TCDB trade roundup: Hebron Reds Fan, LakeShow, Awesomo1389, and bravefan1

This evening I have the results of four smaller TCDB deals from earlier this year. There's lots of cards to look at so let's get right into it!

First up was a PWE deal with Hebron Reds Fan. No surprise here--he wanted a few of my Reds, mostly some dupes that came from the big collection I bought on Facebook. In return I got these:

As you can tell I took advantage of trading on the site to fill in some 1984 Tigers PCs, especially their earlier 80s issues, some of which show them as members of other teams. The two Sportflics cards in the first scan star Tony Gwynn (on a best NL RF trio card with Dave Parker and Kevin Bass) and Willie Hernandez. Morris and Lemon feature on items of vastly different sizes. The Reds at the bottom of the second scan weren't in the greatest shape but HRF made that clear in our communication and I didn't give up much anyway so I was pretty happy with this deal.

Next was another PWE deal, this time with member LakeShow. He requested just four of my cards, two of which were basketball and of zero interest to me. His offer of nine items was good enough that I didn't even need to send a counter:

Up top we have a pair of 1985 Topps Stickers including a foil of leading PC guy Cal Ripken Jr. plus an 80s Donruss offering and two 90s pieces of the Iron Man. If I don't have 'em I need 'em to bulk up his collection so I'll take whatever! I do like the National Packtime card from '95 quite a bit.

The other group helped me knock a couple '96 Ultra Gold Medallions (the only year they were all gold foil like that) off my wantlists for PC guys Hal Morris and Tony Phillips. The envelope also included the first of a good few #CroneZone cards you'll see this evening, this one from 2021 Topps Heritage, and the first of two UD Comic Ball cards, this one a new addition to my Jim Abbott PC.

Overall once again I was happy with the deal and everything involved when it came to this member, no surprise since he has almost 350 positive feedback comments to his name.

Awesomeo1389, a.k.a. Aaron from Grand Blanc, Michigan, is next. It turned out that I could help feed his Jim Abbott and John Smoltz PCs with a good number of dupes I had on hand, and it was nice being in a position to aid a fellow player collector like that. I sent him some 29 cards of the two star pitchers from the state we call home, and in return I got some baseball and hockey (plus one each of basketball and football):

When I said I loaded up on some '84 Tigers I wasn't lyin'! Bergman and Lemon appear on pre-Tigers cards while Parrish is seen with one of his post-Detroit teams, the Angels, but Brookens and Herndon rep the team that won it all in '84 on Fleer cards from the year before they went wire-to-wire.

Everson and Finken look somewhat out of place here on their 1991 Line Drive issues but they're actually new additions to my Michigan Baseball PCs. Everson was a pitcher from my hometown of Livonia and signed with the Tigers as a UDFA but never made it above AAA. Finken, an IF drafted by the Dodgers in '88, also never made the bigs after five seasons in the minors, but like Everson, was able to appear on a handful of minor league issues. It's great to welcome two new members to the collection!

There's not much comparing two Gwynn cards made literally 30 years apart! The "Printer Proof" stamp on Ripken's Topps Gallery insert still means something to a 90s kid like me. On a related note I thought the photo on Fryman's '94 UD subset card looked awesome. And Griffey the elder and younger share a goofy UD Comic Ball card with Yosemite Sam.

I tend to check for just about everything I collect when I'm trading with someone so I added these non-baseball items. Rose and Harbaugh represent Michigan from their sports while hockey saw me add four of legendary Wings D-man Nick Lidstrom to go with three former UM icers. The gold Tim Hortons card of Connor is particularly nice given the success he's had this year.

Given my positive experience here, Awesomo1389 is another trader I can recommend on the site!

Last up tonight is my first of two deals with Scott from Ohio who calls himself bravefan1 on the site. His feedback is over 1400 so he's both prolific and great to work with, plus you know exactly what you need to have on hand to make a deal with him. In return for some '96 Flair dupes and a few nice inserts from the decade I got the cards in the below scans, which offered a nice boost to two up and coming stars of the game:

My collection of rule 5 phenom Baddoo is paltry so I thought it would be fun to add him here. Chalk up two more Larkins to my collection of the Michigan/Reds SS thanks to this pair from 2021 Gallery. Tigers P Mize, who's temporarily on hiatus but likely not for too much longer, was one of the two big winners here, and I'm certainly glad to add cards of him cheaply via trade instead of overpaying for them. The Panini-branded cards were of special interest to me. Ripken's from the super ultra thick 2021 Chronicles base set and his card makes the stack look bigger than it is!

And here we go back to the #CronZone with an excellent seven new items! Honestly his checklist has gotten out of hand like any young star in the current era of collecting, but I can't complain too much when I can add this many cards in a trade without having to give up anything I'll miss. The Panini Black out of Chronicles that you see up top is very cool though I was especially pleased to land the 2021 Topps Gallery Blue parallel on the right as it's numbered to just 75. Hopefully I can keep building my collection of him through deals like this one!

I added fellow Michigan guys Tommy Henry and George Sisler to this scan because they worked well as a theme. Henry, the pride of Portage, Michigan, appears 2021 Bowman Platinum Ice Foil parallel, and Gorgeous George makes a cameo by way of 2021 Diamond Kings on a very classy base card.

Once again I can highly recommend trading with this member as a ton of other TCDB traders have done so to their satisfaction, and now I can add myself to that number.

I'll be back with more soon as I continue trying to clear my card desk of TCDB trades!

TCDB trade: randylaw, part 1: Roar of '84

All the way back in April I completed what was just my third TCDB deal that wasn't with Paul, and it ended up being my largest until a couple months later. This awesome trader was Randy (randylaw), a fellow Michigander who hails from Lapeer, a city northeast of me starting to approach the thumb area of the state.

Over the course of three transactions (it was easier to create new ones when adding more cards to the deal), I ended up with almost 450 cards in exchange for about 750. The best part was that a large majority of what I sent Randy came out of the ridiculously cheap $10 Facebook lot I'd grabbed the previous month. Since I was pretty much playing with house money I didn't mind throwing in more cards since I could help him with his set wants and clear out some piles of stuff from those boxes.

Before I get to the cards I wanted to say that Randy was great to deal with and I'd highly recommend doing so yourself if you have the opportunity. He mentioned some health issues that might slow things down but I have zero complaints about how our deal went. We had an easy back-and-forth getting things added to the transactions, shipping went just fine, and I got everything I was expecting safely. What more can you ask for?

So I'm breaking this deal down into three posts since I'm inclined to show everything I scored for myself (I believe I picked up some trade bait as well). While I'm not usually the type to split things up like this I think it'll be worth it overall.

Still, the volume of cards means I went with photos instead of scans (I hope they're good enough to show off what I got), and that I'll probably be less wordy than usual in hopes that these posts don't take forever to finish.

Today's theme is the 1984 Tigers. The last of the franchise's squads to win it all (just a year after I was born!), it featured lots of players I enjoy collecting, and in this case it would appear that I landed at least one of each subject except Alan Trammell, since Randy didn't have any I needed.

Here are the 12 subjects in today's post and their stacks, some of those larger than others. Minus Tram, this covers the manager, the starting lineup (if you swap utility infielder Brookens in for future Mets slugger Howard Johnson at 3B), the top two starters, and the AL Cy Young/MVP-winning closer. What a team!

Image #1 covers the two subjects with the fewest and most new items in this group, and they form the bookends, which is pretty cool. How can you go wrong with a smiling Sparky on a Studio checklist? I added a solid 11 cards to the late Bergman's collection, spanning most of his Tigers career. I'm glad he was around long enough to make it onto Stadium Club and Ultra cards after those products pulled the industry kicking and screaming from the boring 80s. The previously mentioned Brookens' stuff is all from that decade but at least there's a good mix of brands. And Evans was the big winner today, though you'll see why in the last scan of the post. Here you can see I started with Donruss' '81 debut and went all the way through to '89 with a super eclectic bunch that includes some of the many OPCs you'll see today, plus a Sportflics cameo!

The second group begins with of two Gibby items you'll see today, a 1993 Metz Baking oddball I definitely hadn't see before. Then it's on to smiling closer Guillermo "Willie" Hernandez, the bullpen ace who was a shrewd pickup (along with Bergman) from the Phillies just before the '84 season. Naturally I was thrilled to add a Sportflics card of him as well! We already covered Gibson, so why not add his outfield teammates Herndon and Lemon back-to-back? I tracked down some OPC of both along with some other 80s needs like Donruss, Fleer, and Score. Those are low-end enough that I wouldn't have bought them in the past and just hadn't had them show up in trade packages yet, which is fine since TCDB ended up being a great resource for them! Finally, there's HOFer Jack Morris on all four teams for which he pitched in the Majors, even Cleveland, not to mention a Reds photo that must have been Spring Training action since he never pitched for them. These span 1982 (Donruss!) to 1995 (Collector's Choice) with a couple fun oddballs in between. Morris' haul was second to Evans, tied with our next subject,

...slugging catcher Lance Parrish. The eight-time All-Star socked 200+ homers in his 10 years in Detroit before appearing for the Phillies, Angels, Mariners, Indians, Pirates, and finally, Blue Jays. I managed to get almost all of those teams here, and even better, got a lot of shots of him in action behind the plate. As with Morris his haul spanned a large percentage of his career, going from '82 Fleer up to '95 Stadium Club. Meanwhile, his battery mate from 1979-86 Dan Petry was the next biggest beneficiary. Due to his career mostly taking place in the 80s, most of his cards here are from that time, with some nice early appearances from '81 Donruss (pre-facial hair!) and its sophomore version, and going on up to '91 UD and his sunset season. He has a few cards from his brief tenures with the Angels and Red Sox (mostly found in complete sets I already own) and you won't see any of those here.

Last up today are the minis and stickers. Evans appears on a good chunk of these, adding to the cards you saw earlier to give him an easy lead with 23 items. There's even a sticker of him with the Giants, though the rest are with the Tigers, including a couple 1988 back variations in row 5. Gibby got one sticker from '85, making Sparky the lone Tiger with a single item, and the back notes that the Tigers were 1984 AL Champions. Yep, that too. Hernandez and Morris round out the Topps Mini Leaders cards. Whitaker's only appearances are seven different variations from 1988 where the stickers on the front are different in each case. Herndon and Parrish hail from the '84 Topps Stickers product, and Lemon and Petry each share multiplayer stickers from the same set.

That's it for today but I assure you I have lots more to share from the other two piles, so look for posts on those fairly soon!

TCDB trade #1: TripleCrown24

Recently I made my first trade since joining up on TCDB.  Technically it's my second since I picked out some cards from Paul on the site and we went through some of the process to create a formal trade, including both of us getting feedback.  But for the purposes of this series (I'm hoping there's plenty more to come!) I'm considering this one #1.

My trade partner was TripleCrown24, a guy who collects Tigers and Lions, and he initiated the deal by offering a wantlist card of one of my supercollection PC guys, asking for one of the Miguel Cabrera items on my trade list.  I then used the site's counter-proposal feature to add a bunch more Cabreras I had available for him, and a few more things on his trade list I was interested in.  I came out a bit ahead so I told him he could add more from my trade list but he was happy as-is.  Wanting to make a good impression, though, I tossed in around 25 Chris Sabo doubles I noticed he needed.

Heading back my way were 10 cards I'm happy to show off this evening:

We'll start with a quartet of '81 Topps Tigers, which I picked out since I don't own the set.  The 1980 squad featured a number of contributors to the '84 champs, but you wouldn't have known it at the time.  Brookens was in his first full season (second overall) and put up a career high 2.5 bWAR as the primary 3B.  Fidrych sadly was unable to return to effectiveness after his injury and would be out of the majors after this season.  Parrish, one of my favorite Tigers catchers not named Freehan, socked 20+ homers for the first of seven occasions in his second full season (fourth overall) and capped off the year with All-Star and Silver Slugger nods.  And Petry went 10-9 (for the first of consecutive years) in his second big league campaign, the beginning of a season-season run of double-digit wins.

I tossed in a Stadium Club base of Palmer because he grew on me while with Detroit, probably because of his big bat in the 90s.

And then there's the baseball PC stuff.  The Abbott is a Golden Rainbow parallel from the same '94 Stadium Club set as Palmer's above.  I chose the Gwynn Stadium Club base from this year sight unseen because I knew it would be great, and it is!  Looks like Mr. Padre at the '99 All-Star Game at Fenway.  Speaking if this year's Topps products, supercollection guy Clayton Richard appears on flagship's 150th Anniversary parallel, the card that started this deal.  It's my 125th that I've tracked down toward his checklist and only the second from 2019.  Last up is a 2014 GQ Mini of former blog namesake Curtis Granderson, who's still a blast to watch no matter the uniform.

 

I also noticed one football card that piqued my interest:  this 2017 Elite Draft Picks Passing the Torch insert starring Michigan greats Charles Woodson and Tom Brady.  Gimme college unis any day, and especially cards of two of the greatest Wolverines ever to go on to NFL glory.  The player choice here is somewhat unorthodox since the insert typically pairs a legend with an up-and-coming guy, hence the "passing the torch" theme.  Regardless, they both earned NCAA rings in '97 and then won it all in the pros, so I'm happy to see them here together.

This is exactly the kind of trade I was looking forward to making on TCDB and I look forward to having more to show off, especially as I get my trade bait added.  Until then, consider this a thumbs up for trading with TripleCrown24.  And don't forget to hit my TCDB profile to see what wants and trade items I've gotten to!

Complete sets: 2019 Topps Detroit Tigers 1984 Topps 35th Anniversary

Thanks to some lucky timing, today's post is even a bit more relevant.  As I mentioned in yesterday's trade recap covering the cards (and book!) Paul from Scribbled Ink gave me a couple Saturdays ago, we met up at that day's Tigers game since he had a ticket with my name on it.

Make sure to check out his post from this afternoon where he gives another quick recap of our rain delay experiences (and shows off the stuff I brought him, as well as some eBay and TCDB envelopes!).  That includes a quick look at the Topps '84 Tigers team set I nabbed for each of us using a gift card I got for Christmas last year.  Paul mentioned how difficult these were to find--he struck out at a previous game and we had to check multiple fan shops in the park multiple times before we lucked out and he spotted the last two we could find in the whole stadium.

This is a 10-card set starring members of that amazing '84 title-winning team, though unfortunately it lacks obvious choices like Lou Whitaker and Sparky Anderson (licensing issue or just Topps being Topps?).  That was enough for Paul to leave his sealed for now, but I was happy to bust mine open to post them here and add a checklist and scans on TCDB.

The sets are $12 apiece at the park (if you can find them) or $13 if you go to the team's shop on detroittigers.com, and they're sold in taped plastic cases.

They're based on Topps' 1984 design, naturally, but appear to have different photos, which is nice.

These are also super, super glossy, which is kind of a nice touch--though at this price it's the least they can do!

As for the backs, they fit as many years of each player's stats as they can, a bit tricky since a few enjoyed long careers.  The only guy that gets the original set's "Dateline" blurb is P Dave Rozema, whose career was short enough to allow plenty of room (so, again, why is he included?).

Questionable checklist aside, most of the players here are guys I love to collect, especially Gibby and Tram, not to mention C Lance Parrish, OF Larry Herndon, SP Jack Morris, and '84 AL Cy/MVP Willie Hernandez.

Tram and Morris are recent HOFers that had their numbers retired by the team so their inclusion here makes all kinds of sense.

Berenguer was a decent piece of the rotation that year but it still escapes me how you could omit Trammell's double play partner Whitaker, or the first manager to win the Series in both leagues.

Given Topps' love of all things reprints I'm glad these are numbered "DT-#" so they're easy to tell apart.

CF Chet Lemon is also an annoying omission, but I can't argue with his outfield partner Larry Herndon making the cut--he had a good Series at the plate and caught the final out in game 5.

While $12 per set sounds a bit steep--I thought so too--I figured these would be difficult to find online at least for a while, plus I had a gift card, so I wasn't spending my own money.  Plus, it's hard to go wrong with anything celebrating Detroit's most recent Series win.

Next time you can look forward to a hot-out-of-the-mailbox trade package from Seward's Folly!