2018 COMC purchases: 10 years later...

At long last I'm finishing up my 2018 COMC pickups with my favorites--my PC guys from the 2008 draft class!  It's this here blog's answer to GCRL:  Henne, Hart, Manningham, Long:

Record-setting RB Mike Hart is up first with a fun little trifecta.  His Stadium Club RC (#1799/1799!) leaves me just his '08 Upper Deck base short of his first-year run.  Next is a Rainbow parallel of his 2008 UD Icons auto, which looks to be my 64th card featuring his signature.  That product has a design I don't terribly care for but I love adding any new autograph of Hart.  And finally, I came up with a first for his collection:  a printing plate!  It happens to be a Michigan uni card, too, since it's from 2008 Press Pass Legends.  That's 1/1 #119 in my collection!

Now let's look at the Chad Henne pyramid of greatness--look out, Ron Swanson!  While I'd recommend more daily servings of autographs there's plenty here for a healthy collection.  Up top is another great example of Contenders' Playoff Ticket insert I enjoy so much.  A couple solo jersey relics from 2008 Leaf Certified Materials (#d /100) and 2009 Prestige bookend two more that include Chad's fellow '08 Wolverine draftee with the Dolphins, who's coming up next.  Those are #d /250 and /500, respectively.  Henne continues to rule the football collection with 124 hits and is getting close to joining 300-card PC guy Charles Woodson with a new total of 290.

Former #1 overall pick OT Jake Long gets a double-dip with his own group of cards in addition to the pair he shares with Henne above.  He joins Hart in the RC club with his 2008 Topps Letterman base (#104/419), and I appear to be four cards short of Jake's first-years.  I also added a new signature of his (Michigan uni!) thanks to 2008 SAGE Squared, a card he shares with fellow first-rounder Ryan Clady, who went 12th overall to Denver after a good career at Boise State, then enjoyed a solid NFL run cut short by injuries (sounds kind of familiar!).  To those I added a pair of SPx triple jersey relics, giving me nine of his cards from that product featuring many such variations.

This haul moved Long back ahead of Braylon Edwards with 82 hits as the fourth player to hit 80+, leaving him three shy of the next guy you'll see.

You may have heard of him.  Michigan star WR?  Super Bowl hero?  Namesake of this here blog?  Back in January I posted some Sportlots pickups that had me celebrating 200 Many Manninghams, and now I have a few more to add to that pile.  First is a pair of pretty Panini parallels (say that three times fast!):  2011 Gridiron Gear Gold X's (#068/100) and Prestige Xtra Points Red (#046/100).  I love any new Manninghams but I'm extra happy to add some numbered inserts.

Along with those is a new pair of Giants jersey relics.  The first is the Jumbo Swatch version of his 2008 Donruss Gridiron Gear relic, a piece that looks great and is numbered 16/50.  From the same year's Leaf Limited I found a Rookie Jumbo Jerseys Team Logo swatch (#18/50) cut in the shape of New York's logo.  Well, a rough outline, anyway!

Manningham's 85 hits are good for second place, though he's a crazy 29 behind top guy Chad Henne, meaning I can't say I have too many!

Now that I'm finally done with these, some show pickups and trade packages should come next.

2018 COMC purchases: Michigan miscellany

Let's get this 2018 stuff done!  Up today I'm featuring 10 cards that won't be going into any of my football player collections but were still fun adds:

Where my numbered insert fans at?!  Funch stars on the always great Playoff Ticket parallel from Panini's Contenders--the 2016 version in this case.  It's hard to see but it's numbered 136/249 up front.  You'd have to go back 16 years with Conan and Andy Richter--in the year 2000--to find Grbac's Fleer Focus Draft Position parallel that's allegedly numbered to his, uh, draft position:  823 (my copy is #324).  These are done in kind of a goofy way as Elvis actually went #219 overall in '93, but because he was an 8th round selection, and the 23rd player chosen in that round, you get 823.  Whatever, it's a fun parallel!

I have just one RC to show off today, but you might see a couple more in the last two posts of this series.  Today's Rookie Blue addition is a guy whose drafting team wore Honolulu blue, though he's since moved on to Miami:  Jake Rudock.  According to my checklist this is the sixth of his eight rookies I need to track down:  a very thick 2016 Panini Spectra card #d 03/99.  I'll go ahead and tease that I have something new of his coming in my Spring Cleaning COMC package, but until I can show that off I'll continue to chase his 2016 Absolute and Panini Prizm RCs.

The rest of this post is a hit parade fit for Motown.  That starts with this long Butt, the second of Jake's pair of autos from 2017 Contenders (in this case, the one that's not considered his RC).  I usually like Contenders and who could hate a signature that says "J Butt"?  That's my fifth hit of the oft-injured but hopefully healthy for 2019 TE.

Plate alert!  In what's only my second hit (the other's an auto) of the Liberian WR--who still appears to be with KC but has all of three catches to his name--I'm proud to show off this Magenta Plate of Jehu Chesson from 2017 Prizm that was inserted into Panini's Plates & Patches product.  It looks to be my 118th 1/1 and is a nice addition to what's apparently a neglected player in my football collection!

Chesson's collection stands in stark contrast to his former teammate in the WR room, Amara Darboh.  Darboh's home country of Sierra Leone sits next to Liberia along the northwest coast of Africa, but that's where their similarities end as far as their cards go in my PC.  That's because of days like today when I get to show off a crazy four new hits, all with signatures.

Up top is a pair featuring "just" autographs:  2017 Elite's Pen Pals plus a Panini Contenders Optic RC auto.  The former is a bit plain but was fine for the price, and the latter proves that Panini can occasionally use Topps' Chrome look to its advantage.

Then on the bottom we go landscape-style for a couple auto/jersey pairings.  #1 is a jersey/auto/RC (with a very interesting, if tiny, swatch!) from Certified Cuts that's #d 047/299.  I realize the idea of a cut signature is kind of silly for a player that hasn't passed away or become unable to sign, but I think it's still a fun design once in a while.  And switching gears is the somewhat Pacific-like Phoenix brand and its Rookie Jersey Autographs insert.  Here we get a sticker auto along with a larger swatch, though the print run is still the same (#117/299).

That's 13 hits of the receiver who's back for another shot with Seattle in 2019.

And last but not least is this 2002 Pacific Exclusive Game Worn Jerseys relic of former Michigan/Buffalo TE Jay Riemersma.  A Bill with 23 NFL TDs to his name, Riemersma doesn't pop up in my posts too often, but this is my third hit of him (two autographs), which puts him ahead of a bunch of Michigan alumni in my collection.  And I really like the bold blue swatch from his jersey here.

With these done I have two more posts planned featuring lots more like what you just saw, so stay tuned!

2018 COMC purchases: whateva, I'll do what Avant!

It's been a few weeks between posts, so today I'm finally getting around to showing off the first bunch of pickups from my COMC purchases near the end of last year.

Tonight is all about sure-handed possession receiver Jason Avant.  I'm not sure why things worked out this way but he's one of my top football guys in terms of quantity and quality.  Click on his name in the first sentence of this paragraph to see what I mean.

Speaking of quantity of quality, here's 10 great new hits for his collection:

First up is a five spot of vertical cards:  four autographs and a jersey relic.  The signatures hail from sets produced during his draft/rookie year of 2006 and include:

• Bowman Chrome Rookie Autographs Blue Refractor (#75/75), my third in the autograph rainbow
• Donruss Classics Significant Signatures Gold (#020/100), a fine example from that product
• Select Autographs Red (#02/25), a nice combo of foil and the color red
• 2006 Ultimate Collection RC (#247/275), a relatively cheap pickup from a high-end product

Meanwhile the jersey is one of his three versions of a 2011 Topps Triple Threads Unity Relics Emerald parallel (#01/18).  I thought I had others of Avant from this set but got him confused with Steve Breaston.

Next is a fun trio of horizontal stuff, all from 2006.  The first two are from Panini's fairly confusing Gridiron Gear product where a bunch of the variations on the cards were numbered to 50, making them hard to differentiate.  Fortunately I was able to deduce that the two you see are a Rookie Jerseys Combos Prime Autographs dual jersey auto (#21/50) and Rookie Jerseys Jumbo Swatch Autographs jersey auto (#035/150).  The "prime" pieces look great with the sticker 'graph on the first, and the signed pull-out swatch on the latter is a fun feature.

Joining those is one of the more mundane cards this evening (along with the Triple Threads above), a 2006 Leaf Rookies and Stars Longevity Target Sapphire Parallel jersey (#042/249).  That's an absolute mouthful from another one of those often confusing products (is it the regular Rookies and Stars Longevity parallel or the set named Longevity itself?).  The blue (you can call it "sapphire" all you want) looks great, though the Eagles' green kind of gets in the way.  Not bad for $0.88!

Last up tonight is not just one but two 1/1s, my first of the former Wolverines WR.  Up top is an autographed plate, the Cyan version, from Jason's 2006 SAGE Autographs.  A quick count tells me this is just the 13th of my 117 1/1s to be signed, and it's a Michigan uni card!

I was also stoked to grab Avant's Black plate from 2012 Topps since it's nice to have something more "mainstream" to pair with the college-only SAGE version.

Nine of these 10 cards came from one seller who was either a big collector of Avant or an Eagles fan at one point.  All but the R&S Longevity jersey came to me for a bit over $28, and I feel pretty good with paying an average of $3 per card for what you see here!

Before this post Avant sat on the cusp of a milestone at 49 hits so I was glad to get him over that hump and up to 59.  That jumps him to sixth place overall and makes him the ninth player to make it to 50.  Denard Robinson is likely to be the player that will get the club membership into double digits so keep an eye out for that!

As for his overall PC, I now count 112 different cards, more than half of which are hits.  I wasn't kidding about that quantity of quality, guys!

Next time I'll have more COMC football purchases, though I haven't decided which group to post yet.

2018 eBay purchases: is there Henne chance I can finish this in five minutes?

Yep, I'm doing the five minute post thing over here too because, why not?  I'm betting if I allow myself to be ok with shorter posts I'll write more often.

And anyway this is a good time for it since I have a single card to show off, my only eBay purchase so far this month, which I won for a bit under $12 shipped:

This here is a 2014 Prestige Cyan Plate of my favorite football PC guy, Chad Henne.  I'd had my eye on it for quite a while before giving myself the green light as the seller also had a card I was chasing for a trade package.  I didn't win that one and its free combined shipping bonus, but I was still very happy to add another Henne 1/1 to my collection.  That's #7 (hey, his jersey number!) and leads my football collection by a lot since he's the only guy for whom I've nabbed more than two.  It also represents hit #120 (also a huge lead) and my 113th total plate/one-of-one.  I also noticed as I was updating my PC page that Henne continues to creep closer to Charles Woodson for the #1 spot in terms of my football player collections.  I mean, he may as well top all the lists, right?

Showing a Henne card is particularly relevant this week as Michigan prepares for the annual battle with Michigan State.  Chad was partly responsible for the insane triple-OT comeback win against the Spartans during his true freshman season of 2004.  He also tossed three TDs in another overtime victory in '05, three more in a three-score blowout in '06.  Henne finished his Michigan career against MSU with a game-winning pass to Mario Manningham in the 2007 matchup in East Lansing, one four he tossed in the four-point victory.  Yep, he never lost to the couch-burners!

It's definitely been more than five minutes, but once again at least that got me to post!  I'll leave you with a scan of the base version of this card as well as the Yellow Plate which I also own.  Half the plates are mine!

2018 eBay purchases: Henne given Sunday

After finally eclipsing the $1000 mark on card spending this year in September I went back and took a look at my monthly spending going back to 2012 (the first year I started keeping track) and noticed that since 2018 my overall spending is way down from what it was prior.  And I think that's a good thing, because I'm still picking up things I like and growing my collection while cutting the fat and leaving some to spend on other frivolities.

So 2018 has been another year of good collecting value for me, and a great example of that is my most recent eBay pickup:

The card:  a 2013 Panini Contenders Cyan Plate of blog favorite QB Chad Henne.  The cost:  a measly $6.49 delivered.  Hell, the tree fiddy shipping cost more than the card itself!  It's a plate version of this typically solid Contenders base card:

Henne's actually no longer with the Jags as he signed on with KC for a couple years this past offseason.  Jacksonville sure loves them some Jortles, let me tell you.

Of course he's unlikely to see much--if any--playing time this year thanks to the red hot play of sophomore QB Patrick Mahomes.  So I don't know when Chad will next see the field, but fortunately there's still lots of his cardboard to chase.

As for what I do have, that amounts to 282 total cards including six 1/1s as part of a football collection-leading 119 hits.  This new addition also marks my 112th 1/1, a number that boggles my mind every time it increases.

Until next time, JOOOORRRRRTLES!

2018 eBay purchase: the New Math: 82=2000

Five years ago I had a great milestone day on this here blog by hitting the 200-card marks in my Michigan Baseball hits and Rich Hill collections.  But I also celebrated an even larger number that day: 1000 Michigan Sports (and others) hits.  That's significant enough that I went back and fixed the broken links to the post's scans in case some of you decide to have a look at the significant moment in my collecting career.

But if you just feel like staying here that's fine because you're about to witness history repeating itself:  with the card I'm about to show off I've duplicated that feat and reached the 2000 mark!  Here's the milestone card:

Well naturally it's a Manningham, right?  For a surprisingly low $11.50 delivered I nabbed this 2017 Panini National Treasures Signatures Printing Plates Black auto of this here blog's namesake.  Though 1/1s are no longer a rarity for me--I now count 110 in my collection--this is only my 11th that also includes an autograph, not to mention the first the represents football.  And speaking of numbers, this is my 82nd Manningham in that collection, equal to the jersey number he wore in the NFL:

There he is making his now famous sideline catch that saved the Giants in Super Bowl XLVI.  I love that this card's back mentions both his awesome middle name--Cashmere--and that he put up big numbers in the 2011 playoffs for the eventual champs.  And that was with gumpy-ass QB Eli Manning throwing to him!  I also appreciate that Manningham's relatively brief NFL career still made him worthy of inclusion in this high-end product.  A plate/auto of a Super Bowl hero is a super way to reach the 2K mark, and I look forward to 1000 more.

As I always do when I hit big marks like this I'd like to thank everyone who enabled my college-collecting obsession by contributing to this collection over the years.  For those of you who are interested for some reason here are my counts by sport:

• Baseball:  358
• Basketball:  81
• Football:  1298
• Hockey:  259
• Other:  4

Barring anything new and unexpected arriving in my mailbox I plan on getting to my huge Sportlots order next, so get ready for lots of low-end!

2018 COMC purchases: plates in batches

Just this post stands between you and my big finish to this latest COMC series, in which you'll see all the great stuff I found for my various football PCs.  That'll take me a while to put together because of the sheer volume of cards, but I think you'll enjoy today's stuff in the meantime.  Let's have a look at some football hits!:

Houston's Amobi Okoye was the higher selection of these two early 2007 draftees (#10 overall vs. #33) but I think he wouldn't mind changing careers with the other guy whose NFL tenure has lasted longer

I AM BECOME BRANCH, KILLER OF QBs

Both guys experienced some success in the league, though, so this 2007 Bowman Sterling Dual Autograph Gold Refractor dual auto (#347/400) is a nice addition to my Branch collection, now 17 cards strong.

Swiggity swooty, I got that J-Booty!  Butt is no stranger to my hits collection as I previously found him on a plate (shared with fellow 2017 draftee Taco Charlton) plus an autograph, and I hope he continues to be a more familiar face in these posts.  Here I found him on an signature card from Panini's perennially awesome Prestige product, one that features an excellent full-bleed design with great college action.  If you'd like you can misconstrue his John Hancock to look like "A Butt" if you have the same sense of humor I do.

And now it's time for:  na na na na na na na na PLATE RUN!

Plate #1 stars former Michigan RB Thomas Rawls, making his hits collection debut as player #213 thanks to this 2017 Elite Cyan Plate that was inserted into the same year's Plates & Patches product.  Rawls is one of those guys who transferred away from Michigan but still finds a place in my collection because I tend to stay flexible about things like that.  After three years in Ann Arbor he moved on to Central Michigan, had a very nice 2014 season there, then was picked up by Seattle.  Some Michigan fans were surprised by his success with the Chips and the 'Hawks and that's generally been attributed to misuse and poor coaching by the previous staff.  Hopefully he's now over some injuries and can again excite fans from two Michigan schools in the pros.

Our next player is a two-fer who's not making his hits debut since I was able to track down a signature of his.  Recent RB De'Veon Smith put up some good numbers--more than 2000 yards and 22 TDs--while in Ann Arbor, then was picked up by the Dolphins after last year's draft.  His NFL odds are long--he was let go after limited game action last year--but he made some big plays for the Maize and Blue and his cards are plenty cheap--I believe these two set me back under $6 apiece.  Smith joins Rawls with a plate from 2017 Elite (Yellow) and adds one from 2017 Unparalleled (Cyan) as well.  Once again these were inserted into 2017 Plates & Patches.

The 11th card in my LaMarr Woodley collection of hits is one of the best yet, a 2009 Topps Yellow plate.  What better color to find for a guy who enjoyed lots and lots of success with the Steelers?  I absolutely love the shot of him heading for one of his 11.5 sacks in 2008, a number he'd top during a Pro Bowl campaign the following year.

These new additions up my total to 109 1/1s!

Last up today is Ravens DE Chris Wormley on his 2017 Panini Contenders rookie auto.  Contenders is another design I can almost always get behind thanks to its ticket motif.  I'm fortunate to add this as my second Wormley auto since Jeff previously sent me an even better one back in February from Contenders' Draft Picks version, one that stars a great college photo.  Hopefully he'll see more game action this fall.

That's it for this post but as I mentioned, stay tuned for a big finish soonish!