Happy New Year and blog birthday! Featuring Too Many Manninghams from Sportlots

Well the season didn't end the way I hoped:  Michigan, up 16 points, made too many mistakes against a South Carolina team that switched roles with the Wolverines in the second half.  Just like five years ago this campaign ends with a heartbreaking bowl loss and a negative outlook towards next season...for now.

But you won't see any insipid hot takes over here.  Over the last couple years I've learned to let disappointment and negativity go when it comes to sports, and I feel better as a result even when things don't go my teams' way.  Instead I'm proud of what this team did and I eagerly await the 2018 season and what it could bring.

Speaking of 2018, today is the sixth anniversary of this here blog, one I started because my collecting interests skew heavily towards my alma mater.  Six years later it looks like a good decision: TMM is at about 100 fewer posts than TMV, and the latter had about a 16-month head start!  Happily I feel like I've found a nice balance by shifting my Michigan-related baseball PCs to the senior blog while this one mostly features football and the other big sports.

So in honor of another college football season in the books, another year of this here blog's existence, and a certain "Super" namesake, here's a bunch of Mario Manninghams from Sportlots (but not too many!):

The first scan starts off on a high note with a pair of Michigan uni cards from 2008 Press Pass and 2010 Sweet Spot.  I bought a box of Sweet Spot way back when it came out but never finished the set, but fortunately I've since added a few of the Wolverines from the nice looking product.

The other 2010 entrant is card #2 in the group, a base from Prestige on a design I don't care for as much as I usually do.

Then we have six appearances from 2011, leaning heavily towards Panini brands.  First up is the forgettable Adrenalyn XL, a weird game-type set that's just not that great.  After that we get a much better trio in Certified, Donruss Elite, and Finest before finishing up with Panini's Gridiron Gear and Prestige once again.

Today's other scan begins with one more trio of 2011s:  Panini's Rookies and Stars plus its Longevity base set version (as opposed to the parallel insert) and the usual solid effort from Score.  Down the middle is a Topps run of Prime Retail and its Blue parallel plus the Retail version of Strata (and whatever the hell is supposed to be going on in the background).

A horizontal base from Panini's 2011 Threads is a nice way to end things with a cool design plus one more look at Manningham with the Giants, the team for which he's best known.

These 16 new Manninghams give his PC a new count of 168, once again letting me start this year of collecting on a positive note.  And if you like seeing his cards posted here, just wait until I get to my Black Friday COMC haul, which was very Mario-friendly!  Until then, watch for a few more Sportlots posts over here in addition to the ones I've been running on TMV.  And while you're at it, please keep sending me any Manninghams you have--I just can't get enough!