2013 year-in-review and a look ahead to 2014: my turn!

Happy 2014, everybody!  As everyone else is doing today, I'm going to take a look back at my year of collecting in 2013 and lay out some expectations for this year (as I watch the day's slate of bowl games, which should end after today, period--screw this "next Monday" title game noise!).

First, let's see how I did in 2013:

Resolutions:

1.  Post quality content, dammit!  Meh, not so much.  I came up with a few somewhat original things, but most of my posts were of the "show-off cards" variety.  I'll try to mix it up a bit more this year!

2.  Set a budget this time.  I give myself an "A" for this one.  After a net spending of about $2400 in 2012, that was my 2013 goal, and I stuck to that with zero problems!  This worked out so well I'll be sticking to it again in 2014.  More on that and other spending data in a bit.

3.  350 posts between the two blogs.  Yeah, not so much.  I had a decent pace going for maybe half the year, but there were plenty of periods where I was just unmotivated.  I think the stress of having to produce this much got to me, so as others have said, to keep things fun enough to keep going, I'm not imposing such a quota this year.  By the way, my final two-blog post tally:  112 (TMV) + 146 (TMM) = 258.

4.  Keep on keeping on with the set wantlists.  And how!  I'm not gonna do the work to figure out just how many sets I completed, but the results speak for themselves when you gander at my baseball and football lists (and lack of hockey).  As I focus on new projects, I'm proud of how much effort I put into putting a TON of sets to bed!

5.  Don't forget your non-Michigan PCs.  I'd say I did fine here.  In my resolutions post I singled out some Tigers and stars (Ripken/Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux) I collect, and while I can't say I added a ton of big stuff for any of them, I did score some cool pickups, and many of those I traded with were generous enough to include them as well in packages.  Despite other pursuits, I didn't leave these guys out!

6.  MOAR TRADING.  I specifically hoped to end up with at least 100 trade posts between the two blogs, and I count 34 on TMV with another 25 by way of TMM.  That's barely more than half (with plenty of overlap), and it's not for lack of trying on YOUR part, but pretty much my laziness.  I have less trade bait to work with (mostly procuring things through COMC now) and just don't have the energy some of you guys do when it comes to trading.  That said, without shooting for a specific number this time, I'm really going to try to maintain a focus on trading this year.

7.  Michigan sports PCs goals.  I'll go into more depth in a TMM post, but briefly here's what I wanted to achieve in 2013 (with actual totals as of today in parentheses, as I have a TON left to post):

• Baseball:  200 (243)
• Football:  750 (759)
• Unique football PC subjects:  100 (124)
• Hockey:  75 (112)
• Overall:  1100 (1139)

As you can see, I easily met all of those goals, and that doesn't take into account all my 2013 purchases I still haven't posted!

So overall, I'd call it another successful year of collecting.

Accomplishments:

I didn't do this last year, but it seems like a good idea to highlight some of the cool things I was able to do over the course of the year for my collection and sports fandom.  Those feats include:

Alison Brie, because obviously

• Reaching the 500-post mark on this here blog.  Took me long enough...

• Completing several PCs.  Matt Miller's is the only one that's officially done right now, but I did purchase and/or receive cards that will finish off a couple others.  This will go a long way towards motivating me to keep at it this year

• Completing some nameplates, namely these three:  Mike Hart (2008 SP Threads Lettermen), plus Zach Putnam 2008 Razor Letterman unnumbered and /20.  These are tons of fun to piece together and I'll be on the trail of a few others this year, just watch!

• Attending four MLB games; one in Milwaukee back in May, and three in Detroit, including a pre-All-Star Game Verlander win, Max Scherzer's 20th, and my first ever playoff game--Detroit's only home ALCS victory over Boston (all three were wins!).

Buying/selling:

As I mentioned, I tried to stick to a $2400 net spending budget, so an average of $200/month, while trying not to exceed $300 in a given month.  Here's how that worked out:

I exceeded $300 just once, in January ($311.40) mainly due to a huge COMC haul.  A dip down to $61.44 in February (the only month in which I spent less than $139) evened things out for a bit, and other than some extremes in March (another huge COMC pickup) and November (mostly COMC and eBay), I was pretty good about my spending.  Things picked up in December because I had some money to burn, then made a couple late sales to furnish a few other pickups.  My gross spending was actually about $2450, but I made up for that with a little more than $50 in sales, putting me right around (and slightly under) the $2400 mark for net spending.  In the end I was happy with how well this worked out as I never felt limited, but actually thought I was much more responsible than I could have been!

Here's a quick breakdown on where I spent my money while I'm at it:

Big surprise--the majority of that pie goes to COMC and eBay.  Counting groups of SportLots and COMC items as one purchase each, I made 110 buys in 2013, and 79 of those came from eBay, while eight were monthly COMC packages.  I attended fewer shows, so my spending there dipped, and I also made a massive cut on how much I spent at retail (a major positive development, for sure) compared to 2012, with Blowout also taking a bit of a hit.  A lot of that money went towards SportLots and new source JustCommons, both of which will surely get more of it this year!

So, what does 2014 have in store?

No resolutions this year--I'm in this thing to have fun, not make rules!  Here's some of what I'm planning, though:

• Stick to the $2400 yearly/$200 monthly budget.  If it ain't broke...
• Keep up the player-collecting.  Though most of them are Michigan-related, I'm going to get stuff up about them here to in an effort to bolster acquisitions.
• Do some original posting.  I once again have a few ideas, not to mention some holdovers from last year.  I'm especially thinking of opinion pieces on card design.
• Get some trades done.  I'm not gonna set a number this time, but let's get to work on those!  For now, your best bet to deal with me is to let me know what you have, then expect me to ask you to pick some stuff out from COMC!
• I dunno what else, we'll figure it out when we get there.

Thanks as always to everyone who helped make 2013 a great year, and here's to another!

Bonus content:  favorite entry search terms:

As many of you know, I like taking a peek at my stats from time to time.  Here are some of my favorite search terms that have led people to this here blog:

"ups girl"

"yo dawg template"

"respek knuckles"

"nickelback sucks"

Happy New Year, everybody!

365 x 3 + 1 = 500

So, uh, yeah--I'm celebrating a couple milestones today:  this very post you're reading right now is #500!  At almost the very same time--almost because the actual anniversary was yesterday--this here blog is now three years old!  Could I have made sure those coincided instead of waiting a day late?  Probably, but who cares?  Let's get to some celebratin'!

Post number one occurred three years ago yesterday, on August 28, 2010.  I kicked things off with an image of Dr. Nick Riviera, explained the Simpsons-centered origin of the blog's original title (Too Many Grandersons) and then promised box reviews aplenty thanks to a nice purchase from Dave & Adam's.

Three days later I showed off my D&A bonus packs, then busted my first box to review, 2006 Bowman football (a.k.a the set I just finished YESTERDAY).  Two days after that I busted another jumbo football box, this time 2010 Topps, then used the Gridiron Giveaway codes as bribes for being listed on 10 bloggers' blogrolls, which paid off handsomely.  Among the collecting legends that did me that huge favor were Thorzul Will Rule, the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame, Night Owl, Emerald City Diamond Gems, and BA Benny.  Thank you all again for giving me many much-needed page hits!

From that point on I was busting and reviewing boxes and packs, showing off purchases from shows and online, occasionally coming up with original content, and displaying some of my favorite PC items.  And trading, let's not forget the trading, which is easily my favorite consequence of creating and maintaining this blog.  I completed nine trades that first month and haven't looked back, except when I've literally looked back to enjoy the results of those trades.

Not a whole lot has changed other than splitting off sister blog Too Many Manninghams so I didn't bore all of you baseball fans with my Michigan Wolverines collecting exploits.  Some new bloggers and traders have come and gone, and so have a lot of cards into and out of my collection.  I can honestly say it's been an outstanding three years, the best of my collecting life, thanks especially to learning and embracing some of the habits of those of you I still read daily and trade with as often as possible.  Thank you as always to those of you who read, comment, trade, and help me with the sometimes difficult task of maintaining the motivation to keep buying, trading, scanning, and writing.  Here's to three more!

So since this is a day of celebration, I'm taking a day off of coming up with anything remotely original and throwing some top five lists at you instead:

Top five all-time posts by pageviews:

• My first post showing off my baseball RC collection (2914 views as of this writing)
• My second trade with Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle (2848)
• A trade with Beardy, a huge Michigan PC pickup, and a Topps Chrome replacement pack that leads to a (formerly) significant hit (2731)
• A trade post showing off a few Tigers cards traded to me by Jeff of My Sports Obsession before we attended the UM-Air Force game last season (2340)
• A huge trade post thanks to BA Benny, featuring a bunch of missing images of cards that have since left my collection (2187)

Top five favorite search keywords that led to people visiting this blog (for real):

• "UPS girl"
• "Yo dawg template"
• "Respek knuckles"
• "Nickelback sucks"
• "Attention whore"

Top five favorite posts of mine that I didn't just pick at random for this post:

• "We're gonna need more internets: a tribute to MCM" -- Adam from My Cardboard Mistress sent me a hilarious custom Ohio State card that I still keep handy to this day
• "Who's My Tiger?  These Guys!" -- Fondly remember my favorite Tigers players since my birth, though some of these may have changed thanks to recent developments!
• "TitleTown Poll" -- I really enjoyed recounting how many championships my local sports teams had won, and comparing that number to others around the country
• "Complete Sets:  1996 Upper Deck V.J. Lovero Showcase" -- Come on now, everyone loves this set!  Baseball card photography at its finest, back when inserts MEANT something
• "30 for 30: my 30 favorite PC cards on my 30th birthday" -- I posted this one back in my on my 30th birthday, and I seriously went through a big-time struggle to pare the list down to just 30!

Top five (times two) favorite post labels:

• 1990s Tigers SUCKED
• Alison Brie
• Blue tape is awesome
• COLLECT
• Drug-fueled card-buying binge
• ESPN blows goats
• Jim Leyland is terrible at everything except smoking
• Josh Hamilton says om nom nom drugs
• Ohio State is like Topps and therefore dumb
• WTF Chris Olds?

And finally, Top five animated Alison Brie images I'm gratuitously posting right now because this blog just turned three, and that's 21 in dog years:

Happy THREE Many Verlanders, everyone!

All the cool kids are doing it

I don't want to fall behind on the trend of bloggers listing their goals for 2012, and I'm happy to say I had no problem thinking of a few for myself, though many are admittedly stolen from said bloggers.  So here they are in no particular order (and this list goes to 11):

1. MOAR TRADING:  From the time I started this blog in late 2010, I've added a ton of stuff to my collection, but too much of that came from purchases instead of trades.  While I've got a nice list of trade posts going along the sidebar, it's time I put more emphasis on trading both to save money and get more out of the hobby.  My experiences in trading with other bloggers and readers has been 100% positive so far, and I have no doubt that will continue.
2. Post more trade bait:  While I finally got off my ass this year and got my trade bait page up, it's really only a small portion of what I have available.  I have plenty of other good stuff sure to please other collectors in addition to what's already up there--hits, rookies, bigger inserts, etc.--and I'm betting I can fuel more trades by listing more stuff.  That especially includes my piles sorted by teams--ever popular in trade packages--complete sets, piles of themed inserts, and more.
3. Comment more on blogs I read:  I follow quite a few of you, but I admit I don't comment as much as I should, especially since I've found that's a big incentive for me to keep my own going.  I appreciate a lot of what gets posted, and I promise to show that more this year.
4. Respond to comments I receive:  I'm actually pretty good about this, even if the comment is something like "Nice card!"  But something I'm going to try to do more is respond to the person who made the comment with an email (as I usually do, whenever possible) AND in the comments section so it doesn't appear to everyone else that I'm ignoring you.  Related note:  whenever possible, please comment using an email address so I can respond to you easier, especially if you're inquiring about a trade; I hate trying to respond to something and having the address come up as "noreply-comment@blogger.com" because I can't be sure you'll see my reply in the comments.
5. Manage two blogs:  Have I mentioned Too Many Manninghams, my Michigan-centric new blog?  The support I've received so far has been outstanding, especially thanks to Jeff's (My Sports Obsession) impending contributions, but I really appreciate everyone who's already following and encouraging me.  As I've already pretty much explained, I'm hoping that blog draws interest to the stuff I'm most interested in covering while people continue coming here for mostly baseball-related posts, most of which I'm sure will revolve around my personal collection.
6. Post quality content:  With all of the Michigan stuff separated out, you won't see any more game day posts over here, but I hope to provide entertaining and insightful content that keeps people coming back.  More of the aforementioned trade posts should help, and I plan to continue features on new acquisitions, You Complete Me and completed sets for sure because those seemed to be liked by some, plus I'll continue my pursuits of Bill Freehan's player collection and the Rich Hill Heroes Rainbow.
7. Group breaks:  Two sides to this one:  first, I'm going to try to participate in more group breaks others run.  I'm sometimes leery of joining in on some of them because the return doesn't seem as ideal as I'd like, but there are many run by excellent and trustworthy people, and I plan to devote some of my spending to them.  On a related note, I hope to run another group break or two myself because I've really enjoyed that in the past and each time I've had some outstanding participants that made things successful.  I'll try to come up with ideas that work for me, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to throw in a comment because I'm happy to run one of these having done it a few times now.
8. Spend less on useless crap:  First of all, retail pretty much needs to go out the window for me because that's useful money that I'm often essentially wasting.  Also, boxes and packs in general are a waste of my money AND my closet space and I plan to drastically cut down my spending and purchases of these.  I'll let others play the box lottery and pick up the cards I really want at bargain prices.  Besides PC stuff I hope to continue my new trend of picking up cheap vintage, a new addition to my collecting pursuits.
9. Complete some more sets:  2011 was a banner year for me completing my baseball and football sets thanks to a ton of quality sources, many of which I learned about thanks to bloggers and readers like you.  Trade packages were a boon, as was finding out about COMC and Sportlots, and thanks especially to these three sources, my wantlists have shrunk by an amazing amount.  I want to keep up this trend of finishing what I start so I feel less guilty about spending time and money pursuing other interesting projects.
10. Get more organized and get rid of unwanted stuff:  I've already made some strides here thanks to some of the previously mentioned work I did, such as posting trade bait and sorting stuff into piles for trades.  Still, I have a lot I really don't need that's taking up space in my card closet, and thanks to online trading I have a good way to distribute it to a good home instead of just chucking it for a couple bucks.  I know this is a pretty standard resolution-type thing, but I'm hoping it's something I can get done while I'm suffering through another cold, gray, football- and baseball-less winter.
11. 400/100/50 and beyond:  400 refers to getting to 400 unique Michigan hits, and I'm only 12 away from that, so it shouldn't take long; 500 by the end of the year wouldn't be a ridiculous goal at all.  100 refers to the number of Michigan baseball hits I hope to get to very soon as I continue to build on that collection.  And I'd love to hit 50 of any player in those PCs, though whether it'll be Rich Hill, Chad Henne, Jake Long or someone else, only time will tell.  Stay tuned to Too Many Manninghams for news on those goals.

I think 11 goals is enough for now and should be more than enough to keep me busy all year.  Good luck to everyone else who took the time to set their own goals and have a great year of collecting!

Happy new year! Please check out my new blog

I hope everyone has a safe but enjoyable New Year's Eve/Day!  Also, just a quick note that those of you who read this blog and like all things Michigan, please check out my new blog--Too Many Manninghams--and start following it for some Wolverines-specific goodness.  Those of you who don't, or were sick of Michigan-centric posts, well there's some good news for you:  this blog will now focus mainly on baseball and football.

So here's to a new year of collecting, trading, box busting, COMCing and putting up with Topps' shenanigans.  Happy new year, everybody!

Fun with Blogger stats (no really, it's pretty interesting and there's not much math involved)

(Please don't let the title scare you--you're reading the blog of an English major with an aversion to math that's more complicated than total bases divided by at-bats; there will be no quiz.  Also, there may end up being more images than numbers!  OH NO, THAT'S A RATIO!)

Math is hard!

I realize this is a bit of a throwaway topic for some, but it's something I've been wanting to do for a while.  I often compulsively check my Blogger stats just to see how many people are reading my blog, who referred them, which posts are most popular, etc.  It's kind of fun and often fairly enlightening, and sometimes it's even a bit surprising, but most of the time it's just plain entertaining.  With all that said, here are some fun, enlightening, surprising and entertaining stats:


Where you're from:

In Soviet Russia, bloggers follow yoooooooooooooooou

Naturally most of my audience is from the States, but I have a surprising number of readers from Russia, Germany and Slovenia.  That, or a few of you love to read my blog several times a day while you're downloading porn through a proxy.  Either way, thanks!  I figure my popularity in Russia is due to my communistic leanings during group breaks, where I like to do my best to see everyone get their fair share of good stuff.  Since we're doing stats, here's a useful chart:

For me the biggest surprise here was that another primarily English-speaking country like Canada, represented here by Ralph Wiggum, 

wasn't higher up on the list.  Finally, if you're reading this from Sweeden, sweet little baby Jesus why aren't you outside ogling your extremely hot women?

Page hits here I come!

What you're reading:

Note:  this blog opened for business on 8/28/10

This ends up being just about my favorite metric to look at because I'm always surprised by what the most popular posts end up being.  First of all, the huge spike in January of this year is easy to explain:  some of you might recall my epic run of purchases from the Blowout forums, which I was posting for quite a while.  I made quite a few buys and some of the stuff was pretty exciting, so I'm not too surprised that a lot of you were interested.  Five of those posts are in the top 10, including the #1 and #4 spots.  I can't really come up for a reason for the June spike, though.
#2 might have benefited from being in the middle of that explosion of excitement/quality (much like shows that succeeded after Seinfeld made Thursday "Must See TV.").  That was my third trade with BA Benny, and it was a pretty good one, though I can't identify anything about it that screams "This is the second best post you've ever done!"  Chalk it up to Mike being awesome plus the Seinfeld effect of the Blowout Blowout, I guess.
#3 is actually one of my favorites because there's a good variety of stuff, including a few exciting bits.  Beardy sent me an awesome trade package that November, and I led off with that.  I was most ecstatic about my Michigan quad autograph that I won on eBay.  Finally, I recapped the replacement packs Topps sent me because I was shorted one in a 2010 Topps Chrome football value pack, and the big winner here was actually a big loser:  Jimmy Clausen, in the form of an autograph I later sold.  Again, I couldn't point to a factor that made this top-five material, so in this case I'll attribute it to everyone loving Beardy.
I'll stop with #5 for the sake of relative brevity.  The popularity of this one is just about the least surprising to me because this was the point when I began posting my PC of baseball RCs, most of them being classic older cards, which I think struck a nerve with some of the veteran collectors around here who might be a bit jaded about the direction in which RCs have gone recently (count me in).  I'm hoping it made some of you go back and admire your own rookie card collections since they surely include some of your favorite players.


What you're using to read this:

Let's see, 25% + 8% = 33% of you that are awesome and use Firefox or Chrome instead of IE or the other less-desirable options (though I have nothing against Opera). 

Not bad, only about 8% of you are hipster douches that are too busy being smug to comment!


How you got here:  referrals:

Ever since I bribed a bunch of you to link to me, I've been getting good numbers of hits from being on some of your blogrolls.  My number one source of hits, though, is definitely the excellent Sports Card Blogroll.  If I didn't use Google Reader to aggregate all of the awesome blogs I follow, I'd definitely be on this every day.  As it is, I still use it to find new and interesting blogs to follow (although my number one source for new items is definitely blogrolls and trade posts on other blogs).
The rest of my top 10 is filled out by some pretty popular bloggers:

• dayf of Cardboard Junkie, who did an awesome job pimping my bribes for links post    
• Night Owl of Night Owl Cards, who did his awesome "What's the Best Card In the Package" feature for my trade with him
• Ted from Crinkly Wrappers, whom I'll surely trade with one day since somebody has to take my Blue Jays!
• Mike of BA Benny's Card and Pack Rip Cafes, who's making up for not sending as many pageviews my way by constructing a pneumatic delivery system between our houses since we trade so often
• Johnny/Hiflew of Cards From the Quarry, a.k.a. Purple Rain, my favorite Colorado blogger
• Beardy's old blog, so we'll attribute this to the excellent Mojo Beard blog, the best triumvirate of card bloggers I know of
• Spankee of My Cardboard Mistress, a guy who lives by Jefferson Burdick's philosophy (though hopefully without the crippling injuries)
• All About Cards, which is a great source for card news and box breaks, including one of the better ideas I've seen in the blogging business--their SpeedBreak
• Drew of Drew's Cards, a Yankee collector I can somewhat forgive because he collects Granderson

A big thanks to all of you on this list and everyone else who links to me.  I always return the favor and I never add someone to my blogroll without following them in Google Reader, leading me to a huge collection of awesome and entertaining blogs that help me enjoy the down times throughout my day.

Searches:  useful and not-so-useful:

While these are sometimes interesting, I do this mostly for the hilarity factor, mainly because I love using funny and/or popular pop culture references in my posts.

All-time

Well I'm glad people are finding me when they search for "Too Many Grandersons", although the ones that are searching for my URL could probably save themselves a step....  I mainly wanted to show this to prove that this many people are searching for "unfrozen caveman lawyer" which I've referenced at least once.

This month (July-August, 2011)

Awww, nothing hilarious here.  I do think it's cool that people were finding me after search for Jon Runyan, though.  Oddly enough, I only have the one hit of him.

This week (August 3-10, 2011)

I'm saving "Uncle Sam Earth" for the next section, but I love that I've used "fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuu" enough that somebody searched it and ended up here.  I also love that I just googled "fffffffffuuuuuuu" and got back "Did you mean: fffffffffuuuuuuuu ?"

Today (August 10, 2011)

To the three people that searched "uncle sam earth" today alone, I want to marry you all and start a sect that embraces polygamy, baseball cards and The Simpsons.  I've used this image several times,

and I don't blame anybody else who'd want to use it.  To those of you that searched boring stuff and got here, turn around and go back to Shelbyville and your attractive cousins.


I hope this has been interesting for at least some of you, and I also hope that it gets you to look at your own stats if you haven't been doing that.  If not, you might be surprised (or entertained) by what you find.  Who knows, it might inspire you to become the #1 google result for "Topps collation is like testicular torsion while Black Eyed Peas music is blared in the middle of the English riots."

3-13 card show report: personal collection edition

Blog design note:  
Before I get down to today's post, I just wanted to mention a couple improvements (at least I think so) that I made to the blog the last couple days.

The first is an upgrade of my "Collecting Links" section, which mainly includes my personal collection scans.  I moved my existing scans to Picasa Web Albums and got everything up-to-date there, including captions and tags.  That section now has the Michigan PC broken up by sport and also includes new groups, such as my baseball autographs and rookies.

I also added a new section a bit further down highlighting my completed trades with other bloggers.  I've seen other writers do the same and decided it was high time I did.  They go reverse-chronologically and the links take you to the posts where I discuss and scan what I received.  If I left you out please let me know, but as far as I can tell, so far I've linked to every trade with a blogger that I've posted about so far.  I hope this is a feature some of you enjoy, and even more so, I hope that leads some of you to work out deals with these great traders, all of whom I most definitely endorse.

Ok, card show report time:
As promised yesterday, here's my PC haul from Sunday's card show.  Like I mentioned, I ended up with 16 trade bait cards and another 16 for myself (totally not on purpose) for $90.  This group includes a few slightly higher-dollar cards because, obviously, they're for my collection and I wasn't going nuts throwing money at trade bait.

Baseball:
This doesn't happen terrible often, especially at card shows, but I managed to nab a couple Michigan baseball hits:

Drew Henson 2002 Fleer This Day in History auto:  Yep, another autograph of the Michigan football traitor himself, but this is actually my first baseball auto of Henson (I have two of him for football).  This design doesn't do a whole lot for me, but at this point I'm just trying to pile up as many hits of my players as I can, and this fell under the group of stuff I was getting 4 for $10, so I'm reasonably happy with it.

J.J. Putz 2005 Donruss Signature auto:  I'm slightly surprised this is my first Putz hit, but I guess when you're looking at a bullpen guy you never know.  Here's hoping he can make some noise for the DBacks this year.  I grabbed this for cheap from the last seller I visited, and as I was going through his relatively small group of baseball autographs (one row of a box, compared to several boxes of football, for example) I saw no fewer than five of these, which was great for me because I was able to pick one with a sig that I liked compared to the others.

Football:
I'm sure you'll be surprised that this'll be the majority of my pickups yesterday.  I hadn't been to this show in a while so I wasn't sure what to expect about availability and pricing (considering the Wolverines are a relatively local team there) for my guys, but I did pretty well, plus I managed not to pick up any doubles by accident.

Adrian Arrington 2008 Bowman Sterling Refractor auto RC:  Well I THOUGHT I had all the cards featuring this image, but of course I didn't take parallels into account.  A shinier, lower-numbered version of one I already had, but at a very nice price, and the card looks great anyway.  Not a bad start out of the 4 for $10 group.

Bennie Joppru 2003 Donruss Classics Significant Signatures auto RC:  If you're surprised that I added another Joppru auto/RC to my collection thanks to this show (like I was), you won't believe that I also grabbed ANOTHER Joppru, which you'll see next.  As for this guy, I think it's a great looking autographed rookie of an excellent Wolverine in his college uni.  Classics tends to have solid looking autographs, and this one fits that bill for sure.

Bennie Joppru 2003 Press Pass Authentics jersey:  Yep, Joppru #2, pretty cool.  I think I even found both of these at different sellers, but I can't remember.  A decent piece of an actual game-used (ie, not "event-used") jersey.

Brandon Graham 2010 Panini Threads auto RC:  When I saw this I assumed I had it since I already have a couple of the Panini-branded Graham auto/RCs from this year, but I took a gamble anyway and it paid off.  I guess a non-practice action shot would be too much to ask, but I like the card otherwise overall, and I'm really building up a nice Graham collection, so I hope he steps up next year (assuming there IS a next season).

Braylon Edwards 2005 Upper Deck Portraits Scrapbook Materials jersey:  I know I complain about single-color, boring jersey swatches, but I got this one for $1, and it's from his rookie year, so it's cool at least in that regard.  Of course, nowhere near as nice as

Braylon Edwards 2005 Upper Deck Reflections Rookie Exclusives Red auto:  This is a pretty sweet Braylon autograph, and a shiny one at that.  It may not be an actual RC, but it does have one thing going for it:  this is finally my first Edwards autograph.  It was a long time coming, but I'm glad to have added it to the PC.  The guy who got $50 out of me wanted $10 for this $50 card and I was happy to pay that much for it, really.

Brian Griese 2001 SP Authentic jersey:  Again, this is a fairly boring jersey, but with some of those older players, beggars can't be choosers.  At least it's serial numbered, and it goes along with my Amani Toomer from the same set.

Chad Henne 2008 Leaf Rookies & Stars Cross Training jersey:  My only Henne on the day was a solid Dolphins jersey swatch, which at least comes from his rookie year.  Plus there's all kinds of shiny, foil, serial-numberedness going on, which makes this a fun card for a couple bucks.

Derrick Alexander 1994 Superior Rookies Autographs auto:  One of my firsts from this group was this Alexander auto.  I have a couple base cards of him but didn't have any hits until I saw this one and grabbed it for cheap (it would have to be because I'm not a big fan of those lower-quality sets like Classic and Superior).  Derrick's bio reads a lot like Braylon Edwards:  Michigan WR wearing #1, 1st round pick by the Browns.  He finished his career with 40 TDs, having played for four different teams, which is a decent career in my opinion.

Jason Avant 2006 Donruss Threads Rookie Class auto patch RC:  This was my favorite of the haul and got another $10 out of me from the guy I spent $50 on.  I immediately liked it, especially because I didn't realize it existed--as with the Sweet Spot helmet autos I wasn't necessarily aware these were being done this far back, so I was thrilled to get one that's a RC for one of my favorite Michigan WRs.  The book value is up there a bit so I'm not sure I'd shoot for a name plate just yet, but it's certainly not out of the question.  Of course I just checked eBay and the only one that comes up is the exact same letter....

John Navarre 2004 Bowman Signs of the Future auto:  I think I've had one or two other transactions where I ended up with a few Navarres at once, but it's been a while so this was quite a day.  This is a sharp autograph of the former Michigan QB, and in my opinion one of SOTF's better designs.

John Navarre 2004 Playoff Contenders Rookie Ticket auto RC:  This set often looks pretty good--the ticket motif is kind of a fun idea.  The overall gold look to the card is a plus as well, but as usual, the fact that it's an autographed RC I didn't have was the biggest factor.  Fortunately for me, Navarre stuff is as cheap as it gets since he's out of the league.

John Navarre 2004 Sweet Spot Rookie Signatures Tier 2 auto helmet RC:  As with the Marlin Jackson I picked up last week, I didn't realize these were being made back then, but I'm making up for lost time whenever I find them.  I know not all of you are as happy about these, but they just make much more sense to me than this year's baseball leather slabs--this is a card-sized version of an autographed mini-helmet and I think that works well.  By the way, this is Navarre #7 for me, and all of them are autographs--not bad at all.

Marcus Knight 2000 Fleer Autographics auto:  The last card (alphabetically by first name) in the bunch was another first for me:  a Marcus Knight autograph.  Knight was a WR for our '97 championship team before a brief NFL career that saw him make his way to arena football before becoming a WR coach at Valparaiso, where he's apparently still employed.  So here's another player that didn't exactly star in the NFL but is more than welcome in my collection!

So there you have it--one card show, 32 cards to show for it (stupid lack of worthwhile boxes...).  Please feel free to leave comments letting me know what you think--whether you consider me part of the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked or your new sports card overlord.  And as a reminder, please check out the available trade bait from yesterday--about half of it is still available.