2024 trade package #17: Cards on Cards

I'm in a very thankful mood as I write this post, and not just because this past Thursday was turkey day. I'm grateful I still have family around as I get older, and friends to hang out with, a secure job, enough money to live my lifestyle, and a home.

And more specifically, today I'm very thankful that my Michigan Wolverines beat Ohio State for the fourth straight year despite breaking in a first-year coach, weathering injuries, having one of the worst QB room/offensive coordinator combos in program history, and having nothing to play for but pride, But they did it anyway!

And even more specifically to the hobby and this blog, I'm extremely grateful to everyone I have the privilege of trading with and talking to about cards, plus those who read and even comment over here despite my relative lack of posts.

In a similar vein, I'm very thankful for old blog friends I go way back with, like Kerry of Cards on Cards. Kerry's my college team/pro teams collecting doppelganger in the northwest, and he was one of the earlier folks I traded with waaaay back in 2010 not long after I started Too Many Grandersons. He sent me a fairly large envelope of stuff back in August, and I'm thankful that folks like him don't mind me taking until it's a hair before December to recap it!

Here's what he sent:

Some big names I collect to start things off with Miggy, Cronenworth, Greenberg, Greene, and Junior Griffey. Jake was born eight years after Topps originally used that design in 1986.

That's Griffey and now Gwynn and Maddux; Will the quartet be completed? Read on to find out. But first, check out these super nice additions to my collection of Matt Manning. My favorite: the 3D card, easily. We need more of these and fewer Refractor patterns (colors are fine). The Clearly Donruss acetate card is a close second, though!

His fellow high draft pick Mize also gets in on the action to a lesser degree. Morris and a few other '84 Tigers popped up in that Pinnacle Limited set much to the benefit of Detroit collectors like myself. Oh, and the short wait is over: Kerry did indeed complete the group by including four Ripkens, including a cool Red (I think?) parallel numbered /2023. Cy Young-winner Skubal is next, and while I fully expect our cheap-ass owners not to make a reasonable attempt to sign him, I'll enjoy him wearing the Olde English "D" as long as I can.

Next, Tork is definitely facing a make-or-break season as a former top guy who'll need to earn a spot on a team that should be contending in the AL Central. I really like the mix of Panini designs Kerry included here. The Sport Kings card you see of Tram is my first of the HOF SS from 2024, and that's another one of those products than can be useful for finding players you don't necessarily see much elsewhere. Hopping back to present players, could Verlander return to the Tigers? It's not out of the question, but locating that cool gold playing card-type issue on TCDb was as I'll need to do research on a checklist. Finishing out the baseball stuff, Griffey and Cronenworth make repeat appearances while a John Denny Swell card from 1990 puts me down to just nine short of that set.

While Michigan Football's overall record this year has been pretty disappointing (though wins over the two rivals on the schedule sure helped!), the basketball team is looking pretty nice under new coach Dusty May. I know I said that in my last post but that continues to be the case. None of the guys in this scan played for him but they've all since played in the NBA so that's cool. Bufkin's in his second season with Atlanta, THJ is putting up some minutes with the Pistons, and Houstan and Howard are both with Ann Arbor's pro franchise in the south, Orlando (more on that below).

The former coach's son is getting increased minutes for the Magic in his second season, which is nice to see. Speaking of familiar names, I think most people know Jordan Poole and Duncan Robinson, whether or not they know about their Ann Arbor connection.

I haven't seen this many Duncans at once since Kerry's Cardinals employed father & son duo Dave and Chris! Rose is one of a couple Fab-Fivers you'll see tonight. And as for Franz Wagner...

...the budding Magic star is yet another Orlando player represented here. It may be too late for me to get an autograph of Mo's younger brother at a reasonable price but I really appreciate Kerry passing along this many cards of Franz in one package. Meanwhile, THJ makes one more appearance in sticker form and then we have Jett's dad on a phone card, which is such a 1990s thing I think I just teleported to the mall to go to a music store after watching an episode of TRL when I got home from school. A very cool addition indeed!

And now the team of the day: the football Wolverines! My (new) Big Ten buddy is familiar with how to identify who played for my school just like I'm more than happy to look up guys from his. Transfer TE Erick All makes his collection debut out of '23 SAGE HIT, appearing in a Michigan uni despite having transferred to Iowa. Brady's about the most well-known Wolverines guy in the business but I really have to talk up fellow QB-turned-broadcaster Devin Gardner, who did an outstanding job calling Michigan's game last week after having done a very insightful podcast for a few years. Speaking of successful QBs, I was very happy to see a couple rookie-adjacent cards of '97-'98 champ Brian Griese out of Fleer Brilliants and Upper Deck UD3. Buckeye-killer Haskins is back in the NFL with Jim Harbaugh's Chargers while blog favorite QB Chad Henne rode off into the sunset after carrying the clipboard for another Chiefs title team. Turner is sadly out for the season for the Bengals but hopefully the DB will come back stronger than ever next year.

And last up tonight are these two former Wolverines receivers, both pictured wearing the Maize & Blue on Leaf autographed cards even though they each transferred out! Black was a fairly highly touted WR recruit who produced very little in three seasons before transferring to Texas for the doomed 2020 COVID season. This marks my third signature of the 4* from Connecticut.

Henning, who's also making his collection debut tonight, appeared over the 2020-22 seasons for the Wolverines, rushing for a pair of scores in 2021, with none bigger than the opening score of that year's edition of The Game. Ohio State has yet to beat its hated rival ever since. Meanwhile, Henning remained in the conference and headed to Northwestern, where he picked up five total TDs (four catches and a run) in '23. This season he caught four more and that'll do it as the Wildcats won't be bowling with a 4-8 record. We'll always have that TD in the inspiring '21 OSU win, though!

Kerry, thanks so much again for all of this great stuff! I really appreciate how well you hit so many of my various collections, and it remains a pleasure trading with you for going on 15 years. I'll be gladly including you in this year's Christmas cards and already have a few things set aside for you.

Up next will be one more August envelope, and then we'll see if I pivot to wrapping up the rest of the year's trades before I get to everything else because I always feel like those should get priority.

2023 eBay purchases: rockin' around the Christmas Tariks

With 2023 blogger trades all wrapped up I'm moving on to my eBay purchases from the last four months of the year.

We'll start back in early September when I happily spent a bit more than $12.50 delivered for my second plate of Denard Robinson. This particular Shoelace 1/1 is his magenta plate used to make his 2013 Absolute RC, specifically the "base" version and not the variation where he's carrying the ball in his other hand. You all know I love me some Denard, and I hope he's one of the holdovers on new Michigan coach Sherrone Moore's staff.

A bit less than two weeks later I was quite happy to win this Trey Burke plate for a little under $10 shipped. The 2016-17 Contenders Draft magenta plate you see above is my third 1/1 of the former college star, but it's my first of him pictured as a Wolverine instead of with the Jazz so it's my new favorite. This one puts Burke one away from joining the double-digit hit club in basketball as the fifth member, though a couple others are also getting close.

At the end of the month I was thinking about how well Tigers P Tarik Skubal had pitched after returning for the season's second half. He started off a bit slowly but ripped off four straight wins in the final month to end the year at 7-3 with a solid 2.80 ERA. I decided I wanted a nice card of his and landed on this 2021 Absolute Rookie Leather Signatures Tan auto for about $13. Maybe I'll get something with actual team logos on it in the future, but I'm a sucker for fun gimmicks like this and was more interested in jumping on something before he possibly develops into a higher-end starter. And even if he doesn't, I've got a pretty cool card of one of the team's solid core of starters.

Next, early in October I found a bunch of stuff for myself and others all from one seller and took advantage of low auction prices and combined shipping. The three cards you see above are the ones I grabbed for myself. First up is a Pudge jersey that I thought was worth a flier at $1.50. He'd joined the Yankees in '08 so UD listed him with them, but he's pictured as a Tiger and I'm betting the swatch is from a Detroit jersey, not that it matters too much to me since I collect his non-Tigers cards too. That appears to be relic #10 and hit #11 of the HOF catcher.

To that I added a pair of Leaf-branded cards of former UM WR Tarik Black, our second Tarik of the evening! Black was a top-200, 4* recruit coming in to Ann Arbor in 2017 but he'd compile just 50 catches for two scores in 18 games over three seasons before transferring to Texas, where he put up similar numbers in the shortened 2020 COVID season. I was very happy to add a couple Wolverines uniform autographs of him to my collection (as subject #240) even though they're from the wish.com iteration of Leaf, which is part of the "way too many parallels with ridiculous names" problem. That said, I have enjoyed the State Pride design over the years.

I included the backs to show that the top card is numbered just 4/4 while the other is #19/20. As best as I could tell, these are from 2021 Leaf Metal Draft Flashback Base Autographs Mojo (even though the provided checklist SNs don't match) and 2021 Leaf Metal Draft Flashback State Pride Autographs Wave Blue. For just $4 and $3, respectively, I was satisfied with what I got.

The next time I spent money on eBay on something for myself it was the first day of December and I was able to score this 2012 Bowman yellow plate of Michigan WR Steve Breaston for a cool $8 even. That year's design has always been an outlier when it comes to Bowman but not in a bad way in my opinion. Then again, it's fairly familiar to me as I already had purchased the magenta plate of the same card! Breaston is therefore one of a number of PCs for which I have multiple 1/1s.

That distinction is true of former Reds prospect Ryan LaMarre as well. The 16th hit in his collection is also the 5th 1/1, which is quite a ratio if you ask me. And this design is also well known to me because the black plate you see above from 2010 Bowman Draft is the third one I now claim ownership of from the set! I've checked off the black, magenta, and yellow versions and just need the cyan, making this one of five plate sets where I have three of the four (others are Chad Henne 2014 Prestige; Clayton Richard 2011 Topps; J.J. Putz 2012 Topps Mini; and Rich Hill 2006 Topps). That was worth a bit under $12.50 shipped as far as I was concerned!

Finally, with Christmas just five days away and having barely crossed the $1800 mark in spending for the year, I decided to treat myself to an upgrade. My copy of Kirk Gibson's 2001 Topps Archives rookie reprint auto was one of my favorite cards in my entire collection, but it was somewhat faded when I bought it, and leaving it and some others out where too much sunlight got to them didn't do it any favors:

That's a recent pic I took of what's essentially an auto-less Gibby and a very faded 1999 SP Signature auto of Griffey (that I pulled myself and regret ruining this much all the time!). So I was very much on the hunt for a much better copy despite the cost of Kirk's signature going up quite a bit.

And you know what? For the nice, bold blue signature you see above on my new copy, I didn't think twice about plunking down $53. It's great having such a nice version of that piece in his collection and I'd do it again if I had to. But I probably won't because I'm not letting that sucker get any regular sunlight!

And those nine cards are how I finished up 2023 when it comes to personal eBay pickups. I still have lots more to show off from the end of last year but I'm at least making some headway, and I'll be back soon with more!