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!

5/3 and 5/11/24 show reports: May the shows be with you

This past May was another two-show month for me--technically three if you count the first day of the June Taylor show being on Friday, the 31st of the year's fifth month.

First, as usual, I headed east to Taylor and dropped $80 mostly on some nice trade bait for packages that have since been sent out. I did snag a small handful to offer up here:

I'm pretty sure both jerseys were a buck and I'm relatively short on baseball trade bait compared to football, so I thought the jerseys repping the Texas teams were worth it. Claim 'em in the comments if you want 'em!

And now here are my May Taylor keepers, largely from the cheapo boxes like I like them:

Nothing crazy, just some of my usual favorites. Cronenworth is a natural when it comes to blue inserts. I was happy to find a high-end Larkin base for what I believe was either a quarter or a time. Three new Maddux cards? Not too shabby! A pair of fellow HOF pitcher Jack Morris was a nice find. And lastly there's one of two Ripkens I dug out this time.

That '96 Score Ripken you see above is specially numbered "2131" and had been on my wantlist for quite a while so I was happy to come up with it. A trio of Pudge closes out the baseball stuff.

When it comes to collecting basketball-playing Kobes, Bufkin's definitely my guy, and the lone basketball entrant here. But I did find a cool trio of non-UCLA cards of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet, including my first relic of him, making him member #252 of the football collection.

Here's some great looking football inserts including one of recent alum Ronnie Bell along with cool QB chase cards of Elvis Grbac and Jim Harbaugh. The former gets the Dufex treatment while the latter feels more like a Donruss insert to me than Pinnacle, though it looks great either way.

And here's the last of the football including dumbass LT Taylor Lewan and talented d-man Kwity Paye on parallels, a couple Absolute Retail RCs, and two more of GOAT DB Charles Woodson.

That was it for Taylor but I wasn't done for the month just yet!

Eight days later I made the 90-ish minute drive west to Kalamazoo so I could meet up with some great hobby friends. I knew Jeff and Kevin (Sluggo) would be at that big show selling, plus Jason from TCDb and John planned on attending as well. I got there in the early afternoon and met up with the Sluggo's guys, catching up with them first. Jason appeared a little later, and then John. As always it was great to catch up with everyone.

Here's a pic John got of the two of us, and clearly only one of us knows where to look when taking a picture. Anyway, I spent a total of $100 at this show between four or five sellers, I believe. Kevin gave me another outstanding deal and I snagged some quality stuff from a few others I may look for again the next time I head that way.

Once again most of my purchases were destined for mailers, but my combined haul looked like this:

Give me new Gwynns any day, horizontal or vertical. Haskins was let go by the Titans but just joined the Chargers and reunited with coach Jim Harbaugh. Higdon was another successful college back, just not in the NFL. Ruiz is one of a few recent talented centers the program has produced. And I found what ended up being my fifth auto of DB David Long Jr. (not to be confused with the LB from WVU) who was released by the Giants and doesn't appear to have joined their practice squad or another team just yet.

I also found this nice little six pack of Michigan Hockey guys in a dime box, of all things, which was a surprise given the star power here. Beniers just got paid big time by the Kraken and Fantilli, as I've mentioned a couple times, won the Hobey Baker after an outstanding '22-'23 campaign.

Many thanks again to Jeff and Kevin plus Jason and John for another quality show meet-up, and I hope we get to do it again soon, though not in September as that conflicts with Michigan Football's big matchup with Texas.

In the meantime I'll continue to play catchup as I now get to move on to June with still a TON of great pickups to cover.

4/5/2024 show report: Christmas in April

Tonight's post is one of two I know of that I need to finish out the month of April. This one's a quick summary of the monthly Taylor show I got to on 4/5.

I spent a yearly low there of $45 (with the exception of the second show I got to in January to buy from Sluggo's Sports Cards at the event in Kalamazoo) but still came home with some cool stuff.

First up is some trade bait:

I love me some 90s inserts! The Akili Smith is spoken for but everything else is still up for grabs. McNown's Gridiron Kings card is actually the Canvas version as it's one of the first 500 printed (#0090/5000).

As for my keepers,

As far as I can remember it was mostly a dime/quarter box kind of day. I added a trio of cards featuring a couple of Detroit's recent top prospects, double-"Js" Jackson Jobe and Jace Jung, largely thanks to a prospect-heavy Donruss product. Next is a pair of classic Tigers, Kaline and Pesky, though of course the latter is much more famous for his eight seasons (and namesake Fenway Park feature) than the three with the Tigers. A couple Ginter Ripkens bump his total up as he nears the 1300-card mark in my collection. And former UM pitcher (on a Wolverine-ish airbrushed photo card) Steve Hajjar is the source of this post's title with a 2022 Leaf Holidays-related product and its Happy Holidays autograph set. That's my third signature of the left who's in Cleveland's system.

I also found a couple scans' worth of football stuff between the dime/quarter and dollar boxes. Bell would look better in a Blue parallel, of course, but Red works for his current team, the Niners, plus at least the card has a great college action photo. Transfer RB Charbonnet is one of three guys in these two scans (K Jake Moody and TE Luke Schoonmaker are the others) to pop up thanks to the Retail versions of their Panini Absolute RCs (you can tell as they lack serial numbers on the front as opposed to the hobby cards). The two shiny Funchess parallels are numbered /70 and /75 so I didn't mind throwing down a buck each. QB Grbac features on a pretty cool early Bowman Chrome insert. I may be slowly (and unintentionally) working on Ty Law's Mosaic rainbow, we'll see. And Paye would also benefit from an upgrade of Red to Blue on a Press Proof version of his Donruss RC.

The previously-mentioned Schoonmaker gets almost an entire scan to himself thanks to a rookie-related quartet, one of which is a Prizm Draft card with a great shot of him in action for the Wolverines. And joining my non-sport/misc. Wolverines category is broadcaster Rich Eisen. The New York native is a fan of the Jets (for some reason) but has done a great job over his career of lauding the Wolverines and celebrating the school where he earned his undergrad degree while being a co-editor for the sports section of the Michigan Daily.

I'll try to be back soonish with my last April post and maybe even post a bit more frequently so I can get caught up a bit more.