2022 trade package #18: My Sports Obsession

Well it's already August--hell, almost halfway through it!--though today's felt more like a late September kind of day, 60s and rainy.

I've kept plenty busy with card stuff, especially TCDB as usual, and non-card activities (almost done with the new Lego Star Wars, reading, starting up Better Call Saul), and all of that has put blogging on the back-burner for me.

That said, I do have some stuff to cover, and most importantly I owe a very cool person a trade package post.

Longtime buddy of the blog Jeff of My Sports Obsession, a fellow Michigan fan who I know is also looking forward to the upcoming football season, hit me with a mailer last month that went above and beyond in quality. Check it out!

Jeff and I have a lot of player collections in common so it's fun to swap cards of them back and forth. I was really happy to see the four above cards of Cronenworth as many of his cards are still beyond reasonable/affordable prices. I've snagged a few through TCDB trades and I'm grateful to Jeff for sending more! My favorites are the Diamond Kings card (even sans logos) and Bowman Chrome insert since it's a Refractor. TCDB tells me I have exactly 50 of him logged so far, not bad!

My biggest PC remains one Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr., and he's another guy Jeff collects bigtime. Because I have over 1100 Ripken cards I looked at the above (and below, as you'll see in a second) base items Jeff sent and though, "Thanks, buddy, but these are all dupes." WRONG! Somehow I needed all but one of the Cals he sent me (seen in the next scan). That's a pretty big surprise because besides the volume of cards I have of the Iron Man, these pretty much all came from when I was going crazy buying all kinds of boxes/packs without any kind of focus. They're a terrific mix and I'm happy to have them.

Here you see seven more of Ripken, and the lone double is the Pinnacle Inside card right down the middle. If nothing else I'm shocked I didn't have the UD Starquest insert that opens this scan. The '98 Ultra base is the last of the older bunch and then we have a 2018 Topps Silver Pack card that came out two decades later. Maybe someday I'll have as many Ripkens as the number of consecutive games he appeared in: 2632. Thanks to folks like Jeff maybe I'll get there.

Oh yeah, and then we have the biggest surprise of this package. Out of nowhere popped out a 2016 Panini Pantheon Milestone Scripts Bronze autograph of Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline. Wow! Al had a beautiful signature, of which I'm well aware thanks to owning seven of them now, and let me tell you, it doesn't get old at all each time I get a new one. This one is from a set that celebrates certain marks, and as you can see it highlights Al reaching the 3,000 hit plateau with a total of 3,007. He achieved that count in his final season, 1974, his 22nd in the bigs. Interestingly enough those extra seven came from his 30-game cup of coffee in 1953 over 30 plate appearances. He's currently #32 overall in the category, with fellow great Roberto Clemente the last in the club with 3K exactly. Now that Miggy has joined elite company (he sits at #25 as of this post) it's hard to say how long we'll be waiting for the next member.

Anyway, this is a stunner of a card and I was absolutely floored to find it. And then I turned it over and it got even better:

Yep, it's limited to just 15 copies. Just amazing. Thanks so much for your generosity, Jeff!

That's not all there was by a long shot, though, because as I mentioned, Jeff and I both chase Wolverines as well. From the growing group of basketball alumni we have a shiny twofer of three-point machine Duncan Robinson, who just got paid, and a great college action Michigan uni card of Mo's bro Franz Wagner.

Football begins promisingly with a Gold Zone parallel of star CB Leon Hall's 2007 Score RC, #d 532/600. I do love numbered parallels from this era. Joining him is former 5* QB recruit Brandon Peters, a guy who looked like as sure of a future star as anyone. Things didn't work out that way and he transferred to Illinois, in whose uniform he appears in the above Bowman University card. One of Jim Harbaugh's earliest and most promising recruits at the position, it's a shame things didn't go differently but I'm happy he was able to get his chance with the Illini.

On the hits side of things, first up is another Michigan uni card, this time a great autograph out of Panini's excellent Contenders Draft product. Zach Gentry was a QB recruit who successfully converted to the TE position and got himself drafted by the Steelers. Next to him is a guy with whom the word "success" most certainly applies, at least during his career in Ann Arbor, Chris Perry. The insanely talented RB ended his four-year Wolverines career all over the record books and as a Heisman finalist in 2003. I love the 2004 Fleer Sweet Sigs Copper auto (#011/160) Jeff was nice enough to include here because I thought the trend of signatures on all kinds of manufactured materials was very enjoyable. I believe this is the fourth such card I have of him out of 56 hits. Very cool!

Jeff, once again, thanks very much for being so generous with this latest envelope! I was already going to appreciate the Cronenworth and Ripken cards and the Michigan additions were excellent, and then you blew me away with the Kaline! Hopefully I'll have some great stuff to send back your way before long, plus maybe at some point we really can get together for a show?

All of you should get on over to My Sports Obsession while I work on my next post covering last weekend's show. After that it shouldn't be too much longer before I start catching up on my latest batch of TCDB swaps. Until then, keep enjoying summer as those of us who watch look forward to the return of college football!

2019 COMC purchases: superb basketball and football

It's been a superb Sunday here in Ann Arbor weather-wise considering it's just the second day of February.  Temperatures got up in the 50s a day after we were dealing with the usual cold and snow, and I definitely took advantage.

Now I'm sitting here putting together a post while glancing at the game every now and then, between two teams I don't really care about.  But the fact that it's Super Bowl Sunday is a good reminder that I still haven't covered all of my 2019 pickups.  This COMC recap and one more should do it.

Today I'll be showing off my basketball scores and, yes, some of the football as well!  (A quick note:  I don't have all of the former cataloged in my own albums or on TCDB yet as I've had to create their checklists myself, which sometimes takes a bit.)

I believe I mentioned the crazy number of plates I purchased in the last post, and a large chunk of the ones staying with me are surprisingly from basketball, my least favorite of the four major sports.  I'm not the type to pass up a good deal when it comes to my Michigan collections, though, and four of these were under $4, with the other less than $5.

Here's the backs so you can tell who actually appears on each card.  I landed my first plates of Burke and THJ (times two!), second of Rice, and fifth(!) of Sauce Castillo himself, Nik Stauskas.  All of them are from higher-end products meaning Panini did their thing where they affixed the plates to super thick pieces of cardboard.  Those are totally fine but I really like what they've done with colorful backs on the actual metal the last couple years.  Three of these were inserted into the following year's National Treasures products so checklisting them can take a bit of work.  But who cares, because five new basketball plates!

The football section is quite good as well, though you're in for a pretty good show in the final post of this series.  WR Amara Darboh's up first with a cool pair from 2017:  a Playoff autograph and Absolute dual jersey/football auto RC (#282/299).  As long as Panini keeps producing Playoff cards with college photos like that, I'll keep buying them!  Those two bookend my first 1/1 of former QB (and one-year WR) Devin Gardner.  It's a magenta plate from his only NFL card out of 2015 Topps Field Access, a product known more for its plethora of sticker autos.  He's looking quite acrobatic there for sure.

The middle contains three new players to the collection.  First is DL Rashan Gary, a former top college recruit who went to the Packers in the first round last year.  I came up with a 2019 Panini Legacy auto of him in a Michigan uni, which is awesome, though his signature is anything but.  Hey, they can't all look like Griffey's and Rivera's!

Next is his fellow New Jersey native Ron Johnson, not to be confused with the former Michigan RB.  This one played on the D-Line and was part of that same recruiting class, but he transferred out last year.  He's one of a few future college players I can name from the autograph portion of that 2016 Upper Deck USA set.

The last of the newbies is another former QB that changed positions like Gardner, but in Zach Gentry's case, the move to TE stuck, and it worked out ok for him since he got drafted by the Steelers.  His 2019 Contenders Draft auto looks pretty cool, which doesn't surprise me a bit, and he has a somewhat interesting signature too.

Moving on we have another QB, transfer guy Ryan Mallett.  As I think I've said a few times, I occasionally collect his stuff as long as he's not shown in an Arkansas uniform.  Here you can see a 2011 Plates & Patches jersey/auto RC (#080/299) followed by a Topps Magic signature from the same year.  Both are cool in their own right but Magic is a somewhat recent Topps product I actually like, so that's notable.

Ok, we're on to the last QB of the day, I promise.  John Navarre, the gumpy signal-caller from Cudahy, Wisconsin, gets another of his very occasional appearances; this is just my 13th hit of him.  Luckily I found a cheap new addition in the form of a 2004 Bowman's Best Green auto (#189/499).  I already had the base version, which I prefer mainly because the green ink doesn't look great here--the parallel version of the card is fine otherwise--so it's nice to have them as a pair.

Last up is former Michigan DL Chris Wormley, who's often a fun follow on Twitter:

I hit the trifecta today! I got pooped on, peed on, and puked on by my lovely daughter. 👍🏽

— Chris Wormley (@Chris_Wormley43) January 29, 2020

My second auto and third hit of his is a rookie year 2017 Donruss Optic Rookie Autographs Blue auto (#23/75).  What better color of a parallel could you ask for in terms of a former Wolverine?  He's seen a decent amount of playing time with the Ravens and hopefully that increases enough for him to earn a rare non-rookie appearance in some Panini products.

That's it for today but stay tuned for another blowout post where I cover the rest of my football purchases.