Complete sets: 1982 TCMA Greatest Hitters, Pitchers, and Sluggers

So my latest COMC package did arrive, just not quite in the state I expected.  Somehow a few cards got excluded from the shipment and were just chilling in my inventory.  Oh well, I turned those lemons into lemonade by grabbing a few more cards for myself along with a few for trade packages and once again requested a shipment.  That means I'll be waiting on some of the cards needed for posts (and trade packages), but I'll get to them eventually.  In the meantime here's another post covering more of my complete set collection.

A small part of my collection has been with me since before I was really a collector, meaning that my parents bought some cards for my brother and me when we were pretty young.  I know for sure that we had complete sets of 1989 Donruss and Topps because I vividly remember flipping through those in my earlier days--I would have been six when they came out.  A number of those got moved around to various locations, such as my grandparents' house, or lost entirely, including Griffey's Donruss rookie, but regardless, I think it's cool that my parents bought those for us before we were really into collecting.

Besides those more mainstream items I have some stuff of the oddball variety from earlier in the decade, including reprint-type cards.  In fact, I can recall looking at the back of a Honus Wagner reprint, reading the text on the back indicating its value at the time, and excitedly reporting to my mom that we were rich.  Not so much, young me!

Anyway, where this long story is leading is that in today's post I'm showing off three of my oldest, oddballest sets.  Many of you are familiar with the name TCMA and have cards from their products in your collections.  I happen to have three sets made in 1982, the year before I was born:  Greatest Hitters, Greatest Pitchers, and Greatest Sluggers.

Each is a 45-card set filled with black-and-white and classic color photographs of a ton of the game's greats, most of which are Hall of Famers.  Naturally the first and third sets have a bit of overlap which means twice the fun when it comes to a few legends.

I'll let the scans do most of the talking but the fronts and backs are a sort of off-white with red or green borders.  Backs include a write-up and career stats with everything in blue.  Numbers can be found in the bottom-right corner in the format "1982-#".

As I said, the player selection is excellent given the themes, and I'm happy to be showing off a bunch of Tigers--Al Kaline, Harvey Kuenn, Ty Cobb, Harry Heilmann, Heinie Manush, and Charlie Gehringer (Hitters); Hal Newhouser (pictured with Cleveland for some reason), Denny McLain, Frank Lary, and Jim Bunning (Pitchers); Eddie Mathews (incorrectly spelled with two "Ts"), Hank Greenberg, Norm Cash, Rudy York, and Rocky Colavito (Sluggers)--and a couple PC guys as well:  Gehringer and George Sisler.

And to tie this in with the COMC mention, I did need to grab one card from there to replace a missing one in my Pitchers set, Jim Bunning (you can tell the back of his card is whiter than the rest in that scan).

So to give some of you around my age or older a good case of nostalgia, and introduce some fun old cards to the rest of you, please enjoy the fronts and backs of these three sets!  (NOTE:  I realize the write-ups on the back aren't easily readable, but I just didn't feel like putting in the effort to scan, edit, and post them individually.  I hope appreciating how they look is more important to you!)

Hitters

Pitchers

Sluggers

Trading Cards, Man--Awesome!

2017 Sportlots purchases: RIP and PCs

An amazing World Series has given way to a rough last few weeks for Major League Baseball after the tragic deaths of retired Blue Jays and Phillies ace Roy Halladay (plan crash) and top Red Sox prospect Daniel Flores (cancer), who was just 17.  Unfortunately, another former player passed unexpectedly a couple weeks ago as well, and this time it affected the Michigan Baseball family and one of my player collections.

Former Wolverines pitcher Ross Powell and his dad were found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning in a van they were using for their recently-opened lawn care company.  Ross was just 49 and his dad was 72.  Their tragic passing was on my mind as the baseball world mourned an all-time great in Halladay and a potential future star in Flores.  Needless to say I extend my condolences to the families of each and hope MLB honors each of their contributions to the game.

While I already showed off my Powell pickups from Sportlots in my last post (along with those of another too-soon deceased player in Steve Howe), I do have some items today representing a couple former Wolverine baseballers and PC guys that have long since passed:  Charlie Gehringer (1993) and George Sisler (1973).  I had a great time tracking down a good bunch of cards of each, many of which skew more towards the oddball side, making it even more fun to add them to those collections.  So enjoy these new cards of a couple Hall-of-Famers:

Let's start with the Mechanical Man.  Gehringer's haul begins with a 1980s trio, with a 1983 Donruss HOF Heroes leading off.  Those Dick Perez works of art were just becoming a Donruss staple back then.  Next is a 1986 Sportflics Decade Greats, another fun example of 80s holograms.  That's followed by the very recognizable 1987 Hygrade All-Time Greats, with a great casual shot of ol' Charlie.

The next four hail from the large multi-year Conlon product of the early 90s, with the first two coming out of the 1992 version, the third from '93, and the last from '94.  I love that the second '92 card goes with Charlie's awesome nickname right up front.

Last up is Gehringer's base card from the excellent 1999 Upper Deck Century Legends set.  This product paired classic photos with a beautiful design--so basically, a typical Upper Deck issue.

I also found a couple cards of non-standard size.  On the left is a 2003 Upper Deck Play Ball 1941 Reprint, which is probably as close as I'll get to that card, at least for a while.  The smaller card on the right is a 2011 TRISTAR Obak T212 Mini, and like the Conlon earlier it also has the "Mechanical Man" nickname.

My Gehringer collection remains small, but this ten-spot at least bumps it up to 44.

Now we'll move over to "Gorgeous" George Sisler (don't worry, none of these cards feature that nickname).  Like Gehringer, his first scan begins with three cards from the 1980s.  First is George's card from the 1977-84 Galasso Glossy Greats set (with Sisler's card hailing from the 1980 version focusing on the '20s), an issue that made me look into the name and find out that it was a TCMA product given out to folks that bought complete sets from early dealer Renata Galasso.  Very cool!  That's followed by a Pacific Legends card from the same year, one that features a grinning Sisler in a photo we'll see twice more in this post.  The last of the trio is from a 1985 Woolworth's Topps boxed set that focused on all-time records, in this case George's then-lead in hits in a season (257).

As was also the case with Gehringer, I found four of Sisler's Conlon TSN issues, with these hailing from 1991, 1992, and a pair from '93.  The quartet manages to depict him with two of his three career teams:  St. Louis and Boston (Braves).

The final two cards in this scan are a bit more modern.  The first hails from 2001's version of one of my all-time favorite products, SP Legendary Cuts.  There's that Sisler grin again!  Boy would I love to have a cut signature of this all-time great.  That's joined by one of his two issues in 2010 Topps' Legends of the Games insert set.  This one, showing him as a St. Louis Brown, is from the flagship product while the other, which I don't have yet, came out of 2010 Update and includes a Braves photo instead.

Finishing off 2010, the first card we have here is one of Sisler's two appearances in that year's Topps National Chicle base set; I currently lack the St. Louis Cardinals SP version that can also be found.  Also, that smile looks mighty familiar....  Next is a base card from Panini's excellent 2012 Cooperstown product--a card I surprisingly lacked despite owning two of the very cool colored parallels.  Speaking of 2010s Panini, we'll finish up the regular sized cards with Sisler's base from 2014 Classics, featuring a slightly altered repeat photo from the previous card.

Opting for small ball, we'll end today's post on a pair of 2011 Topps-branded minis.  On the left is one of his four appearances in that year's Gypsy Queen Minis set--he also has a Browns issue, and each of those has an SP version with a different photo.  To its right is the very vintagey looking Kimball Champions insert that was somewhat oddly included in 2011 flagship.

14 new Sislers put his collection at a nice even 80.

I'll be back with more stuff from my huge Sportlots haul soon, but first it's time to show off some new trade packages, so watch out for those soon!

2017 trade package #20: the Daily Dimwit

After going about three and a half years between a couple trade packages I only had to wait a few months this time to receive some cards from Sam, the Daily Dimwit.  The nomadic collector of Houston teams and prolific purchaser of wax put in a nice amount of effort to scan his trade bait by team recently.  A card in his Tigers/Royals post caught my eye and we quickly made a deal--boom--just like that, which sounds like a textbook Dimwit deal to me.

So I happily packaged up his cards and some other oddball stuff, and pretty soon I received my desired card, along with a couple more that "fell into the envelope":

Throw-in #1 is this sold relic of Pudge from a 2006 UD relic set called Team Pride.  '06 was Rodriguez's third of four-plus seasons in Motown, and saw his third of four straight All-Star nods (#13 of 14 in his career) and 12th of 13 Gold Glove Awards won.  Of course that's also the year Detroit surprised a lot of people in winning the AL Pennant.  "Team Pride" is apropos of Rodriguez's Tigers tenure as he helped restore some respect to the team; it's been said a lot, but it's true.  So it's nice to have my seventh hit of him in my Tigers PC.

Hey, it's the guy whose name appears in this here blog's title!  This Verlander relic from 2016 A&G was also included in Sam's trade bait post, but I didn't think to ask for it because I didn't want to get greedy after having made a deal I liked for the next card you'll see.  Sam being Sam tossed it in anyway, or was merely a spectator as it jumped into the snap case by itself, if you choose to believe his story.  JV may be with a different team (Sam's favorite team, in fact) in a faraway state, but you'll still see me rooting for him and collecting him right here.  Speaking of that, say hello to Verlander #254 and hit #20.  Milestone!

Ah, there's the showstopper, the card that made me hurry up and respond to Sam's post so I wouldn't miss out on it!  Some of you know that I collect Gehringer especially because of his Michigan Baseball connection, but I also highly respect him as a Tigers legend, and that's why this HOF triple relic, which also includes Greenberg and Goslin, was a must-have.

This group, as highlighted by Panini's 2014 Classics Classic Lineups set, played together from 1934-1937, Goslin's four seasons in Motown towards the end of his career.  Hank was still in Detroit in '41 before sacrificing three years to the war effort, come back for '45 and '46, then spend the final season of his career as a Pirate.  Meanwhile, the Mechanical Man rode out the rest of his playing career, through 1942, as a Tiger.

The team represented by this lineup won 366 games with two AL second-place finishes (the final two years), the '34 pennant (losing to St. Louis) and the '35 World Series (over the Cubs!).  A young-ish Greenberg clobbered more than 100 HR and posted 500+ RBI in those four seasons while winning the '35 AL MVP.  Goslin contributed 50 HR, 345 runs and 371 RBI to go with a .297/.376/.456 batting line.  And old Charlie hit a mere .352 with a .961 OPS, 535 runs, and 447 RBI; he was an All-Star in each campaign and claimed the '37 AL MVP award.

So yeah, you could say I'm pretty excited about getting this cool bat/jersey/bat combo featuring these three players, giving my my first relic of Gehringer and 10th hit of his overall (another milestone!).

Sam, thanks again for a great swap, and I hope we can match up for a deal again soon.  In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed what I sent you and I look forward to seeing what you post!

2017 trade package #9: Bob Walk the Plank

He started it!  I mean, at least, I think so.  I've been trading with Matt of Bob Walk the Plank for more than three years now, and at some point during that partnership one of us raised the stakes to the point that each time we send out a package we do our best to wow each other, often with high-end stuff.  Since this is my blog I'm going to say that Matt fired the first shot.  I may not be able to pinpoint the exact moment he ramped things up, but I have lots of examples:

• August, 2014:  he sends me autographs of Miguel Cabrera and Bill Freehan
• January, 2015:  another Miggy auto plus a sweet Nick Castellanos
• June, 2015:  two even higher-end Castellanos autos, a Sweet Spot signature of Alan Trammell, and a low-numbered Max Scherzer signature, among others
• September, 2015:  sick patches of Prince Fielder and Scherzer, and two Al Kaline autographs
• December, 2015:  another high-end Castellanos autograph and a third Kaline autograph, this one numbered to just 49
• March, 2016:  another Kaline autograph, plus a Ty freakin' Cobb bat relic
• December, 2016:  a Justin Verlander quad jersey plus an autograph of the Tigers ace

With amazing content like that, what could I do but respond in kind?  It has been and continues to be a blast trading with Matt, especially thanks to this high-end back-and-forth that fortunately hasn't resulted in bombings on either side.

So let's look at the latest heavy hitters the Mountaineer Man sent my way last month!:

Austin Jackson 2016 Panini National Treasures Game Dated Material Signatures jersey auto (#98/99)

This beauty represents the Tigers portion of the envelope, and it may just be my best Austin Jackson in that bunch yet!  I do have a Triple Threads jersey/auto as well, but I think the game-datedness noses this one ahead.  I looked up the box score of that June 30, 2012 game against Tampa and confirmed the back's mention of AJax's 8th inning, two-out, three-run shot that ended up being the difference in the Tigers' 6-2 victory that day.  Also of note in the box score, the only Detroit participants still left on the 2017 roster are Miguel Cabrera and Alex Avila.

As for the card itself, it's another fun example of a simple Panini design I like that isn't hurt by the lack of logos.

Barry Larkin 2015 Topps Five Star Golden Graphs auto (#19/50)

I'm happy to say that this amazing Barry Larkin autograph isn't the default winner of the package, if you can believe it; reserve your judgment until you see the other two cards!  Five Star was pretty much a forgettable product as far as I'm concerned, but the exception would be this beautiful signature set featuring a bold gold auto on a striking black background, plus a nice photo.  Larkin seals the deal with his very cool John Hancock on a huge addition to my collection.  It represents my fifth Larkin autograph and 20th hit overall, giving me a nice pair of milestones to celebrate!  Seriously, Larkin stuff often goes for big bucks so it doesn't get much more high-end for me than a fantastic inclusion like this.

George Sisler 2003 Topps Gallery HOF ARTifact Relics bat

George Sisler 2016 Panini Flawless Teammates Triple Relics Sapphire bat-jersey-bat (with Goslin and Rice) (#03/15)

And this pair out of f$@kin' nowhere is why the Larkin wasn't an automatic win.  The Wolverines have placed three players in the Hall and Matt sent me cards of two of them in Larkin and this pair of relics of "Gorgeous" George Sisler.  One is from the 2003 HOF version of one of my favorite Topps products, Gallery, and I really like how they added a bat chip and color gradient along the left border to what was already a very nice looking base card.  

The other hails from the very high end Flawless product made by Panini in 2016.  This super low-numbered hit features not one but three HOFers including Goslin and Rice.  These three were Washington teammates for part of 1928, Sisler's only season with the old Senators, while the other two played most of their careers for that club.  Tigers fans may remember Goslin playing for Detroit from 1934-37.

This was an amazing pair of out-of-the-blue high-end hits of one of the best players in my collection, not to mention the game's history, and I'm floored at Matt's generosity, not even taking into account the other two cards you already saw!  I'm proud to say that thanks to Matt I now own three Sisler relics (to go along with three manu-relics), bolstering my collection of vintage stars.

I can also credit the Plankster for sending me the cards to reach another fun little milestone of 350 Michigan Baseball hits!

Matt, at this point I'm speechless, but rest assured I'm going to get to work on putting together a package that makes your jaw hit the floor, just as soon as I can find the ammo to do so.  Remember:  you started it!

I do take requests

...especially when it means less work for me!  I didn't feel like doing the work of putting up a post today, but then Kin of I Feel Like a Collector Again left a comment on my post from yesterday that he wanted to see all eight of my Charlie Gehringer cut autos at once.  Well, Mr. K., that sounds like an easy enough request to fulfill!

For your enjoyment (and anybody else who happens to be reading this), here they are in their scanned and enlarged glory:

2005 SP Legendary Cuts Autograph Cuts (#76/97)

2006 Exquisite Collection Cuts (#06/65)

2006 SP Legendary Cuts A Place in History Cuts (#23/57)

2006 SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Signature Cuts (#67/76)

2006 SP Legendary Cuts When It Was A Game Cuts (#18/64)

2007 SP Legendary Cuts Enshrinement Cuts (#03/65)

2007 SP Legendary Cuts Inside the Numbers Cuts (#52/60)

2011 Donruss Limited Cuts 2 (#25/49)

Thanks for reading and for your comment, Kin!  Readers, please show him some love by heading over to I Feel Like a Collector Again now (or maybe again, if you just came from there.  Even if you already did, go there again.  Now.)