2018 Sportlots purchases: PC predators

I just received my first trade package of the year but that'll wait for another day as I already had a draft of today's post ready to go.  This evening we'll be ditching the vintage stuff (mostly) and perusing some cards from my Tigers and Michigan Baseball player collections that didn't warrant individual posts because I just found a few of each.  New cardboard:  GO!

One scan, three former Tigers greats.  Gibby gets three new additions thanks to '95 SP's Silver parallel (which is listed on TCDB as "Superbafoil" for some reason) and a couple 2001 Topps versions:  Chrome and Home Team Advantage.  A high-flyin' Tram doubles up Mark McGwire on '92 Leaf's Black Gold parallel, a.k.a. "What '92 Leaf's Base Set Design Should Have Been" (sorry if I say that every time) and he joins Gibson in the '95 SP parallel set.  Last up is a great 2017 Verlander pair:  Diamond Kings and Stadium Club.

And on to the Wolverines.  Jim Abbott is one of two players that hit the four-card mark today.  A '92 Seven-Eleven hologram coin is the most unique item I added of him this time, his '95 Finest base (White Sox version, #233) is the highest end, the Pinnacle Museum Collection from the same year is my favorite, and the Circa card from '96 wasn't a bad throw-in.

As for the single-card guys, we'll begin with Astros pitching prospect Brett Adcock, whose collection doubled thanks to that 2016 Bowman Chrome Draft base you see dead center.  My non-supercollection of superagent Casey Close (no Major League cards to chase) got a little boost to seven items thanks to a 1990 minor league issue.  It's been a long time since I rock & rolled and added a new Freehan item to one of my favorite Tigers/Wolverines PCs, but here you can peep the Tigers great on his '66 O-Pee-Chee card, one that's surely seen better days.  I still lack three checklist cards for pitcher Scott Kamieniecki but did track down another of his minors cards from '89.  And Elliot (not "Elliot") Maddox's completed PC grew by one with his appearance from 1990 Swell Baseball Greats.

Hal Morris is another PC guy who got a card knocked off of his checklist thanks to that '96 Collector's Choice Silver Signature you see leading off this scan.  But new Blue Jay Clayton Richard had the most productive day in terms of new adds with four Topps-branded cards from 2018:  Flagship, Big League and its Gold parallel, and Heritage.  I wonder if he'll get a card with Toronto this year or if Topps will ignore him in favor of a 13th Aaron Judge subset.  As for Leon Roberts, I completed his checklist a while ago but lately have had some luck finding Senior League cards of his, this one from Pacific.

And here's a nice bunch of players to close out the group today.  I still need plenty of help in terms of my Chris Sabo collection but this time I did score both a fun oddball, an '89 Fleer box panel card, plus a need, the Golden Rainbow parallel of his '94 Stadium Club card.  I also bumped up my George Sisler PC to 85 cards with a pair of decent Topps inserts from 2010-11.  100 cards here I come!

That leaves three more players.  I considered it too oddball to be part of his supercollection checklist but happily picked up pitcher Gary Wayne's 1993 Pacific Spanish issue, and now I'm showing it off about a week before his sorta namesake, the Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne, returns on Netflix's excellent Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for its final season.  I managed not to get shut out when it came to my favorite PC, Rich Hill, thanks to his nice horizontal appearance from last year's flagship Topps product.  And finally, we travel all the way back to 2006 and Topps Chrome for a base issue I somehow didn't have:  a Gold Glove subset card starring former catcher and manager Mike Matheny.

That wraps up the collection of smaller additions to my PCs so look forward to bigger bunches of cards featuring some of your (and my) favorite stars, not to mention a brand spanking new trade package!

2018 Sportlots purchases: A-toZ PCs

Before I cover the last two single-player posts I'm going to use this one to show off the rest of the PC guys for whom I mostly just picked up a handful of cards (or even just one!).  They didn't fit the Tigers/Reds theme from a couple posts ago but they do share one thing in common:  all are former Wolverines, which isn't a surprise since the vast majority of my PCs are Michigan guys.

So here's a bunch of different players, some of whom I hope you recognize:

Jim Abbott is surely one of the most well known guys in this post and it didn't take much luck to turn up eight new cards of the one-handed wonder.  There's a nice mix of oddball--'90 Topps Magazine and '96 Angels Mother's--base, including a cool pairing with Nolan Ryan from '92 Pinnacle, and parallels, especially '96 Pinnacle Starburst.  I now count 259 cards in his collection.

Previously I didn't have enough cards of former Yankees OF prospect Casey Close to warrant an album, but thanks to these four I went ahead and made one, adding to a couple Michigan-specific items I already had.  Close is now known as a superagent who represented Derek Jeter, among many others, but in the 80s he was toiling in the minors for New York and Seattle after a terrific college career.  These four minors products, two each from '88 and '90, capture him with the Columbus Clippers (Yankees, AAA) and Calgary Cannons (Mariners, AAA).

If you've read at least a few posts on this here blog you know my favorite supercollection is that of current Dodgers lefty Rich Hill.  While putting together this massive Sportlots card I was fortunate to find a couple new cards for my assault on his checklist, this pair of Topps All-Star Game Silver cards from the special stamped sets the manufacturer made for the occasion.  In knocking off a couple more cards for those rainbows I also got closer to the 300 mark and am just five short!

I'm still lacking one freaking card ('94 Stadium Club Team First Day Issue) for my collection of late pitcher Steve Howe, but I did find this interesting pair to bolster it.  He's the third of four players I grabbed from the 1990 Dodgers Target set, and the second of another quartet, this time from Line Drive's 1991 AAA product.  You already saw Ross Powell's card a couple posts ago and you'll see the other two shortly.

One of those guys is former Brewers pitcher Mike Ignasiak.  I completed his 15-card collection a while ago but I'm always on the lookout for new stuff like this Minor League trio with cards from 1990-92.  The brands represented are Grand Slam, Line Drive, and Skybox, and the teams are the El Paso Diablos (AA) and Denver Zephyrs (AAA).

The other is pitcher Scott Kamieniecki, a pitcher mostly know for his stints with the Yankees and Orioles.  To his nearly-completed run I also added a trio of Minor League issues with the '91 Line Drive card book-ended by '90 Best and 1991-92 ProCards Tomorrow's Heroes (and its little foil diamonds).  Albany was the Yanks' AA squad while Columbus was their top affiliate until 2007.

Former Brewers/Giants/Cardinals catcher (and manager for the latter) Mike Matheny is one of the more well-known guys among my PCs, and I managed to track down new checklist needs from three of his four clubs (the Blue Jays aren't represented since no cards of him with the team appear to exist).  Those are, in order, a '98 Pacific Online Red parallel and base cards from 2005 Donruss Team Heroes and 2016 Topps Heritage.  I'm getting reasonably close to 100 unique cards for his collection not to mention 50% of what I've checklisted so it's nice to have productive days like this.

Former QB/current pitcher Clayton Richard is a few years into his return to San Diego, and while he hasn't been terribly effective he's at least been able to eat some innings for them.  As you can see here I finally nabbed his 2017 Topps Update base and got the Rainbow Foil parallel to go with it as my first examples of his issues from that product.  I still have lots of his stuff to track down, especially cards released over the last couple years, but I'm at just about 60%, and hopefully future posts will see more bunches of his cards.

The last of the multi-card players for today is former pitcher (and Michigan Baseball manager) Geoff Zahn.  As with Ignasiak I completed his run a while ago but was glad to find other stuff to add, like this oddball pairing.  On the left is the third and final Kellogg's issue I added through this series, in this case from 1979.  It's not exactly mint--the scan doesn't show how much the card's cracked--but it's not like I especially care as I'm just happy to have another fun lenticular food issue.  And as promised I can show off the last of the '90 Target Dodgers.  Zahn was with L.A. for the first two-plus seasons of his career so he too was part of that very cool perforated set.

And now we'll take a quick look at the guys for whom I picked up just one new item:

• Brett Adcock, a 2016 4th round selection of the Astros out of Michigan, is my latest brand new player collection.  The lefty isn't high on the team's list of prospects for now but you never know!  The first card for his debut is his 2016 Bowman Draft base and I currently have 16 of his cards to track down.
• Like Howe above I need just one card to complete Jake Fox's PC, though the quad auto I'm hunting will be much, much harder to find.  In the meantime I added my first non-checklist card thanks to this shiny 2006 TriStar Prospects Plus base from his time as a slugging Cubs catching prospect.
• Former White Sox IF and current front office guy for the same franchise Chris Getz has a larger checklist for me to chase, but I likewise added a Minor League issue, this one from the 2008 Just Autographs product from which I already own an autograph.
• That's right, it's a run on Minor League cards!  Injured pitcher Zach Putnam completes the trio with another TRISTAR-branded offering, 2009's Projections.  Zach was a member of the Indians organization at the time and this card includes a shot of him with his pro debut club, the Mahoning Valley Scrappers, a low-A affiliate in the NY-Penn league.  The Niles, Ohio-based team is still affiliated with Cleveland today.
• Vintage legend George Sisler is the lone HOF PC guy in this post (though Nolan Ryan does make that cameo!) and while I usually can find more new items of his at a time I was happy to add this SSPC HOF card from the product's 1980-87 run.  There's no date on the back so I'm not exactly sure when it was made, but I do like that it shows him as a member of the 10-person 1939 Hall of Fame class that was the fourth ever inducted and also included Lou Gehrig (thanks to a special election due to his health).  It represents my 83rd card of the one-time single-season hit king.
• Last up is a final SSPC offering, once again from 1975, of former Cardinals (among other teams) IF Ted Sizemore.  I'm adding it to his completed collection along with another non-checklist card as a fun vintage oddball item. 

Two more large single-player posts await, so stay tuned!

Complete sets: 1994 Topps II and 2000 Topps

What better way to deal with a huge backlog of stuff to post than to avoid posting for way too long, amirite?  I can see myself sticking to this bad habit of sporadic posting for the foreseeable future, especially thanks to the holidays, but I'll try to get a few more posts up before the end of the year.

So thanks to some fairly restrained spending the last couple months, I finally found a good time to pick up a couple complete sets I'd really wanted to snag.

The first was 1994 Topps Series II.  I can't remember how I ended up with a Series I set, but for the longest time, that's all I had, and I always found that ridiculous.  $20 shipped was enough to bring that one home, and that's now my oldest '90s Topps set in my collection.  Here's a few highlights I dug out to scan:

I made sure to grab my usual favorites in Griffey, Maddux, Ripken, and Gwynn, including subset cards of both Juniors.  I also highlighted a pair of Tigers favorites in Whitaker and Tettleton.  The four-player Prospects card was worth a mention since it included two pretty good catchers in Delgado and Kendall along with another former Major Leaguer in Bako.  Kendall actually appeared on ANOTHER quad prospects card the following year, because Topps.  Finally, the Aaron was a cool tribute to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his breaking Ruth's career HR record.  Appropriately enough, it's number 715 in the set.  See?  You don't have to do something stupid like retire a number (a la Mantle) to honor a player.

I highlighted this pair of cards from the "Coming Attractions" subset for two reasons:  the Chipper/Klesko card shows off a pretty solid pair of franchise players.  Meanwhile, the Tigers card tells you all you need to know about our abysmal 1990s teams!

Finally, I'm including a pair of scans of cards that go right into my Michigan Baseball player collections:

Scott Kamieniecki and Chris Sabo

Next up was a 2000 Topps complete set that I picked up for about $23 shipped.  This is one I shouldn't have had to pick up, but for the life of me I haven't been able to find the original one I pieced together from a pair of boxes back when the set came out.  My cards have been moved place-to-plate a bit, so it's possible they just got lost along the way.  Anyway, I was fine grabbing another set to have on hand, giving me a complete run of regular flagship sets from 1999-2010.  That run WOULD extend back to 1996, but sadly I also can't find my original '98 set and am stuck with just Series II, go figure.

I remember having fun putting this set together back when Topps boxes didn't suck, and the design is pretty reasonable.  Here's a few highlights:

Again I included multiples of Gwynn and Ripken, including a couple of the subsets, which were sort of cool.  Palmer and Ausmus (as a Tiger!) are my Tigers representatives.  Topps again inserted Aaron into the set, and the product also included a full reprint set of him that year.  The shot of Larkin in the field has always been a favorite of mine (though I already had one for his PC).  And I found another chance to show off a still-young Chipper Jones.

No big deal, just seven more cards of Gwynn/Griffey/Maddux/Ripken!  I managed to grab a couple multiplayer prospect-type cards too.  I feel the Riley/Mulder/Sabathia Prospects card is the best grouping of the set, despite Riley flaming out and Mulder having to hang 'em up due to injury.  Meanwhile, the Zito/Sheets Draft Picks version has to be the best from that subset as both went on to have pretty good careers.

For about $43 I'm now much closer to having a full run of Topps flagship sets from '94-2010, and maybe eventually I'll go all the way back to '83 as an homage to Lifetime Topps Project!