2025 trade package #3: Nachos Grande

Not too long after I received that PWE from Chris, "The Collector," that I just wrote about, I was treated to an envelope from another Chris that's east of me: Mr. Reed of Nachos Grande. I've known him as a great blogger and quality trade partner for years now and was happy to include him in my most recent Christmas Card mailings, helping him complete his run of Reds Topps Lineage relics.

He was nice enough to return the favor the following month with a package that screamed "Nachos Grande" to me as it was chock full of items I associate with his collecting habits:

That foil Cobb actually hails from the same 2011 Topps Lineage product I just mentioned and it's one of several parallels you could find in the set, not to mention a card I didn't previously have on hand.

Then we get into the Ginter stuff, which is definitely a Nachos Grande staple. I had all of the ones you see here on my TCDb wantlist including 2020 base of Cobb, Fielder, Gwynn, and Tram, a 2020 Mini of Mr. Tiger Al Kaline, and a 2011 of former blog namesake Curtis Granderson. As it turns out, Fielder and Tram are both SPs in the 2020 product so it was extra nice of Chris to include them. They give me four former Tigers that were short-printed, along with Jack Morris and Sparky Anderson. I could also add Magglio Ordonez and Jim Bunning to my wants but haven't decided to do that yet.

And as if those weren't enough, Chris also helped me out with a dupe of a guy we both PC, Barry Larkin. I appreciate any extras he can send my way since he's managed to write up individual posts for more Larkins than I currently even own! #980 in my collection is the '21 Donruss Red and White Stripes parallel you see above, #d 1801/2021. That marks my fifth parallel of his Retro '87 base appearance along with the base card itself in what would likely be a years long search for the product's rainbow. While I miss the MLB logos I do like the design, including the throwback to the 1987 set.

Chris, thanks again for thinking of me and sending these great new additions my way. I'll keep working on trying to find some new Larkins for you to try to get more of your doubles into my collection.

And once again I'll be back soon as I have three more blogger trades from January to cover, not to mention a huge one from February, and three monthly shows to recap. Until then, enjoy some Spring Training ball as we head into warmer weather and a new season!

2024 trade package #25: My Sports Obsession

I'm fresh off watching Michigan's hilarious bowl victory over an Alabama team that claimed they belonged in the Playoff and then did that against basically the Wolverines bench. Now I've got three more December trade packages to cover this afternoon/evening to meet my goal of getting them all done before the new year.

Fortunately for me I'm able to front-load the work as the largest remaining package is the one that got to me next. This was a roughly 200+-count box from buddy of the blog and fellow Michigan fan Jeff of My Sports Obsession. Jeff, I hope you enjoy reading this post in the afterglow of one of our more unlikely bowl victories in team history!

This one took a whole bunch of scans to recap, so settle in for lots of cards to eyeball:

Well damn, a sweet Sparky trio is a great way to start out strong! I remain grateful that the most important manager of my lifetime still gets the odd cardboard appearance. Miggy's count climbs with a high-quality three-spot of his own. And a third franchise legend joins the scan in Ty Cobb, who you'll see in two more scans in this post, including the next one. Stadium Club and Diamond Kings are products with designs that will always appeal to me more than plainer fare such as flagship Topps.

Two more Cobbs to start this scan look Georgia peachy to me thanks to Topps Chrome Platinum and an era-appropriate Sepia parallel from Stadium Club. Cronenworth is one of a bunch of guys in this post that both Jeff and I collect and I'm happy we can keep sending them back and forth, especially when I get beauties like a Holo and another eye-popping Stadium Club look. Elliott, a 2022 2nd-rounder out of Michigan, is probably another guy I found out about thanks to following Jeff's posts as he's often better at catching the newer guys than I am. Griffey stars on one of a number of instances of the fantastic Topps Museum product. And my Gwynn PC got a very nice boost in this package--including one of my favorites in Stadium Club Chrome--with a bunch more in the next scan too!

See? Lots more Gwynn, lots of fantastic designs! Museum, Stadium Club, Chrome Platinum, Gold Label, and some inserts too. Lots of great additions to his collection. The crazy Prizm parallel represents another PC guy we share in P Steven Hajjar on a Michigan uni card. And he's followed by a Retail version of a Mr. Tiger Panini Absolute base.

No suspense here as the Griffey/Gwynn pairing above joins Maddux and Ripken in this scan to complete the big four PC group. Cal's probably the player we trade back and forth the most in terms of our shared PCs, though a few guys probably do come close. I loved seeing Tram join Sparky above from the Purple Donruss parallel. Then, counting the next scan, we have four many Verlanders, which is twice as good as two, especially when they're this shiny.

With those three Chrome parallels I'm starting to approach JV rainbow territory. Baez's second appearance also gets the Chrome treatment. Cobb (Black Foil parallel) gets in on the action one more time with a flat-out classic shot of his baserunning skills. One of two last Gwynns serves as a reminder of one of Topps' recent-ish gimmicks, and then baseball goes out on top with Stadium Club base of two of my favorites--who retired and also entered Cooperstown in the same seasons--getting feted in fantastic horizontal shots.

Jeff also sent me a huge group of basketball Wolverines which I always appreciate since I don't put much money towards the sport. There was a fun mix of brands and designs with a few that popped up multiple times. A Premium Iggy tips things off, and then in a fun twist, I just looked on TCDb and found out that I now own as many cards of Kobe Bufkin as his namesake Mr. Bryant! THJ's in my top five with the four above him all over the 100-card mark. Houstan's a bit newer to the collection but the college card and shiny parallel here are great additions.

Young Jett Howard plays for the NBA's version of the Columbus Blue Jackets, a.k.a. Ann Arbor South, and his dad's fourth in my PC with 123 cards. LeVert is #7 and one of eight players who've reached the 50-card milestone. Livers may not be with the Pistons anymore but Cracked Ice parallels often look cool. McGary's college and pro careers were both far too short.

With the number of Jordan Poole cards I've received this year I'm somewhat surprised he's not ranked higher, but he's still just one card shy of joining my top 10 cagers thanks to hauls like this one. Remember when that Prizm Monopoly product was a huge thing for a minute? Just one card for Rice but the NCAA champ remains top dog with 206 cards, still the only player to eclipse the double century mark.

If Robinson's parents had any foresight they would have named him "Three-Point" instead of Duncan since he was responsible for way more of the former than the latter. Rose is the last of my top four over the 100-card mark and grouped nicely with two of his Fab Five teammates. Sauce Castillo was a fun guy to watch in college and the pros, and as the UD card captures, he indeed helped Michigan to the NCAA tourney final in 2013, a six-point loss to champion Louisville. Wagner bro Franz closes out the basketball group, and the young star's card count has absolutely exploded in my collection, climbing up to 47 for the 9th spot.

Now we switch over to the sport of the day: football. Believe it or not, Brady's not my top football guy--that distinction belongs to his fellow QB Brian Griese--and Tom Terrific ranks only #7, the last guy in my football 300-club. That's probably because I really don't put money into a guy like him since his prices tend to be overinflated. Still, you can always count on the kindness of strangers friends, and I appreciate this six-pack from Jeff! He also sent me a nice bunch of five cards of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet, who's had his ups and downs with Seattle.

I'm not quite a quarter of the way through the RCs of Charbonnet I'm chasing but it does help when someone's nice enough to send them to me! Charlton was a fun player with a cool nickname. Collins is two TDs away from matching his career high of 8 set last year, and maybe he can come up with a big pair in Sunday's game. Speaking of a big pair, actually, let's make that a three-of-a-kind with RBs Corum, Edwards, and Haskins here. I need as many as I can get of the first two, with Corum in his first year and the Don headed for the draft.

Meanwhile, Hutch continues to climb the leaderboards thanks to days like this one, and I hope the former Hot Rookie gets a chance to return in a big way for a Lions playoff game. The Bowman Chrome U love continues in this scan with a pair of champs in Johnson, an upcoming first-rounder, and McCarthy, who was anything but unexpected to Michigan fans, but most definitely a delight thanks to his calm leadership. I don't wish transfer QB McNamara anything but good health (and maybe a better head) next season. The Prestige card of the former "Money" kicker is the highlight of two Moody cards, though he's going through a nightmare season for the Niners and clearly isn't right after an injury. And Ojabo has quietly put up a couple sacks this season for Baltimore, though I don't get the impression that his playing time has been growing.

If you could pick a color for a parallel on a DPJ Browns card, why would you go with anything other than orange? Schoonmaker has one game left to try to equal his rookie season total of 2 TDs while his teammate Mazi has been slightly better during his own sophomore campaign. I love Donruss' Rated Rookies cards and the Optic of defensive back DJ Turner looks sweet! WR Roman Wilson joins a few of his other title teammates in this post on another excellent card. And GOAT DB Charles Woodson gets three more for his own collection, enough to secure him the #3 spot by that many cards over Braylon Edwards.

We're not quite done yet because there were two cool Prizm relics of recent Wolverines in this package. Charbonnet makes his second hits PC appearance with a Neon Green Pulsar parallel of his jersey card, and that's joined by my first relic of Lions terrorizer Aidan Hutchinson: a beautiful Honolulu blue swatch!

And even then we're still not quite done because Jeff included a rare hockey card, though given the photo it was an obvious inclusion. Shields was an excellent netminder in the early 90s, winning 111 games before suiting up for the Sabres, Sharks, Ducks, Bruins, Panthers, and Thrashers in parts of 10 NHL seasons. The photo of him in action at what I'm guessing is Yost Ice Arena is as Classic as the card's brand.

Jeff, thank you once again for this absolutely ridiculous stack of cards that hit so many of my PCs! I hope you enjoyed your own Christmas package, and I can promise plenty more White Sox, Michigan, and other PC cards will be heading back your way in 2025, when I hope we can also meet up at a few shows.

Stay tuned this evening for two more (much shorter) trade recaps to close out the year!

Fun freebies featuring A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

Who doesn't love free stuff? That's why my post is all about this evening.

The main star for tonight is Jon over at A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts. I was one of a pretty large group of folks who participated in his "Take my cards Tuesdays" and "Free Card Fridays" back in May, and I know I saw quite a few familiar names in the comments so this won't come as news to many of you. I give Jon a ton of credit for his generosity as he was truly asking for nothing in return--not a follow, not cards, not a damn thing. And some of the stuff up for grabs was very high quality considering the price, or total lack thereof. Stars? Check. Serial numbered inserts? You bet. Vintage, oddball, and non-sports? All there, friend.

All he asked was for folks to try to limit their initial requests so a reasonable number of people could get a chance to claim something. I had no problem with that and came away with eight cards I chose plus a bonus:

The baseball selection was pretty much Tigers baseball royalty. Cobb, Cochrane, and Manush are all HOFers, Miggy will join them in a few years, Evans and McLain came up big for title-winning teams, and Granderson is one of the best players the farm system has produced in the past 20 years. I think the Purple Refractor of Granderson was the one I wanted the most from this bunch so I made sure to get my comment in very quickly!

Before we get to the football pair, the Evans you see up there is the bonus Jon was nice enough to include (along with, remember, my free cards) and it was totally new to me. Normal '87 Topps? Nope, I already said it was new to me:

That's a blank-back version! What a fun throw-in.

As for the two Michigan football stars, Anthony Carter's is an SI For Kids issue from 1992, and HOF Rams LG Tom Mack's hails from 1976 Wonder Bread. I believe I can count my NFL food issue cards on one hand so that oddball-ness is extremely cool to me, in addition to it being a vintage piece of a former star.

Thanks again to Jon for treating so many of us to some quality free cards!

Next up is a freebie via Twitter thanks to a friend. Buddy of the blog John saw an account named C-Train GatorMayne offering up the following card gratis and asked him to send it my way, which he did:

Ex-UM WR Nico Collins is looking mighty fine on a 2022 Panini Obsidian parallel called Electric Etch Orange. It lives up to its name for sure and as always it looks better in person so just take my word for it when I say it looks nice.

Thanks again, John!

Last up tonight, I believe I've mentioned a number of times that my mom has always been very supportive of my interest in the hobby, one of the many reasons I appreciate her so much. She gets out to garage and estate sales once in a while and sometimes even grabs things she think I might like. At some point in the past year or two she found me a sealed 1991 Topps baseball factory set.

A few weeks ago she texted me asking if unopened 1990 Donruss packs were worth anything. Naturally I asked if she was thinking of starting a fire. Anyway, she specifically wondered if I thought she overpaid for 10-15 "packs" of them, and I thought, "probably, but it's the thought that counts, thank you!"

Well, it turned out to be a bit better than that:

Hmmm, opened but...

Ah, those are the "packs she's talking about. Let's take a look at a few of them:

Yep! It's an opened factory set and but with the base cards and Grand Slammers still sealed, meaning the only thing that appears to be missing is the Yaz puzzle, which I believe I already have anyway. Each sealed brick has 55 base cards plus one Grand Slammers insert except for the 13th brick which has the Bart Giamatti tribute base card in place of that insert.

While I already had a complete set put together by hand, it's fun knowing I for sure own a complete run of the cards with the factory set border, which is a bit different than the one on cards that were packed out. That and it's really nice having another set my mom specifically bought for me. Please believe I treated her well as always when Mother's Day came around in May!

So thank you to everyone involved who made my collection that much better with the free cards you saw this evening! Stay tuned for some more trades before I catch up on other stuff I'm excited to show off.

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!