2023 trade package #26: Sports Cards From the Dollar Store

It's been a few weeks since I last posted about receiving cards from Doug of Sports Cards From the Dollar Store, and that means two things: another envelope arrived since then that I need to cover, and then another one joined it yesterday. These got to me in August, October, and December, so the roughly two month cadence means I have only myself to blame for being behind.

Anyway, here's a look at all the great stuff that arrived this time:

1981 Donruss Tigers. I don't think anyone looking at the 1980 squad would have predicted the franchise would win it all just a few seasons later. Alan Trammell, Lance Parrish, and Steve Kemp had the makings of a good core, but guys like Kirk Gibson and Lou Whitaker weren't quite there yet. Some of the guys above did have an impact on the Wire-to-Wire champs, though. Corcoran, Cowens, and Dyer were gone by the time the '81 season ended. However, swingman Rozema and #3 starter Wilcox were key pitchers in '84. And Kemp and Wockenfuss were traded in deals that brought back important players for the same team, the former for White Sox OF Chet Lemon in '81 and the latter as part of the famous swap where the Phillies sent Dave Bergman and Cy Young/MVP closer Willie Hernandez to Motown. And the rest is history.

Speaking of Guillermo, he leads off scan #2 in OPC form, along with teammates Terrell and Tram. I recall my brother and I mocking him as Walt "Terrible" but when I go back and look at his numbers, he was 47-32 from 1985-88, so it was mainly his 7-16 record in '88 for an otherwise solid team that earned him the nickname, I'm sure. Also, we weren't terribly happy that the guy the Tigers gave up to get him, Howard Johnson, had some big years for the Mets.

Meanwhile, Miggy is a guy Detroit traded for 16 years and 10 days ago, and nobody has any regrets about that, even before taking into account that the only guy the Marlins got that panned out was Andrew Miller, and even he only had a few years of success, out of the 'pen of all things.

Verlander's trade to the Astros felt like a catastrophe at the time and it still mostly feels like that with Jake Rogers being the only player of any value the Tigers got back, but at least we got to enjoy him for 13 seasons. Josh Johnson's entire career didn't last that long, but I guess two very good campaigns in a row tricked Topps into pairing him up with the future HOFer on that Diamond Duos insert.

And now over to football. I haven't totally warmed up to '23 Score's scoreboard design quite yet, but I also don't have that many cards from the product so it's still growing on me. I do appreciate getting more college photos, though! Brady may be gone (for good this time, I assume), but transfer RB Charbonnet, who finished his college career with a pair of strong years at UCLA, finally picked up his first NFL TD in week 13 against Dallas, which is great.

Nico and DPJ, in Prizm form, are two recent-ish WRs the generally run-heavy Wolverines have put in the league, and Peoples-Jones joined the Lions at the trade deadline, which is very cool, though his numbers are way down this season and he doesn't have a score out of his nine catches.

Here's where things get especially interesting and another reason why I love trading with someone like Doug. Not only does he have access to stuff like CFL cards, he also puts in the research to find out which Michigan guys appeared on them! The late Coode was an OT for Michigan in the early 70s, then Atlanta drafted him in '74, but so did the briefly active World Football League's Detroit Wheels. Coode then opted for the CFL and seven seasons with the Ottawa Rough Riders, peaking with a Grey Cup win in '76 over Saskatchewan's Roughriders, whose lack of spacing in their nickname was obviously the difference in the 23-20 loss. Coode sadly passed away from ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) in 1987. You see him above on one of just three cards that feature him, all made by JOGO. This one was made in 1993 and is from the Missing Years set.

Art Walker's career trajectory is surprisingly similar. He was also an OL (who sometimes flipped to defense), in his case in the early 50s, and he also ignored the NFL's interest (Green Bay) for the CFL's (or WIFU until 1961) Edmonton Eskimos. In his (also) 7 seasons his team appeared in three Grey Cups and won two (his first two seasons). And sadly he also died at an early age, just 39. TCDb lists six cards for him, all CFL-related of course, and the 1961 Topps CFL above is his second to last cardboard appearance.

Thank you again to Doug for going the extra mile and finding cards of these two Michigan alumni so I could learn about them!

And let's close things out with some very impressive hits. Bookending this scan are my first two such cards of Buckeye-killing RB Hassan Haskins (oops, he just scored on Ohio State again!). His signature may not be much to look at, and I suppose it belongs in the bucket of such guys as Rashan Gary who tend to disappoint with their autos, it's still an autograph of a new player in my collection and I'm happy with that. Also, Donruss's answer to Chrome, Optic, looks pretty cool with the Contenders design. I love that Doug added a jersey relic as well of the now ex-Titans RB to double up the fun.

Former Raider and one-year Niner Big Mo Hurst, playing for the Browns in his fifth season, is unfortunately out for the year with a torn pec but hopefully will return to full strength by next season. As another fairly recent Michigan defender I enjoyed wreaking havoc in the backfield, I love getting new cards of his like the 2018 Donruss Elite auto you see above. His signature is also not the most intricate, but "Mo H." isn't the worst. And that auto, numbered /299, is my fifth of the big DL. Nice!

Sticking with defense--arguably Michigan's strength recently--how about a guy who's having a very nice third year in Indy, Kwity Paye? His '21 Absolute Signature Rookies Green Waves auto is limited to just 25 copies and if you know what you're looking for, "K. Paye" or something like that can be seen. As with Hurst, all of my Paye hits are autos and I now have four of those thanks to this package.

And now we'll end with what I'd say is my favorite design of the package. I'm quite happy getting any new signatures of star WR Nico Collins (this is number four of eight total hits), but I'm also a sucker for stuff like the '21 Panini Elements Rookie Neon Signs card above. This one is actually the Orange parallel, numbered /125, and sometimes it's not all about the on-card signature when you get a fun design element like you see here with the acetate/shadowbox thing. While most recent designs don't stack up to those of the 90s for me, once in a while I'll see a gem like this and just think, "cool!"

So that's another Buckstorecards package in the books! I'll be back with the newest one later this month but I still have others to catch up on before I even get there, and even more after it. Knowing me, it's likely I'll still be posting 2023 stuff in January but that's not that big of a deal since I also won't have my personal COMC pickups until then.

So I'll be back at it again soon with the next trade envelope whenever I feel like it. Until then, thanks to Doug for another banger!

TCDB trade: FiresNBeers

Tonight's post is the first in a series of unknown size that will cover around 30 (and still growing!) trades I've made on TCDB over the past few months. A few of the larger deals will probably get their own posts while I'll group smaller ones together so it doesn't take forever to get through these.

First up is FiresNBeers, a.k.a. Brian from Wisconsin. Brian's one of my favorite people on the site and someone I talk to pretty often because we both do some work maintaining it by handling inaccuracy reports (IRs) for missing checklists, wrong images/other info, etc. There's a group of dedicated folks who put in a ton of effort to make sure TCDB is as useful and accurate as it is and Brian is one of those people.

That's one of the reasons I decided to send him a nice trade package of stuff from his wantlists at some point last year, largely to say thanks. A bit later, he was the one to whom I sent a Robin Yount relic I found at a show in return for a Paul Goldschmidt manurelic I sent to Daniel, and he was generous enough to let me pick some stuff from his trade list as well.

The items below comprise everything he sent me, including the cards I picked plus a few surprises:

Not too surprisingly, Brian is a big Brewers fan, and over his years of collecting he's compiled quite a few Milwaukee police team sets. Above are some of the cards I picked out, with some bonuses he added. Basically the photos stay the same for a given year with only the various suburbs' names changing. 

I was interested in scoring cards of two former UM alumni, Jim Paciorek and HOFer Ted Simmons. Jim has just two MLB cards to his name--1987 Fleer and its Glossy version--so oddballs like these help grow my collection of the brother of the more well known Tom. All of his cards here are from 1987.

Simmons, meanwhile, never played baseball for UM but attended school here so he fits the parameters of my collection. Brian had cards of him from each year of 1982-85, 12 cards in total. Pretty cool!

I'll just have to figure out how I want to store these as they're larger than standard trading cards and therefore won't fit will in my 5000-count player collection boxes.

Most of the rest of what you'll see tonight consists of '84 Tigers, other well known former Tigers from during my fandom, and a few other PCs. Here Bergman and Evans represent the wire-to-wire champs of 1984 on pre-Tigers issues. MLBPA prez Clark's late 90s offerings are shiny and cool. Philly/Detroit legend Cochrane won two rings with the A's and one with the Tigers (1935) and was also the manager for the latter (as well as their pennant-winning club the year before). Big Daddy oddballs are always fun. And you can't have too many Grandersons, especially when they have awesome photos like this one.

Henneman joins Fielder as one of the better early 90s Tigers of my youth and one of the best at the closer position. Hernandez was a standout himself in the role in '84, winning the AL Cy and MVP awards, and I scored two pre-Detroit cards of him plus one of '84 OF Herndon. I've been growing my Inge collection a bit since he joined Michigan's coaching staff. And Jackson was sometimes the next best thing to Granderson, so I ended up with four cards (one more below) of him, including a Finest Refractor as the last card of this scan.

Parrish and a sticker of Morris represent the last of the '84 champs here while bookending the rest of the baseball stuff, and the sticker is a good reminder that Jack was a Series hero for another team as well! Simmons gets two more oddball appearances and I have to say that the 1992 Carlson Travel '82 World Series card really pops. The Brew Crew didn't take home the win that year but you can't exactly blame Simba who put up 2 HR and 3 RBI in the loss to the Cards. Cobb, seen here in miniature form, never won a ring himself despite three trips to the Fall Classic, losing to the Cubs twice (1907 and '08) and Pirates ('09).

Brian also had a good selection of football to choose from so I grabbed 10 cards of 10 different players, starting with the three above: WR Derrick Alexander, RB Tim Biakabutuka, and OL John "Jumbo" Elliott.

And here's the rest of the football stuff: QB Elvis Grbac, LB David Harris, WR/KR Desmond Howard, DL Maurice Hurst, OT Jon Runyan (senior!), RB Derrick Walker, and TE Jerame Tuman.

I owe a big thanks to Brian for all this great stuff, not to mention all the times he's made my life easier on TCDB, and I'll be trying to score some new stuff for him at future shows. If you're on the site and haven't traded with him, he comes highly recommended from me so go send him a proposal!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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