2017 COMC purchases: too many Manninghams! (and more)

It's taken me until we're almost 100 days into 2018 but once I hit the Publish button on this post I'll have finally wrapped up 2017!

Today is all about my football player collections; rookies, inserts, hits, it's all there.  I hit eight of the nine (I left Tom Brady out since I don't really buy his stuff that often--he shows up in trade packages frequently enough!) and ended up with 66 cards including 22 hits.  Let's have a look at them so I can finally move on to stuff from this year!

We'll start alphabetically with Adrian Arrington, currently the lone supercollection of my football PCs.  I tracked down three of his inserts from Panini-related brands:  2008 Donruss Threads Bronze Holofoil (#131/250) and 2008 Score Gold Zone (#193/400), plus 2009 Donruss Threads Pro Gridiron Kings Framed Red (#072/100).  The theme of my Michigan Football purchases besides hits is "Numbered, shiny, Refractor, or all of the above" and these fit well.  I'm now at about 20% of AA's 370 cards

Braylon Edwards' stuff is plentiful on COMC so I had no problem finding a stack of cool cards of his.  In this first scan you can see more items that fit the description I mentioned above.  In fact everything I found of him is serial numbered as well.  That includes a Playoff Contenders insert from his 2005 rookie year, Topps Triple Threads base cards from 2006, '07, and '09 (plus a Sepia parallel from '06), a 2008 Donruss Gridiron Gear parallel, plus more 2009 fun that comprises a numbered Finest Refractor plus parallels from Leaf Rookies and Stars and Topps Unique.

The last of the vertical inserts can be seen here--a Gold 759 parallel (guess what it's numbered to) from Topps' 2010 Unrivaled, plus a really nice insert from 2011 Panini Gold Standard called Golden Anniversary.

The horizontals begin with another 2005 Contenders insert that pairs Bray-Bray with fellow first-round WR Troy Williamson (definitely the lesser of the two).  That's followed by yet another numbered base card, this one from Panini's 2010 Plates and Patches.  Then that year's Topps Unrivaled makes a second appearance with a numbered chase card set called Veterans.

I also turned up a decent hit of Edwards, a Prime Cuts jersey (#49/50) from 2009 Donruss Rookies and Stars.  It met my usual cheapo price range for relics and comes with two colors, making it a solid addition to my Braylon Hits, now at 71 (and 235 cards overall).

As much as I love getting anything new of Mike Hart it's harder than it should be to find good prices for him when it comes to COMC inventory.  I at least tracked down this fun pair of 2008 Topps-branded parallels:  Kickoff Silver Holofoil (#0399/1349) and Letterman Refractor (#95/99).  Though I've been chasing the Letterman rookies of my guys I wasn't aware they had Refractor versions so that was a very nice surprise.  The Kickoff card, football's version of Opening Day, was a fun pickup too.  Together this pair jumps me up to 120 different Hart items.

Hey, it's blog favorite QB Chad Henne!  The new KC Chiefs backup found his way into my cart a good few times on some numbered inserts, plus one that's just plain ol' shiny.  He shares a 2008 Leaf Rookies and Stars insert you'll see again shortly with another PC guy, then goes solo on the rest:  2010 Crown Royale Blue (#049/100) and Playoff Contenders Playoff Ticket (#24/99), 2011 Rookies and Stars Longevity Parallel Silver (#211/249), and 2014 Panini Hot Rookies Showcase (#68/79).  The only non-numbered card is the horizontal one, 2011 Prestige Prestigious Pros Red.  It may not be the Michigan hue, but I sure do like the blue that the Score parallel is rocking!

And what would a post with Henne be without adding on to his football collection-leading hits total?  The first one is a mouthful:  2008 Absolute Memorabilia Rookie Premiere Materials AFC/NFC Spectrum Prime dual jersey/ball (#12/25) (sorry, Gavin!  Find me another one and you're welcome to this one.).  I've got a bunch of Henne's stuff (and other Wolverines too) from this product and am always happy to add to it.  Here the draw for me was the nice pair of "prime" jersey swatches.

Speaking of "I already had a bunch of these", how about another addition to my 2008 SPx haul?  I did a quick count and this dual jersey card with the cut out area in the shape of the "SPX" name seems to be my 11th from that product (against seven of the Absolutes).  They look nice enough and usually don't go over $1.50 so they're well within my range).

But why don't we put a nice cherry on top of this sundae with my fifth Henne plate?  Already my third from 2014 alone, this one's a Cyan version from that year's Rookies and Stars set (the others are Prestige and Score if you were interested).  It's always a good day when you can add this many cards to your favorite PC and an even better one when one of those is a plate!  That's 114 hits of Chad, 266 cards overall, and 98 1/1s.

It happens to be good timing to be posting cards of the LT that protected Henne at Michigan and in Miami, former #1 overall pick Jake Long.  That's because he finally recovered from multiple injuries and surgeries to the point that he was able to to run for the first time in 18 months.  Football obviously takes a toll regardless, but nobody deserves that much pain!

For his collection I grabbed three cards from the 2008 Leaf Rookies and Stars Studio Rookies insert:  the Combos card you saw above with Henne (#413/500) plus his solo card (#0899/1000) and the Gold version of that (#304/500).  Then I tacked on yet another Gold card, this one the parallel from 2014 Topps (#0756/2014).

Happily I also didn't come up empty when it came to hits of the big guy.  Like his former teammate I came up with this '08 SPx dual jersey card whose version is described as "SPx Rookie Materials Star and Position Dual 149" (#023/149).  The nomenclature may be a bit ridiculous but at least you know what you're getting!  And what I got was five new Longs to reach 75 hits (just the second player to claim that many) and 115 cards overall.

There's still plenty to come in this post but we're now at the main course:  too many Marios!  Mr. Manningham led all comers in cards and it wasn't even close--wait until you see what I have in store!

Let's begin with this bevy of inserts.  The first two rows include 2008 inserts from Donruss Gridiron Gear and Leaf R&S (the previously seen Studio Rookies) plus Topps parallels:  a Chrome Refractor and Gold from flagship.  The horizontal pair next to them hail from 2008 Absolute and 2010 Prestige.  Everything is numbered except the Refractor, not that it needs that feature to be awesome.

Then the bottom trio includes two parallels from the fine looking 2011 Timeless Treasures set: Silver (#74/99) and Gold (#06/49).  A Gold Topps parallel from 2012 rounds out the inserts.  But we're just getting started, oh yes indeed.

Let's start with a perfect page of eight landscape hits.  The first two are from UD's fantastic 2008 SP Rookie Threads product, the one responsible for my all-time favorite Lettermen cards.  On the left is a dual patch (#46/75) the its partner in crime is a dual jersey/auto (#10/50).  Regarding the latter I was like "'RT'?  He's a wide receiv--ooooh, 'Rookie Threads'".

Then there's a four-spot of the very familiar 2008 SPx rookie materials:  Football Shape Dual 119 dual jersey (#077/119), SPX New Logo Dual 75 dual jersey (#14/75), SPX Dual 199 dual jersey (#091/199), and SPX Triple 99 triple jersey (#49/99).  I'm secretly building my own Giants jersey, y'all!

Moving on to the bottom row I grabbed a 2009 Prestige Rookie Review Materials Prime jersey (#14/50) with a nice two color/stitching combo, and this post's other Manningham autograph, 2016 Panini Plates and Patches Pivotal Marks (#63/99).  That one correctly highlights his extremely important catch in Super Bowl XLVI that led to the winning points.  If that's not pivotal I don't know what is!

Now let's pad that hit total a bit more.  We'll go back to 2008 and begin with a huge jersey swatch/rookie from the fantastic Leaf Certified Materials (#203/599), another product that was quite friendly towards some of my favorite draftees from that year.  Then a decent Dress For Success jersey from R&S (#050/250) leads into another highlight-worthy card from SP Rookie Threads:  a Rookie Numbers Holofoil Patch (#51/75) with the cutout done in the shape of Super Mario's pro number.  Sticking with 2008 one final time I came up with a cheap (and accordingly tiny) jersey card from Icons (#178/199), which has never been high on my list.  Then Manningham goes out in style thanks to that 2014 Elite Throwback Threads Prime jersey (#19/49), which is on par with the Prestige card from above.

How about some numbers for the guy they called "the New Math" in Ann Arbor?  22 new cards, 13 of them hits, for 190 overall and the silver medal as the new #2 in my football PC with 81 hits!  Long and Edwards are left behind eating his dust, at least for now.

Now we're done with the cards I was the most excited to post, but I still have two more players to get to, and some nice stuff of them at that!  First is Denard Robinson, the most recent Michigan QB I've seen play live.  You all got to see the card on the left, his 2013 Absolute RC, a few posts ago, and to that I added a 2015 Certified Mirror Silver (#116/499).  I'm glad to see the Certified Mirror name has stuck around for 20+ years!

And the hits kept coming for Shoelace too.  Finding his hits at reasonable prices on COMC is like shooting fish in a barrel, which is fun for a collector like myself.  It's so easy I scored these three relic/auto cards for under $6 combined.  All are from his rookie year of 2013 out of Panini brands:  his Limited jersey/auto/RC (#264/299), Momentum Rookie Signatures triple jersey auto (#053/199), and Totally Certified Red Signatures jersey auto (#050/299).  Autographs are still my favorite hits to pick up but the Limited and Totally Certified issues came with very nice swatches too!

Oh yeah, and for a bit more than the price of those three--just $6.50--I landed my first 1/1 of the quick QB:  a 2016 Donruss Cyan plate from Plates and Patches.  I think you all know I'm a big fan of the classic Donruss look, and I'd say Panini's treated it well over the years.  It certainly looks nice here in plate form, if you ask me.  By the way, that's 1/1 #99, so we'll be celebrating a fun milestone very soon!  For now I'll enjoy four new Denard hits for a new count of 36, and 78 items overall.

And now I can say farewell to 2017 in style thanks to a quintet of cards starring my alma mater's upcoming Spring Commencement speaker, Charles Woodson.  You already saw the first two cards, rookies from 1998, in my Rookie Blue post a couple weeks ago, so you know how I feel about those (reminder:  Playoff Momentum gets a biiiiiig thumbs down).  To those I added a fun trio of inserts. 

First is a Pewter parallel (#120/199) from the retail version of 2015 Crown Royale.  These die-cut cards already look nice enough but pewter makes for a good alternate version.  Next is what's somehow the only Michigan uni card in the entire post, a gorgeous Stained Glass insert from 2015 Panini Prizm Draft Picks.  It's easily one of those "I saw it and I had to have it" kind of purchases and I bet I get at least one identical comment about it when this goes up.  Last is one final parallel, the Jumbo version of Chuck's Gold Zone (#44/99) from 2016 Score.  I don't think Panini should have made different versions of these, but at least the numbering helps you differentiate them.

It wasn't a huge haul for Woodson but he remains the player collection leader for now with 269 cards, three more than Henne.

And this super fun sendoff to 2017 bumped me up to 1266 football hits (up from the easier to remember 1234!).

Now that I'm finally, finally done,

I can say thank you to everyone who made 2017 another great year of collecting for me, and here's to 2018!  Maybe I'll even get most of my pickups from this year posted before next March....