2026 other stuff purchase: Shuck yeah!

It's November and the World Series has come and gone--congratulations to the Brewers!--but as we enjoy the brief fall weather before the usual descent into miserable winter temperatures, I'm flashing back to July. I took a trip down to Mississippi to see a close friend, and her family lives near the Biloxi Shuckers, who happen to be the Brewers' AA affiliate in the Southern League. Of course, this was before Milwaukee's playoff heroics, and even before the trade deadline that nearly saw them flip a few prospects for Tarik Skubal.

The temperature, as you'd imagine for the area, was hot, but mercifully some good cloud cover kept us reasonably comfortable as my friend, her husband, their kid, and I, settled into our seats behind home plate. We watched Biloxi pound the Pensacola Blue Wahoos (Miami's AA club) 11-1. Top prospect SS Jesus Made went 3-5 with a homer and 4 RBI as he lived up to his lofty billing, and some other good prospects contributed as well.

I decided to mark the occasion by picking up a team card set from the stadium store, a purchase that set me back about $15. I remember paying closer to half that in the past but between inflation and the fact that Made's in the set, it is what it is. Besides, it's a fun way to remember the trip!

Here's a quick look at the team set along with a few notes about some interesting Shuckers prospects:

Made is front and center when you rip open the box, but that makes sense since he's card #1, naturally.

RHP Bishop Letson is a top-10 guy and he actually started the game I made it to, going 5.0 IP and allowing no runs on two hits and a walk. Burke's a bit outside the top 10 but the 1B bat has crazy good power, and he socked 34 dingers in '26. 

Nobody notable here, apparently, although Cruz did pitch a scoreless inning in the win.

OF Mark Coley II isn't a top prospect but he sure relished filling up the box score against his former team, going 3-5 with three runs and two RBI. Jimenez allowed the lone run for the Wahoos in his 1.1 innings following Letson's start. Merkel got the last two outs in the 7th.

Wichrowski is a top-25 guy but nobody to write home about. Guerrero spent parts of the 80s and 90s in Milwaukee's system as a middle infielder (along with pit stops with a couple KC affiliates), and he's managed the Shuckers in two different stints among his coaching experience. Coach Matt Lipka's name is one I remember from the 2010s as a former Braves first-rounder who also spent time in the Rangers' system, among others, though the IF/OF never cracked a Major League roster in about 12 seasons.

Not appearing in this set are OFs Josh Adamczewski (top 10) and Josiah Ragsdale. The latter went 2-4 out of the leadoff spot with a pair each of runs and RBI thanks to a two-run shot in the seventh. He was traded to the Cardinals in August with another prospect for JoJo Romero and Dustin May.

Here's a look at the back of Made's card to give you a complete idea of the design. Nothing fancy but pretty solid overall, I'd say.

The game, my most recent in-person baseball experience, was lots of fun, not to mention my honorary nibling's first as well, and I'm happy I decided to grab this set both as a souvenir and so I have at least one card of a likely future start in Made!

A blaster of 2019 Leather & Lumber

After an especially dispiriting Michigan loss this afternoon--one that I hope finally shocks the coaches into making some much-needed changes--I headed over to Meijer to grab a few things.  Armed with a gift card from a rebate plus 10% off I checked the card aisle and was happy to see a couple blasters of Panini's 2019 Leather & Lumber available.  I'd checked out a couple breaks and received a few cards in trades that piqued my interest, so why not?

These go for $21.99, though I got a couple bucks off that thanks to having 10% off with my rewards card.  The blaster came with the two packs of five cards you see above, and as you might have noticed up top you're guaranteed a hit.  The pack on the right was clearly thicker so I opened the other one first.  Here's what I pulled from each:

Pack #1 was 100% inserts, all of which look pretty cool to me.  Marte's is called Hit 'N Run and is the Gold parallel, #d 48/99.  Campy's is titled Slugfest and looks terrific too.  Next up is Maple & Ash, certainly highlighting the "lumber" part of the product, and the player I got is Colorado's Charlie Blackmon.  The last two are from an insert called Bat Patrol, and I got two all-time great pure hitters in Carew and Gwynn.

10 cards isn't much so I scanned the backs as well.  Here's the first pack:

The Gwynn is the lone keeper for me in the blaster, but the gamble was fun, and I like having some recent trade bait.  That's also my 650th card of Mr. Padre!

Pack #2 contained four base cards plus the promised hit.  I like the looks of these as well, especially compared to the original versions back in 2004 and 2005, the last time the name was applied to a standalone product (it had previously been used as an insert a few times).  The bat and glove backgrounds again live up to the set's name and make for a cool design.  The players I got were pretty good too, led by Trout.

Meanwhile, my guaranteed hit is a signature/manuball RC (#091/149) from the base set of Cards pitcher Dakota Hudson.  It's one of 51 such cards in the base set, the first one, in fact, at #101.  Hudson is among a pretty strong group that includes Juniors Vlad and Tatis, Pete Alonso, and others.  I've always liked the look of these "sweet spot" signatures so this was a nice get as my guaranteed hit, especially since Hudson one of St. Louis' first-rounders in 2016 and has had a very nice season in their rotation.  I'll be giving Kerry dibs on this and will make it available otherwise.

And here's the backs, in case anyone is interested.

Retail and boxes/packs in general aren't really my thing anymore but this was a fun one-off purchase.  I don't see myself going the unopened route with these in the future but may try to nab more items from the product, especially those cool die-cut cards, one of which you'll see in my next trade post soon!

Blasting off with 2017 Leaf Draft football

This post combines two things that have been pretty uncommon for me recently:  posting more than once in a week and (going back even further) spending money on retail stuff.  But after I saw what these 2017 Leaf Draft cards looked like, I decided to snag myself a blaster at Meijer last weekend.  (It also didn't hurt that five Wolverines feature in the base set, with lots more on the autograph checklist.)  A couple days later I grabbed one more since I enjoyed the break and hoped to complete the set.  Here's a bit more about the product and then lots more about how I fared:

• I believe this is a retail-only product, and I also think that's been the case throughout its existence
• Blasters go for about $21.99 and include 20 packs of 5 cards
• As a bonus, you get two guaranteed autographs which are separately packed into toploaders (no sleeves!) and then a team bag
• The base set includes 69 cards of players in their college uniforms
• The photos are airbrushed in some cases, surely for licensing reasons
• Inserts include:
• Gold parallels
• All-Americans (and Gold Parallels of those)
• TD Machines (and Gold Parallels of those)

I pulled the following out of my pair of blasters:

• 1 base set (69 cards)
• 44 base doubles
• 27 gold parallels
• 1 set of  All-Americans (17 cards)
• 10 All-Americans doubles
• 8 gold All-Americans
• 1 set of TD Machines (14 cards)
• 6 TD Machines doubles
• 5 gold TD Machines
• 3 regular autographs
• 1 gold autograph

Since I managed to complete what I'll call a master set of the base set and non-Gold versions of the two inserts, I decided to show off all of those here.  Should you have interest in seeing the Michigan cards in more depth, please head over to TMM!

Base set:

A sample base set card back, Virginia Tech QB Jerod Evans (in honor of MCM's Spankee's Hokies):

All-Americans:

A sample back from the All-Americans:

TD Machines:

A sample TD Machines back:

Here are samples of the Gold parallels from the base set and inserts (backs look exactly the same):

And here's my four autographs:

• Rodney Adams (USF)
• Johnathan Ford (Auburn)
• Eddie Jackson (Alabama)
• I'Tavius Mathers Gold (Middle Tennessee)

Overall my impressions were fairly positive:  

• Cons:
• I would have preferred to be able to snag a complete set out of one blaster, but the crazy number of inserts (an average of about 44 per box!) made that unrealistic
• Airbrushed unis (though that's not Leaf's fault)
• I'm fine with the base parallels but think the insert versions were superfluous
• The TD Machines design doesn't do much for me
• Sticker autos don't bother me, I just don't really care for the plain white ones used here
• A good number of the autographs are SSPed
• Pros:
• College unis!
• Autographs of 153 different players
• Five Wolverines in the base set
• Early cards of some of the top players before the draft
• A pretty solid base design
• The colorful All-Americans insert looks great
• A decent price point (that could be even better with coupons/sales/discounts); if you consider two of these the equivalent of a hobby box, you're probably going to get what I did:  a master set, lots of other inserts, and four autographs, all for about $40
• Perfect collation:  neither blaster considered by itself contained any doubles whatsoever, and together they produced zero triples.  You can't beat that!

I'll note for those of you that are interested in these blasters but don't really want to get in at full price, I've seen card show sellers flipping them for something like 2 for $36, and I bet most of you could do better than that.

So if you're a college collector like me, you have my recommendation to check these out whether it's blasters or singles!

One more Topps Olympic blaster

After grabbing a fun blaster of 2014 Topps Olympic Team and yadda yadda yadda last weekend, I picked up one more at Meijer on Friday for my final February purchase.  I had 15% off, making the price a slightly more reasonable $18.70, and I thought it would be worth taking a stab at completing the set while also scoring more trade bait or stuff to sell.

I'll spoil the fun upfront by saying that the one I picked this time couldn't live up to last week's, though that's not a huge surprise since that one went so well for me.  I also didn't complete the set or pick up anything all that big, but I still enjoyed the break.  Here's how I did:

Inserts:

Eight more Bronze parallels.  I once again pulled that many in seven packs, so, so far so good.  Jones is probably the most well-known here and was a decent pull.

Silvers, Gold, and others.  This time I won the coin flip by pulling four Silvers instead of three.  By the way, that Deneen is a great shot from what was easily one of my favorite events this year!  My one Gold, Geopper, was the Bronze winner in the US sweep of men's slopestyle, which rocked.  The Olympic Heritage card celebrating the 2006 Turin games is my first from that set, while I pulled another "Games" card of Bronze-medalist luger Erin Hamlin.

The hit (just one this time!):

After the auto/three-color relic combo I pulled last time, this was a bit of a letdown for me, but still not terrible since it's not a plain white swatch.  Aaron is apparently quite accomplished in the sport, though hasn't participated in the Olympics.

The base:

Finally, I ended up with 27 new base cards I needed (out of 61, so not bad), putting me just 12 cards short of the set:  1 7 11 17 24 33 47 51 62 74 75 85.

I also now have these doubles to trade (as well as everything else I've pulled):  3 4 8 9 10 15 18 21 26 29 30 39 42 48 49 53 57 58 59 61 65 67 68 69 76 80 82 84 87 90 94 97 100.

If any of you would like to do any trading, please let me know!

Blaster break: 2014 Topps US Olympic & Paralympic Team and Hopefuls

Since I had some "free" Meijer money to play with (rewards programs are great!), I made an increasingly rare decision to pick up a retail blaster, but only a very specific one:

I'd seen some fun breaks of this year's Olympics set, the hits look fun, plus there's a nice Michigan connection thanks to the presence of five Wolverine figure skaters in Sochi.  For a typical blaster price of about $22, you get seven packs of 10 cards and a guaranteed hit, which can be an autograph, relic, one of two types of manupatch, or a pin.  My goal was to pick up some of skater Meryl Davis' stuff since it's so expensive after she won the pairs gold with partner Charlie White, but I'd be getting into the Olympics enough this year to be excited about some of the other athletes too.

First up, here's highlights from the base cards:

Bronze medalists

Silver medalists

 Gold medalists (except for Shibutani, who I included with fellow Wolverine skaters Davis and White)

And while I'm at it, here's a back for completeness:

I ended up with 61/100 of the base set with ZERO doubles.  Wait a minute, this is a fun, interesting set with excellent collation?  Hmmm....

I landed a total of 15 inserts in my seven packs, which was pretty cool, even if I tend to favor base set completion first.  Here they are:

First up are the Bronze parallels, which feature a Bronze logo stamp on the bottom-right corner.  These are apparently at least one-per-pack since the odds don't list them.  I pulled eight from seven packs, so you do the math.  As you can imagine, I was happy to pull the Meryl Davis.

Here we have the rest of the inserts.  The top three are Silver parallels, which are 1:2 pulls, so I "lost" the coin flip for the fourth, which is no big deal.  Side note:  "Sled Hockey" sounds like an amazing Paralympic sport!  Wagner, meanwhile, is a 1:8 Gold parallel, while Daly is the Gold Rainbow version, which comes in at 1:24, which is a tad tougher than one per three blasters, so I really lucked out!  The Brown curling card is from an insert called "Games of the XXII Olympiad" and falls 1:8, and the insert showing off the Iceberg Skating Palace is from "Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games Venues," and was a bit tougher at 1:12.  Overall I did very well in beating the odds, and I'm very happy with this haul.

Ok, onto my promised blaster hit:

Actually, it wasn't this autograph of figure skater Evan Lysacek, which was certainly an exciting pull.  At least, I consider it a bonus hit because as usual I sorted through the packs until I found the "thick"one so I could open it last.  This card showed up in the penultimate pack, much to my surprise!  He wasn't part of the 2014 team but did win gold in Vancouver four years ago, so this looks like an especially nice pull, and a tricky one at 1:38 packs.

Well this certainly explains why that last pack was so thick!  It really was a fantastic pull, not just because it's a tri-color relic (and a 1:22 pull), better looking than most I've seen around the internets.  It's also nice that Mancuso is a pretty well known skier, and I was happy to see her win a bronze in her sport this year, even though she surely considers her lone medal a letdown.

To sum up, the set looks nice and is well-done, the collation is flawless, I beat the odds with the inserts, and got twice the number of expected hits, both of which look great.  Ok, all the evidence is in, and this is clearly NOT a Topps product, as it literally meets the opposite of each requirement.  In all seriousness, congrats to the company for making a worthwhile product, and I can only hope they apply what they did with this set to the rest of what they make!

I haven't decided if I want to pick up another blaster yet, but I will be working on the remaining 39 base cards one way or another.  Everything else except for the Bronze Davis is available for trade, and my main interests here are picking up the remaining inserts and hits of Meryl Davis--so if you ask me what I'm looking for in return for the autograph or relic, there's your answer!  I may eventually try to sell those, but as usual, my preference is to trade.

It's always worth waiting until sale prices on these, but if you're at the store eyeing blasters and see these available, they carry the TMV seal of approval!

USA!  USA!  USA!

2013 Topps Football Value Box

Over Black Friday weekend I took advantage of one of Meijer's infrequent 20% off deals to go along with Saturday's Santa Bucks promotion, which offered more discounts.  I haven't had a ton of luck with retail over my collecting career, and you all know I'm not a huge fan of Topps, but for the price (less than $15 after everything was said and done, original price $21.99), I thought I'd give one of these a try:

That's a very blurry phone picture of a 2013 Topps Football value box.  As it states, you get six packs of 2013 flagship, two hobbies of 2013 Platinum, and three OMG EXCLUSIVE!!!1!1 Refractors.  I'd seen some pretty good stuff come out of these on Blowout, plus I couldn't resist the urge to bust a few packs.

In the end, I didn't land anything all that exciting, but I think I got my $15-worth out of the eight packs and bonus cards:

The Wolverines:  a Chad Henne Jags base, and Brady appearing on the Pats' AFC East title card.  Keepers, obviously.

The inserts from flagship.  Nine from six packs was pretty good, I think, though I rolled my eyes at the Peyton double.  All are available.

From Platinum I pulled a couple base rookies, and these were the insert in each, apparently a thick Sapphire parallel.  Meh.

Finally, here's the EXCLUSIVE Refractors, which do look pretty nice.  I'd hoped to land the Denard Robinson, but at least I got a decent trio, even if it includes QB bust Geno Smith.  Ball just had a nice game against KC, and Lacy's had a pretty good year himself.  Again, all are available, especially if you can flip me the Denard.

Naturally I also have a bunch of Topps base available, so feel free to shoot me wantlists since I'm always happy to help.  Everything else besides the Wolverines is also up for grabs, as stated, and I'll surely be including a nice amount of stuff in future trade packages as well!

11/10 card show report: wait, that's it?!

I made the trip down to Taylor, MI, once again this afternoon for a card show, and if I expected it to be even more disappointing than usual, I wasn't disappointed!  The lack of quantity and quality is just apparent from the moment you walk in.

Still, it wasn't entirely fruitless.  I made two purchases for a ridiculously low total of just $25 (plus a bit more for some top-loaders, which are supplies and don't count towards my card spending).  The second haul can be seen over on TMM this evening; here's what I got for $5 from another dealer:

They're the six 2013 Score rookies I still needed, leaving me just 39 base cards short of the set (not taking into account the contents of a trade package yet to be posted!).  The guy basically quoted me $1 per card I needed, and since he had all six, I snagged them for his $5 price.  On a related note, I tried to package in a 2013 Topps Denard Robinson variation auto, hoping to bundle everything up for $15 or $20.  This guy's older, more clueless partner explained that "It books at $40, so I'm asking $24."  I don't know on what planet that card goes for $40, or even $24, but it sure ain't this one.  I think the highest eBay price I found was $10 or $12, and that was in the minority.  Congratulations, clueless card show seller, you're an idiot.  Anyway, it's great to have that rookie subset completed.

Since I spent so little at the show and had to stop at Meijer, where cards at 20% off this week (as well as around Black Friday again, fellow midwesterners!), I decided I'd finally get back into the retail pack game:

These three 2012 UD Football racks set me back just $9.58 on sale, which I thought was decent considering the number of cards I was getting.  Your highlights:

Up top you have Wolverine David Molk (I think I already have one or two of those) as well as young standout QBs Case Keenum and Russell Wilson.  Next you see four of my guaranteed six (two were dupes) inserts of Tim "Megabusting for Jesus" Tebow.  Finally, I landed a pair of SPs, both '93-style:  one of Arkansas WR Joe Adams and the other of former Oklahoma QB and Heisman-winner Jason White.  SP featured some cool designs back in the day so those are a nice touch.  And of course I love the college unis, which is why I skipped over everything else in the card aisle today.  I may put together the Star Rookie set, you never know!  The inserts and SPs are all available, though, as are any doubles I pulled if you have a wantlist handy.

As I mentioned, please check out TMM for the bulk of today's card show haul.