Christmas is coming, my stack is getting fat

As you probably know, Dennis is a very generous dude and for a little while now, he's been sending out Christmas packages. I've been lucky enough to be on his list for a number of years. We share a bunch of PC's so it's easy for us to pick stuff up for each other. I've got a box of stuff ready to go to him as well, I just got to get it to the post office later this week.

As per the usual, we'll start with the White Sox cards. These 4 all go to the Sox collection. The Reylo is the metallic winter. The Morel and McDowell are inserts and the Short is a purple refractor. The McDowell looked familiar but I didn't have it.

Just as the Reylo above was, this is the Metallic version as well. You can't really tell in either of the scans. This is my 228th card of Yoan.

Dennis sent me some of these Generation Now of Zimmy. These were the only 2 I needed to go along with the 19 that I already had. I also have 3 of the Chrome version. These 2 got me to a milestone though, I now have 400 cards of him.

One of our shared collections is Cal jr. I thought I already had this card as well, I was even thinking that I just added it not long ago but it turns out it was the Darryl Strawberry version of it. This Cal give me 975, not sure I'm going to make that 1k by the end of the year.

He even managed to hit my Vintage collection with this 1972 Topps leaders card. It is my 239th card from that set.

This was another card that I thought I had but I didn't. I do have the base version as this is a promo parallel which explains why I thought I had it. This is the 21st card of Tyrone Wheatley and being as he isn't a PC player, they are all in the Michigan uniforms.

I definitely like this card of our current Running Back. This is the International Trading Card Day card. I'm so glad Bowman can use logos now so they didn't screw with his helmet. This is my 5th card of hopefully many more in a pro uniform as well.

Now we get to the hit portion of the package.

First up, he sent me my 5th auto of Trey Burke. Out of those 5, this is the first one he put her jersey number on the auto. This is also the newest card I have of Burke so maybe this is the way he signs now. This card is my 60th card of Trey.

Funny story with this Funchess patch, Dennis came out to the Kalamazoo show (we'll be back there in January and May) and pulled a card just like this, only with a better patch, out of our boxes. A card I obviously didn't know was there. So he bought that and upgraded his and sent me the old one. It's still a cool patch even if you can barely see the other color. It's also numbered to /50. This is my 113th card of Devin.

Love seeing these 8 TK Legacy autographs as they are difficult to find around here, at least the Wolverine ones are. I see the Notre Dame ones all over. I even recognize a few of the names. He also added a Donovan Warren silver auto.

As always, a great package from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders fame. Thanks brother and I'll hopefully get you yours before Christmas.

Free Burke

I haven't watched too many sports lately, I saw that we signed Benintendi which I'm good with and I saw the last play of the Patriots/Raiders game (just wow) but other than that, not much going on.

The last post was the last of my October pick-ups so today we are starting the November pick-ups. We'll start with the player that I have cards to show but it has been the longest since seeing a post of his. It's been a year and 4 months since I've posted new cards of him.

All that build up and I only had a card but like I said, it's been a long time coming since I added one of Burke. It's the only one I have of him in a Mavericks uniform. It is my 45th card of him though so I'm closing in on the half century mark. At this rate, I'll hit it in 2030. I grabbed this out of the base cards that I sorted for Sluggo so it was free.

Burke and all that Jazz

Went over to my cousin's today so he could put new brake pads on my car. Afterwards, we were working on cards for the store. I helped sort but I have so much to learn about all the variations and short prints and stuff like that. We were sorting $1-$5 cards but there are so many different variations and players who I have no idea who they are. I've been so focused on my collections and buying on the cheap that I'm so lost when it comes to other cards. I have a lot to learn before we open a shop.

Today's random came up with another Michigan guy. You'll actually see quite a bit of them because the order I went through on Sportlots is Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Michigan, then Tier 3. I have a couple players left in Tier 2 but the majority of what I'm picking up are now are the Tier 2 Michigan players. A couple of you will appreciate that, but probably not too many. All of these came from Sportlots but a couple of different packages.

A rainbow of Prisms, I was shocked to get so many variations at under $.50. Says a lot about a lot of the variations.

Another rainbow of Prizms and again, surprised to get them at under $.50.

Some more Prizm, just not much of a rainbow. I threw the Select in there as well just because it's Panini.

Technically we're still on Panini but this is more the Donruss/Pinnacle portion.

Lots more Panini, the Excalibur has a cool design on the back. The bottom 2 finally have some decent action shots as well.

A couple of more shiny Selects. The blue and silver one has a cool look to it.

Another Excalibur without the cool design. All of the above are cards with the Jazz which is where he played for awhile when he first went into the league. Maybe next time we'll get some other teams as he's played for a few more since these.

Well there is one other team he played for. I did manage a couple of cards with the Wolverines as well. As I got further into this post, I all of the cards are Panini, they also all feature a basketball in his hands if you like that kind of thing.

These 27 cards more than doubled my Burke collection and made him my 2nd highest basketball PC behind his teammate at Michigan Tim Hardaway jr with 44 cards.

Tuesday's with Burke

I guess the plant is trying to shut down on Friday to give us a 4 day weekend because we've been working a ton of hours which is nice, but in order to do that, we are working 10 hours all this week. I'm allowed to work the extra before or after my shift. Normally, I do 5 to 3:30 but I really hate getting off at 3:30. So this morning, I went in at 4 so I can get off at my normal time at 2:30. As much as I hate getting up that early, it was nice getting off at my normal time. Plus, the traffic was great at 3:30 compared to 5:30. I feel like I still have time to get stuff done after work which was nice. The really nice thing about having Friday off is I took all of next week off so that makes it a 10 day weekend for me. It also makes it easier to work more hours this week knowing I'm going to have all kinds of time next week. I plan on working on my cousin's cards most of that week.

Today's random gave us another Michigan alumni PC.

This is the only card that I got in the last Sportlots package but I received a bunch in the previous one that I haven't show yet.

That blue & silver parallel from Select is pretty slick. I also picked up the base.

3 more base, a couple of rookie cards in the mix.

I picked up the base Prism as well as a couple of color parallels. It's always nice to get some of the color ones under $.50.

One of the reasons I like the way that I'm purchasing cards through Sportlots is I'm adding to my Michigan PC's that don't have many cards. Problem is, a lot of them don't have many cards but there are a few where I can pick up a number of them, such as this Burke collection.

These 9 cards bump up his collection up to 26 cards.

3 for Trey

* I put my January purchases on random for today's post.

All I got left are Michigan guys (at least for this month) so the only question is, is this going to be a basketball player or football player.

I picked up 3 more Trey Burke's which gives me 17 of his. He's tied with Mitch McGary for the 2nd highest amount of basketball player collection. Of course, I only have 125 basketball cards in my collections and they all would be former Wolverine players.

3 Autos in 2 Days

After receiving an auto yesterday of Trey Burke, I got 2 envelopes with 2 more autographs. One who played with Burke.

Yeah, I don't know who he is either. I only paid $1/shipped for it which is what I generally put on older autos of players I haven't heard of. Considering he only has 39 cards listed on the TCDB, it's not surprising that this is my 1st card of his. Obviously, this isn't the guy who played with Burke.

This is the guy, I nabbed another Stauskas auto for the collection. I got it for $3/shipped. It's my 4th auto and my 14th card total of his.

Hitting the Trey

I got one card in the mail and it was mislabled when I purchased it off of Ebay. It took me awhile to figure out why I couldn't find it under 2014-15. That would be because it's a 2013-14. It didn't matter to me for 2 reasons, 1, I didn't have it either way and 2, it's an autograph so to have 2 of them certainly wouldn't bother me either.

This is my 13th card of Trey Burke and my 4th autograph. I picked it up for $2.79/shipped. It's fitting that I do a Michigan alumni on the night they had a chance at being the College World Series Champions but that didn't work out to well. They just flat out met a better team and considering Michigan wasn't even supposed to be anywhere near the tournament, you can't be mad at that. To be honest, it was nice to see more of their games. Big Ten Network doesn't play very many of their games throughout the year, maybe with them going this far, they'll get on TV more next year.

College Football Saturday

As you may, or may not know, Dennis and I got together to at the Big House for the Michigan game last weekend. He gave me a nice stack of cards in person since I saved him all that postage. Since I didn't get any cards in the mail today, I'll split it into 2 posts so they aren't to picture heavy.

Since it's college football Saturday, we'll start with the Wolverine cards.

Always like receiving cards of the Fab Five, they were the team that put Michigan on my personal map and started my love for the Wolverines.

All 3 of these guys had pretty good careers in the pros but they all started at Michigan. You should have heard of all these names before considering they have 33 years experience in the pros and Henne is still playing, well, still on a team.

You might have heard of this guy too. I love getting cards of him in the Maize and Blue. This is only my 5th of his and all are years after his draft in 2000.

Next we'll get into the player collection cards of former Wolverines.

This is my 6th card of Martin and is my 1st pro card. This is also the 1st card that I've gotten of his in the last 2 years so I was definitely happy to see a card of him.

This is my 9th card of Trey, almost in double digits. It's also the 1st card of his that I've received this year. I thought I would be able to pick his cards more quickly but they seem to be out of my price range.

This is my 8th card of Jake Butt. I expected him to have a pretty good pro career but in his 3rd season now, he has missed 2 of those with injuries.

This is only my 3rd card of Big Mo. I'm going to love him proving wrong all those idiots who passed on him in the first 4 rounds. He was a beast at Michigan.

These 2 cards of Stauskas give me 11 of the Canadian. I really like him when he played for Michigan.

These 2 cards make 7 of Wormley. Oddly enough, I started his collection off with 4 straight autographs and then the last 3 have been base cards.

These 3 cards make 43 card of Shoelace. I've been picking up his card pretty well this year, only had 2 last year and these 3 make 8 for this year. None of my pick-ups were as nice as that last one though. That is a sweet looking card.

That's it for this post, I do have another Michigan Man but you'll see his cards in tomorrows baseball packed post. Be sure to check out "Too Many Verlanders" and the better "Too Many Manninghams"

Trey card

I guess with all the cards that I posted yesterday, that it's fitting that I only have 1 today, and it's not even a baseball card.

I got this card of Trey Burke for a quarter/shipped. I don't get his cards often as this is only my 7th and sadly, most of them are in his pro jersey.

February Additions - Burke, Robinson, Funchess, Robinson, Hardaway and Stauskas

This months pick-ups come from

1. Jimmy at S.Mack Talk
2. Ray at All Cardinals All the Time
3. Sluggo (my cousin)
4. JustCommons.com
5. COMC.com
6. LCS - Media Madhouse
7. LCS - Just Cards
8. Ebay
9. Packs

I've randomed and todays selection are going to multiple players collections.

2015-16 Panini Contenders Draft Picks Old School Colors ($.75)

Really love the look of his card. I'm going to have to look and see if they have any more Michigan players in the Old School Colors set.

2013 Fleer Retro ($.49)

2013 Bowman Black ($.48)

2013 Bowman ($.35)

These 3 Denard cards put that collection at 24 cards. By far the biggest player collection since I went and added a bunch of Michigan alumni to my player collections. I'm pretty sure he's the only one in double digits of cards.

2015 Panini Contenders Draft Picks Game Day Tickets ($.52)

2015 Panini Prizm Collegiate Draft Picks ($.75)

With his super bowl appearance and a couple of really good games in his rookie season this past year, his collection is gradually moving on up recently. These 2 cards put his collection at 7 cards. I picked up my first card of his at a card show in October and all the rest have come since the new year.

2014-15 Upper Deck Letterman ($.81) 

2014-15 Upper Deck SPx ($.75)

These 2 cards only put this collection at 4 cards and they are all in the Maize and Blue so there's that at least.

2013-14 Fleer Retro 1992-93 Rookie Sensations Auto ($5.99)

2013-14 Upper Deck SP Authentic ($.75)

2013-14 Fleer Retro ($.49)

These 3 cards put his collection at 6 cards. I actually have a couple of pro cards of Hardaway jr since he had a decent rookie season. I haven't heard much from him this year but I don't really follow NBA much other than watching an occasional Bulls game. That is my first autograph card of his as well, even at $6 when I saw it, I wanted it since he was in the Maize and Blue.

2014-15 Upper Deck SPx Finite Rookies ($1.25)

I really don't run into any of his cards very much. This is only my 2nd card of his, both of the Maize and Blue variety.

2013-2014 NBA Hoops ($.50)

I did manage to get one card off of Ebay. This card (along with the top one) puts my Burke collection at 5 cards and a few of those are pro cards as well.