6/20/26 card show report: meetup mania!

It took me until early August to post this but tonight I'm finally giving you a recap of the much-hyped June show and meetup!

It was another amazing one, as you can tell from this picture of me, John, Jeff, and Jason, plus Jason's wife Sam. I headed west to Kalamazoo, picked up John, and got us over to the Wings Event Center, a place that's hosted this show a number of times. This one was actually down in one of the ice rinks instead of the expo space, which was weird but ultimately fine.

When we got there we were able to meet up with everyone else, then we headed to the tables run by the Hollister family, some very nice folks Jeff knows well from previous shows when he and his cousin were also dealers. They were nice enough to take the above picture, and I spent plenty of time at their tables piling up some great cards.

This was almost like a mini National for me since I'm used to spending most of my time and money at one person's table thanks to my monthly show. There was a lot more variety to check out here, and Jason pointed me to a number of sellers who had stuff I could most definitely use. I think I bought stuff from around four or five dealers there, and I could have probably spent more time and money if I had any of either left!

Here's what my box looked like when I got home to give you an idea of just how much I picked up. That's one of those graded card boxes, and it works perfectly for me at my monthly show, but in this case it wasn't nearly enough to transport my haul! I spent $140 that Saturday in late June, making up for the small amount I'd thrown down a couple weeks prior, and I'm thrilled at some of the big items I found for myself and others. Most of the latter have already been sent out in trade packages, but tonight you get to see my goodies:

Not a ton of baseball stuff, but some good ones for sure. I think Jason might have picked up that Clark for me. He's been a bit of a spark for the Tigers post-trade deadline, which is very cool. That second Gwynn is numbered out of 2001, the Ripkens look great, and Pudge #1 is actually a sample version of a favorite 90s insert (they rule!) of mine, Great X-Pectations.

That Pepsi Palmer is a bit beat up but is something I'd never seen before--a 2000 collab with Upper Deck comprising 15 Tigers. And lastly for baseball, I think the Bondo bat is another card Jason scored for me. It's always funny getting bat relics of pitchers in the DH era, though at least we got to see some of these guys at the plate before both leagues succumbed to the designated hitter. Baseball-Reference says that Jeremy had 31 plate appearances over 15 games, and he was lucky enough to tally one hit in that time. He singled to lead off the top of the 5th against Jon Lieber and the Phillies on June 15, 2007, and a couple singles got him to third before a Gary Sheffield sac fly brought him home for his only career run scored.

The baseball stuff was nice, but football clearly won the day here in terms of my keepers. More specifically, I came home with tons of inserts, color, and RCs of Michigan gridiron stars--enough to need six scans to capture everything! I won't bore you with details, so feel free to just admire these if you feel like it.

I'm enjoying continuing to build out my Corum PC, and I've been surprised by how reasonably affordable Graham's cards are, but I guess that's what happens when you play defense.

When I said lots of color, I meant it! A good chunk of these came from the Hollisters' 3/$1 boxes. The cards were originally a buck each and for me they would have been overpriced at that level, but they worked fine when they were 67% off.

That Prestige Gold of Kwity Paye, numbered /99, was one of my favorite pickups of the show. Gold is a nice parallel color when you're wearing the maize & blue.

By luck this scan contains most of the numbered football cards I scored. Peterson's 2001 Chrome Refractor is limited to 999, Denard's Topps Platinum goes to 99, and Terrell's Pacific chase card is also SN999. I guess these three were dressed to the nines!

The last football scan includes a few more inserts before getting to the hits, including a '97 Pinnacle Inscriptions V2 card I already owned, allowing me to peel the protective coating off of this one.

To those I added a third auto of OT Trezelle Jenkins (third hit), a jersey relic of the A-Train (#55 overall), and football relic of Thomas's positional counterpart Tyrone Wheatley (#8).

My haul didn't quite end there, though, as I picked up this Pacific jersey relic of Wings legend Nick Lidstrom from the same seller that had the above relics (and some other nice cards I scored for trade packages). I think this one was something like $3-$4 so I was happy to add it to my small collection of Wings hits.

As you can tell I had a blast, not only because of my pickups, but especially because of the great time I had seeing Jeff, John, and Jason & Sam. It's a treat to hang out with all of them and I'm glad I've been able to do so a few times now! I don't know if we'll be able to do it again this year, or at least maybe not all of us, but if it can even become a yearly tradition I'd be over the moon. A big thank you again to everyone that made the trip, you're the best!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be back with next but I've still got plenty to cover, if not the attention span and energy to do so. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of my pickups, your recent show experiences, or anything else that makes you want to comment.

2026 trade package #14: My Sports Obsession

It sure does make your day that much nicer when you're already excited to go to a card show and then you get to meet up with a bunch of friends too! I'll cover more about the show in particular in an upcoming post, but today I'm covering cards that were gifted to me by one of those very cool people.

Here's a look at all of us at the 6/20 show in Kalamazoo. I'm on the left, followed by John, Jeff, and Samantha, who's now married to Jason from TCDb (congrats to them!), followed by the Army/Reds fan himself.

Jeff, whom I think everyone reading this knows from My Sports Obsession, brought me a box packed with stuff he knew I'd love, and as always, he was correct. My fellow all things Michigan/Barry Larkin/Cal Ripken Jr. collector does an amazing job of sorting through cards for a local shop, getting to keep some as payment, and sending me some of the spoils, because he's cool like that.

Here's a look at all the goodies he brought with him:

Lots of good Tigers, especially Miggy, Cobb, and 2026 All-Star Riley Greene. Once again I'm reminded that Topps' Flagship cards look quite nice compared to their actual flagship output. Elliott is one of a few Michigan Baseball PCs Jeff and I have in common, and thanks to him I now have six cards of the 2022 A's second-rounder who's still in their system. Oh, and Riley with just the 'stache looks hilarious!

This scan is a nice one for my Mr. Padre collection. Pacific Prism Invincible remains undefeated thanks to cards like that, and of course I love 90s stuff like Pinnacle Mint. The more recent cards from Topps Gold Label, Platinum Anniversary, and Archives look quite nice too. And I don't get to add to my collection of UM guy Tommy Henry (the pride of Portage Northern!) as much as I'd like, so I appreciate Jeff sending me the Bowman Draft Chrome card above.

Rich Hill may be retired but thankfully I get to enjoy a card of his final MLB team, the Royals, who were #14 for Dick Mountain. I love seeing Kaline and Kell together again. I think Barry Larkin would have to be the player with the second largest combined total between our collections, second only to Ripken. Yep, I just looked, and by about 700 cards! Barry's the fifth player I've gotten over the 1K mark, along with the Griffey/Gwynn/Maddux/Ripken big four. Verlander's next with 730+, and Miggy hasn't even hit 600 yet, so I would imagine my blog's namesake will be next to hit the mark. Anyway, this is a great assortment of cards of the former UM/Reds SS.

And Maddux has just a five-card lead on Larkin, with 1020 as of this post. The 90s SPx card plus a recent Stadium Club are very nice highlights of great additions to his PC. A Topps High Tek of former Tiger J.D. Martinez was a fun throw-in here. As for the Iron Man, Jeff hit me with a Leaf base from 40 years ago (wait, '86 was that long ago?!) and last year's Stadium Club. Stewart didn't work out, but Skubal sure did!

Sure, Tarik's likely to be traded in the next few weeks, and that's probably the right move given that his free agent asking price was going to be exorbitant and the cheap-ass owners wouldn't have paid him half that anyway. It was nice when the team was able to keep a home-grown superstar ace like Verlander for longer, but those days are good and done. At least I have some really nice cards of Skubal's to enjoy, like the bunch Jeff sent here that give me a solid 82 of the repeat Cy Young-winner. And speaking of Verlander, he ends this scan...

...and ends the vertical orientation baseball stuff with another six-pack. The soon-to-be-retired legend adds eight to his collection thanks to Jeff, and those made a good dent towards the 750 mark. I really can't have too many cards of his, and I enjoy a good number of the brands/designs you see here, especially Stadium Club and Archives.

And finally for baseball, some horizontals plus an oddball. 2000 has to be the classiest look for Pacific's Aurora brand. Mad Dog goes back for one more appearance thanks to '23 Archives. Then we have a couple Tigers team cards: '79 Topps, the year before Sparky would take over, plus 2006 Heritage, showing off the team a year before they'd shock everyone by racing to the World Series. Lastly, the lenticular card is from '87 Sportflics, and the back of this one lists the team's leaders in average, HRs, and RBI each year from 1977-86.

Now we have a few basketball scans, mostly thanks to Jeff's ONIT Timeless subscription. Also, this is apparently when scanning went off the rails for me, but to be fair, I did have a cold at the time and probably just didn't check to see how these came out. No disrespect intended to the pictured athletes!

Anyway, this first group puts me at 10 of the 14 cards in the Timeless set covering the 2025-26 women's team. Jeff also included a Compass insert of Te'Yala Delfosse.

Additionally he gifted me more of the men's team set. There are 16 cards of the eventual champs, and I now lay claim to 13 of them, needing star first-rounder Aday Mara along with Malick Kordel and Ricky Liburd. The other big names are here and in the next scan, including Most Outstanding tournament player Elliot Cadeau, #9 overall pick Morez Johnson Jr., and #11 selection Yaxel Lendeborg. It was pretty cool seeing Johnson, Lendeborg, and Mara go #9, 11, and 12 overall a few weeks ago!

Besides the base cards, he included a Johnson insert called Stained Glass, plus a Classic Game Card of Juwan Howard from 1994, and a Bowman Chrome U of star women's player Syla Swords.

Jeff has given me a whole bunch of basketball and football ONIT Timeless cards so I'm glad I was able to give the '25 ONIT team set I bought for him on Facebook when I saw him at this show. Just like that set, the Timeless version is 79 cards in size, and he's given me 27 of them, including a rare-ish appearance of Justice Haynes with the Wolverines (he's since moved on to Georgia Tech after his brilliant '25 campaign was shortened due to injury). Also included: a Black Compass insert of DB Rod Moore, numbered to just 25. There are apparently 10 in this set so it's crazy he pulled two of one card limited to 25 copies!

The final ONIT card was a regular Compass insert of this year's QB with limitless potential (if he can put it all together), Bryce Underwood. That's just my third of the true sophomore who could show leaps in development thanks to a new head coach and an actual QB coach. Joining him in the top row is a great pair of shiny inserts of two recent UM stars in Nico Collins and Blake Corum. 

Johnson is a quality CB who did make an instant impact for the Cardinals, and also shouldn't have green anywhere near his cards! My 9th card of TE Sean McKeon is his Crown Royale entry from 2020 Panini Chronicles. Mullings' card hails from the college-friendly Bowman Chrome U, which happily didn't have to edit out uniforms. And my latest Michigan card of GOAT DB Charles Woodson is a 2025 Panini Prizm Draft Silver Prizm, which looks fantastic and puts him just 5 cards away from the 400 mark.

And last but not least is a surprising hockey item, since Jeff and I don't usually deal in that sport. I certainly do appreciate it, though, since I'm working on a project to track down certain cards of Michigan alumni across sports and non-sports. That makes the '93-'94 Upper Deck RC of Kevin Hilton extra valuable to me, as it knocks one guy off the list. The Trenton, MI born C put up some very good offensive numbers in four seasons in Ann Arbor (1992-93 through 95-96) and was on the under-20 World Junior Championship roster as well for the last two of those seasons.

Again, I want to extend a huge thanks to Jeff for making the trip all the way up to Kalamazoo from his Indiana home, hanging around and talking cards for a bit, and of course, for bringing me this big stack of great new stuff! He's one of my oldest blogging buddies (not literally, Jeff!) and I'm thankful to know people like him in this hobby, not to mention live near enough to get to meet up once in a while!

I think the two June show recaps will follow this post but we'll see what I feel like. Until then, I'm going to enjoy putting away a whole bunch of new stuff!

11/8/25 card show report: a triple "J" meetup

For what will likely be my final post of 2025 (man, the year went by so fast!) I'm going to close the book on my collecting for November by covering the show I went to the weekend after the one I just covered.

Thanks to a bye in Michigan's football schedule I was able to head out west to Portage, not far from Kalamazoo, for a show held in a school gym. I made the 1.5 hour-ish trek out there because I'd get to hang out once again with John, Jeff, and Jason (plus his fiancee Samantha). You just don't pass up opportunities like that! John lives nearby and I was able to pick him up, Jeff's about a half hour closer than I am, and Jason's drive was just a little longer than Jeff's.

Of course I mention all three of these guys here and then didn't think to get a picture of all of us together while we were at the show. At least I got one of John and me when I dropped him off before heading home:

Anyway, just like I enjoyed hanging out with Angus at the show the week before, I had a blast with these folks. I ended up spending a bit of time with each of them, including Jeff before he took off (he beat us all there), but not before handing me the stuff I posted in this trade recap. I then stopped at a few tables where Jason and Sam were looking before they headed out. Then I closed out the show looking at a few other tables with John before we got out of there.

It was really nice seeing all of them in person and I greatly appreciate that they all took the time to hang out for a bit. I'm grateful for all the cool people I know through this hobby and here I was surrounded by a bunch at once, truly a treat.

I ended up spending $79, every last dollar in my wallet but one, apparently, and scored some cool items that went in Christmas card packages. I also came home with a few keeper items for myself, but thankfully not so many that I'll need to spend a lot of time going over them.

This 73-card boxed set focusing on Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline, was actually the very last thing I bought. I noticed it on a table way in the back and made sure to come back for it before I left. It's fairly low-end as far as production value goes, but for $5 I couldn't just leave it.

Here's a look at some vertical fronts. If the design isn't much to write home about, the photography choices are still very cool. The cards span Kaline's playing career and life beyond the field. There's a mix of orange and black borders not to mention black & white and color images.

 
There were some fun horizontal images too so I included a scanner bed worth of those as well. 

The backs are about as simple as the fronts but the write-ups are solid. You'll notice the first card is numbered "1A" and there's a "1B" as well, and then the rest of the numbers go up to 72.

One other thing to note is that the set was made with both black and red borders on the back, and mine obviously has the latter, which is a bit less common.

Overall I thought this was a great value for just $5 and it allowed me to add more than 70 cards to Al's PC!

I believe the rest of my cards, all but one of which were of the football variety, came from three different tables. First up is my sixth relic (13th hit overall) of Sauce Castillo. I'm pretty sure this came from a younger guy, probably a teenager, who was wearing a #2 Michigan Football jersey, so I was happy to give him a sale.

The cheapest football card here is a SAGE base of Michigan/Bengals DB DJ Turner. And then I found three very nice hits from the sport. One is my 12th autograph of TE Jake Butt, out of 2017 Spectra and numbered /75 on the back. #2 is a large multi-colored jersey swatch (with stitching) of RB Hassan Haskins from 2022 Panini XR, which is limited to just 25 copies. And last up, I overpaid a bit for the auto you see of Iowa/Michigan/Lions QB Jake Rudock, but it just looks so cool! It's a 2016 Panini Black Gold card, and I'd already scored the "White Gold" version (numbered /99, as opposed to 199 here) so now I have its twin. The signature and player image areas being enhanced by acetate make this a big winner for me in addition to the black background with gold foil. Besides the other auto I mentioned, I have a plate of Rudock as well and therefore three hits of him overall.

Thank you again to John, Jeff, and Jason & Sam for a nice meetup at this show. I hope we can set up something similar in 2026 depending on when these shows are scheduled!

This should be it for me for 2025. I'll mostly be spending tomorrow watching Michigan face Texas in the Citrus Bowl as my fellow fans and I look forward to a new coach next year, plus I've been putting in some effort cleaning up and updating my trade bait on TCDb. I should be back early in 2026 (maybe as soon as Thursday? We'll see!) to recap this month, which brought a couple more blogger trade packages, plus I have the December monthly show and rest-of-year looks at my eBay purchases and TCDb trades to get to.

So Happy New Year to all of you, and GO BLUE!

2025 trade package #24: My Sports Obsession

November ended up being a very social month for me as far as the hobby goes. Less than a week after I attended the show with Angus that I just recapped, I headed about an hour and a half west to meet up with Jason, John, and the person who handed me this trade package, Jeff of My Sports Obsession. It was a Saturday show that I was able to go to with Michigan on a bye week (I'm sure Jeff wouldn't have missed the game either!) and things also worked out for Jason (and his lovely fiancé) and and John to have time to spend there.

I'll recap that show a bit later this month after covering the other trade packages and the usual monthly show, but for the purposes of this post I'll briefly say that I really enjoyed getting to hang out with these guys and look at some cards. It's a treat getting to enjoy this hobby with others that feel the same way and I'm grateful that they all made the effort (and glad that I did too).

Of course I was dumb and didn't get a picture with everybody for the bit of time we were all there (just with John when I dropped him off at home, though I'll share that in the show post), but at least I made sure to maximize my time with everyone there. That includes Jeff, who beat us all to the venue and therefore left sooner. We still got to talk for a while while flipping through cards at the tables run by a family he saw all the time when he and his cousin were doing shows, and that was a good time.

And of course he brought me some cards. LOTS of cards. I always appreciate it when someone puts in the time and effort to set stuff aside from me, and Jeff's one of the best at it thanks to the work he does for a card shop near him.

Here's what he brought me this time:

Miggy hit six career grand slams--I just looked it up--and I'm sure each ball felt like that Mosaic card looks when it left his bat. I hadn't added a new card of Michigan alum Franklin in forever so I loved seeing that Refractor. Griffey, Gwynn, and Maddux all pop up in this scan on Prizm cards, and you'll get to see the fourth member of that quartet plenty in this scan. The two colorful Panini-branded Kalines are among the coolest cards in tonight's bunch (even if "Pink Ice" sounds more like a drug reference than a baseball card).

See what I mean about Ripken? Jeff and I have a bit over 2400 Cals between us so you'll always see lots of his cards go back and forth in our trades. I really like the Diamond Kings and Gallery cards here, and there's even a rare Gypsy Queen design that works well with a photo of the HOFer in the field. These aren't the only cards of the Iron Man you'll see tonight, though. Before we get to those, it's back to the Prizm well one more time with HOF Wolverine Ted Simmons and a nice shot of him wearing the tools of excellence. He's followed by (future former) Tigers ace Tarik Skubal on a couple recent Topps inserts.

I'm hoping my fellow Tigers fans and I get to enjoy Skubal for at least as long as his predecessor Justin Verlander, of whom Jeff sent two many this time on a couple shiny parallels. The final non-hit portrait card is a checklist from a Wendy's/Coke '84 Tigers set that I've actually seen pop up a few times lately on Blusky and blogs, which is fun, and hopefully I'll add more of those myself. A quartet of landscape Ripkens rounds out the leader of the big PC foursome, including a typically beautiful Stadium Club shot of a guy known for staying long after games to sign for kids.

There were a couple surprise autographs mixed in with the baseball stuff: a 2016 Bowman Platinum Green (/75) of  Michael Fulmer and 2021 Topps Chrome Update Autographs signature of Kyle Funkhouser. These are my first signed cards of the two pitchers. Fulmer was that year's AL Rookie of the Year after coming over from the Mets, though his effectiveness waned and he found himself in the bullpen. Funkhouser was Detroit's fourth-rounder in 2016 (after the Dodgers took him in the first round the previous year but didn't sign the Illinois native heading to Louisville). He also didn't pan out in the end, but a Refractor is always fun and he has a very nice signature.

The last baseball item is a fun oddball piece: a 1994 team schedule. Detroit went 53-62 in the strike-shortened season, Sparky Anderson's penultimate year managing the club. My PC guy Tony Phillips led the team in bWAR while Travis Fryman and another PC favorite, Mickey Tettleton, made the All-Star team. David Wells and Mike Moore were the most effective pitchers that year. Yeah, the 90s sucked for Tigers fans. But items like this are fun to keep!

In a bit of a surprise, a Panini Phoenix RC of Franz Wagner was the only basketball item, but a very good one!

As for football, the content pretty much matched both the quantity and quality of baseball. That begins with RCs of TE Erick All. Buckeye-killer RB Tim Biakabutuka pops up on a 2000 Collector's Edge insert that's numbered /500 on the back and color matches pretty well with his Panthers uni. Transfer guy Charbonnet, who plays the same position, also appears thanks to Panini Prizm, and I'm enjoying seeing him play weekly for Seattle. And then there's a quartet of Nico Collins, who continues to star especially when the QB throwing his way isn't ass. Nico added a pair of TDs in today's win and eclipsed 1000 receiving yards for the third straight season. I have to say that Panini's retail version of its Illusions brand scans quite nicely and largely looks just as good as the hobby version.

The theme of this scan is "color and chrome." I love getting cards (especially colorful cards) of Blake, who scored a TD and had a couple very nice runs against the Lions' porous defense earlier today. I don't think too many others would give a second thought to a card of Amara Darboh, but Jeff and I both would, and I love the colorful Optic card of the WR. Michigan sorely needed Grant and his DL partner Mason Graham this season, but I hope things go well for the Dolphins rookie, seen on his first Score card. Between the years Aidan and his dad played for the Wolverines, there was HOF G Steve--no relation--who's seen on last year's Topps Chrome return, along with fellow HOFer Ty Law. Jenkins is another young ex-Wolverines defender I'm watching with great interest. JJ's had a bit of a rough first year as a starter but still shows a lot of promise, and his alma mater's fight song is the best. Ojabo's Contenders Optic features a very nice design and action photo of the fearsome defender.

The second-to-last scan begins with AN ORJI IN THE ENDZONE! (Thanks to Bowman Chrome U.) Like Orji, QB Brandon Peters transferred out, in his case to Illinois, though he has no cards depicting him as a Wolverine, and therefore I don't count him in my collection. The trio of A-Train inserts look great, with two hailing from Pacific brands and one from UD. Like fellow RB Tim Biakabutuka above, Tyrone Wheatley adds a numbered (/500) Collector's Edge insert to his pile. He hasn't had much NFL luck, but I'm happy to add another RC of national champ WR Roman Wilson to my collection. And the pair of Woodson cards looks great, especially the Select Draft Picks parallel where the red really makes the best college football uniform pop.

The last cards I'll show off tonight are ones I really appreciated since I wouldn't likely add them myself anytime soon. ONIT appears to be the latest brand handling the cards being sold for NIL money for a number of schools, and their overall design is pretty solid. I believe Jeff bought a few packs (which aren't cheap) or found singles otherwise, and gifted me these six. We'll skip talking about the guy who should be shot into the sun, but it's great getting the rest (plus I can cross the ex-coach off my checklist now).

Browder is a true freshman WR who appeared in seven games this season. El-Hadi is a fifth-year OL who came back for one more season where he finally got more playing time. Goodwin (son of Michigan alum Jonathan) is a sophomore WR who played in all 12 games and caught 11 passes for 145, and was also sometimes a pretty effective pass-blocker. Senior EDGE Derrick Moore was one of the most effective players on defense in '25 with 10.0 sacks, and next year's defense will surely miss him.

Finally, QB Davis Warren is one of those great stories you sometimes hear about in the college game. He overcame leukemia in high school to walk on at Michigan, then persevered long enough to get most of the playing time in 2024 after JJ McCarthy headed to the draft. It was a trying season for Michigan but against all odds he helped the Wolverines beat Ohio State for a third straight season, and also started in the bowl game win over Alabama. Whatever he does after graduating this year, he'll surely be great at it.

Jeff, thanks so much once again for this huge stack of goodness you were generous enough to bring me at that show. I have no idea what's in store for our favorite college football team going forward, but I'm thankful to have friends like you with whom I can root for them and trade some cards. I'll get a return envelope back your way at some point soon, possibly before Christmas.

Readers, you can look forward to three more November trade recaps before a couple show posts and one looking at a few eBay pickups too.

2025 trade package #14: My Sports Obsession

It took a bit after the clock finally hit zeroes for me to be able to function normally again, but now that I'm done enjoying Michigan's third victory of the season (over Nebraska), I can spend a bit of time on another trade post.

July package #2 arrived courtesy of fellow Michigan fan Jeff of My Sports Obsession. As he's done in the past, he sent me a straight-up BOX stuffed with cards, and so many of them were new that I decided to save myself a bit of effort by not scanning the dupes.

There's a ton of great content from the top three major US sports, so let's get into it:

Scan #1 includes Tigers favorites Miggy and Big Daddy, with the latter being represented on some very cool oddballs, two of which are playing cards. The highlight for me, though, is the quartet of Cronenworths. I still love that Jeff and I take turns bolstering each other's PC of the Michigan alum, and this time he sent me some great looking items, two of which are nice parallels. We're currently the #s 3 and 4 collectors of Cronenworth on TCDb, by the way.

Scan #2 begins with two more Fielder cards including another fun oddball. A guy who hit 300+ HR including 258 over a seven-year span of 1990-96 most definitely has the power to hang in a set made in conjunction with Duracell. A single Griffey, featuring what appears to be Junior in an older style Mariners uni, gives way to a nice little bunch of Gwynns, with an oddball and some Stadium Club beauties in the mix. The latter applies to another of our shared PC guys in Barry Larkin, and that card brings back great memories of watching him play, plus the original Stadium Club Chrome products. 2021 2nd-round IF Izaac Pacheco provided some nice pop for the Midwest League champion West Michigan Whitecaps as he works his way through Detroit's system.

Oh hey, it's another one of the players Jeff and I both PC--Cal Ripken Jr.! He's the #1 guy whose cards we send back and forth and #1 in my collection (second to Frank Thomas in his). Topps Chrome Platinum and Stadium Club Chrome both have pleasing designs. The less I say about Tork's team and their division lead-choking ways right now, the better, though I do appreciate getting his cards. And including the next scan, you get to see 11 Many Verlanders that Jeff sent my way, with some nice looking Topps designs leading the way.

See? Even more Verlanders! Even a card of him with his latest team, the Giants, who've all of a sudden helped lead him to the fountain of youth, apparently. It would be awesome if he felt like pitching next season.

He's joined by another Tigers Topps parallel like in the first scan, plus a pair of interesting 80s issues: a Fleer Mini of catcher Matt Nokes, and a 7-11 coin of HOFer Jack Morris. Sweet!

I'll say it until I'm blue (and maize?) in the face, but thank you to those who send me Michigan Basketball cards I don't have so I can spend my money on the sports I prefer! Jeff sent me a couple recent-ish stars in LeVert and Franz Wagner, the latter of which is, appropriately enough, blue!

On the football side of things, my collection of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet (UCLA) got a nice little three-card boost that included a RC and cool multi-color die-cut of the same. Stud WR Nico Collins pops up once, as does former UM coach and current Chargers leader Jim Harbaugh. Buckeye-killers Haskins and Hutch join in the fun in airbrushed form thanks to Wild Card Matte.

Hutch has been pretty quiet early this season, though I'll attribute some of that to rust after an injury derailed what was going to be a special 2024 season for him. Jenkins is in his second season with Cincy and hopefully will improve on his 3.0 sacks from last year while I continue to chase his RCs like the ones above. Law is a deserving HOFer and I'm glad he continues to appear in lots of post-career products just like Charles Woodson. Former blog namesake Manningham is another guy who comes up pretty often despite his relatively short career, likely due to helping Eli Manning's gumpy ass win a Super Bowl. The SAGE card above is my first of UM DB Rod Moore, a guy who made some big plays for the '23-'24 champs, then was out all of last season and the start of this one. Ojabo's another example of what you get with the current "Wild Card" name these days. And I love adding to my collection of the championship team's defensive MVP, Mike Sainristil, who's been solid in the league so far.

This last scan begins with a couple more RCs in a post stuffed with them. Mazi hasn't lived up to his college and draft hype but was fun as an amateur, and Wilson was even more of a blast as a high-scoring WR for the '23 champs, though he's been slow to get going in the NFL due to injuries.

Last up we have a group of seven cards of players Jeff sent that I'll hold onto but won't count towards those players' collections as they're pictured in other college unis. First is a quartet of TE Erick All, who bailed for offensively-challenged Iowa and made room for Colston Loveland to be a star in Ann Arbor. Charbonnet, as I mentioned, headed out west to UCLA and put up good enough numbers to get himself drafted by Seattle, where he's made some nice plays. And WR/KR AJ Henning remained in the conference like All, heading to Northwestern where he put up some solid numbers with the benefit of more playing time he might not have received in Ann Arbor.

Jeff, thanks a ton for this generous box of stuff that really had a nice effect on a bunch of my favorite collections! I need to start a new stack for you since sending that last one but I'm looking forward to treating you to some Wolverines while we celebrate our team's 3-1 start. GO BLUE!

I should be back soon with even more July trade content. Until then, Tigers, would it kill you to win a game every now and then and not lose the division in embarrassing fashion?

2024 trade package #25: My Sports Obsession

I'm fresh off watching Michigan's hilarious bowl victory over an Alabama team that claimed they belonged in the Playoff and then did that against basically the Wolverines bench. Now I've got three more December trade packages to cover this afternoon/evening to meet my goal of getting them all done before the new year.

Fortunately for me I'm able to front-load the work as the largest remaining package is the one that got to me next. This was a roughly 200+-count box from buddy of the blog and fellow Michigan fan Jeff of My Sports Obsession. Jeff, I hope you enjoy reading this post in the afterglow of one of our more unlikely bowl victories in team history!

This one took a whole bunch of scans to recap, so settle in for lots of cards to eyeball:

Well damn, a sweet Sparky trio is a great way to start out strong! I remain grateful that the most important manager of my lifetime still gets the odd cardboard appearance. Miggy's count climbs with a high-quality three-spot of his own. And a third franchise legend joins the scan in Ty Cobb, who you'll see in two more scans in this post, including the next one. Stadium Club and Diamond Kings are products with designs that will always appeal to me more than plainer fare such as flagship Topps.

Two more Cobbs to start this scan look Georgia peachy to me thanks to Topps Chrome Platinum and an era-appropriate Sepia parallel from Stadium Club. Cronenworth is one of a bunch of guys in this post that both Jeff and I collect and I'm happy we can keep sending them back and forth, especially when I get beauties like a Holo and another eye-popping Stadium Club look. Elliott, a 2022 2nd-rounder out of Michigan, is probably another guy I found out about thanks to following Jeff's posts as he's often better at catching the newer guys than I am. Griffey stars on one of a number of instances of the fantastic Topps Museum product. And my Gwynn PC got a very nice boost in this package--including one of my favorites in Stadium Club Chrome--with a bunch more in the next scan too!

See? Lots more Gwynn, lots of fantastic designs! Museum, Stadium Club, Chrome Platinum, Gold Label, and some inserts too. Lots of great additions to his collection. The crazy Prizm parallel represents another PC guy we share in P Steven Hajjar on a Michigan uni card. And he's followed by a Retail version of a Mr. Tiger Panini Absolute base.

No suspense here as the Griffey/Gwynn pairing above joins Maddux and Ripken in this scan to complete the big four PC group. Cal's probably the player we trade back and forth the most in terms of our shared PCs, though a few guys probably do come close. I loved seeing Tram join Sparky above from the Purple Donruss parallel. Then, counting the next scan, we have four many Verlanders, which is twice as good as two, especially when they're this shiny.

With those three Chrome parallels I'm starting to approach JV rainbow territory. Baez's second appearance also gets the Chrome treatment. Cobb (Black Foil parallel) gets in on the action one more time with a flat-out classic shot of his baserunning skills. One of two last Gwynns serves as a reminder of one of Topps' recent-ish gimmicks, and then baseball goes out on top with Stadium Club base of two of my favorites--who retired and also entered Cooperstown in the same seasons--getting feted in fantastic horizontal shots.

Jeff also sent me a huge group of basketball Wolverines which I always appreciate since I don't put much money towards the sport. There was a fun mix of brands and designs with a few that popped up multiple times. A Premium Iggy tips things off, and then in a fun twist, I just looked on TCDb and found out that I now own as many cards of Kobe Bufkin as his namesake Mr. Bryant! THJ's in my top five with the four above him all over the 100-card mark. Houstan's a bit newer to the collection but the college card and shiny parallel here are great additions.

Young Jett Howard plays for the NBA's version of the Columbus Blue Jackets, a.k.a. Ann Arbor South, and his dad's fourth in my PC with 123 cards. LeVert is #7 and one of eight players who've reached the 50-card milestone. Livers may not be with the Pistons anymore but Cracked Ice parallels often look cool. McGary's college and pro careers were both far too short.

With the number of Jordan Poole cards I've received this year I'm somewhat surprised he's not ranked higher, but he's still just one card shy of joining my top 10 cagers thanks to hauls like this one. Remember when that Prizm Monopoly product was a huge thing for a minute? Just one card for Rice but the NCAA champ remains top dog with 206 cards, still the only player to eclipse the double century mark.

If Robinson's parents had any foresight they would have named him "Three-Point" instead of Duncan since he was responsible for way more of the former than the latter. Rose is the last of my top four over the 100-card mark and grouped nicely with two of his Fab Five teammates. Sauce Castillo was a fun guy to watch in college and the pros, and as the UD card captures, he indeed helped Michigan to the NCAA tourney final in 2013, a six-point loss to champion Louisville. Wagner bro Franz closes out the basketball group, and the young star's card count has absolutely exploded in my collection, climbing up to 47 for the 9th spot.

Now we switch over to the sport of the day: football. Believe it or not, Brady's not my top football guy--that distinction belongs to his fellow QB Brian Griese--and Tom Terrific ranks only #7, the last guy in my football 300-club. That's probably because I really don't put money into a guy like him since his prices tend to be overinflated. Still, you can always count on the kindness of strangers friends, and I appreciate this six-pack from Jeff! He also sent me a nice bunch of five cards of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet, who's had his ups and downs with Seattle.

I'm not quite a quarter of the way through the RCs of Charbonnet I'm chasing but it does help when someone's nice enough to send them to me! Charlton was a fun player with a cool nickname. Collins is two TDs away from matching his career high of 8 set last year, and maybe he can come up with a big pair in Sunday's game. Speaking of a big pair, actually, let's make that a three-of-a-kind with RBs Corum, Edwards, and Haskins here. I need as many as I can get of the first two, with Corum in his first year and the Don headed for the draft.

Meanwhile, Hutch continues to climb the leaderboards thanks to days like this one, and I hope the former Hot Rookie gets a chance to return in a big way for a Lions playoff game. The Bowman Chrome U love continues in this scan with a pair of champs in Johnson, an upcoming first-rounder, and McCarthy, who was anything but unexpected to Michigan fans, but most definitely a delight thanks to his calm leadership. I don't wish transfer QB McNamara anything but good health (and maybe a better head) next season. The Prestige card of the former "Money" kicker is the highlight of two Moody cards, though he's going through a nightmare season for the Niners and clearly isn't right after an injury. And Ojabo has quietly put up a couple sacks this season for Baltimore, though I don't get the impression that his playing time has been growing.

If you could pick a color for a parallel on a DPJ Browns card, why would you go with anything other than orange? Schoonmaker has one game left to try to equal his rookie season total of 2 TDs while his teammate Mazi has been slightly better during his own sophomore campaign. I love Donruss' Rated Rookies cards and the Optic of defensive back DJ Turner looks sweet! WR Roman Wilson joins a few of his other title teammates in this post on another excellent card. And GOAT DB Charles Woodson gets three more for his own collection, enough to secure him the #3 spot by that many cards over Braylon Edwards.

We're not quite done yet because there were two cool Prizm relics of recent Wolverines in this package. Charbonnet makes his second hits PC appearance with a Neon Green Pulsar parallel of his jersey card, and that's joined by my first relic of Lions terrorizer Aidan Hutchinson: a beautiful Honolulu blue swatch!

And even then we're still not quite done because Jeff included a rare hockey card, though given the photo it was an obvious inclusion. Shields was an excellent netminder in the early 90s, winning 111 games before suiting up for the Sabres, Sharks, Ducks, Bruins, Panthers, and Thrashers in parts of 10 NHL seasons. The photo of him in action at what I'm guessing is Yost Ice Arena is as Classic as the card's brand.

Jeff, thank you once again for this absolutely ridiculous stack of cards that hit so many of my PCs! I hope you enjoyed your own Christmas package, and I can promise plenty more White Sox, Michigan, and other PC cards will be heading back your way in 2025, when I hope we can also meet up at a few shows.

Stay tuned this evening for two more (much shorter) trade recaps to close out the year!