2024 Facebook Marketplace purchases: a few Facebook finds

As I near the end of my 2024 pickups so I can move on to this year's stuff, here's a quick look at my last three Facebook Marketplace purchases from last year. It's been long enough that I think a few of the items got mixed in with each other, but those details aren't as important as just showing off the goods.

So in mid-August I made two stops in one day, which was pretty cool. Trip #1 was to a garage sale that was thankfully largely inside a garage on a day when it decided to be pretty rainy! I saw an intriguing bunch of sports stuff for sale and made my way over. Here's most of what I picked up for an even $40:

I'm not sure if this matted 12x16 piece was a stadium giveaway or from something else but I thought it looked extremely cool. The top photo includes lots of team greats, all of whom are among my favorites in the history of the franchise, plus it notes the Tigers' four World Series titles to-date. The bottom is made to look like an envelope with a cancelled Tigers stamp, and it celebrates Miggy's 2012/13 consecutive MVP wins. I'll get this framed and put up at some point.

This stained glass piece doesn't specifically say it's Tigers-related but that's the feeling it gives me anyway. It was just $0.50 and I ended up sending it to Paul.

Y'all know I trade with at least one Blue Jays fan so I spent $3 on this baggie full of Toronto postcards. I still have a ton left with larger quantities of Juan Guzman and Pat Hentgen, slightly fewer of Ed Sprague and Devon White, and a smaller stack of Al Leiters. If anyone would like one or more of these please let me know and I'll see what I can do

Here's the first of a few boxes of cards. There was easily more than $2 worth of '24 Heritage in this box and I've already put some of them to use in trades. I kept a couple for myself and still have over 100 of them available to help anyone who can use them (but no SPs).

This was a fun box to flip through since I love Sportflics! I don't think there were any I needed in the box, but for $3 I got some cards from the first four years of that product to include in trade packages.

This $2 box of '94 Stadium Club ended up being a bit of a bust since the vast majority were in bad condition (foil issues), which is a shame since there was a good number of the Golden Rainbow parallels to be found. I may separate the few good ones out but otherwise don't mind taking the loss of $2.

Once again I'd argue that I got more than $7 worth here. There were plenty of dupes but since these were new enough at the time I threw them up on TCDb where they remain available, and I'm sure I've used some in deals already. If you can use some non-SP base help, I have almost 400 total cards up for grabs.

And last but not least, the lone single I grabbed was this cool 2022 Absolute dual jersey of Mize and Skubal numbered /99. I think the cost was a bit more than $10 but I didn't hate the overpay, even for a relic, because I'm enjoying getting nicer stuff of Skubal, plus the swatches aren't your usual plain white napkins.

With that sale in my rear-view mirror I once again headed in the direction of Brighton to buy a four-row box of cards from the same guy that sold me this shoebox back in April. I talked him down to $60 for the box and happily flipped through it once I got home.

It's entirely possible that there were some keepers in here for me that mixed in with the images for the last purchase below, but either way, once again I easily got my money's worth in entertainment and trade bait. These were pretty much all baseball and football--my bread & butter--and were mainly from the past few years, filling in some holes in my trade bait.

I don't have anything specific to show off at this point but anything I didn't keep for myself or send out in a trade package likely ended up on my TCDb tradelist.

Finally, early in September I noted a guy selling some cards that lives not too far from my mom's place, and for the initial asking price he was offering a bunch of prospect autographs (generally busts from the 90s-2010s), so we made a plan to meet up at his house to look things over.

He ended up being very fair to work with and in the end I bought home this stuff for $120:

Quite a few of these cards were either autographs (as mentioned) or bulk RCs, though like I said, many were scrubs at this point. But for the cost of one or two of my show trips I got a lot of value!

Here's how things shook out in terms of baseball. The first row and a half are prospects, especially 2000s Bowman/Chrome and Topps Traded, plus Bowman Sterling and others. The rest of row 2 plus row 3 are generally other base, some in decently sized groups. Row 4 I believe is all inserts, with a big, big portion being Bowman Gold parallels, but there were some other fun ones as well. And everything in the last row is an autograph or jersey, with more of the former than the latter.

A chunk of these went out in trade packages and I think I traded a few on TCDb as well, but I still have a good amount on that site's tradelist. I'd say the most "significant" card I pulled was this one:

It's been a while since Castillo could be considered a prospect, but an autograph #d /5 isn't something you pull out of a bulk box every day!

Here's a look at the football stuff (with a stray hockey card or two):

These are broken down in rows as following: base RCs, 90s base (mostly Stadium Club and Zenith from 1997, I think), inserts (lots of parallels!), and hits. The group of autos was smaller but still quite useful to me.

And here are the singles I ended up keeping for myself, again with the caveat that I might have mixed in pickups from purchase number 2 above:

Lots of shininess and big names! I especially love the 90s stuff like the Press Proof of Fielder and the Griffeys.

More shiny, numbered, and big PC guys. The Refractor theme was strong in this box and I loved it.

A few more baseball including Two Many Verlanders and a HOF battery of horizontals.

1997 Zenith treated me very well in terms of needed Wolverines but I was surprised by how many nice Brady cards were available too.

Both '97 Zenith and Stadium Club look fantastic, and that A-Train insert (#d /1000 on the back) was the cherry on top.

Obviously Facebook can be very hit or miss when it comes to card deals (or anything else, really), but that makes me appreciate these successes even more. I'll be back at it this year seeing what I can score on the site in between shows, eBay purchases, and blogger & TCDb trades.

But before I get to the new year's collecting, I need to recap my 2024 COMC Black Friday pickups. Stay tuned for those!

2024 trade package #24: Cards on Cards

Continuing with my marathon posting of trade packages this evening, here's #1 from earlier this month: a basketball-heavy mailer thanks to Kerry from Cards on Cards. Maybe this is something he can read as he nervously awaits his Oregon team's Wednesday Rose Bowl matchup with the hated Buckeyes. My suggestion: the Ducks wear crazy-ass jerseys all the time anyway so why not make an Oregon version of the iconic winged helmet and wait for Ryan Day to poop his pants like he usually does? Oh, and I happen to know that he has another envelope from me that may include one or more Ducks whenever he gets a chance to open it.

Anyway, here's what Kerry sent me earlier this month:

Most of the baseball fit in this one scan. Like his cards above, Baddoo may be feeling Blue after being DFAed so new pitcher Alex Cobb could join the roster. Greene, whose roster spot is secure, looks groovy on the Big League card, and he also offers my first look at this year's Stadium Club Chrome insert (not to be confused with the separate base issue). I wonder if Jung will get a chance to stick with the club now that Gleyber Torres has been signed and other moves may be in the works. Donruss' recent products are geared toward folks like me who love collecting classics like Sisler. Skubal, who's going to be very, very rich within a couple years, was an All-Star this year, as the above Topps insert reminded me. Verlander comprises the rest of the baseball content, and the shiny version of his Attax card makes the all-too-common regular versions seem even uglier than they are, if that's even possible.

Topps' flagship design has always been hit or miss with me, mostly the latter, but Stadium Club is rock solid when it comes to looks. I love the horizontal Verlander photo of him finishing his pitching motion, and the Sepia parallel looks quite nice as well.

Most (but not all!) of the rest of the content is basketball, and Hoops-related products are well represented. That works for me since I needed practically everything here! As with football, Panini released a Halloween-themed product called Haunted Hoops, and Bufkin and the younger Howard are two of the former Wolverines you can find in it. Burke is "just" a regular Hoops RC (nice!) and former UM coach Howard gets just his second card from the past decade to join my collection thanks to 2023-24 Topps Chrome, with Topps having to do the logoless thing like Panini does with baseball.

LeVert, Poole, Robinson, and both Wagner brothers also get the Haunted Hoops treatment here. Every card you've seen has been a base except for the two Orange parallels--Bufkin above and Poole here. Poole also gets a new Panini Flux for his PC, Robinson joins Bufkin above from the apparently-difficult-to-scan Hoops Premium Stock product, and Franz adds appearances from Panini Illusions and the most recent Topps Chrome.

Remember a bunch of the guys we just saw? Well they're back--in sticker form! These are all 2023-24 Panini Stickers, and four of them are standard versions while Poole gets a cool holofoil entry and Franz appears in the Global Icons subset representing his native Germany. I hope both Wagner brothers heal up in time to run it back next season!

Lastly, I can always count on a fellow college collector like Kerry to send some Wolverines my way. Better yet, half of these are college uni photos! Hutchinson's season ended too soon earlier this year but with the injury luck the Lions have had in 2024 there's no doubt he wouldn't have made it through the season anyway. That doesn't dampen my enthusiasm for collecting him, and I continue to root for his team to keep winning to make my friends who are Lions fans happy.

His former teammate J.J. McCarthy suffered his own injury before even making it through the preseason, and I hope he returns to health next year as well. For now I'll keep collecting him, especially Michigan cards like the above pair of Score inserts which remind me of happier memories earlier this year when JJ led Michigan to a national championship.

And lastly, I guess the theme of this section is injured recent Wolverines because Wilson also dealt with similar issues in the preseason and has barely played so far in 2024. His pro debut may be done prematurely but boy did he come up big time and time again for last year's title-winners catching 12 TDs including the one that tied the Rose Bowl against Alabama with under 2:00 to go in the eventual OT win for the Maize & Blue. While I tend to favor Score's RC design, Prestige does sometimes have its moments, and I've always appreciated them using college shots as well.

Kerry, thanks again for this envelope stuffed with Tigers and Wolverines! I'll continue my full-throated support for your team especially as a matchup looms with a team with possibly the most toxic fans in the nation. GOOD LUCK, DUCKS!

Well that's three posts I've done today and that leaves three for New Year's Eve, giving me something to do as I watch Michigan's noon bowl game against Alabama (again). Most of the impact players will be gone due to the draft or transferring, and it was already looking like a mismatch before taking that into account, so I won't be expecting a win, but regardless I'll be thankful for one last 2024 Michigan Football game after the calendar year began on the best note possible. LET'S GO BLUE!

2024 trade package #10: Bob Walk the Plank

It's always a treat when I get cards from Matt of Bob Walk the Plank since we send stuff back and forth maybe once or twice a year, but there's always a higher-end aspect to it. Back in May he treated me to quite the birthday present with these:

Current/future star Riley Greene is a nice looking Museum Collection parallel numbered to just 50. Both Griffeys are from that decade or so in the late 90s/early 2000s when everything was numbered. His Topps Stars goes to 9799 while the gorgeous team color parallel from Leaf Certified Materials is much rarer, /200!

Hill ('23 Chrome Update Orange) is even more limited at just 25 copies, plus that color could be considered a team parallel too. I've mentioned that Miller was quite useful to the Tigers as trade bait, and his 2007 UD Masterpieces card is quite the looker. I have a crazy 83 cards of Casey Mize right now, and one of the rarest of those is the '22 Select Cracked Ice you see above, which is limited to 25 copies just like the Hill (don't worry, Gavin, neither is a 12/25!).

Neither of those is the rarest card of the bunch, though, thanks to a '22 Topps Mini Red of my favorite recent Tigers catcher, Jake Rogers, that's numbered 2/5. Wow! Speaking of "wow," how about another 2007 UD Masterpieces RC of a former Tigers pitcher, this time future HOFer Max Scherzer? That's a beautiful card of the three time Cy Young winner and owner of two World Series rings. Last up is another Red parallel that's not quite as rare as the others in this scan--299 copies--of former RP Joel Zumaya, whose legacy is looking iffy due to being connected to some very troubling allegations about former player and TV guy Craig Monroe.

And here you'll see the contents of the package I was the most excited about. First up is no big deal, just a Miguel Cabrera autograph from 2005 Upper Deck Pros & Prospects. I don't think I can emphasize just how generous Matt is--though I encourage you to look through all my trade packages from him here, containing flat-out amazing cards of current and future HOFers like Kaline, Verlander, Larkin, and others--but maybe this will help: this is my fourth signature of Miggy, and aside from the one I pulled from a pack myself, the other three have come from my collecting doppelgänger in West Virginia. Seriously, my hat's off to him.

Continuing the goodness, next up is a bat relic of a guy I just mentioned above: Barry Larkin. I'm as sick as everyone else of seeing the boring 80s designs beaten to death by Topps, but I'll always be happy about a new hit of a favorite player, such as #25 of the Wolverines SS that became a Reds star!

And for something even more timely, not only is it amazing that Tarik Skubal is the front-runner for the AL Cy Young on another tire fire of a "rebuilding" team, but Matt managed to score a '22 Chrome Refractor auto (numbered /499) of his on Twitter for under $20 and have it delivered to me. What a great card to have of a guy who'll presumably be around for a bit more after the team thankfully didn't give him up for another underwhelming prospect package (see: Flaherty, Jack) at the deadline.

On the football side of things, a pair of Tom Brady cards serves as an appetizer to the main course: a brand new Chad Henne autograph, which is something I haven't been able to add for quite a while. The 2009 Gridrion Kings card you see above (#d /50) is my 144th hit of one of my favorite UM QBs, putting him six behind collection leader Rich Hill. That number is bonkers and I'm grateful for folks like Matt who've helped build that collection.

And finally tonight, this surprise quintet is a fun way of wrapping things up. Representing the Pistons, Lions, Wolverines, and Red Wings are a great mix of Starting Lineup cards showing off several different designs. Hill and Osgood are examples of partnerships with Topps and Fleer, respectively, while Batch, Griese, and Woodson have designs I'm much more familiar with when it comes to those collectible figures and their cards. As for the title-winning Wolverines pair, Griese's from the 2000 product while Woodson's from the '98 Extended Series released during his rookie season.

That's another Bob Walk the Plank package in the books and man was it a great one! I'm fortunate to trade with some very generous folks and Matt is most definitely among the best when it comes to high-end dealing. I appreciate it as always and am working on a return worthy of this to send back to Morgantown as soon as I can. Thanks, Matt!

I believe I have two more May trade packages to get to followed by some show recaps and then it'll be on to June. Stay cool, enjoy the Olympics, and join me in looking forward to the college football season in just a few weeks!

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!

10/6/23 card show report: cheap boxtober

I'm encouraged by the fact that I was able to get that Facebook Marketplace purchase post up last night so I'm back this evening to see if I can zip my way through another one. Because I'd like to give folks at least a couple days to look over that one and pick out potential trade bait, tonight I'm going to do the same with my show pickups from last Friday.

I continued my standard practice of taking the first Friday of the show off from work despite Michigan not playing until Saturday evening, largely because I feel like I might miss out on some good stuff if I wait a day. So early Friday afternoon I headed out to Taylor and spent around two or two and a half hours digging through lots of boxes. It was certainly worth the effort with the deals available that day. Dime cards were 100/$7 (and even better deals were there if you bought larger quantities but I'd had enough by then) and the next level up was quarter-ish cards at five/$1.

Here's a quick spending breakdown before I get to the scans:

• 100 @ $0.10 each = $10
• 125 @ 5/$1 = $25
• 10 @ 2/$1 = $5
• 7 @ 2$ = $14
• 5 @ 5/$20 = $20

That's $74 and he asked for $70.

Before I left I hit up the vintage guy I check out once in a while and grabbed eight of his $3 cards that go eight for $20. That means I left having spent $90 on some 255 cards--not bad!

Here we go with some trade bait. Please make your requests via comment/email/TCDb offer as always.

UD Finite rookies /1299; Moments & Milestones /150.

More M&Ms /150.

The rest of the /150 M&Ms, plus a Black parallel /25. The Studio Stars inserts aren't SNed but look awesome.

Bonds /10,000; Brown /2000; Ensberg /2006; Giles /150; King /3499; Reynolds /500. 
Ayanbadejo /1000; Denson, Huard, and King /2999; Graham /399; Hali /999; Mason /2009; McNown /2500; Moore /2010.

Moreau /2000; Redman /2500; Stith /1500; Westbrook is a Promo; Williams /500.

Pettis, Schaub, and Shiancoe /999; Stith /1500; Williams /999.

And now we get to my keepers:

These six items are among the eight I snagged from the vintage guy for $20. I'm very short on Bunning Tigers cards (and Yankee Killer Lary as well), Cash is always a winner, and the quartet of '74 Topps Stamps was too cool to pass up, especially since it added a new Freehan to my collection.

The dimes and $0.20 cards were as good to my collection as they were to the piles of trade bait I'm building. A numbered Bondo, a new Grandy, another Griffey for the set from which his card hails, Mr. Padre, the Professor, a sweet acetate Manning, and three of the four new Cals I added that day.

A numbered Pudge for under a buck? Yes, please! Not only did I hit all four of Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken, but I also got both blog namesakes too in Grandy and JV. Cecil looks cool in UD holo form. Ripken and Ozzie were All-Star stalwarts. And my first relic of Skubal, who put on an ace-like performance to end the 2023 campaign, is a 2021 jersey from A&G for just $2!

I didn't skip the other sports either, coming up with a sweet acetate Iggy plus a $2 signature of former star Trey Burke. That was such a nice deal I added a second one to send Jeff's way (since that's exactly what he would have done for me). It's just my second autograph of his among seven hits so I thought it was a particularly good score.

As for football, I came up with a couple more of those Donruss Premium Press Proofs, and I'll have to see how close I am to a team set at this point, but it was cool that they were RC parallels of Haskins and Ojabo. Law is a 2000s Ultra Gold Medallion, Funchess represents yet another sweet acetate insert, and we finish up with a final parallel, an Elite Pink, to add to Ojabo's growing collection.

I don't know how often my favorite seller will have those dime and $0.20 boxes but I've really been enjoying the time I've spent digging through them for gems so I hope to see them at upcoming shows.

Anyway, as usual, I hope you enjoyed a recap of my show experience, and I'll remind y'all one more time to please feel free to stake claims to some of the trade bait above!

As for me, besides packing up some envelopes soon, I think I may go back to the blogger trades I need to cover, then sprinkle in some eBay pickups and more TCDb transactions.

2022 trade package #26: the Collector

Now that I've made lots of progress getting Christmas packages out in the mail, it's time to get back to what I was fortunate to receive this month! Chris (the Collector) went the Xzibit route, sending Christmas cards with a Christmas card:

Chris is a nice dude, confirmed (as if I didn't already know that.

Here's the cardboard contents:

Scan number one includes cards of a couple local teams: the Tigers and Wings. I love that Chris hit both my former and current blog namesakes in Granderson and Verlander. Curtis is seen on a Mets-appropriate Orange parallel (/250) from 2014, though of course that color also works for his original team. JV appears with both the Tigers (Topps' Chasing History insert) and his new old team, the Astros. Dig the back of the latter, which is just a blast to look at:

Since that injury-abbreviated 2020 campaign he tacked on an 18-4 record/1.75 ERA/185 K NL Cy Young season and his first World Series winning decision while earning ring number two. To say his career has been special is an understatement!

Current (though injured) Tigers pitcher Skubal joins the orange party with that parallel from last year's Topps Big League to sew up the baseball group.

Over on the ice we have a fun group of Wings. Datsyuk and Zetterberg are two Detroit players I associate with each other because they were longtime European teammates (02-03 through 15-16) that were late round draft pick gems (sixth and seventh rounds, respectively) back when the Wings were great at that. They also won the 2007-08 Cup together while spending their entire careers with the franchise, and tallying more than 300 goals.

Chris Osgood is another name that's known well around Hockeytown, even if he wasn't initially given the respect he deserved. After backing up veteran Mike Vernon in 96-97 he led the team to a cup repeat. A few years later he'd be off to the Isles and Blues, but he'd return to Motown in time to run it back with the 07-08 squad mentioned above.

I have less to say about Hirose because he's a Michigan State guy, but as with those in other sports (see: Kirk Gibson) I'm willing to give him a shot.

As for Michigan State's big brother, here's some cards of guys that played football and hockey for my old school. Brady, Manningham, and Woodson are all legends of the Ann Arbor gridiron, and all won Super Bowls in the NFL too. Tom's 2022 Father's Day card looks great with the old college action photo, which appears way better than his NFL season, which proves he should have hung 'em up and put time into his marriage. The Manningham (hey, another former blog namesake, that's all three!) 2011 Rookies & Stars parallel is absolutely sick, a beautiful blue that works for his alma mater and pictured team. That one's also numbered /75 and is definitely my favorite of the bunch. That's not to knock the die-cut UM card of GOAT CB Charles Woodson out of '98 Press Pass, though, because the design, including a textured football, kicks all kinds of ass!

Heading back to the ice one more time we have a really nice pair of cards of former sniper Mike Cammalleri. The 15-year center scored almost 300 goals while suiting up for five different teams, including two stints each with the Kings and Flames depicted in his two above cards. On the left is a base from 2007-08 UD Mini Jersey, a fun product with the thing in the name as something to chase, plus what I believe to be a red(?) Prizm parallel from 2013-14. Whatever the actual color, Chris continued to kill it with the team-appropriate parallels in this package.

Chris, thanks so much for the warm Christmas wishes and cards of both types! I'm happy to report that a present of your own is on its way back to New Jersey as we speak, possibly in time for Sunday, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I loved these early gifts!