2017 Sportlots purchases: Henne for your thoughts

Did I already use that title for a post before?  Maybe.  Am I gonna bother checking?  No.

I'm not really a fan of basketball and I barely collect that sport on cardboard, but today was a pretty big day for the Wolverines as they beat #4 Michigan State in East Lansing, which is kind of a big deal.  Of course Michigan would be them in their sport when the Spartans beat the Wolverines in football last season, because reasons.

Anyway, let's celebrate, but with football cards I was already gonna post anyway!  As the title suggests, we're gonna take a gander at some stuff I found of blog favorite QB Chad Henne on Sportlots late last year, featuring some Maize and Blue cameos!

The first four cards here comprise the majority of a quintet of college uni cards, with every one coming out of a non-major brand product.  Up first is Henne's solo base card from 2008 Press Pass (he also shares one with a guy named Manningham) that features a cool action shot.  Henne wasn't exactly a dual-threat QB so you can bet he was looking to pass here.  The next card is from that same brand but the product was called SE (for Special Edition), and this one is notable as it mentions the NFL team that drafted him.

The next two are SAGE brands with the first being Aspire (which is apparently cataloged that way, so alphabetically it should have been first here) and the other a Glossy parallel of a card Chad shares with Mike Hart in the HIT product (which you saw last post).

Speaking of glossy parallels, another one popped up in the form of a parallel of Henne's 2008 Score rookie, a card that's joined from that product by a Hot Rookies insert.  I also have a numbered Scorecard parallel of the latter.

Card #7 is a puzzle piece from Topps' low-end 2008 Kickoff product.  As you can see on the back,

Henne was one of 28 players to get such a card.

Card #8, from UD's 2008 Rookie Premiere set, ended up being a double so we'll skip that.  And the ninth card finally gets us out of that year thanks to another Glossy parallel, this time from Score's 2009 set.

Next we'll both continue and finish up 2009 with a base card from SP Signature.  Then we go on a run of 2010s with Certified, Classics, Donruss Elite, Epix, Playoff Contenders, Prestige, Topps Magic, and Topps Prime.  Those first three Panini brands look great as they often do while Epix was definitely a mistake.  Contenders and Prestige are almost perennially good efforts though.  I wish Topps had stuck with Stadium Club instead of the sorta decent Prime product, but at least Magic looked pretty nice, even if it couldn't reach the heights of the outstanding 2009 version.

Two more Topps cards lead off this can to finish out 2010--the retail version of Prime and the slightly higher-end Unrivaled.  Retail Prime features thinner card stock and not much else, and I sure which manufacturers would stop making those kinds of cards.

We then begin a nice run of 2011 Panini stuff with the day's worst card:  the Topps Attax-like Adrenalyn XL, which is so extreme to the max that when you flip it over a backwards-hatted skateboard jumps out, hands you a Mountain Dew, and yells "RADICAL!"  Thankfully the year is redeemed by more design excellence from Certified, Donruss Elite, and Prestige.  Panini may have plenty of products that should go away but these three aren't among them.

The top two cards here finish up 2011 and they hail from Panini's Rookies and Stars Longevity (again, the base set, not the parallel) and Score.  The former set has rarely done anything for me, but Score's almost always a good buy, the way Topps used to be.

Jumping ahead to 2014 I have two cards with Henne on his current squad, the Jags.  Another nice Score design contrasts nicely with a 90s Pacific-esque Totally Certified.

And we'll end the post with a few horizontal Hennes.  The first one brings us back to 2008 Press Pass SE, and this Marquee Matchups card pairs Chad up with 2008 Captial One Bowl foe Derrick Harvey of Florida.  Henne's Wolverines had the last laugh in winning by a 41-35 margin, but the future first-round DE had himself a day as well with three tackles for loss including two sacks plus a forced fumble.

Next up is a solid horizontal design for another example from Playoff Contenders.  I think I prefer the 2010 version above by a bit, but this one's cool too.

Last is a pair of 2011 Panini products in Threads and Playoff Contenders.  I don't know that Threads was that useful but the threads along the right edge are kind of fun, I guess.  And the Contenders card from that year is probably the best of the three year run I showed today, in my opinion.  That's mostly due to my preference for a whole photo instead of the player on a random background, but the left section is nice itself.

That's a nice total of 31 new Henne cards which puts his collection up to 257, another fun little milestone.

I'll be finishing up this series soon with a post (or two) centering on one more football player.  See if you can guess who it is!