2/5 and 3/5/22 card show reports: old and new $45s

I'm taking a quick break from posting trades to cover the shows I made it to over the past two months. As a reminder I skipped January's for weather reasons.

First up was February 5 when I made the usual drive east to Taylor Town Trade Center to hit up my favorite seller. It looks like from my notes my breakdown of the purchase that day was 10 $1 cards, 12 that were $2 each, and five out of his $5 box. I added that up to $54 went I went to pay but he gave me a price of $45 because he treats his regular customers well!

A lot of those cards will be sent out in trade packages if they haven't been already, but here's what I brought home with me, starting with available trade bait:

Nothing too crazy but those dual Diamond Kings relics are always fun and I know I trade with at least a couple folks that collect the Royals. Berroa's card is #d /299, Blalock's is /200, and Stewart's is /100. As always, please feel free to ask me about the trade here in the comments or on TCDB.

And here's the three I kept for myself, because 90s inserts rule!!! First up is a 1999 UD Textbook Excellence Double insert of PC guy Greg Maddux. As you can see it's #d /2000, hence the "double" variation, and it's also die-cut on the right side, plus it has kind of a copper grid thing going on behind the photo. The regular version isn't numbered and is plainer, the Triples are /100 with maybe a silver kind of grid background, and the Home Runs are /10 with maybe a holofoil grid. I love me some numbered 90s inserts!

Not that they have to be numbered for me to love them. I'd actually tried to trade for card #2 on TCDB just that week but the member understandably valued it quite highly. No problem, I snagged one from the $5 box. That would be another die-cut card, a '97 Ultra Baseball Rules of top PC guy Cal Ripken Jr. Besides the baseballs being die-cut the stitching is also raised/embossed, which is a very cool little detail. The back of this one explains MLB HOF eligibility requirements.

Last up and also from '97 is a super cool insert from the interesting-if-divisive Pinnacle Inside product. I for one loved it and some of the great looking inserts you could find from both years it existed. In this case we're looking at a Dueling Dugouts chase card that paired two players and included a wheel you could spin that would show each player's stats from 1992-1996.

I nabbed this one because of the guy on the back, Pudge, to add to his collection, but this would have been impossible to pass up either way.

Thanks to the magic of converting phone video to animated GIFs I can show off both sides relatively quickly like-a so:

How cool is that?! Today's inserts may suck and get short shrift due to the obsession with hits and RCs, but fortunately for collectors like me, we'll always have a treasure trove of 90s inserts to dig up.

More recently I headed back earlier this month for another run through the dude's boxes, and while I can't remember the exact breakdown, my haul again came from the $1, $2, and $5 boxes, with the later on sale at 5/$20. This time I think my total was closer to $50 and again he knocked a bit off, asking for $45. Sold! The quarter boxes were too crowded to peruse and he still didn't have any dimes to flip through so I happily headed home with these items, starting with unclaimed trade bait:

I thought both football cards I grabbed looked pretty nice and I always like to snag autographed memorabilia cards for trade bait when I can. The Brian Leonard is #d /100, and the super shiny gold Fant (now with the Seahawks) has a solid five memorabilia pieces along with numbering /299. Meanwhile, I went a bit unorthodox in picking up the Australian Silky Terrier Manupatch from 2018 Goodwin Champions because, why not? I bet someone will want it, either here or on TCDB. Once again, please claim 'em if you want 'em!

My own take home was double the size of last month's with a few fun new items:

Former UM pitcher Jeff Criswell is front and center on a 2020 Panini USA Baseball insert #d /999, and he reps the collegiate national team while Jack Flaherty is on the back shown with the 18U team. Speaking of numbered cards, I snagged two different Griffeys from 2008 Topps Moments & Milestones, each for just a buck. They each represent one of Ken's 147 RBI from his crazy '97 MVP-winning season and both are #d /150. I realize there's a ton of these and it's a goofy set but I still thought it would be fun to pick them up.

The second row opens up with the most expensive of the cards I kept for myself: a $5 2021 Leaf Metal Draft autograph of former Wolverine Jesse Franklin, as seen in an airbrushed Wolverines uniform. $5 might seem a bit much for him but that was the first hit of his I'd seen and the guy I buy from always cuts me a deal so I felt it was worth it. Welcome to the collection, Jesse!

Next is the lone basketball card I kept, a 2007-08 Fleer Hot Prospects dual jersey (/149) of former Fab Fiver Jalen Rose. Michigan's actually playing as I write this and I don't expect them to beat Tennessee--after all, they've only been winning every other game for more than a month--but I'm still glad they were able to go dancing after a down year. Anyway, my fifth hit of Rose shows him with his sunset season team of the Suns (ha!) at the end of his 13-year career. It's nice to see a couple interesting colors instead of the plain old white/gray.

Last up this evening is one more numbered insert: a 2007 Topps TX Exclusive Silver parallel of former UM LB Prescott Burgess. I can add this card, limited to just 49 copies, to the RC I'd already picked up of him. He has just 69 (nice) cards to his name on TCDB and I have 12 of them. He managed to appear in 40 games over four seasons after the Ravens took him in the 2007 6th round so that number of cardboard appearances seems reasonably appropriate to me.

That's all for February and March but I hope I'll be back in April with more great results, whether or not I spend exactly $45 again! Until then, I would expect that my next post will be a double blogger trade recap. And no matter what happens in any of their games, I'll be enjoying watching UM's women's and men's basketball and men's hockey teams as they continue to work for postseason glory. GO BLUE!

2020 eBay purchases: Captain Comeback and the wait for plates

Things have improved a bit on the mail front over the last few days, and not just in the case of California rep Katie Porter grilling clueless and corrupt Trump toady and USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. This morning I was glad to see that not only were two of my quite recent eBay purchases out for delivery, so was the one from three weeks ago, which was coming from Saginaw, MI, a city 90 miles away from me. That makes me wonder if the Detroit-area facilities are among some of the ones around the country publicly flouting DeJoy's attempts to derail the service, instead turning sorting machines back on and actually getting mail to folks.

So this afternoon seems like a great time to celebrate the two new additions for me that arrived today as well as one I snagged earlier last month.

Item #1 is that card from early July, a '97 Topps auto of former QB and current HC Jim Harbaugh. It's definitely a card of its time, with a design that doesn't set aside a specific area for the signature, and that's great. The frame around the photo is a nice touch too, and my only request would have been to zoom out a bit so the ball didn't get cut off.

I have to say that the back made me laugh a bit, referring to Harbaugh as "Captain Comeback." That's mainly because a comeback is a stat I'm not entirely enthused about, especially since in football there's a good chance poor QB play earlier in the game necessitated the comeback in the first place. (Can you tell I have to hear about Matthew Stafford for weeks at a time every year?)

Anyway, this is a fun card and it was great to add my third auto of Jim for about $5.50, a good chunk of which was shipping. While the Big Ten season looks like it'll (wisely) be at least delayed, if not cancelled, I'm looking forward to seeing what the team looks like again whenever he's back.

Up next is the first of two plates. I just won the auction for this one--a 2007 Bowman Sterling yellow of former Michigan LB Prescott Burgess--last Wednesday--so that has me feeling a bit better about shipping times again. Once again, shipping accounted for most of the price, which was around $6.50.

Burgess was a five-star LB recruit out of Ohio, and while I don't know that he lived up to that billing, he had a pretty good career in Ann Arbor. Baltimore took him in the 6th round in '07 and he'd see playing time in some 40 NFL games.

The plate you see above was used to make his 2007 Bowman Sterling RC,

and thanks to the very helpful frame on the front it's quite obvious that it's the yellow version. I'll admit that I wouldn't have figured that out myself without help. It's just my third hit of Burgess, who obviously doesn't have many--and it was fun to find something this nice of him out of the blue.

And last up today is a card that I bought so long ago it feels like I got it around the same time as the Harbaugh above, though it was actually a month later. I won this 2011 Topps Inception Magenta Plate of Braylon Edwards on 8/1, and the seller shipped it a couple days later. Please enjoy the following tracking information:

Damn you, DeJoy! Anyway, it made it to me and that's all that's important. I spent roughly the same $6.50 on it as the Burgess above, including similar shipping costs.

Again, I like the framing on the card, which gives it a nice look while also making its color obvious. It's my third plate of Braylon, and I'd say it pairs up nicely with this one:

the yellow version!

Combined with the Burgess, it gets me fairly close to 150 plates/1-of-1s. It's also my 90th hit of the former star WR, and along with the two above, helped me hit the 2,300 Michigan sports hit mark. "M" is for Michigan and milestone, baby!

I hope this continues a positive trend for mail delivery, but even if it doesn't, it makes for a nice treat on a hot Summer Monday.