2018 Sportlots purchases: LH + CW = 2DB

Just 15 days are separating my Wolverines from their 2018 season opener and it's getting hard to remain patient.  Further pumping me up for the return of college football is the fact that I got to go on a tour of Michigan Stadium as a work thing earlier this week, including hanging out in the locker room and running around on the field.  I made a quick dash from endzone to endzone, though I certainly didn't set any stopwatches on fire.

Anyway, let's see if I can finish up showing off all of my football Sportlots pickups before that night game against Notre Dame.  Today I went with an all time pair of Michigan cornerbacks, Leon Hall and Charles Woodson:

I'm showing off 15 new Hall cards today and only three of them don't include college photos, which is a huge win for me.  This first group is 100% Press Pass and SAGE, brands that were college-friendly for years.  Press Pass represents the first seven, including its flagship product, Legends, and SE.  Inserts include a Blue Reflectors parallel (kind of useless, as parallels sometimes are), a couple versions of SE's Insider Insight--regular and Collectors Series--and a Marquee Matchups card pairing Hall with OSU's Ted Ginn Jr.  Ginn's Buckeyes got the better of Hall's team in a close loss, one of the best games in the series, and both guys were 2007 first-rounders that have had solid NFL careers.

As for SAGE, this might be my favorite design of their yearly HIT product.  It has something like a cardboard feel to it and a very pleasing design both front and back.  I should try to track down the other Wolverines from the set (Breaston and Woodley) for that very reason.  They Playmakers insert--Blue here and Silver to lead off the next scan--isn't nearly as interesting but that's not a big deal thanks to the extra nice base version.

Joining the cards above and the aforementioned second Playmakers insert are two other 2007 offerings.  A fantastic looking Topps Draft Chrome Black parallel provides another look at one of my favorite Topps products whose absence I felt long before the Paniniopoly; black and chrome go well together with the maize & blue!  That's joined by Hall's only horizontal issue today, a 2007 Aspire Century Club insert.  The back lists his key measurables and compares him to Ronde Barber.  While it doesn't look like he'll live up to that comparison, Hall's had a very respectable career.

Much of that career, nine of 11 seasons so far, was spent with the Bengals, and I grabbed three cards of him with that team:  2008 Select and Topps' Mayo, plus 2010 Certified.  Those gave me a pair of second-years and a very nice design from his fourth.  And overall these additions put Hall's collection on milestone watch at 98 cards!

And now we'll move on from one of the greats to the GOAT, Charles Woodson.  We'll start with a sextet of second-years in the form of 1999's Paramount, Playoff Momentum SSD, Playoff Prestige EXP, SP Authentic, Stadium Club Chrome, and Upper Deck Encore.  There's lots of designs I like here, but Topps' Stadium Club Chrome was, in my opinion, a winner at the time, and a look that passes the test of time.  It should at least be brought back as a standalone product for baseball at least!

Then a trio of 2000s follows.  Chuck was included in Bowman Chrome's Rookie of the Year set for winning the defensive version in '98, just one of his many accolades.  I also found him in Fleer Tradition's Glossy factory set (which, yes, is as curved as they usually are) and Ultra's die-cut Gold Medallion parallel.

I hope you're ready for a big jump in time because now we move all the way on up to 2008 and Score Select plus UD's Draft Edition.  Then there's a pair of 2009s--Bowman Chrome and Topps Mayo--and 2010s--Score Glossy and SP Authentic.  The college-friendly SPA is one of two Michigan uni-fied Woodsons today and therefore one of my favorites.  Those are followed by 2011 Certified and a pair of 2012s:  Panini's Momentum and Prizm.  This is a nice bunch of Chuck on the Packers, the team I associate him with more than the Raiders thanks to his Super Bowl victory in 2010.

This last scan opens with one more 2012 card, a Rookies and Stars Statistical Standouts insert that notes his league-leading seven picks in 2011 (one of two occasions where he led all comers).  A 2017 Playoff insert called Gridiron Force is the penultimate vertical card and notes that Woodson picked off a pair of passes from Heisman runner-up and fivehead-having Papa John's lover Peyton Manning for the first time in 2015.  Then we come to probably my favorite Woodson addition today, his 2018 Panini Contenders Draft Picks base, which once again comes with a fantastic design and photo.  Chuck looks like he's ready to grab another gravity-defying one-handed interception against the Spartans!

Finally there's a trio of horizontal offerings to check out.  1999's Omega is another second-year Pacific offering of the two-time Raider, and a very cool one at that.  Then we have 2007's Ultra on a typically solid design of the Fleer product  Last up is an insert from last year's Panini flagship product, one called Decorated, which mentions Woodson's 2009 DPOY award, one he earned by going for league-leading (and career high) totals of nine INTs and three TDs.  His 179 return yards were also a career best, plus he force four fumbles.  GOAT GOAT GOAT!

Speaking of leads this huge bunch allows Woodson's collection to overtake Chad Henne's for tops in the football bunch with 296, also putting him within easy reach of his own milestone.

Despite my desire to get all the football stuff done before game 1, my next post should be focusing on three of my hockey PCs, so stay tuned!