris features on an '82 foil piece that celebrates his first of five All-Star nods. Nokes is another Super Star back and I'm much happier to show that than the guy on the sticker up front, the execrable Ozzie Guillen. Sweet Lou's version from 1990 includes a way more respectable guy who earned himself a foil sticker: Eric Davis.

There's nothing vintage about these cards but the subjects are. An early 90s Score base shows old Tiger Stadium, where I witnessed plenty of games in my younger days (mostly losses!). HOFer Jim Bunning is represented twice, in each case as a Tiger, I believe. Detroit legend Ty Cobb pops up twice, including another Score base, this one showing off his Hall items. And I appreciate when modern products remember guys like Kuenn and not just the obvious MLB legends.

Speaking of Cobb, he was the star of Donruss' puzzle inserts way back in '83, the year I was born. I'd take these over some crappy gum any day! It's made up of 21 pieces and Randy only had 20 of them available, but I'm sure it won't be a problem getting the last one to finish it up.

Here we have the first of seven scans of guys associated with the Tigers. '84 champs Bergman and Brookes hail from sets 10 years apart. I added a bunch of stuff of Miggy, and while not enough to equal his 500+ homers, I'm not far off the number he's hit as a Tiger. Tony Clark is a former top prospect who panned out reasonably well even if he didn't turn into a big star.

Another Clark reminds me of how much I love '96 and '97 Upper Deck, and then it's on to a five-spot of Big Daddy cards. Besides his Tigers tenure, I think most folks know he was with the Jays before the trip to Japan that preceded the seasons he spent in Detroit. However, after being flipped to the Yanks in '96, he spent the bulk of '98 with the Angels (as captured on that Ultra base), then got picked up by Cleveland for a couple weeks' worth of games later that year, his sunset season. I often tend to associate Fielder with Fryman since they manned the corners together for a few seasons, and you can see three of the four early/mid-90s base I snagged of him as well.

After another Fryman appearance we get one of a slightly more recent guy from the left side of Detroit's infield, Carlos Guillen. Henneman was a quality closer in the 90s for some bad Tigers teams while Hernandez enjoyed a highly decorated '84 season with the champs. And how cool would it have been if Herndon, A-Jax, and Lemon could have formed an outfield together at some point?

We're looking at mostly 80s stuff here, starting with another Lemon, but rising star Casey Mize makes the first of a pair of appearances too. Morris pops up on a pair, including a food issue from Chef Boyardee. And there's a pair of catchers back-to-back in Nokes, a late 80s favorite of mine, and the "Big Wheel" Lance Parrish, the type of catcher I'd love to see backstopping the Tigers again.

Noticing a lot of '84 Tigers? I basically checked Randy's trade list for anybody I collected, and a good number of those guys were on Detroit's most recent title-winning squad, like Petry, seen here on cards made around that year. I also added a whole mess of stuff to my Pudge collection, mostly Rangers cards since a lot of what I have was made during his time in Detroit. There's a nice range of '93-'97 stuff here, including some good looks from UD and Stadium Club.

The rest of the Pudge haul can be seen here, and what's fun is that all of them are shots of him wearing his tools of ignorance excellence. There's even one card each repping him with the Tigers and Astros, two more of his six career franchises. Sheridan and Tanana were post-'84 guys that made some contributions to Detroit but had to live through that playoff drought. And Thompson, who was traded to my annoyance in the deal for malcontent Juan Gonzalez, arrives on his card from Pinnacle's goofy-but-fun Inside product.

Miggy leads off the horizontal stuff with a pair, including a retail version of his '07 Ultra base (which you can tell since the foil around his name is silver and not rainbow). Fryman (cool shot!), Guillen, and Mize (along with rotation mate Skubal) each get another appearance. And Tram is the last of the vertical Tigers but those didn't divide up nicely into groups of nine. I love me some DKs, and I wonder if Topps will ever come up with something that spurs that kind of nostalgia in me, because rookie cups don't do it for me.

And now we're moving on to the non-Tigers PCs. Abbott, who tossed his amazing no-hitter 18 years ago today, makes three oddball appearances, including another food issue I don't see very often in Wonderbread. Griffey, meanwhile, adds three to his collection, including the not terribly interesting Topps Fire, to get within 30 items of the 1000-card mark.

Next, the designs on Gwynn's two early 90s items aren't anything to write home about, but the photos are pretty cool! Larkin joins a few other guys today out of '21 Donruss, and I even ended up with a few more to trade. Lata is the newest member of my Michigan Baseball PC. He was drafted in the latter rounds back in '89 by St. Louis and never reached the Majors, but he still managed to pop up on seven cards, including the 1990 Best above. Maddux joins Griffey and Larkin out of this year's Donruss, a throwback to the '87 design that doesn't look as nice with all that white space. Cal maintains his PC lead with two new pieces, including a variation of an '87 Sportflics card, plus a '92 Ultra base I can't believe I didn't have.

Yep, I grabbed some UM Basketball guys too. Fab Fivers Juwan Howard and Jalen Rose are joined by recent guy LeVert (check out Jeff's post filled with cards of Caris here), plus '89 champs Glen Rice and Loy Vaught. Rice continues to lead my collection of hoopers and is nearing 200 cards!

These football Wolverines seem plenty appropriate as Michigan opened its season with a convincing win this afternoon. Biakabutuka's and Grbac's shiny cards came out of 2000 Collector's Edge Odyssey. Take a wild guess as to which Brady card I was more excited about. And three WRs finish off the group: Heisman-winner Howard, DPJ on a 2000 Absolute Retail RC, and Streets, who scored a single TD for the Lions in his sunset 2004 campaign.

And finally, although I don't want to be thinking about the weather typically associated with the sport, we have a few hockey items. Wings legends Lidstrom (Black Diamond!) and Yzerman (Flair Showcase!) flank a pair of former Wolverine Jeff Norton, a guy who often shows up in trade packages from Canada, so I'm surprised I didn't have those.

Whew, that was a lot of stuff to cover! Again, I very much recommend trading with Randy as long as you're willing to be patient with him given some medical issues that sometimes hold him up. He's fair, responsive, and has a nice selection to choose from, so if you go the TCDB route, please consider PMing him about a deal!

As for me, I'll either be showing off my eBay pickups from the last couple months or be doing a recap of yesterday's monthly show whenever I post next. I hope everyone enjoys their long weekends!

RIP Bill Freehan (1941-2021)

The Tigers lost one of their all-time greats yesterday as catcher Bill Freehan passed away at the age of 79 after a long battle with Alzheimer's disease. Freehan was John's favorite baseball player so he put up a quick post yesterday, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more from him when he's ready.

As for me, I thought I'd do a quick rundown of Bill's life and what I have of him in my collection.

Freehan was born in late November of 1941 in Detroit, and though his family moved from Royal Oak to Florida when he was in high school, he quickly returned to the state when it was time to go to college, opting for the University of Michigan and a place on both the baseball and football teams.

He played a season on the gridiron and hit a ridiculous .585 during the '61 baseball season, then signed with his hometown team (since the draft was almost a decade away).

Freehan got a four-game up of coffee in 1961, and then from 1963-1975 he'd appear in at least 100 games each season, ending that streak in his sunset campaign of '76.

1968 would prove to be his career-best season with 25 HR, 84 RBI, 6.9 bWAR, and a second-place AL MVP finish. He lost out to 31-game winner Denny McLain, naturally.

One of his biggest career moments occurred in that season's World Series game 5. With the Tigers on the ropes down 3-1 in the series and 3-2 in the  top of the fifth, Cardinals speedster Lou Brock doubled with one out, and it looked like St. Louis' lead would double when Julian Javier followed him with a single to left. But another Tigers legend, Willie Horton, was having none of it, and he made the deadshot throw you see in the video above to Freehan, who was perfectly positioned to block the plate and apply the tag to a furious Brock, who probably thought he was safe to his dying day.

From MGoBlue.com

Bill's bat was much cooler in the Fall Classic but it didn't matter as players like Cash, Horton, Kaline, and Northrup led the way, with McLain (1 win) and Lolich (3) doing the rest on the mound, leading to this famous shot of the Series-winning battery.

He retired after the 1976 season with his name in the record books for catchers, earning five straight Gold Gloves to go with 11 All-Star nods and two top-3 MVP finishes. Spending his entire playing career wearing the Olde English "D", Bill compiled exactly 200 HR and 44.8 bWAR. He's considered a top 20 catcher by several methods, at a very tough position at which to stay healthy and productive, and a good chunk of his career coincided with an era that stacked the deck in favor of pitchers. Sportflics rightly included him in their '86 Decade Greats boxed set as one of their three choices for the best of the '60s at his position.

The Hall of Fame didn't come calling, but #11's legacy with the franchise is a big one that deserves to be recognized with a retired number (since done for Sparky Anderson) and a statue (with Lolich, of course!) among the monuments beyond the outfield.

His contributions to his team and the game didn't end there, though, as he offered coaching to a fairly similar player in Lance Parrish along with other backstops. He also returned to Ann Arbor to helm the baseball team from 1989-95.

Bill became one of the guys I put more effort into collecting the more I started focusing on chasing PCs, especially both Tigers and Wolverines. Here's a quick look at some of my best items:

Relics: 10

Autographs: 13

Printing plates and 1/1s: 2

I also have a few other interesting pieces, including:

An IP/TTM autograph of his 1988 Domino's '68 Tigers card

A signed 8x10

Another signed photo, personalized "to Dennis" (given to me by another Dennis!)

And a bobblehead from a 2018 stadium giveaway (where I could have met John as we ended up going separately)

For me, Bill's passing leaves as big of a whole as a player like Kaline, and I'll miss him, though I'm glad he no longer has to suffer from the effects of Alzheimer's. I hope that the Tigers and MLB do a lot to honor the memory of a guy so crucial in the team's history but often ignored outside of Detroit. If you saw him play, tell your kids and grandkids about how great he was so future generations can pass down the name Bill Freehan. RIP.