2026 trade package #6: Johnny's Trading Spot

I skipped going to my monthly show today in favor of going tomorrow, mostly out of laziness, but the weather's not exactly cooperating either (lots of fog and rain). Instead, I'll put that time towards showing off my final February trade package.

As it happens, that came to me courtesy of John of Johnny's Trading Spot. This was the first time we swapped cards, and that started when I threw some John Elways into a package Angus brought across the border for me to send John's way to make shipping easier. John was nice enough to return the favor with a package that looks pretty similar to others I've seen across some blogs (in a good way!), but with a distinctly Detroit flavor.

I'm starting off with these 1990 Panini Stickers since they're the oldest items from the mailer, and also because everything else comes from one manufacturer, making for a very nice sampler. I can still remember ripping packs of these stickers as a kid and filling up my album, hoping for the Tigers and nicer items, such as that foil helmet card. Henneman and Lemon are also PC guys and are most definitely welcome here.

Everything else you'll see here is a Fleer brand, largely from the 90s but with some aughts thrown in as well. This group represents all of the Ultra cards he sent my way. Fleer's first "premium" brand debuted in 1991 but started using its more typical full-bleed photo/foil combo the following year. The product's run from 1997-2001 has some of my favorite design elements I associate with the set, especially the neon lettering look.

This group includes single cards from 1995 (Fryman) and '96 (Williams), four from 2000, and a trio from 2006. Fryman, Palmer, Bondo, and BInge are all PC guys, plus like I said, I really favor a certain era of these, so those 2000s look amazing to me. 

A 90s Fleer product that was even higher-end than Ultra was Flair. These cards were released on thicker stock with even more gold foil elements, and they retained the full-bleed photo greatness of other products like Topps's Stadium Club.

The set made its debut in 1993 and is represented here by the complete first scan plus first two cards of the second image. It's awesome for me to see PC favorites like Fielder, Fryman, Gibby, Henneman, Phillips, Froot Loops, and Sweet Lou. Still, for as bad as that decade's teams were, I've deployed the "1990s Tickers SUCKED" tag tonight.

The remaining seven cards from the second scan represent the '94 set, one that was fairly similar in design to the previous year's, including dual front images, while adding lots more gold foil in the form of the larger player name plus team. Gibby and Phillips are the highlights of these for me, as is one of the inserts added in '94: Hot Gloves.

Up next is a quartet from 1995's E-Motion, a product under the SkyBox name. These are very 90s Fleer-coded with an experimental design that's kind of busy, one that's most noteworthy for the "emotion" on each card. I don't think anyone's ever associated the word "delighted" with the ultra-competitive Gibson, but I'm still happy to see guys like him and Whitaker in this set. It may be weird, but it's of its time.

Keeping that word "experimental" in mind, another fun 90s Fleer offering was Metal Universe. This fusion of metallic elements and comic books debuted in 1996, and the first five cards you see here were found in that set. There's a big emphasis on crazy foil backgrounds that highlight the crazy imagery. Fryman represents my PC guys from the '96 set while Tony Clark (who recently resigned as MLBPA chief) and malcontent Bobby Higginson's cards were inserted into the '98 version.

I kind of mashed up a bunch of products in these two images, and we'll start with 2000 Skybox Dominion. Those feel like fairly textbook examples of a a Skybox product from around then, and I recall busting a decent amount of packs of those chasing some fun inserts. E-X always looked great, including the 2000 product represented here by another malcontent, Juan Gonzalez. And Encarnacion's a huge creep who's a great candidate for Chris's "Bad Guys in Sports Tier List" post, but Gamers was a fun rip back in 2000 thanks to the chase for relics.

Leading off the second scan, I suppose I could have included Weaver's beautiful 2001 Flair Showcase card with the earlier Flair items, but I think Showcase was in a league of its own and really showed how nice cards could look. Then, a couple years after Fleer released a pretty nice product called "Focus," they put out a "Jersey Edition" of the same name, chasing the hot trend of relics. Dean-O highlights the group for me, and well-known collector Dmitri Young is also among the group. Lastly, a lone example of 2004's Sweet Sigs stars Pudge, a Tiger for parts of five seasons who made his debut with the team that same year and helped bring the franchise back to the playoffs on 2006. The base set looks great and the relic and autograph cards are top-notch as well.

And now we've come to the final pair of images, ones that feature some of Fleer's best efforts over its storied but relatively brief existence. The manufacturer did a fantastic job of highlighting some of the game's HOFs, legends, and fan favorites in a number of products, but I think the product most synonymous with the idea is Greats of the Game. These always had beautiful, artistic designs with classic photos, and like Topps's Fan Favorites, they didn't limit admission to HOFers, which I've always appreciated.

A few Greats products are represented in these two scans. The recently deceased Lolich plus Jack Morris, a couple World Series heroes, start us off with the debut 2000 set, one I love for its amazing aesthetics. HOFers Cobb and Kell show off the 2002 design, one with an even simpler retro look that suits the photography well. Cochrane (listed as a Tiger!) is our third Mickey of this post, and he joins Mr. Tiger from Flair Greats, released in 2003 as a great fusion between the two brands. And lastly, Cochrane makes a repeat (including photo) appearance in the 2004 Greats set along with the previously seen Morris, plus Wolverines/Tigers Freehan and Gehringer, as the product went back to a very cool framed look. What a great collection of, well, greats, on great designs!

John, thanks for sending these to complete our first trade, I really appreciate it! I'm sure anyone reading here knows your blog well so I'll just mention that they should also find you over on TCDb. Good luck to your Braves this year and also to you making some headway on your wants of your favorite team!

Tomorrow I plan on heading to my usual show and then I'll probably put in some work readying my next post which should cover last month's show.

2025 trade package #27: Wes Moore

It's getting later on Christmas Eve but I'm still up for giving some thanks to another cool person who sent me cards in November (and getting a post up before the holiday official hits).

Tonight's cards came from Alabama native and former Pancake King, Wes Moore. I think most people who follow me here are aware of Wes's legendary trade war exploits and a sense of generosity that would put him in the Olympus of traders if one existed. In case anyone reading this hasn't heard of him (or the Pancake King story) before, just search his name on some of your favorite blogs to be amazed.

Anyway, it had been quite a while since either of us sent the other anything, I think, but his joy for giving certainly wasn't rusty when he sent me a nice bubble mailer last month. This one was filled with mostly Tigers, but also some football Wolverines--mighty kind of an Alabama fan towards one whose school was trying to poach the football coach from his!

Here's a look at what I found inside:

I have to say, the guy is still a pro, and the case these came in protected them perfectly.

Just in time for Christmas, this scan of Tigers includes silver and gold, and other colors too! There were enough Refractors in this envelope that I used the insert's name as a tag for this post. Former Tigers Avila and Castellanos fit the bill here while Bondo, Coke, and Big Daddy bring the gold. Fielder also represents silver, like the bells, with an Electric Diamond parallel from '94 UD.

Hey, more color! I still remember the hype around '90s Select Certified and its rare mirror parallels, which is somewhat similar to the more recent appreciation for that era's Precious Metal Gems. Fulmer and AJax bring more Refractor heat while All-Star Riley Greene bucks the Christmas colors trend with Sky Blue. No Refractors for Manning but the colorful effect is essentially the same on Prizm and Topps Rainbow Foil inserts. Nokes is a great throwback to one of my favorite 80s Tigers plus the fun stuff we got back then like stickers and boxed sets. And Magglio looks cool on a throwback Topps insert.

Will the Tigers stop pinching pennies long enough to give Skubal (and his fans) the gift of a new contract? I'm not holding my breath, but it's not impossible. Panini didn't have this festive season in mind when they made the parallel Tork appears on, which is more suited for another holiday. The Stadium Club Super Team card is my favorite in the package because I haven't found them easy to acquire and this one includes two of my Tigers favorites in Alan Trammell and Tony Phillips. Turley's another Refractor but I didn't recognize his name, which can happen as Bowman products sometimes include 16th round picks like the ex-Baylor P. And speaking of Refractors, how about a Negative version of a player who was fairly positive for Detroit, Justin Upton?

Last up tonight, the closest to gold these Michigan Football cards come is the maize they're wearing, but there's some silver to be had. And more importantly all nine cards feature college photos, which is very cool!

I'm not a big Leaf fan these days, but I have to say that Trinity Steel card of Blake Corum looks quite nice, partially because of the cool lava pattern in the background (in addition to the cool shot of him running hard as always). His '23 backup and lightning to Corum's thunder, Donovan Edwards, gets four cards added to his collection thanks to college stalwart SAGE. The fourth card is from their Artistry product, but I haven't found a checklist for that yet to get added on TCDb and will have to work on it when I have time.

Defensive backs Will Johnson and Makari Paige join the Don out of this year's SAGE product, and the latter represents my first card of Makari that isn't a Valiant Michigan issue. Ex-#1 WR Greg McMurtry, a five-year NFL vet, looks good on his '90 Score RC. And Colts LB Kwity Paye looks ready to bring the pain on a Wild Card Matte issue.

Wes, thanks for thinking of me once again, and I appreciate your trademark generosity and ability to get nice cards into the hands of others. I don't know if I can find anything you might need but if I do, rest assured I'll work on returning the favor. For now I'll happily thank you for this perfect Christmas present.

I'll be taking tomorrow off, of course, and then plan on returning with a couple show posts next on the docket. Thanks for reading and Merry Christmas, y'all!

2025 TCDb trade roundup: January through April

I recently hit the 200 transaction mark on TCDb which is pretty cool to me since I first started trading there way back in 2019. Today I'm showing off the goods from my 2025 deals made there before I took a hiatus to get my trade list updated a bit. All of these were completed between January and April:

deadhead11:

A couple former Tigers including a cool food issue of the versatile Tony Phillips, plus plenty of help for my Michigan Football RC project (and a sweet Michigan uni insert of Tai Streets!).

heattreat:

This one was all baseball with some great looking parallels, numbered cards, and combinations thereof. Of course I was super excited to add a new Rich Hill!

ILLRIMESAYA:

This deal saw two cards go in each direction but one of the two I got went to another one of my trade regulars. The one for me was this sweet die-cut Maddux insert. 90s inserts rule!

jasongerman9 (PIF):

Jason's one of my oldest friends on the site and he sent me some very cool stuff in early January. The ("Christan," not "Christan") Bullock is my first of the former Michigan Baseballer, a Leaf Perfect Game auto with a huge jersey swatch. His cards are limited to this product so I really appreciated him tracking one down for me.

 

Football-wise, the '60 Topps of Barr and '61 Fleer of Smith are both second-years of guys who appeared on very few cards, so not only are they great looking vintage pieces, but they're rare appearances of guys I collect!

 

Those are joined by my first signature of LB David Bowens, a two-year Wolverine who transferred to Western Illinois, then played in the NFL for 12 seasons. Just my second card of him, what you see above is a 2005 Topps Turkey Red auto. I love adding new players to my hits collection so this one's exciting too!

 

Last up is some sort of collectable coin of Tom Brady, one that was made around 2005 or so. It's certainly a cool item of the GOAT QB.

 

Thanks as always to Jason for the amazing stuff he sends me! 

Ymmat (PIF):

Joe's another good dude I love dealing with on the site, and besides trades we've sent a number of PIFs back and forth as well. He surprised me with this one back in April, a PWE that included some baseball and football from my wantlists.

I've since returned to active trading on the site and completed more than 20 trades with more likely on the way so I'll probably have another trade roundup to catch up on those sooner than the end of the year (unless I want to have a ton to cover in December!).

I should be back relatively soon with my eBay purchases for the first half of '25. Until then, just one week until Michigan Football kicks off its season. GO BLUE! 

2023 trade package #6: Chronicles of Fuji

It may be April 1st but no foolin', I'm actually posting something! I have an absolute ton of stuff to catch up on so I'm going to try to rapid fire through some of it as best as I can.

Last month I was one of the lucky recipients of a package from Fuji (Chronicles of Fuji), who's sent me lots of great stuff in the past. This time I got a small flat rate box of all kinds of cool items that hit multiple spots in my collections:

It certainly makes sense to start off alphabetically with Jim Abbott. Those oddball Baseball Card Magazine cards are very cool and you'll see more of them a bit later. Retiring future HOFer Miggy featured heavily in this bunch with an excellent nine items (more below), all from Panini.

The remaining Miggy cards here look great too. The Dominators insert is numbered /999 and I love the callbacks to Preferred and the Gallery of Stars insert, plus the die-cut is a plus. Can't go wrong with a pair of DK-related Cobbs. Fielder's UD hologram card is a beaut. And The first of a run of Larkins is also a Topps throwback done by the previously-mentioned magazine.

More Larkins! I'll get to 1000 of his soon at this rate. The pair of numbered V-Marts get a big thumbs up from me as well, especially the Season Stat Line parallel numbered to his 2013 batting average. That "blank" spot is actually a blank front printing glitch issue of HOF P Jack Morris which I'll be happily keeping. Nokes was indeed exciting as a slugging C for a few years with the Tigers. And Palmer and Phillips are two recent favorite PCs.

Scherzer, Tanana, and Verlander combined for 361 wins (out of 686 for all teams) as Tigers, and I'm interested in seeing how the Mets teammates fare this year (as soon as JV is healthy again). And lastly we have should-be HOFer Lou Whitaker.

After one more Sweet Lou there's some fun oddball team logo items and then cool inserts of ex-Tigers I don't tend to collect, but I'll likely keep at least some of them because the cards are great!

Here's most of the rest of the baseball stuff--horizontals and oddball sizes--though there's still a bit more to go. I don't think I'd ever seen that Phillips/Jefferies insert before and it was a definite need for Tony's PC, so kudos to Fuji for finding that one for me! The JaCoby will likely find a better home with one of his bigger collectors soon. And how about all the insanely cool oddball stuff? Champ Summers and Steve Kemp are the stars of the Fleer Stamps on the right.

Paul Gibson is another ex-Tiger I don't collect but I'm not getting rid of what represents my first '91 Topps Desert Shield card! The auto is of Ann Arbor-born Tigers draftee Shannon Withem, a P whose entire MLB career consisted of 3 IP in a 1998 game for the Jays. Then you see the first of the largest items in the package, Donruss All-Star Standups of Jack Morris and Sweet Lou!

Joining those were the even larger regular All-Star cards. Here you see the team set sans Tram. What a great callback to the '84 team!

The basketball and football portions weren't as bountiful but were no less appreciated. Joining ex-Piston Grant Hill and current (for now, anyway!) UM coach Juwan Howard from his own playing days is my first autograph of fellow Fab Fiver Jimmy King. It's a Signature Rookies card so you get some nice college action in the photo, making it a Michigan uni card, besides the bonus of it being my first of King, the 31st different member of my basketball collection.

Over on the football side we have cool numbered cards of Brian Griese and Mike Hart, the latter of which is a "base" RC despite having the Refractor finish on it. Meanwhile, three of the four(!) autographs here are of the Michigan uni variety, a fun reminder of Michigan's spring game having been played earlier today. Breaston's from the fantastic 2009 Topps Magic set, and since I already had it but Jeff didn't, I brought that to him when I visited him at a recent show (more on that in a future post!). Former QB Todd Collins gets a new auto card from '95 Superior Pix, a very similar card to the King above, and that includes a college uni shot that also meets my approval. My favorite ex-Michigan RB Hart adds an autograph to his RC above, this one from a Topps set that shows him during his brief NFL career with the Colts. Fortunately he's doing great as UM's current RBs coach! And fellow legend Marquise Walker closes us out with a very, very nice Topps Finest auto/RC that includes a nicely done signature with bonus jersey number.

Fuji, thank you as always for the generosity and effort that went into you sending this package my way. I'm always thrilled to keep trading with you and this recap shows all the reasons why that's the case. I have a few cards I grabbed for you at a recent show and will try to hit you back once I have enough for an appropriate response. Until then, may the rest of your school year be uneventful!

2022 Sportlots purchases: 90s and 2000s Tigers PCs

I'm back this evening with the last of my Sportlots purchases from late last year. Yep, it only took me until ::checks:: mid-March to cover my 2022 purchases!

Anyway, as we just did this past weekend it's time to spring forward and look at some cards starring players that are younger than those in part 2. Tonight's subjects are Tigers and Tigers-related PCs from the 90s and 2000s (including a small number of 2010s):

Cecil is one of the players in this post that got a very nice bump to his collection with some 19 additions, giving me a pretty nice total of 225. Since I'm not supercollecting him (as in, I'll take what I can get but I'm not actively chasing everything) I put my focus on affordable but cool looking base and inserts. There's plenty of cool to go around here with Collect-a-Books, a hologram, Sportflics, fun inserts, and more. Fleer's EMotion product is a precursor to the bordered/framed cards you still see these days.

You'll see a bit more of Big Daddy down below but the '96 foursome up top is quite cool if you ask me. Yep, we're back in the days when I loooooved Topps' products!

Two Grandersons does not equal too many Grandersons, but they're always welcome in any quantity. I think the Unique Unis insert could have been less bland but I do like the recognition for Detroit's olde English "D." The shiny Lineage parallel was a fun add too, even if it's from his time with the Evil Empire.

BInge is a Tiger I've come to appreciate a bit more lately, but I think what spurred me to collect him a bit more recently was when he joined UM's baseball coaching staff for a short time. Two of his three additions are on display here from Diamond Kings and one of Topps' many parallels.

As for Dean-o I count a massive 30 new items for his collection giving me a TCDb-dominating 469 cards. I'm now more than halfway through the wantlist I put together on the site, where I've excluded a number of issues that don't really fit my collection. This group includes some fun 90s inserts such as a '97 Studio Silver Press Proof and Ultra Gold Medallion plus a '98 Finest No-Protector parallel. The Flair Showcase card is certainly a highlight in terms of base design quality.

There's even more 90s insert-age to see here, like four different versions of his Topps Stars card, numbered between 2299 and 9799 copies. The die-cut Paramount Team Checklist is also a beaut, and who wouldn't love to see Pacific back in the game in this time of bland, thoughtless designs?

There's a few more Palmer cards below but this scan gets us through the rest of his vertically oriented stuff. The die-cut Black Diamond Reciprocal parallel and Topps Gold insert were of particular interest to me, but it was also nice to track down a cheap copy of his '01 Topps Limited base as well.

Underappreciated spark-plug Tony Phillips gets a bit more love in a scan below but right here you see him with the Angels on his '98 Score Showcase parallel, an insert that brings me back to a fun era of chasing such cards.

This purchase also boosted my Mickey Tettleton collection a bit. I'm over half the number of Froot Loops' cards documented on TCDb and maintain a huge lead when it comes to him as well. This time it was all parallels of the slugging catcher, with a pair from Stadium Club, a Collector's Choice Silver Signature, and the '97 version of Score's Showcase, another personal favorite.

Then we have the remaining six Fielder cards, all of which are landscape style. The Leaf Power Brokers and Donruss Bomb Squad inserts, the latter pairing him up with NL counterpart Andres Galarraga, highlight his ability to mash dingers. Denny's provides his second hologram card of the post. '95 Pinnacle's Museum Collection is a top 10 all-time parallel for me. I nabbed one more Sportflix issue from '95 because I've always enjoyed that product. And why not a third Score parallel as well?

We can just about (but not quite) close things out with this scan. Inge gets one more addition in the form of an Emerald parallel, appropriately from his brief tenure in Oakland in 2012. I only scored one AJax this time but I made it count in the looks department since it's a Topps Chrome Refractor. Palmer gets a couple more interesting UD items and a '95 Pinnacle Museum Collection card of his own. I have 21 cards from that parallel and another four on my list! And Tony Phillips gets three more added to his total (257, again, a TCDb lead) thanks to Stadium Club parallels.

We're not quite done though because there's still this oversized item:

Palmer joins Barry Larkin as having one of these cards in my collection from 1994 Upper Deck All-Star Jumbos. While a chunk of the cards focused on one player, this one pairs up Dean-o with ex-Giant and new teammate for 1994 Will Clark. Palmer's fellow corner IF put up five straight All-Star seasons between 1988-92 in San Fran, and he'd make his final Midsummer Classic team in '94. Dean, for his part, put up 19 homers during that shortened campaign but wouldn't reach the All-Star game until 1998 with the Royals.

Hooray, I've finally covered all of these Sportlots additions! Next time I expect you'll be feasting your eyes on a very generous trade package from one of the coolest bloggers around, and then I'll get to my backlog of other stuff (eBay, a show, and TCDb trades, at least). Happy almost baseball season, y'all!

TCDB trade roundup: I've got my mind set on you

I'm back today with a roundup of eight TCDB trades from the past few months. While I don't feel like every post in this series needs to have a theme, I decided to pick one for this post anyway: deals that brought me at least one card for any of the baseball sets I'm working on. Of course, I love to make bigger trades when I can, so these deals also include a number of my teams and player collections, so this'll still be a fun mix of new stuff.

There's a ton to look at, so let's get to it! I uploaded the scans in the order they appeared in my drafts folder, which were named alphabetically by member name, so these aren't in chronological order, which I figure doesn't really matter.

First up is Orioles fan Aschroyer. I swapped a few cards of his team for these:

The set wantlist card in question here is in the #6 spot: Benji Gil's '95 Finest base. I was happy to tack on some Topps-branded Minor League cards of former Wolverines Brewer, Criswell, Franklin, and Nwogu. And because his end of the deal included a Manny Machado RC I didn't care about, I was able to snag a jumbo relic swatch (my first) of Jake Cronenworth from last year's Select. Dig that pinstripe!

Another O's fan, doublee919, had been after a couple Ripken inserts I had listed, and we came to a pretty fair four-for one swap:

The first two are base cards from '94 SP and '99 Topps Opening Day, with an especially nice photo on the latter from back when Topps wasn't mailing it in. The '96 Leaf All-Star Game MVP Contenders card was a fun inclusion from a 90s inserts standpoint. And the set card for me is #3 of the 10-card 2632 insert Topps released in 2015. I now have eight of those and just need #s 6 and 9. And I'm glad they didn't make 2,632 of them!

Floridian FSCGrad777 (who would have thought) originally reached out to me on Twitter, I believe, and we were able to put together a trade I know I was stoked about. I ended up with the following 15 cards in return for just five:

Blomgren and Hajjar are Michigan guys, of course. The Gwynn (Epix!), Larkin (Silver!), and Maddux (Staremasters! #d /1500) were pure "90s inserts rule" picks and there's nothing more that needs to be said other than I love them. Evans was a fun throwback that made for a good throw-in. And the Palmer I believe was a bonus as well.

Even more Palmers, including a Refractor and Atomic Refractor? Yes please! Ripken's a '97 Finest Silver just like his NL counterpart above. Tettleton's '96 Finest Refractor scan actually does it justice, which is great. And the very last card, Andres Galarraga's base from the same product, is the one that lowered the number on another wantlist.

I hit up member George Hayes primarily for a little set help as he happened to be one of the few folks on the site who could move the needle on one of my longest set-builds, and a few others too:

Abbott's a '96 Pinnacle Starburst Artist's Proof because hell yeah! (And '90s inserts rule!) Greenberg and McLain look great in the classy '94 Ted Williams product. Palmer's '94 UD Electric Diamond parallel is another notch in his belt. And then we have four set wants. Servais is from '95 Donruss, down to just one card needed for Series 1. The big gets were Olerud and Gonzalez out of '97 Score Hobby Reserve, specifically the cards with the "HR-" prefix on the numbers on the back. I've been working on replacing the incorrect versions I unknowingly had for years and now I'm back down to two, I believe. And Piazza's card is one I didn't realize counted toward a full set of '98 UD--an SP of him from his brief (five games and eight days) tenure with the Marlins that year before the Dodgers star got flipped to the Mets. So consider that one done. Again.

My deal with Washington state member nwcardsupplies hinged mostly on set wants so it's perfect for this recap. Colin was great to work with and very patient when I realized after we agreed to our deal that my inventory was off and I was missing one of his cards. I was able to buy another copy on eBay and send it his way since there's no way I want a bad reputation on a site that's so amazing for traders. Here's what I ended up with:

Scan 1 of 2 is mostly set wants out of 1994 and '95 Finest, '95 Donruss, and '97 Score Hobby Reserve again (though unfortunately I didn't ask him to check the numbering on the latter and it ended up being the wrong version. Life goes on.) Maddux's '95 Donruss appearance here technically doesn't go towards the set but his PC instead since I'm currently only chasing Series 1 and he's the first card found in the second series.

Scan the second opens with five more cards destined for set storage. The first is the start of my chase of '95 Skybox E-Motion's Cal Ripken Jr. Timeless set, and next to it is another from 2015 Topps's 2632-themed chase set. Then we switch over to another Junior, Griffey, and three of his 2016 Topps The Kid inserts. My pursuit of that set now stands at 16 of 30, so not bad.

The others here are sweet PC cards of a couple favorites. Barry's is a '98 Score Showcase parallel while the late Tony Phillips appears on a '96 Fleer Update Tiffany parallel and '98 Score Angels team set Platinum variation.

My transaction with Puma1125 is the biggest swap you'll see in this post as I sent him 85 cards towards his '95 Score wantlist and got a solid 36 back that I wanted:

This one brought back a great mix of years, brands, and players. A couple of old Evans cards from his pre-Tigers days, a post-Detroit Granderson, two of Griffey (showing off that sweet swing), two more of Gwynn (I love me some 90s Score parallels, as this post makes obvious), and a couple more of ace closer Hernandez.

Herndon and Lemon were '84 Tigers favorites (and beyond), of course. I keep sneaking in new Larkins wherever I can, even low-end stuff like Classic. And Maddux continues making a good number of appearances in trades I'm showing off this evening.

Peaches and Stanley are also Tigers favorites from the past. The two Ripken inserts were a win for me, especially the '97 Topps All-Stars card from one of my favorite Topps products of all time. I managed to pair up Tram (1982 Topps Squirt) and Lou ('87 OPC Stickers) for a double-play in this scan. And then we have four of the five set wants from this deal: Jim Thome from '94 Finest and then a trio for my own set build of '95 Score Series 1 (which is now complete!).

The final set card (and baseball fodder here) is Donnie Baseball's '96 Score subset appearance, the last one I needed for the last of my extra sets that are for trade. As you can see I was also able to tack on some fun football PC additions like Anderson's Michigan uni Classic issue, some '93 Topps Gold, and a 2008 Cleveland team set issue of Braylon.

My deal with RJeng is another that involved a mistake I had to correct as I'd mis-IDed one of the cards I'd sent him and had to find a replacement on eBay once again. It all worked out, though, and my side included these:

Another '95 Finest base, this time of former Pirate Esteban Loaiza, is the lone set card. The injured Mize is seen on yet another RC for his collection, in this case '21 Bowman Chrome. Larkin's cameo here is courtesy of Topps' 2021 Double Headers insert I've mentioned before, and it reprints his first Topps card (not necessarily RC) on the front and final base appearance on the back:

For all my squawking about too many reprint sets this is one to which I'll give a thumbs up. Fellow 90s star Gwynn is last up with a Denny's hologram from '94 when they were made by Upper Deck. Sweet!

Colorado resident twprkj was the other half of tonight's final deal, another one that involved a bit of a screw-up. We agreed on a three-for-four deal where I got the larger end, and unfortunately the most valuable item in the PWE I sent his way, a ~$5 basketball RC, got absolutely mangled. He was actually content to just take the loss but I told him I'd handle it, and after a bit I was able to nab another copy of that card on eBay and send it his way along with a couple bonus cards--in a BMWT, just to be safe.

Here's what he sent me:

'95 Finest figured in the first and last trades in this post, go figure, and why not '90s slugger Jeff Bagwell? Pinnacle's 2013 Swing for the Fences acetate (or acetate-adjacent) inserts look amazing and I knew I needed to have one. You won't see Ryan LaMarre pop up on here too often since I've nabbed most of his easier to get cards, but here's one I didn't own: his 2016 Ginter SP RC. And speaking of Ginter, here's another trade where I found a way to up my Larkin collection thanks to a 2020 Chrome mini. He also threw in that Detroit olde English "D" sticker which looks awesome. I'm not sure if it's from any licensed baseball product or just a standalone thing but I'm happy to have it either way.

After I took care of the issue mentioned above, Eric expressed his appreciation a couple times in messages to me, then sent me the following wants, which proved that there were no hard feelings and that he's a good dude:

The Henne card is (I believe) a base offering from Panini's 2014 Rookies & Stars Longevity product (and not the Longevity parallel of the Rookies & Stars product. So confusing!) It's been long enough (pun intended) since former Dolphins #1 overall pick Jake Long suited up for St. Louis that I initially associated the Rams team card from 2015 Topps with current CB David Long, even though he wasn't even in college at that point! And the biggest surprise was a jersey relic of WR Amara Darboh from 2017 Panini out of an insert called Squires Jerseys. I didn't have this one yet so it's relic #14 and hit #43 of the former Wolverine, but given his Darboh collection is also one of the best on the site, I wasn't remotely surprised that the TCDB images of the card were provided by Jeff.

I've still got quite a few trades to cover, some large and some small, so you should expect a few more posts like this coming up reasonably soon, though likely without a theme, at least an intentional one. In the meantime, I hope some of you take this post as a sign to get trading on TCDB!