2017 Sportlots purchases: Mike Hart jumpstart

Welcome to those of you who found this evening's post after checking out my pile of new Chris Sabo cards over on TMV.  Today's title references the fact that it was so cold here in Michigan this past week that I needed to have my car jump started once on Wednesday and twice on Friday before giving in and buying a new battery.

But that's also football weather, and the subject of tonight's post was, like Sabo, a Michigan Man in his sport.  That would be none other than Mike Hart.

If I had to rename this blog for some reason, "Not Enough Mike Harts" might be a top candidate because I don't have nearly as many as I want.  While I'm only adding four thanks to my large Sportlots haul from last year, anything new helps!  It also doesn't hurt that three of them are of the college uniform variety.  Check 'em out:

This is Mike's base card from one of a few 2008 products made by SAGE:  Aspire.  I would have liked it a bit more if the left side of the photo wasn't cut off by the design, but it's a solid effort otherwise thanks to a great photo of a RB who rarely went down behind the line of scrimmage.

Here's a fun insert from another brand that used to produce nice college cards:  Press Pass.  From its 2008 SE product, it's called Insider Insight, and the write up on the back quotes someone who can offer something interesting about that player.  In this case Hart's coach Lloyd Carr credits his ability to do so well in pass protection while still being responsible for a full load of carries.  Mike's ability to stand up oncoming LBs to protect Chad Henne is certainly something I appreciated over his four year college career.

Speaking of his former QB teammate, this is a Glossy parallel of a card shared by Henne and Hart from 2008 SAGE HIT.  That product headed downhill after these were made but fortunately for me this was a pretty solid product for a Wolverines collector.  By the way, each player also has a Glossy version of their own cards from the base set.  You'll be seeing this one again in a future post with the rest of the Hennes I picked up.

Today's only non-college card is this 2009 Score Inscriptions base.  It was a lower-end autograph-friendly product that comes up a lot in my collection because lots of guys that wouldn't normally land on signature checklists made it into this one.  While that may not appeal to breakers, it sure does to me!  I count autos from Hart, Henne, Adrian Arrington, and Jake Long in my collection thanks to this Score product.

While I continue working to add more to what I hope will be a much larger collection, I now have 118 cards of my all-time favorite Michigan RB, with a couple more via COMC to show off in the near future.

Until then, here's hoping I'm done with needing jumpstarts!

2013 eBay purchase #1: Hartsky and Hutch

That's right, I'm putting the COMC Haul posts on hiatus for a day because I wanted to show off my first (and so far only!) purchase of 2013.  An eBay seller had one card I was very, very interested in, and then I noticed he had another that would totally make combined shipping worth the effort.  It was touch and go for a bit because the card I wanted more would finish about a minute after the card I wanted less, and I didn't want to get stuck paying shipping on the latter by itself.  Fortunately it all worked out, and thanks to about $3 in eBay bucks I got this pair of cards for less than $7 delivered!:

Mike Hart 2008 SP Rookie Lettermen 'A' patch auto (#03/62)

While I already had one of these letters for each Wolverine in the set, I decided to see if I could find more for around $10 or under each.  Back in November I snagged seconds of Henne, Arrington and Long, meaning I had two of each of them and one each of Hart and Shawn Crable.  Well, for just a few bucks I've nabbed my second Hart, and now I might just have designs on getting a nameplate of him, especially since I only need the "H" and "T."  There was no way I could go wrong with another letter patch auto of one of my favorite players for just $5.  Oh yeah, and some bigger news:  this is Mike Hart hit #40 for me!  Mike is just the fourth member of the 40-hit club, joining Jake Long, Chad Henne and Braylon Edwards.  Don't forget I still have plenty more to scan from COMC, though.

Steve Hutchinson 2001 Press Pass SE Bronze auto

My other pickup for a measly $0.99 was this Michigan uniform on-card auto of future HOF OL Steve Hutchinson.  I'm now up to five hits of the star guard, and three of those are autographs, but this is the only one of the group that's on-card.  I know many collectors aren't fans of the Press Pass and SAGE sets of the world, but for me, there's nothing like a simple design featuring the player in a college game paired up with a good-looking signature.  Hutchinson is one of the greatest OL ever to play the game, both at Michigan and in the NFL, so I'm very happy to be putting together a growing PC of his better cards.

That's it for now, but I'm watching quite a few things on eBay and should also be hitting up a show towards the end of the month, so hopefully I'll have more new stuff for you soon.  Until then, stay tuned for plenty more COMC haul posts as I work on finishing up that stack of pickups!