My Sports Obsession

Monday, January 26, 2026

Doing Deals at Work

I mentioned in the last post that I had a guy at work that I trade with as well. He goes to a lot more shows that I do and he likes to dig through boxes so he always buy's cheaper cards for me. He'll give them to me and I'll go through them and give back whatever I have. I also give him all my top loaders and penny sleeves that I'm not using. Because I give him what I already have, he has quite the Michigan and Sox collection which is hilarious because he's a Notre Dame and Cubs fan.

Let's see what Fred brought me this past week.

Some shiny and some guys I have a lot of. The Tatis is numbered to /99 and the Vaughn is to /100. There are 3 guys up there that I used to PC but don't anymore. I have over 300 of Eloy and Robert each.

He always gets me shiny stuff which I don't usually come across a lot of with what I do in cards so these are always appreciated.

Since we started with teams, I'll throw this one up here as well before I get to my PC's.

Right now I still have Hinton in the Michigan collection, even though he is in the league, he doesn't have much in cards. The only major release he's included in is Prizm and they are all Autographs. Keene was with the team up until the portal opened up and has gone to ASU., his 4th college team. Don't get me started on that.

I started collecting the Fab 5 last year, not sure why it took me so long considering they are the reason I became a Michigan fan way back in high school (please don't estimate my age, it's getting up there.) These 2 cards of Juwan give me 152 cards of him.

2 posts in a row with a Larkin, maybe good signs to come on his PC this year. 781 cards of the Hall of Famer.

Another Nico as well. He always gets me a bunch of Nico cards which is why he's at 103 now.

I just started PCing Woodson last year as well so there are still plenty of older cards of him that I need to add. This one gives me 102 of another Hall of Famer.

These were scanned separately because I got them at different times. I just got the one on the left this past week. These 2 cards of Hutch give me 85 cards of him.

He did give me 1 (former) Sox PC with this Blue Sheets which is my 84th of Gavin.

He also picked up this trio of Cronenworth cards. That is the 2nd auto of Jake he has picked up for me. Non licensed and stickers so they were only a couple of bucks but I'll take them. The Rookie Class set confuses me on which one I have, I believe that is the base and I already had the Emerald one. These 3 give me 114 cards of the former Wolverine.

I'm out until another day.

Sunday, January 25, 2026

A Non-Birthday post?

Long time no see!

I know I've been posting the birthday posts and I've done a pretty good job at not being late on any of them (other than some being late at night before I get them up.) I enjoy those because I can see how far my collection has come since the previous year. I'm going to try to start posting incoming again. I stopped because at the time, I was working shows and just didn't have the time with everything coming in. Now I only hit a few shows a year and get a few trades here and there. I did order another Sportlots order but I haven't hit ship yet, waiting on one guy to get my cards to the box. So here goes nothing.

You should know if you follow me at all, that I sort cards for the LCS here and in exchange, I can keep whatever I find that I like. That's easy for him to do because I only keep specific collections and for the most part, the cards that I'm sorting are base and commons but it fills in gaps in my PC's. That's not all I get though. When I browse his shop and find some cards, he'll give me a huge discount or sometimes, not charge me at all. For example, he gave me this last week.

I was in the shop when a lady came in with some cards and this. He bought it all for very little. This has a COA but from a company we've never heard of so he knew he wasn't going to be able to sell it very well. He has other Griffey autos in the shop in Mariners uniform with good COA's and he hasn't sold those so he offered it to me. He knows I'm not looking to sell it and it will go in my PC so I jumped on it. I haven't done anything with it yet, which is why it's just leaning on my shelf, on the floor.

I also get a lot of common cards to fill team sets of the Sox but I'm not going to show a lot of that so I'll just show my PC adds.

Here I said I wasn't going to show team stuff but it's shiny and I couldn't resist. He's no longer with the Sox as he was traded a couple of days ago and I no longer PC him anyways but I still collect Sox cards so he stays. He was with the team long enough that I've accumulated 346 cards of him.

Since I'm doing Sox cards, I'll go ahead and throw these in as well. These are all Tiffany versions. I only had 2 to start with, I added these 26 and am now only 1 card short of the team set.

I know you're thinking, he didn't have that yet, but this is the Tiffany version as well which as you can see above, there was a bunch of those in the sorting boxes. This is my 362nd card of the Kid.

I added another of Hendriks which I don't do a lot of, I only added 3 cards all of last year. He sits at 61 cards now.

I also located an older Larkin that I didn't have which is always nice. I only added 10 cards of his last year so I don't get a ton of his anymore which tends to happen when they aren't included in newer sets. I now have 781 cards of Barry.

The next 3 guys you'll see are all former White Sox that I liked when they were here and decided to continue to collect them anyways. You can also add Dylan Cease to that list but I didn't add any of his this week.

When Madrigal was traded away, I hated it. He wasn't a superstar by any means but he was a slap hitter. They called him 2 strikes Nicky because he would get all kinds of hits with 2 strikes. He just got on base, a lot, which I loved but I stopped PCing him when he got traded but I've added him back in and along with the other Sox cards of him that I kept, his count is up to 118.

I really hated this trade because I knew he was good and was only going to get better, now he's a Cy Young contender. Luckily, I picked up a few autos of him because he was a Sox prospect so I got them cheap. This Boston Sox card gives me 59 cards of him.

Another non-superstar that I liked. He's a lefty power hitter but not much of anything else. Plus he ended up going to San Diego with Cronenworth and Cease so I followed the Padres a little bit last year but Cease is gone now. This card gives me 84 of Gavin.

The show owner actually gave this one to me in his shop. While he does his own sorting, he sets aside Sox and Michigan cards for me and hands them to me when I come in. I think it's funny that I've got him and a guy at work that I trade with learning all the Michigan players because they give me cards. They are both Notre Dame fans. This is my 23rd card of the younger Howard.

My Nico collection is doing pretty good since he's doing very well in the NFL. Even though he has an Ohio QB throwing to him (who didn't fare too well with Nico out). The Absolute is the retail version but the Illusions is not the retail version which I rarely ever see. I always find the retail versions of these kinds of cards. I now have 103 cards of Collins.

Last but definitely not least, the last box I sorted had a mixture of old and new. Old usually means 80's and 90's but occasionally I'll find a few vintage cards in there like the 2 above. The Champion is my 367th from the 1975 Topps set which is just above 55% complete and the Cullen is my 257th card of the 1972 Topps set which is good for almost 33% complete.

That's all for now, hopefully there will be more in the future. I have them all scanned, now it's finding time to type them up.