2023 trade package #s 34-37: Bob Walk the Plank, The Collector, The Lost Collector, and A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

So I can finish up covering the trades I received from bloggers last December before the calendar flips to March, here's a combined trade post featuring the last four envelopes that hit my mailbox before Christmas '23:

Former Bob Walk the Plank blogger Matt and I still manage to swap cards at least once or twice a year and I enjoy that we tend to keep things fairly high-end, or at least above average. This time he sent me a very nice Michigan-themed Christmas present after picking up some stuff from COMC:

Merry Richmas! Of the five you see there, four are new to me and the fifth was a great deal he didn't want to pass up despite knowing it was a dupe for me. The latter would be card #1 in the scan, a Bright Yellow Back from 2017 Heritage that isn't numbered but is limited to just 25 copies. That's most definitely a good idea of the generosity remaining in this envelope. The other Hills include his 2019 Topps Mini Pink parallel (/25), 2020 Topps Mother's Day "Hot Pink" (/50, and could have fooled me on the color!), 2020 Topps Mini Pink (/25), and 2020 Topps Update Black (/69, NICE). That's an outstanding selection of recent numbered Hills and it's not like I get to add this many of him at once very often!

Joining him on the baseball side is one more dupe Matt couldn't pass up, a 2008 Bowman Chrome Draft Gold Refractor (/50). He's obviously got great taste because pre-2010-and-later Refractors continue to look fantastic!

Finishing up on the football end of things we have a pair of very rare Wolverines. Former TE and solid broadcaster Jake Butt is up first with a 2017 Panini Certified Mirror Green auto. It's really tough to make out on the scan but along the upper-right edge it's numbered a ridiculous 5/5--hell yeah! That's my 9th hit and 7th auto of the talented pass-catcher. Flipping over to defense, there's my third signature of LB Mike McCray, and certainly my best as it's a 2018 Elite Orange Status die-cut auto numbered 07/10. The signature's nothing to write home about (pun intended) but the card design--die-cut plus numbered--and home college uni action photo make this a winner in my book.

Thanks again for our yearly trading and in particular this outstanding Christmas present, Matt!

Next I have a fun surprise PWE from Chris, the Collector, which ended up being the second that he sent me last December and third since November:

Former Michigan pitcher and current Guardians prospect Steve Hajjar leads off this one. This is just the 9th card in his collection so the Wolverines uni-highlighted '21 Prizm Draft Green Pulsar Prizm was a fun surprise. I was of course thrilled to see another Rich Hill need out of '23 Topps Chrome Update even if Topps dropped the ball on showing him with the Padres. And Chris tapped into his extensive hockey knowledge to send me a foily 2002-03 Pacific Vanguard base of goalie Steve Shields, a very successful netminder in Ann Arbor in the early 90s who played for six teams over 10 NHL seasons.

And as if those weren't enough, the big prize was this full SI For Kids sheet from the November/December '23 issue starring none other than NCAA Champion RB Blake Corum (plus a few other notable names). Corum and his teammates delivered the greatest possible present to Wolverines fans after the holiday with a Rose Bowl win over Alabama and title win over Washington. He ended his extremely productive Michigan career with school highs in single-season rushing and total TDs and points scored and career records in those exact same stats. I look forward to seeing what he can do in the NFL though I wouldn't ask a single thing from him after his career in the college game that I much prefer anyway. But I'll be glad to add on to the paltry five cards I have for now.

Thank you, Chris, for the extra Christmas present!

Next, after sending me a nice chunk of cards last September, AJ the Lost Collector hit my mailbox again before Christmas with this small but effective group of cards:

I think I'm sensing some kind of theme here.... First up is what's easily my best card of WR Ronnie Bell so far, a '23 Prizm Draft Gold Ice Prizm. It's just my third card of the Niners pass-catcher who outperformed his recruiting ranking in college by a mile, and it'll be hard to top for a while! Breakout WR Nico Collins of the Texans is next, hailing from last year's Score set, and I look forward to seeing him continue his upward trajectory next season. RB/PR Chris Evans hasn't been able to get things going for the Bengals but I'm happy to continue to add his RCs to his collection either way, such as the '21 Donruss Optic up above. And how could you possibly go wrong with two defensive stars Michigan lost, only to continue their dominance in 2023, in Mazi Smith and DJ Turner, out of last year's Prestige? The brand continued its practice of using college photos, which of course I love, and I was glad to cross these off of the needs lists of those two players, for whom I now own two cards and one card of--welcome to the collection, DJ!

Thank you, AJ, for gifting these to me last year just before my team put a bow on possibly their best season ever!

And finally tonight, definitely the most Christmassy bunch of cards that could have sat under my tree came from A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts' Jon. Whether you're a fan of Culture Club's "Karma Chameleon" or get excited at the site of Christmas colors red, gold, and green, you'll love these as much as I did:

Panini's solid 2013 Cooperstown product offered cracked ice-type parallels in a number of colors, and Jon represented three of those over three different players in the HOF-themed product. Wolverine/Tiger Charlie Gehringer is up first with Gold and Red cards, which is great as I apparently already had the Green of him. The Golds are /299 with the Reds a more common /399. Tigers HOF hitter and iconic broadcaster George Kell is next, and Jon sent me his cards in three colors, including the Green, whose set is the most common and not numbered. Another former Wolverine, Gorgeous George Sisler, rounds out the group with a Red card of his own. I'll have to track down his Gold but do have his Green as well. I also have Blues /499 of Sisler and Gehringer, and need to track down Matrix (/325) cards of everyone seen here.

Jon, thank you for a very festive PWE of HOFer PCs (too many acronyms!) to close out the year in collecting, and I look forward to trading with you again this year!

Thank you once again to everyone who sent me cards in 2023, which resulted in an average of 1.5 envelopes/packages per month! No matter how long I keep blogging, I'll continue to work with all of you that enjoy swapping cards as it's one of my absolute favorite parts of being here. I already have some 2024 trades to show off once I finish up the rest of my '23 acquisitions, and I promise I'll get back to sending packages out myself soon. As a matter of fact, two are due to arrive to current trading buddies in the next day or so.

Next time: either TCDb deals (likely split into two parts), a show recap, eBay pickups, or my late-year COMC haul, though the latter will likely be my '23 finale.

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.

2023 trade package #2: a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

Jon of a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts was the sender of my second trade package of 2023, and I'd say the contents are worth coining the phrase "small things come in good packages." Check out all the cool stuff, some of which is of diminutive stature, in this envelope:

I teased the tiny stuff but I'm starting with standard sized cards. Gwynn is a Refractory Chrome insert from 2019. Mr. Tiger's shiny parallel was inserted into Topps' solid 2011 Lineage product. His longtime teammate Mickey Lolich's item in spot #3 is from 2001 Topps Archives Reserve, a beautiful Chrome Refractor version of the excellent base set.

Below those are a pair of 2014 Panini Golden Age sticker cards, each with four players. The first is awesome since it includes Kaline and another '68 teammate, Willie Horton, who's gotten a bit of love in some of these throwback sets (plus the excellent Catfish Hunter and Yaz). The big draw for me on the second is Michigan Heisman-winner Tom Harmon, but Detroit boxer Joe Louis is a huge plus. Naturally I'm happy to see The Man as the third subject, and the youngest DiMaggio is no slouch either. Ty Cobb (who won a car for splitting the batting average crown with Nap Lajoie, sort of) wraps up the baseball content in the scan.

The last regular sized card in the bunch is a rookie year insert of Charles Woodson out of 1998 Skybox Premium. The reigning Heisman winner made the D'Stroyers set by obliterating offenses with his ball-hawking ways first in college, then the pros. As a reminder, he accumulated 65 INTs (with 11 leading to TDs) and forced 33 fumbles (and returned a couple of those for scores as well).

Ah yes, the much-hyped small stuff! Let's start with a nice stack of Minis. The first three are 1999 Pacific Private Stock PS-206 cards featuring PC guys Tony Gwynn, Greg Maddux, and Dean Palmer. Yes, that's a funny combination, but I have lots of player collections! These look nice though I tend to think of the 2001 set more often.

The others are from Panini Golden Age products. Gehringer is from 2012 and is the Red Candy back. Fellow Wolverine and to a lesser degree ex-president Gerry Ford is from the 2013 set's Carolina Brights backs. Also from the UM football team we have Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch and a double-dose of the previously-seen Harmon from 2014. Hirsch and the first Harmon are Hindu backs while the other Harmon is a Mono back.

And all by himself from 2014 Ginter's Black Bordered set is Sparky Anderson. It sure is fun adding stuff of him since managers don't appear on nearly as many cards as their players do, understandably. I love the image of the pensive skipper, probably wondering if he should live up to his nickname of "Captain Hook" or leave Jack Morris in.

Everything else in this scan and the next one is a sticker, and boy is there some great variety here! The first two you see, Chet Lemon and Larry Herndon, hail from 1981 Topps Stickers, and those of course are pre-Tigers items but still 100% welcome for me. Everything else with the exception of the 1983 Ripken seen in the final image is from the '82 set, and there you see Lance Parrish, Herndon again, Jack Morris, Darrell Evans, Lemon again, and Morris along with Denny Martinez/Steve McCatty/Pete Vuckovich. The rookie-year sticker of Cal is very cool, and it's one of his two appearances in that set.

And here we have the final six stickers, once again with a mostly Tigers lean broken up by another Ripken cameo, which happens to be the second '83 sticker I just mentioned. That's because these are all also from that very set. Evans makes his second Giants appearance, Herndon makes his first as a Tiger, and Dan "Peaches" Petry joins in the fun. After the Ripken we have a pair of Lance Parrishes that form a full image of the apparently disinterested subject.

This was a very fun and diverse group of new additions to my collections and I have to thank Jon for all the effort he put into identifying and sending cards I could use, especially mini and sticker types that I often don't tend to buy for myself for various reasons. I also appreciate when folks like him go the extra mile to send items of, say, Tigers players in different uniforms, and especially Wolverines of any type. So this was a fantastic second package that kept up the momentum from the first one I showed off earlier.

I'm happy to report that Jon has already been handsomely rewarded for this bounty with a fat stack of cards of some of his own player collections that I had fun rounding up on Sportlots, and I look forward to his reaction to those when he has time!

As for me, I'll likely try to recap this month's show before January is over, both because not doing so would be pretty lazy, plus the February one is right around the corner. Until then, go check out Jon at http://pennysleevethoughts.blogspot.com!

2020 trade package #29: a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

 

Moving on from the last post to this one, we're going from "one of one" to "One of a Kind." More on that in a minute, but first I want to start as usual by introducing today's sender.

Jon who runs A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts decided to celebrate his excellent blog's fifth anniversary a couple weeks ago with a cool one-card PWE giveaway. There was lots of nice stuff to choose from, and my eye caught a player I like to collect, so I happily claimed the card, and not long after I received it:

Here we have former Michigan catcher Mike Matheny on a parallel of his 1998 Stadium Club base card called One of a Kind. While the more familiar First Day Issue versions were available in that year's retail packs, this insert was rarer (#d /150 instead of 200) and available only in Hobby and HTA packs. Besides the numbering you'll find two main differences between these and the base cards: the foil background and logo in the corner. Naturally they don't scan as well as they look in hand but hopefully you get the idea.

I was glad to add a new card of the former Card/Brewer/Giant/Jay, ex-Cards manager, and current skipper of the Royals, because I just don't get to do so that often these days. That it was a rarer numbered 90s parallel was a huge bonus. It marks the 103rd card of Matheny in my collection.

Many thanks to Jon for celebrating a nice achievement with some generosity! Here's to many more years of A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts. I'll do my best to provide some content for him in the form of a return package, possibly a PWE of my own. The rest of you should make sure to follow him if you aren't, and keep an eye out for more posts around the blogosphere celebrating receiving cards from a great member of the community!

2020 trade package #19: a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

How about a nice, relaxing trade post for a nice, relaxing Sunday? I've had that vibe going all day so this evening seems perfect for sharing another PWE courtesy of Jon over at a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts. I can say "another" because it feels like he just sent me one, and April wasn't that long ago!

This one contained a pair of new items for me and a note that said "Just sending along a couple of cards that I thought you might like." Does it get any better than that in this hobby? Nope!

Here's what he sent me:

  

Though both cards are nice this is easily the better of the two. Given out at the 2015 National, I believe this came from one of the packs you could get as a VIP, plus it's the Cracked Ice parallel. I was even able to identify that without the helpful serial numbering since it's one of the more popular designs right now, though I'd be hard pressed to pick out others given the plethora of weird names created by Panini and Topps.

Anyway, this is a super slick card of Burke, and numbered to just 25 copies too! TCDB tells me I have 21 items of him, which isn't bad since most of those would have come from trades. Since I don't really follow basketball I had to look him up to find his current team, Dallas, with whom he signed a couple weeks ago, though oddly enough he was traded there in January of 2019 (along with the other player in this post), signed with Philly, and then returned to the Mavs. With that team in the playoffs that look to be happening (maybe!) I hope he gets some PT.

  

The other player today is THJ, and it was fun to see him in this PWE since he's appeared all three times Jon's sent me cards! Card #25 in his collection is a Green parallel from 2015-16 Hoops. I'd say Hoops is the basketball equivalent of Score, meaning it's usually lower end with a solid design and nice amount of inserts. Obviously green isn't usually near the top of my favorite parallel colors but it does look pretty sharp here, with the color and pattern evoking some older Donruss Elite inserts.

Tim Jr. was originally drafted by the Knicks and even returned for parts of two more seasons (and was then flipped to the Hawks, as seen on this card), but as I mentioned he's now with the playoff-bound Mavs. Checking his numbers it looks like he made some excellent contributions to the team this year, which is really cool to see for a Michigan guy.

Jon, thanks for another fun unannounced PWE and for more contributions to my neglected basketball collection. One of these days I'll be able to load up again on stuff you collect and return the favor!

2020 trade package #8: a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

You know, whenever I say "let's trade again soon!" in notes I include in my trade packages, I do mean it, I just usually don't expect it to actually come true that quickly.  And yet, just a few weeks after I posted cards from my first deal with Jon at A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts, another envelope with his name on it was in my mailbox!

He was nice enough to include a note that alerted me to the fact that one of the items could easily be lost.  Forewarned, I carefully extracted them:

First is a pair of new cards for my nascent Ted Simmons collection.  In case I didn't explain it before, I wasn't actively collecting him because I didn't think he had any affiliation with UM, and in fact he didn't play baseball for the Wolverines, but he was a student here, and therefore fits the definition of a Michigan alum and someone I collect.

Almost everything I already had of him was from my complete Topps sets from the 80s, so the two you see above are among the oldest of the 17 I have.  On the left is a '75 Hostess oddball--my only 70s card of his for now--with the usual inconsistent quality of the cut-out job increasing its charm.  The smaller item I had to be careful to remove is an '81 Topps Sticker of the HOFer, and I think he's wondering if you've ever played ball for the Brewers...onnnnn weeeeeeeeed?

The other card today is a 2013-14 Prizm HRX insert of THJ.  This is actually the fourth Hardaway insert Jon's sent me going back to the last envelope, which actually had three other Prizm inserts, all of which are different.  For those of you that never saw these inserts in the basketball/football/hockey products, HRX started out as a redemption for a card with an embedded video, then eventually morphed into what you see above, with a QR code on the back you'd scan to see an "exclusive video."  Kind of like UD's PowerDeck, but with more work!

Jon, thanks for getting me back with another envelope so soon plus adding to a couple of my smaller PCs!  I'll keep working on looking for some stuff you might like so I can return the favor when it makes sense.

2020 trade package #4: a Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts

If I decided to make a list of the top 10 best things about card blogging, numbers one through nine would be trade packages.  I've received so many cool items from all over the place since I got into this racket and it's made me a better collector.

My newest trade partner is Jon over at A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts.  I'd followed his blog for a while when recently he was nice enough to offer me a couple vintage football cards, one of which I needed.  Then he was able to tack on some cool basketball stuff to boot, which surprised him a bit but not me since that's definitely my smallest Michigan collection.  That was enough for him to be able to send a PWE my way:

The court stuff leads off with Trey Burke, somehow a veteran of five teams in six-plus seasons.  I always loved Donruss' Stat Line parallels when it came to baseball so this '15-'16 card, numbered /43 for his 4.3 assists/game (I guess you can't number a card out of 4.3), is right up my alley.  That's followed up by a shiny Red/White/Blue parallel from the same year's Prizm product, and there's plenty of that brand to enjoy today.

That's all thanks to our next guy, Tim Hardaway Jr., who's only on his third team in his seventh year.  The similar cards you see in a pair were released a year earlier thank Burke's, and they appear to be Blue Wave and Yellow/Red Mosaic Prizms.  These are confusing, but not Topps Tek confusing!  The last card of his trio is from the same 2015-16 set as Trey's card above, and from what I can tell this particular parallel is called a Flash Prizm.  It's definitely all about flash, I'll give it that!

Last up from the basketball group is possibly my favorite of the bunch.  Nik "Sauce Castillo" Stauskas is bursting through your screen in living color on a 2014-15 Donruss Rookies Swirlorama parallel.  I think the combination of a design that succeeds in grabbing me right in the nostalgia plus a funky parallel makes this a win.

And then we close things out with the card that kicked off this deal, a '69 Topps of former Michigan/Chicago Bears DB.  Vintage football is another weak area of my collection but it won't be for long if I have folks like Jon helping me.  This is a great looking card that's especially fun for me since I was primarily a baseball collector for so long and enjoy seeing the different looks Topps used between sports back then.  One feature you can often count on when it comes to old cards: awesome team logos.  Damn nature, you scary!  This is just my second McRae to go with his '64 Philadelphia RC and I appreciate Jon putting in the effort to note that he's a former Wolverine and offer it up to me.

Jon, thanks again for a great first deal!  You have an envelope heading your way as we speak (unless you're reading this after Thursday when it'll likely get delivered) that I hope you'll consider a good answer to this one.

As for me, I appear to be Marching into spring with lots more stuff to show off from a couple TCDBers, another blogger, eBay, and this past weekend's show.

2017 trade package #6: the (Pedestrian) Collector

A quick note before I get to another great trade package:  Jon from A Penny Sleeve For Your Thoughts is running a very cool contest celebrating reaching the 200 168-post mark.  (Dude, I haven't even made it to 800 posts here and I've been going for six-plus years!  No worries, you'll get there.)  Leave a comment for your chance to win $15 in COMC cards he'll purchase for you, just a fantastic prize in my opinion.  I'm happy to enter and pimp this contest, plus I'm now following his blog, a fun consolation prize if nothing else as I'm always glad to find new ones to check out.  Head on over and enter!

Ok, on to another trade package as I work to show off the hard work of some great traders and finally get to showing off my unposted Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken stuff!

Today's envelope marks my second package from Chris, the (Pedestrian) Collector, who was the first to step up and join my tradeapalooza/giveaway late last year, then was nice enough to send some Tigers my way in December.  That package was 100% Motown Kitties, but this one was more well-rounded; besides the two cards you see below, you can also view a bunch more over on TMM this evening!

The spoils:

Card #235 in my Justin Verlander collection is this old-school league leaders piece from 2013 Heritage.  Card #6 in the set, it's the second such base appearance for Verlander, who also shares #2 with former teammate David Price and current jackass Jered Weaver on the AL ERA leaders card.  Coming off winning the 2011 AL Cy Young and MVP awards, Verlander posted a 17-8 record with a league-leading 239 strikeouts and a sparkling 2.64 ERA for the American League champs.  Another former teammate, Scherzer, appears for taking second with 231 K's a year before his dominant 2013 AL Cy Young campaign.

While I don't currently own the previously-mentioned card #2 in that set, I do have JV's third and final appearance, card #500, which is an SP.  Thanks for a new Verlander, Chris!

The other card I have for you here is a '96-'97 Fleer base of former Russian Red Wing great Vladimir Konstantinov.  Vladdie was a very good D-man after being chosen by Detroit in their outstanding 1989 draft that also landed them future legends Nick Lidstrom and Sergei Fedorov, not to mention future NHLers Mike Sillinger, Bob Boughner, and Dallas Drake.  What a haul!

Wings fans remember him as part of the '96-'97 squad that finally brought the cup back to Motown at the start of a very good decade for the club, then was unfortunately severely injured in a limo accident that ended his career.  The team dedicated their repeat Cup win the next year to "Vladdie", and I'll always remember this photo, which is on one of many posters that adorn my walls:

Thanks again for the new cards, Chris!  I know you said I shouldn't feel like I have to send anything in return, but I will anyway because that's how I roll.  But I'll at least try to make sure what I do send fits your collection since I think you mentioned you were trying to clear out unwanted stuff.