2026 Facebook Marketplace purchases: half-year haul

It took a bit but in June I was finally able to grab a couple random card lots on Facebook Marketplace, one of my favorite things to do for the combination of entertainment value and potential for my collection plus trade bait. Although I technically made my first Facebook purchase back in March, these two buys were the first miscellaneous lots I was able to secure in 2026.

First, on Saturday, the 27th, I headed to a city not too far from my mom's house, and I spent $50 on a trio of not-quite-full 5000-card monster boxes. This was a fun one since the sports, years, and brands varied wildly. I'd say the majority was baseball, followed by football, with other stuff like basketball, hockey, and non-sports lagging behind. Although a decent chunk of stuff in the boxes was junk wax (and/or junk quality), I was very pleased with the amount of 90s and 2000s stacks.

Some of those have made it to my TCDb inventory or will do so soon, and others have been included in trade packages. And then of course there are my keepers, which you'll get to see right here:

Former Tiger (and MLBPA prez) Tony Clark was one of the most well represented players in the group with enough cards to fill out more than one scan. This one gives you a good idea of the makeup of a number of the bigger stacks. The Pinnacle Inside and Topps inserts look excellent and will make nice additions to his PC.

Clark, Fielder, and Fryman certainly weren't surprises in these boxes given the era, but the Heritage parallel of All-Star C Dillon Dingler definitely shocked me, though obviously in a good way!

Guillen was one of those random astute pickups the Tigers made in the 2000s to get back to respectability, and his 2004-2008 seasons in Detroit made him a guy I'm still happy to collect. While I didn't land any new Tigers cards, I did end up with six of him with his original club, the Mariners, including a few Pacific items. 

You saw a random Griffey insert above, and Gwynn, Larkin, and Maddux all appear in this one at least once, which made my 90s collector heart happy. Meanwhile, Magglio is another guy the Tigers picked up who helped them win more than they had in a long time, then retired as a fan favorite. Once again, anything I found of him was with his original team, the White Sox, which is totally fine. And that includes more Pacific goodness!

A random Parrish as a Pirate? Why not? He can join the club with Gibby and his two appearances with Pittsburgh ('92 Pinnacle and Stadium Club). Ripken completes the big four (or five, if you include Larkin) group with another nice Pacific pairing. And then we have a solid run of Pudge, who's seen his total in my collection climb quite a bit recently.

That includes a Pinnacle Inside Stand-Up Guys insert that he shares with former teammates Rusty Greer, Will Clark, and Juan Gonzalez. And no, I don't currently have the second card in the pair. Speaking of Juan Gone, Former Tigers P Justin Thompson, who was dealt to Texas in the ill-fated trade for that malcontent whiner, also got a nice little bump to his collection. I was very happy to see a pair of Score Showcase parallels of him, even if he isn't one of my top Tigers to collect.

Here's a bit of miscellany before I get to the horizontally oriented cards. Jim Abbott (plus Griffey, in one case) pops up in Comic Ball form, Gibby's big Series HR led to a Big Topps card, and Big Daddy gets the odd-est-ball card, a disc from 1994 Innovative Confections.

Last up from baseball, everybody here already made an appearance earlier, but this scan does give us a look at a few products we hadn't already seen.

Last up from this purchase is a football trio. WRs Chris Calloway and Nico Collins appear courtesy of Stadium Club and Panini Illusions, and QB/coach Jim Harbaugh is one of three Colts on a Collector's Choice team card.

As always this was a blast to flip through and I'm still working through what I want to keep for trade bait vs. dumping back into a lot I'll ultimately sell on the same site to free up some space.

Next, as in the very next day, a Sunday, I meet a woman at a nearby store to pick up a mostly recent football lot for which she was asking just $20. I can always use newer trade bait from that sport plus there's lots of newer Wolverines to collect, and the sample images looked promising. If anything, the real deal exceeded my expectations, including a couple relics, WAY more inserts than I figured, and some solid RCs too.

Though my keepers pile was fairly small, it was quite nice, plus the aforementioned stuff has already proved useful in my TCDb trading. Those keepers were the following:

Scan one of two includes a new Blake Corum base from Topps Chrome followed by some colorful parallels (and two RCs) of stud Browns DT Mason Graham.

Meanwhile, the second group is only slightly more diverse, comprising three players instead of two. Graham's college partner-in-mayhem, DT Kenneth Grant, joins Corum from Topps Chrome, and his trio includes a RC and two parallels, one of which is the very cool Football Leather Refractor. Young Bears (or whatever they'll be called when they're in Indiana) star TE Colston Loveland adds another RC to his pile, this one out of Mosaic. And RB Kalel Mullings also gets a colorful '25 parallel pair thanks to Donruss Optic and the same Football Refractor as Grant.

Like I said, I was happy to get back to nabbing a couple of these lots because they're so much fun when I can find them. And I'm happy to say that I was able to pick up more cards through FBM the following month, though that recap will have to wait a bit until I catch up on a couple other things.

Until then, may the weather remain as hot as the Tigers as we get tantalizingly close to college football season!

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 #6: Topps Cards That Never Were

Hey, look, I've finally made it to the last trade package I received in January! It was a busy month for my mailbox as this was #6 for the first month of '25, and it was a PWE from Jeremy of Topps Cards That Never Were.

He and I tend to send envelopes back-and-forth without warning, which is a lot of fun to do in this hobby of ours. I certainly wasn't expecting this one but enjoyed its contents as usual. Here's what Jeremy gifted me this time:

Not many managers get much more Classic than Sparky, and he still owns the Tigers record for wins with 1,331, exactly 200 more than fellow HOFer Hughie Jennings, the only other skipper in franchise history with more than 700 victories (Jim Leyland hit that number exactly).

Fielder and Fryman, seen on a pair of '92 issues (Big Daddy's a Gold Hologram version), were the main corner infielders in Sparky's twilight years in Motown. They manned those spots together from 1990-96, when Fielder was traded, a year after Anderson's last dugout appearance.

Keith (Topps Holiday) is tonight's only active MLBer but he still looks very promising despite struggling a bit to get his bat going for the surging 2025 Tigers.

When (not if!) I hit 1000 unique cards of Barry Larkin, it'll be thanks to many of you who've contributed, like this Donruss Orange parallel/'24 Panini Prizm pair from Jeremy. As of this post I need just 19 more.

Robson's the only recent guy besides Keith in this post but the OF and 2016 Tigers draftee (8th round) hasn't been in the organization since 2022.

Pudge joins Sparky in this post as a Tigers HOFer and he has something in common with Fielder above as well: the card you see above is the tougher to find Gold Hologram variant. It's really nice getting those knocked off my wantlists!

Big Daddy makes one more appearance featuring the star of my last post, Mickey Tettleton. The Cecil/Mickey pairing posted 35 and 32 HR in 1992, then 30 and 32 the following season when the UD card above was released.

Last up tonight is a 2014 Panini Golden Age Mini Hindu Back of Red Wings HOF C and current GM, Steve Yzerman. He's come in below expectations in terms of getting the franchise back to the playoffs but may still get there with a bit more time. If nothing else he'll always be a franchise icon and "The Captain" that led the team to three Cups.

Jeremy, thanks again for treating me to this fun PWE. I may actually be returning the favor relatively soon once I decide to pull the trigger to mail the small stack I've put together for you.

With that, January '25 trades are done and I should be mixing things up a bit with January's show recap next time.

2025 trade package #1: Baseball Cards Come to Life

When it came to the first blogger trade cards I received in 2025, it was a case of last in, first out. Bo of Baseball Cards Come to Life was the sender of the last envelopes I received late in December and then the first that hit my mailbox this past January. As it turns out, there was a reason for this: the January envelope should have been delivered with the earlier ones, but it decided to go off on its own adventure.

That didn't bother me, though, since I still ended up with some very cool cards that pretty much held up the same themes as the post-Christmas ones: vintage, oddball, and Tigers. Oh, and also, Bo identified everything as a want from my TCDb lists. I highly, highly recommend getting yourself organized there for many reasons including this one.

Here's the contents:

"Big Daddy"'s last Studio card as a Tiger was in the fantastic '96 set with one of my favorite designs. Fryman was gone from Detroit before appearing on the Absolute card you see, but those look terrific and I collect him in any uniform anyway.

The run of vintage Lolich cards was especially nice for me as it brought four news from '73, '76 (x2) and '76 Traded. By the way, Lolich has since been surpassed in strikeouts by a lefty by Randy Johnson, Steve Carlton, CC Sabathia, and Clayton Kershaw. Also, he was flipped to the Mets in December of '75 in a deal that brought "Le Grand Orange" Rusty Staub to Motown.

Speaking of outstanding pitchers, Bo filled a couple Maddux needs with his '93 Fleer Final Edition and '94 Fleer Sunoco cards. And Mad Dog's fellow 80s/90s HOFer Jack Morris came along for the ride with Fleer boxed set issues from 1988: Exciting Stars and Record Setters (first card of next scan). I love that there are still so many of those 80s oddballs for me to chase that include my many PCs.

Gwynn and Griffey didn't make the trip this time but Junior Ripken sure did thanks to cards from '91 Classic and a '94 Donruss checklist. I can't remember for sure but I may have had one of the Classic games/trivia sets that included those cards at one point.

A couple other MLB HOFers close out the baseball content. The first is a '76 Topps NL batting leaders card that includes PC guy Ted Simmons in the #2 spot with #s 1 and 3 held by Bill Madlock and Manny Sanguillen. 1975 was the first of four seasons Madlock won the batting title, and his .354 clip beat an also excellent .332 that was a career best for Simba. Meanwhile, Tram joined HOF teammate Morris from the '88 Fleer Exciting Stars set after an insane '87 season in which he was jobbed out of the AL MVP by enough voters that preferred George Bell.

Former Wolverine Jim Smith is all by himself in terms of the football content this time, though combined with the other envelopes Bo sent he would have been one of four. The '79 Topps card you see above of the WR who played six seasons with the Steelers was essentially last regular issue I needed for his collection which is now short just some oddball-ish stuff. Very cool of Bo to find that and send it my way.

Bo, thanks again for the slightly delayed additional Christmas cards! You know I'll be keeping an eye out for cool stuff for you at upcoming shows, especially any help I can give you for your vintage set builds.

I'll be back with more January trades soon, but in the meantime, it's nice to be done with 2024 and finally covering 2025 pickups!

2023 trade package #12: the Collector

Tonight's trade envelope comes from a collector I've traded with many times who recently celebrated 600 transactions on TCDb (quite the feat!). That collector's name? THE Collector, Chris!

Not one to sit around and wait for deals to come to him, Chris put in a bunch of work to hit that 600 deal milestone (in preparation of celebrating his 600th post). I can see in his transaction history that he started 2023 with 545 done and he's completed 78 already this year as I'm writing this. Nice! Find him over there as hockeydude, by the way.

Chris reached out to me early last month and I became his 596th swap. He offered me a nice little mix of items from my wantlist in return for future considerations, though I happened to have some stuff on hand I was going to send him anyway, so that worked out really well.

Here's what the New Jerseyan sent westward to me in Michigan:

The transaction Chris proposed actually only included the bottom six cards so the trio of Tigers were nice throw-ins. The Cuyler and Fryman are from '93 UD while Jose Lima hails from the '96 product. Cuyler got a pretty good number of ABs with some of those terrible 90s Tigers squads while Fryman enjoyed a respectable career in Detroit before finishing out his run with the Indians. The late Lima looked like nothing special before a trade to Houston produced the highest moments of his career. He did return to Detroit in 2001 for parts of a couple seasons.

Another Tiger is the lone baseball representative from the deal as originally agreed upon. J.D. Martinez is a guy who pulled a reverse Lima, heading from Houston to Detroit and overhauling his swing to great results in the batter's box and his wallet. His 2017 Topps All-Star Game set card got me to look up his Midsummer Classic appearances, and he's made five--one with the Tigers and four with the Red Sox.

Basketball gets just one new card today but that's fine because it's my least favorite sport. Chris hit one of my Wolverine cager PCs with a 21-22 Donruss Optic base of Tim Hardaway Jr., a three-year Michigan guard who's spent the last five of his nine NBA seasons with the Mavs. Wait, he's been in the league for nine years?! Man, I'm getting old.

Switching over to one of my alma mater's more recently successful sports, Chris found a pair of ex-Wolverines that I was happy to see. First is five-time Pro Bowl OT Mike Kenn who played 17 seasons for the Falcons. He appeared in 251 NFL games, all of which he started, and that's an excellent pro career if you ask me. His '82 Topps card above notes his second of five eventual All Pro selections. Joining him from the other side of the ball is DE Kwity Paye on a '21 Panini Chronicles Flux base that shows him in college action. Paye, like Kenn, was a first round selection, in his case by the Colts, and he'll be going into his third NFL season this fall.

And we'll wrap things up with a hockey duo from hockeydude right in the thick of what's probably sports' best postseason setup. Mike Comrie (2001-02 Topps Reserve) never won a Cup but did contribute a pair of goals and four assists to the 06-07 runner-up Ottawa Senators, who fell to the Ducks 4-1. Meanwhile, Ann Arbor native Andrew Copp (21-22 OPC's Retro version) is still active in the league and has 54 playoff games under his belt including 20 last year with the Rangers, but saw his new team, the Red Wings, fall short this season. I'm hoping the team exits its long rebuild soon and that Andrew is part of that success.

Chris, many thanks for making me part of your quest for 600 trades and congratulations on blowing that goal out of the water! I'm looking forward to picking up more stuff for you at the next show and in the meantime I hope those deals keep rolling in on your end.

TCDB trade: CraigM

With no other cards in-hand to cover at the moment I'm going to start recapping all of the TCDB deals I've made over the past few months since the last time I got caught up on them.

Today's will likely not be too wordy due to the large number of cards and images, so I'll mostly just let you enjoy some cardboard.

I proposed this transaction to member CraigM back at the end of July and he accepted it the next day without any counters, which was pretty cool. It probably helped that I offered to send him 200+ cards in return for closer to 100. It mainly involved a lot of lower end/common stuff going both ways which I was totally happy with as I've got plenty of gaps in my collection to fill and I'm glad to continue clearing out my set-fillers. The bulk of what I sent him came from '89 Bowman, '95 Stadium Club, and 2006 Topps, and in return I got the following, broken down over 14 images:

I said "mainly" low-end stuff because, I mean, come on--that '65 of the Gator is awesome! I don't even own double digits of the '68 champ and former PH star. I did add 10 of Cecil "Big Daddy" Fielder, though.

His teammate from the opposite corner of the diamond was well represented in this one too, also getting a 10-spot added to his collection. I crossed the 200-card mark for Fielder and Fryman's not far behind, thanks to deals like this one.

This packaged scored me five cards produced before 1980, which I currently categorize as "vintage", and the pre-Tigers '78 Topps base of Herndon was one of them. Craig helped me fill in a good number of cards of Morris with the Jays. And you'll see lots more of Nokes in the next couple images.

I think I've explained before that I don't really put much effort into chasing Nokes' cards--he was only briefly a star and wasn't a Tiger for very long either--but he's been a reasonable throw-in when working on some of these deals, so why not? As of this post I have 80 of his cards, or almost a quarter of the 331 he has to his name on TCDB.

I didn't do this on purpose but I love that this scan ended up being 100% catchers. Before Nokes there was the Big Wheel, who played for a few teams after leaving Detroit. I'm getting closer to 150 cards of Lance, and that's pretty cool. While those two guys were playing, Pudge was just getting his career started, and of course he eventually made his way to Detroit as well. I love the design of Score's 1993 Dream Team subset (not insert, though the insert that became was great as well!).

I wish Rogers had been healthy this year so Detroit fans didn't have to suffer through subpar play from Tucker Barhnart. Tanana is another nomad who suited up for a few different teams (six total), equaling his run with the Angels by spending eight seasons in Detroit. I now own 85 cards of the Michigan native who won 240 games over 21 seasons.

Here's the horizontal versions of the Tigers players in the package, with Petry's card the only one starring a player not seen above. 1981 was the second of six straight seasons Peaches would win 10+ games as he'd go 87-59 with 43 complete games from 1980-85.

Besides the usual PC guys, something that stood out to me on Craig's tradelist was a nice bunch of 1991-93 Conlon cards. It's great that legends like Cobb and Greenberg figure in, but so do many guys who make few other appearances, if any. At some point maybe I'll figure out how many I'm missing of the teams from the first half of the 20th century in those sets.

And another nine, with Jennings probably being the most notable, though I believe at least Veach and Walker have some name recognition too.

I was happy to tack on some earlier Tigers from '94 Topps Archives and UD All-Time Heroes as well. Chalk up another example for just how diverse this trade was!

The baseball items conclude with six non-Tigers PC cards. Former Michigan Baseball guy Kostro ties Gates Brown above for the oldest card in the bunch out of the '65 Topps set. That's just my third of his issues and the oldest I've found from his limited run. I believe the '95 Leaf of Bichette sewed up the Series I set for me, entirely built from the Facebook collection I bought last year and TCDB trades. And the '97 Score Hobby Reserve of Spiezio gets me one step closer to re-completing that set with cards that have the correct numbering (HR###), which is down to just two.

The first of two football scans offers this nice mix of cards from multiple decades. Hicks is the Wolverine repped on the Niners card, Higdon's a RC and McRae hails from Topps' 1970 football set.

And the second includes a pair of Fleer's oversized Gameday cards, of which I now own a solid number!

And lastly I came away with a pair of legendary Wings D-man Nick Lidstrom, including a RC, plus former UM icers Jeff Norton and Aaron Ward, a WolverWing I love to collect.

With this many cards to show off I think you'll all understand why I gave this deal its own post. But the quantity was part of the fun here and I couldn't have been happier with how things went overall. Many thanks to Craig for being a great member and making this deal with me--I highly recommend working with him myself.

Depending on what shows up in the mail you can likely expect another TCDB recap soon, probably covering multiple smaller trades as I once again work through my folder of scans.

2022 trade package #21: Cardboard Collections

The other recent TCDB-aided trade post I have for you this evening is thanks to collector of Braves, Panthers, and toys, and Affordable Group Break-er Colbey of Cardboard Collections. This will be just the fifth trade I've done with him on this blog, but given how active he is on TCDB, with more than 300 deals in the books, we could easily increase that count but taking advantage of that site's trade-enhancing features.

Those of you who know Colbey are probably fairly familiar with his username on a number of sites, "flywheels", and that's exactly his alias on the DB. After I recently loaded up more cards to my trade list and ran a trade matching report he came up near the top, and we ended up with a deal in which we each got 70+ cards. Everything went great, and I was happy with my own haul, which included some fun trade items for others which have since gone out to them in the mail.

Here's what I landed for myself from my longtime blogging pal:

Up front we have some classy looking throwback looks at Tigers HOFer Tyrus Raymond Cobb. In all I ended up with six items (you'll see another below) made in roughly the last decade of the Georgia Peach, and I'd say the shiny 3000 Hits Club insert is my favorite here. Jake from St. Clair (think that nickname could stick like the State Farm guy?) is next with yet another RC for my growing collection of the young Padres star (and one of two appearances this evening as well). After him is a trio of a duo that manned the corners at Tiger Stadium in the 90s: Cecil Fielder and Travis Fryman. While I don't prioritize those guys in deals I'll always add them in to bulk up a trade when it makes sense.

Also sometimes guys like those two star on one of the best cards of the package, as is the case with Fryman and his '94 Select Skills insert. It's a beautiful looking rainbow foil card that reminds me how grateful I am that other brands made great looking cards and eventually forced Topps to up their game. The double-take of Grandy's 2015 GQ card with its White Bordered parallel makes it easier to appreciate how much better the latter version looks. Greenberg joins Cobb as a Detroit HOF blast from the past, and in Hank's case he arrives courtesy of Topps' 2011 CMG Reprints insert (and you'll see him one more time in a bit). I managed to sneak Griffey and Gwynn into the package thanks to their 2018 Donruss base appearances. And who could resist a Toys R Us/Topps collab of a young Henneman?

I won't be renaming this blog after Austin Jackson--I don't even have 100 of his cards yet--but I was glad to make him part of this deal with the pair above. Mr. Tiger makes a well deserved cameo with two cards here and one below, and did you know he was just the fourth AL player to hit two homers in an inning? Three more recent Larkins help me continue his march to 1K, and I'm over 900 so I'm happy with the progress I'm making. And Mize may be on the shelf (honestly, which pitcher for the Tigers isn't at this point?) but my pursuit of his cards isn't, so there's a nice pair of his items to round out this scan.

If I had to have the Toys R Us Henneman, why not 1987 AL ROY second runner up Matt Nokes? I don't think people realize just how many cards of Magglio--Tigers and White Sox--I have in my collection, but TCDB tells me it's 234 and when I look at his stack in my Tigers box I believe it! I really liked the nice mix I got of Pudge (with one still to go below) even with only one Tigers card in the bunch, and the Marlins card is a nice reminder that he helped Florida to the '03 World Series in his only season with them before helping bring Detroit back to respectability. Tork's been...not great this year, but I'm nowhere near ready to give up on a kid that just turned 23 and obviously gets zero good feedback from a failure of a coaching staff. And hey, how about the season JV is having? Dude's a few months older than I am and he's a ridiculous 16-3.

How about even more Verlanders? No such thing as too many, I always say! The Morris/Avery card is a fun French's food issue. Magglio looks even better with the Tigers on his '11 Topps Diamond Anniversary parallel. And THJ was the lone basketballer to appear here, but one more sport will feature in the final scan below.

All those "you'll see x more in a few" comments were about this scan full of minis. It's largely a Ginter party but there's a few other sets repped as well. Tram is the only baseball player that wasn't seen earlier, and I happily added something new of him. Clark is nobody's idea of a role model but I collect plenty of terrible people so here's a sticker of him to add to the pile.

And finally I enjoy when folks make up their own promotional stuff like business cards, for their blogs/breaks/other. In Colbey's case it's an extra great idea because he also left a spot to write down the TCDB transaction number, a great thing to include in one or more places when you package up your deals there.

One more reminder: not pictured are a few more very nice inserts and hits that went to some of my other favorite trade partners. I want to emphasize that because just the stuff you see above was a nice haul as far as I was concerned. Colbey continues to be a great guy to trade with and I'm glad we were able to complete such a large deal thanks to my current favorite card site. Thanks, Colbey!

Up next you'll probably see my spoils from the Labor Day weekend show featuring a cameo by someone I mention quite often around these parts. Until then, I have more TCDB deals in the works!