2022 Trading Slash Line: 90/34/2/1246/37

We may not have reached the end of the year quite yet, but I think I have just about wrapped up the trading of 2022. Stat-wise, I've had probably my most solid year of trading--at least in a few years. Let me explain my numbers.

90=Number of trades made, either through TCDB or blogs.
34=Number of states involved in my trading
2=Canadian provinces traded with this year
1246=Number of cards brought in through trading
37=Net cards gained through trades

I'm pretty happy looking at those numbers, but there are two I feel are weaker. First, the net cards brought in. At the beginning of the year, I made a goal to have a negative net trade number. I had two reasons for this. One reason is that I wanted to clear space and I thought a negative trade net would help. The second is that I hoped that I could entice TCDBers to respond more quickly if I had extra cards going to them in my proposals. That was going well until summer hit and I got this wild notion to complete three junk wax sets through cracking boxes and trading. Suddenly my wantlist was filled with 1989 Score, 1990 Topps, and 1991 Fleer baseball. Trade proposals came rolling in with numbers decidedly in my favor because people were all too happy to offload their extras of these sets. 

The other number that I would like to see improve is the number of states involved. This year, I traded with 34 states and 2 Canadian provinces. This map is a nice visual representation of my trading partner locations this year. I'm happy with 90 trades (probably my most ever), but I think it would be pretty cool to get all 50 states in a year.

Now we're going to get heavy into the scans. I had a flurry of trades around Thanksgiving--15 completed trades in less than a month--and I need to get caught up. So allow me to share some of those 1246 cards I added to my collection from trading this year.

First, we have bigger trade with TigerFan22:

He sent some nice BYU cards. I like Bart Oates snapping the ball to Steve Young, just like he did in college!

A few more BYU, this time all Ty Detmer. I really love looking at late-90s variety.

He helped with a smattering of set needs. Jerry Rice is from 1993 Upper Deck. I'm not collecting that whole set, but this card finishes off the Berman's Best subset.

A Rookie of the Year Chris Sabo rookie, some All-Decade performers, and a lone Jordy Nelson addition finish off my trade with TigerFan22.

@CowboysFan1@ sent me all BYU players. Two of these players are having pretty good seasons in their roles. One is not having a great season. Jamaal leads the NFL in rushing touchdowns with 14. Taysom has five himself. Not only that, but  last Monday night, Taysom Hill just became the only player in the Super Bowl Era with at least nine touchdowns passing, rushing, and receiving. Not too bad.

 

 Capper14 sent another all-BYU trade return.

We'll keep the BYU run going with some of my cards from JBsSetCollection. Here we have some great cards, regardless of the player. A center with his hand on the ball is a mini-collection of mine. A nice Red Pulsar prizm and a rookie auto are great. Consider that all three of these guys are former Cougars, and these are great cards.

More from JBsSetCollection. I particularly like the Davante Adams Turkey Red rookie and the impressionist rendition of Jordy's Lambeau Leap.

Texas A&M fan amalum sent me a couple more BYU players in Jamaal Williams and Kurt Gouveia. Also Heisman winner Jameis Winston in a college uniform, a 1989 Score need, and a short-term stop uniform of ROY Vince Coleman round out this small PWE trade.

This is just a string of very small trades from CH34, deadhead11, jbostic, MichiganFan9, musclebeech, ravensray52, and thesouthpaw. I just want to give a huge shout-out to jbostic, who sent along three 1970s TCMA cards as extras! I'll also point out that I've been low-key building 2014 Topps Valor and a couple of those cards show up in these trades. It's a set that I've really liked since it came out, but I haven't ever put much effort into chasing it. However, it seems like lots of trade proposals lately have included needs for Valor. I typically replace those cards in the offer with more priority wants, but a few have still managed to sneak through. I doubt I care enough to ever finish the set, though.

Steelers fan Bob Warnell sent a couple of legends from the 1980s (the team card is sliding into my Lester Hayes page), a pair of needs from last year's awful Wild Card that I'm collecting for some reason, a handful of last year's Donruss (represented only by Stefon Diggs and A.J. Brown) and a trio of nice-looking Zach Wilson cards.

Myrke helped me with a random assortment of baseball wants.

I used to do an annual post highlighting my Brad Sorensen pickups for the year. It's getting harder and harder to find any new ones, though. This auto from TCDB user briznuts is one of only two this year. The other Sorensen will get its own post in the near future.

 

Trader Maximus sent along a fun bunch of cards. Shiny Detmer, cartoony football-clad basketballer Charlie Ward, police issue John Anderson, and Rey Sanchez signing his 1993 Topps card on his 1994 Topps card all stand out to me. For a player who was good enough to make the 1980s All-Decade team, John Anderson certainly lacks representation on cardboard. I don't think there are even enough standard-sized to fill my Anderson page in the 1980s binder.

Finally, frequent trading partner jlcre2003 and I pulled off good-sized trade.

He helped knock off some set needs.

Some various baseball collection wants.

A few football wants, too.

And of course, a few from all of my favorite teams.

It has been a fun year of trading. A lot of the fun came from the ease of finding trade partners who had the cards I needed for three decidedly overproduced, common sets. I thoroughly enjoyed going from box breaking to trading to complete for three different large sets in a matter of months. Of course, that's not a process I'm going to complete. I don't have the space or desire to go build multiple sets from those years. 

But it wasn't just junk wax set building. You can see from the scans above that a great variety of cards came my way in trades. Thanks to anyone reading who helped me produce a solid trade season stat line!

A Trade Between Packmen

This hasn't been the best football season I've experienced as a fan. Both of my teams--on the college and pro level--started the year with high expectations and have fallen a bit flat in reaching them. 

My BYU Cougars were coming off back-to-back 10-win seasons and returned 20/22 starters from last year's team that rolled undefeated through the PAC-12 they faced, en route to a 6-1 overall record against P5 opponents. 

 

The scan did these cards no favor. The two Wild Cards are a silver and gold parallel. If you look closely at the Collector's Edge Millennium Collection parallel, you can just barely make out a faint outline of a photo.

 

When this year began, they opened hot, beating future conference rival (and defending Big XII champ) Baylor for a Top 10 win. Sitting at 2-0 and ranked #12 after two weeks, the future was bright for a team leaving independence to join a P5 conference next year. A loss at Oregon turned out not to be such a bad loss. But then came October. Oh man, October. The Cougs went 0-4 in the month and looked really bad doing it. They salvaged at least a bowl appearance with an undefeated November, including a solid win over Boise St. and another P5 win over not-so-great Stanford. So BYU finishes the season at 7-5. This was definitely not the expectation for an experienced team with an NFL prospect QB and an offensive line that is graded #1 by Pro Football Focus this season. So what went wrong? Well, the defense, for one. Contrasted with the #22 offense (per PFF), the defense sits at #113.

 

 

But the biggest difference between last year and this year could very well be the loss of current Atlanta Falcons running back, Tyler Allgeier. He was so good last year for BYU. I've started gathering a few cards of Allgeier, but many 2022 football products have only been recently released, or are still waiting. I did manage to snag my first auto off eBay, however.

So that's the disappointing season of the BYU Cougars. At least they managed to finish above .500. 

 

My Packers, though. Ouch. Last year, the Pack finished 13-4 and earned the #1 seed in the NFC. A heartbreaking playoff loss to San Francisco cut the season short prematurely, but expectations were high starting this year. In fact, about half of all expert prognostications I saw put Green Bay in the Super Bowl this year. But then they just kept losing. Sitting at 4-8 now, the playoffs look like a distant dream. It has been a long time since I've been so disappointed by the Pack's performance.

 

 

At least the cards are still great. Everything in this post (minus the eBay Allgeier purchase) came from a trade on TCDB with fellow cheesehead dmbramer. Donn hooked me up with a page of new Jordys and a bunch of cards from Shopko's Packer-centric set in 1997. I especially love my first cards of offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur and defensive coordinator Sherm Lewis (previous scan).

Some of the cards were for other sections of my collection. Four of these guys are all-decade picks, plus a college uni Heisman. Even though it has been a disappointing season for this fan, trades like this one with another surely disappointed Packer fan have been good.

Rookie of the Year on Baseball Card Day

This is a somewhat timely post. Sure, National Baseball Card Day (or, "International Trading Card Day") was all the way back in August. I picked up my free pack of cards way back then and never posted anything about it. But it's still timely today because one of my pulls was a guy who was recently honored with an MLB "Major Award."

A Major Award: the soft glow of electric hardball in the window

That major award was American League Rookie of the Year. The player is Julio Rodriguez.

This is my only J-Rod so far. I'm using it in this post to welcome him and NL ROY Michael Harris to my Rookie of the Year collection. I don't have any cardboard of Harris, yet. I'll be interested to see how their careers go from here. Documenting the career trajectory of these players is my reason for this little collection. For example, what will become of Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge, who both won the Rookie of the Year award in 2017, subsequently took home MVP awards, and are now currently free agents? Their careers seem to be going in opposite directions of late. I'm rooting for them, as I am for Rodriguez and Harris.

As for International Card Day, here was an interesting incident. I picked up the thin, clear cellophane pack and saw the Topps promo card had a weird scalloped edge on it. I thought it was kind of odd, but didn't think too hard about it. Then I opened up the pack and saw this.

Notice the top of each card. It appears that the machine that crimped and sealed the packages caught the entire stack of cards in this pack. (Which also includes former ROYs Carlos Correa and Mike Trout). 

This photo courtesy of TCDB

The owner of the LCS also saw this and provided me with another pack, which contained the Julio Rodriguez card. I didn't scan the rest of it, though. The highlight of that pack was my first card of Corey Seager as a Ranger, adding that piece to my collection as I continue to document the career path of yet another former Rookie of the Year.

I may be a few months late in celebrating our little hobby's holiday but as the major holidays approach, I'm right on time recognizing the latest player to be added to my PC. Now I just need to get on track with my Rookie of the Year spotlight posts.

2021 Donruss Jumbo Pack Box

I went on a dry spell without making any purchases for about 3 months. I was saving up some change to a certain amount, then I started buying a bunch of stuff that I needed. In the past few weeks, I've tried to fill set needs. I've tried to hit project and mini-collection needs. I've pursued some new BYU players that I needed to add. Part of what I "needed" was the fun of busting some packs. I found a good deal on a couple of boxes to scratch my itch.

One of those two boxes is 2021 Topps Big League. I haven't touched that one yet. But a fat pack box of last year's Donruss football has already been finished off. I chose this one because I was thinking I needed to complete a 2021 set still. However, after I bought the box, I remembered I already had a complete 2021 Prestige set in my possession. Oh well, I still wanted to bust a box and we'll see if I get close enough to this set to go after it.

Let me me walk you through a typical pack.

Each pack contained 18 veteran base cards. You can see from this pack, there are a handful of legends in the checklist.

There are three rookies in each pack. This particular pack didn't include any spectacular names. There are 50 photo variations in the set. Each variation is just a helmetless shot.

Finally, each pack brought four Press Proof Blue parallels and one insert. This was fairly consistent throughout the box. (Four packs had 3 variations replaced with base cards.) Collation was good; I pulled no dupes. Which, if you do the math, you can already figure out what I ended up with: 220/250 veteran base, 36/100 rookies, 44/50 variations, 48 Press Proof, and 12 inserts.

Moving on from a pack breakdown, we'll see an overview of the entire box.

A Pack hot pack.

 

 This was an interesting pack. I ripped it and saw a Nick Chubb Dominators as the insert.

Then pulled the cards out of the pack, flipped them to the front, and found Nick Chubb's base card on the top.

Oddly, there are two Tom Brady base cards. These are not variations of each other. Buccaneer Brady is #1 in the set. Patriot Brady is #2 in the set. It's like the Patriots used Tom Brady as their legend on the checklist, despite the fact that he had a current card with his active team!

I didn't pull any of the bigger rookies, like Justin Fields or Trevor Lawrence. Or Zach Wilson, which I would have liked best. But here are the best of the rookies in the box. Micah Parsons is already on the threshold of superstardom. Amon-Ra St. Brown has been a beast this year. Davis Mills has been surprisingly reliable for the Texans. Rhamondre Stevenson, Travis Etienne, and DeVonta Smith are pretty solid.

There are far too many masks in the variations. I don't like the reminder, but I guess it will make an interesting historical note in later years for this set. This box got me so close to completion that I decided I'll make a run for the complete base set: vets, rookies, and variations all.

Of all the Blue parallels, these are the ones I am going to keep.

Any other Press Proofs are up for trade. These are the most notable. I pulled both versions of Jonathan Taylor. There are a few interesting rookies here. Rashawn Slater was named #78 in the NFL Top 100 by his peers after just his rookie season. Sam Ehlinger was briefly the starter in Indy this year. And Javonte Williams was playing pretty well before he went down for the season.

Of the 12 inserts in the box, there were four that will slide into my collection. Elite Series may be shiniest, but only one of the designs is really appealing to me: the simpler Inducted set.

I don't necessarily plan to keep all of these inserts. There are some pretty decent cards here, though. Jaylen Waddle and Ja'Marr Chase are young studs at receiver, and there are three between the two of them here. Nick Chubb and Lamar Jackson are two of the best at their positions. The Rondale Moore card is interesting. In the scan, it looks like just a base card, except for the "Rated Rookie" in gold foil stamping. But it's a "Rookie Portrait" insert and the card has a canvas feel to it.

Even though it's not the coolest product out there, I had a blast opening packs for the first time since my annual Opening Day break back in March. As a bonus, there were no collation issues, so I was able to come within 30 base, 64 rookies, and six SPs of a complete set. So I'm going for it. If you have any 2021 Donruss, here is my wantlist. Let's deal!

All-Star Hunting at BaseballCardStore.ca

I've hardly purchased any cards since school started. I've pulled off a handful of TCDB trades, but I really haven't had many cards added to my collection for quite a while. So when I received a package this week, I was excited to be able to show it.

I'll get to the larger purpose of my purchase in a second. First, I sought out some All-Star MVPs that still had open slots on their pages in my binder. I like all of those Michael Young cards. I think since I was not even aware that baseball cards were even still being printed during my collecting hiatus, cards from the 00s always feel fresh to me.

I don't know why I decided I needed so many Bob Horners for my Rookie of the Year collection. It turned out that I only needed one, but I apparently found the need to add many of them to my cart. That one in the middle has to be one of the most unflattering cards I've seen, even if they are celebrating a notable achievement.

But most of my purchase revolved around finding cards I wanted to add to my All-Star Project. Believe it or not, every player you are about to see in the next 8 scans was an All-Star at some point in his career. There were a lot of these cards that I liked, so I'll just share the scans and my favorite card in each one. The cards are all in alphabetical order, ready to go into my All-Star monster box.

 

8 cards, 7 different years. I think my favorite here is the Certified Cuts Morgan Ensberg.

I like the double dip Kendrick. I like the bunting practice from LeFlore. But there is something about the Larry Gura that really appeals to me. It's my favorite of this bunch. 

I think the card that stands out to me the most is Dennis Martinez. It's so close up that his body takes up most of the frame. The rest are a bit "blah."

Magglio Ordonez on SPx is my favorite card in this scan. Biff Pocoroba is someone I've never heard of before. His sole All-Star appearance came in 1978. His full name is Biff Benedict Pocoroba, according to Baseball-Reference.com. He's one of a number of guys in this purchase that are completely unfamiliar to me.

Best card here is J.R. Richards. Even without much frame of reference, you can tell this dude is 6'8 from this photo.

I really like the Manny Sanguillen with his glove on his bat--just like I did it on my bike when I was a kid. But the SP Authentic Grady Sizemore, pushing off the wall on the Geico ad takes the cake for me here. What a great card that is.

Robby Thompson's double play turn is good. Andy Van Slyke's helmetless dive into the base is better.

There are some really great cards here. I love Jack Wilson turning two on Tatooine. Tony Womack going in headfirst. The Kevin Youkilis Signature Stars card just comes together perfectly. But I can't crown any other card as the best in this scan--a bunting shot on a McDonald's MVP oddball reigns supreme. 

How many of these All-Stars bring back memories to you? How many had you completely forgotten? How many have you never heard of? Or who surprises you that they were ever an All-Star at all? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments.

Holographic MVPs

Without looking it up, can you name the AL and NL MVPs from 1991? I'll give you three seconds.

3

2

1

If you guessed--or remembered--Cal Ripken and Terry Pendleton, you are correct. I bring this up because I recently stumbled onto an all-holograph set from Upper Deck.

I didn't even know of this set's existence before I found it on eBay. As I've mentioned in a few of my most recent posts, I spent the summer with overproduced era sets, trying to complete one set per year since I started collecting. For 1992, I chose Fleer. Unpopular, I know, but I still don't regret that decision. But as I waded through my junk wax cards, I became really fond of 1992 Upper Deck and its fun, unique photos on both sides of the cards. I jumped onto eBay to explore the cost of a factory set and found 1992 Upper Deck Team MVP sets for sale. 

 

I still don't know how it was distributed, but I learned they were EXTREMELY RARE. Yes, ONLY 214,000 were made. My CoA says this is #143886/214000. I put in a bid and ended up winning for about $3 plus shipping. Then it took forever. I waited for three weeks after I had received a tracking number before checking up and finding that the tracking number had never been received by USPS. I contacted the seller who said he had gotten sick and would mail my package the next day. About five days later, USPS marked the package as having entered transit.

The set has 54 cards--two for each team and one each for the league MVPs. Each team is represented by its top pitcher and top position player. Many big names--from Nolan Ryan at the end of his career to Jeff Bagwell at the beginning of his--are featured in the set.

 

But do you remember these guys? These are the stars that Montreal, California, Detroit, Houston, New York, and Milwaukee had to offer. I bet those Bill Wegman vs. Luis Polonia matchups were instant AL classics in 1991.

It's a pretty cool set and I'm glad I found it (cheap). I'm still debating whether/when to add 1992 Upper Deck baseball to my wantlists, but in the meantime, I'll be mesmerized by turning a set of 54 holographic cards around in the light.

Fantasy Football Kickoff, 2022

Already this year, our workplace fantasy league (which is the one that counts to me) is less exciting. A couple of years ago, our school split. We managed to keep some of the teachers who went to the new school in the league last year, but they started their own faculty league this year. So I went on the recruiting trail for some new players this year. I found a few enthusiastic new players and thought the league was set. Then we ran into a hiccup: we've always used Yahoo! as our platform, but our district's new filter blocked Yahoo! fantasy sports. We typically draft together after school, but we couldn't do it on Yahoo! this year. So I had to switch the league over to ESPN. However, when faced with the prospect of having to create an account on a new system, three of our lukewarm players dropped out. So instead of a 12-team league, which I love, we have a less-than-ideal nine-team league. That's disappointing to me. On the flip side, the nine players we have are pretty much all-in. There shouldn't be any cupcake victories because somebody left their three players who are on IR in the starting lineup because they haven't logged in since Draft Day.

Since the NFL kicks off tonight, let's have our annual look at Trevor P's Myopic Chihuahuas. All cards are in my collection

QB: Trey Lance, San Francisco

Not the QB I wanted. But we had one player who drafted all of the QBs. I'm not sure why. I think he missed out on all the running backs, so he drafted Josh Allen, Justin Herbert, and Lamar Jackson instead, thinking he could flip one for a decent running back. So in a nine-team league, I somehow ended up with the projected QB11. I've yet to decide if I'll bite on a QB trade.

RB1: D'Andre Swift, Detroit

 

I believe in D'Andre Swift. I think he'll have a good year. But I can't say that drafting any Lion running back as a starter doesn't give me pause. Still, he was my biggest target going into the draft, and I came away with him, so I can't complain.

 

RB2: Javonte Williams, Denver

 

I also believe Williams will take a firm hold on the RB1 spot for the Broncos, rendering Melvin Gordon irrelevant. Russell Wilson will loosen defenses up like Mile High hasn't seen since Peyton Manning, and Williams will have room to run. That's how I envision this going, at least.

 

WR1: Ja'Marr Chase, Cincinnati

 

Actually, Swift wasn't my #1 target. This guy was. I was happy to get him. But this is why my roster makes me nervous: this is the third player in four slots that is entering his second season. And I have more in my FLEX and bench spots. For some reason, those players looked attractive to me this season over more established vets. Chase was huge last year. He will be again this year. But I'm relying on a boom-or-bust breakout strategy.

 

 

 

WR2: Stefon Diggs, Buffalo

 

I ended up with Diggs last year, too. I didn't intend to go after him this year, but he fell to me for just $3 more than I had budgeted for my second receiver slot. Given that I was also projecting the other guy I was targeting to have a breakout year, I pulled the trigger on the higher ranked, more proven commodity. 

TE: Dalton Schultz, Dallas

Tight end is always my Achilles' heel. I tried to fix that by going hard after Kyle Pitts, whom I think I will have a monster year with Marcus Mariota at quarterback and no proven play-makers on the outside. But I wasn't the only one going after Pitts, apparently, and he ended up being too rich for my blood. I'm high on Shultz, though. I had him ranked as the TE4, ahead of Darren Waller and George Kittle. It's a big drop-off from the Kelce, Andrews, Pitts tier, but I think my fellow Utahn will serve me well.

FLEX1: A.J. Dillon, Green Bay

Maybe this was a homer pick of me, but I don't think so. Dillon has been great since the Pack drafted him. I know he's behind Aaron Jones, but he still got plenty of playing time last year and made the most of it. I expect even more evenness in the backfield this year, and I think Dillon will roll.

FLEX2: Rashod Bateman, Baltimore

In this league, we play two FLEX with no kickers. It's more fun that way. Here is yet another second-year player I'm counting on to take the leap. He's now WR1 in Baltimore, so that's positive. We all know that WR1 in Baltimore doesn't equate to huge volume, however. I think he'll be solid as my third wideout, though.

Defense: Tampa Bay

I tend to stream my defenses, but this year I anticipate keeping the Bucs for a while.

Bench:

RB: Chase Edmonds, Miami

RB: Dameon Pierce, Houston

RB: Tyler Allgeier, Atlanta

WR: Allen Lazard, Green Bay

WR: Amon-Ra St. Brown, Detroit

WR: Christian Kirk, Jacksonville

 

My bench is filled out with rookie running back stashes that I think will see a lot of volume by season's end (Pierce and Allgeier) and receivers who may be weak options, but are at least the top guy for their teams (all three--Lazard, St. Brown, and Kirk). I'm hoping that a couple of these guys pay off as they become "The Man" for their teams.

My draft went mostly according to plan. The only major regret I have is not getting Rashaad Penny. He was big for the last few weeks last season, and with nobody else currently in the backfield, I thought he'd be able to pick up again where he left off. So I nominated him late in the draft. It took everybody else in the room by surprise and one guy looked at me and asked, "Do you seriously want him?" I made the mistake of answering truthfully and set one other player after him. In the end, he had more money to spend and I missed out. My other doubt is that I had wanted Derek Carr as my QB before I knew we were down to a nine-team league. With nine teams, though, I figured I could do better. After I failed to get any top-tier QB, I had the chance to get Carr according to my original plan. But I second-guessed that idea and opted for possible rushing yardage from Trey Lance. Now I think I may want that one back. We'll see. 

 

It's rare that I can budget and build a dream line-up before a draft and basically see it come to fruition. I had to make very few in-game adjustments. So if this season doesn't work out, I'll know it was a faulty game plan from the beginning.

What are your thoughts? How does this team look to you? How does it stack up against yours? Are you ready for some football?

One last thing--none of us are too satisfied with the ESPN platform so far. I decided to try the NFL.com site with a team, just to test it out for next season. I signed up for a custom public league with a salary cap draft. When I signed up, I noticed that the commissioner had set the budget for $700 instead of the customary $200. I tried to adjust my position budgets accordingly, but when the draft started, I found that all of the teams but one were on autodraft. The result was that the bots typically drafted according to preset budget estimates based on $200 while I was free to go as high as I wanted. I missed 45 minutes of the draft and still ended up with this lineup:

QB: Joe Burrow (Proj. QB8)

RB: Joe Mixon (Proj. RB5)

RB: Najee Harris (Proj. RB6)

WR: Davante Adams (Proj. WR4)

WR: CeeDee Lamb (Proj. WR5)

TE: Travis Kelce (Proj. TE1)

FLEX: James Conner (Proj. RB14)

K: Justin Tucker (Proj. K1)

DEF: Buffalo (Proj. DEF1)

QB: Dak Prescott 

RB: A.J. Dillon

RB: Devin Singletary

WR: Terry McLaurin

WR: Jerry Jeudy

WR: Rashod Bateman

This league means nothing more than a test of the NFL.com platform, but I am still laughing at how this lineup turned out.