Back That Trade Up

 A trade today from TCDB member ravishingrick which I can only assume is a throwback to the WWF days of the 80s and 90s and Ravishing Rick Rude. I automatically go to his feud with Jake The Snake Roberts and the paintsprayed tights Rick wrestled in.

I digress as today, we are talking trade, and we start with baseball.

Chrome cards which don't quite complete the team sets for me, a 2021 Bowman Draft Camo parallel and some A&G. I will say, of the different options for parallel, I am not a fan of the camo - it just doesn't blend anything in usually, as odd as that seems to be.

The A&G from 2024 are my first Jays, and now 4 of the 6 base card Jays for the team set - sweet.

Oh, but the best card is for last, and ties back to wrestling...

Nice! He may have done it for The Rock, but I liked him most with Too Cool. His signature is pretty nice and it might be a sticker auto, but a good card design for it, so I am all thumbs up.

Getting the card, I was curious and had to check - it's my 17th wrestling autograph. I know there are people out there with hundred or more of autographed cards, but I look at it as, that's 17 I never thought I'd have when I was starting collecting, even getting back into the hobby 12 or so years ago.

If I had a "wish list" card that I'd love to pull but would never put the money to individually buy - a Kiss card. I thought these were a cool idea, and the fact they had Goldust do them - just awesome.

Wrestling With Trades

Rare I get a just wrestling card trade, but here we are with a great offering from Ehoff01 over at our friendly neighbourhood TCDB.

2018 Topps WWE Road to Wrestlemania is a set I don't think I ever opened a pack for, so all the set build has been from trades. We are now up to 61 cards of 100 - fantastic! Looking back, I can't believe this was about a decade ago! Roman looks so young, and so - not comfortable compared to where he is now.

Speaking of set help...

I had a couple (or was it a few) blasters of 2022 AEW which helped get this set going, and now with the additions here, over 80% done on the base set. I still rarely watch AEW, but I appreciate it as an alternative and look for their stars to eventually cross to WWE in most cases. Will be interesting to see if someone like MJF ever does.

It wasn't just base cards though, as we get some of the parallels including a bunch of gold which look great, but the best card in the bunch...

A sweet red parallel SN to only 100. Wow. Was never lucky enough to pull a card that good in the boxes, but very much appreciate the addition to the collection from this fantastic trade!

JCD Cards For Me

 We have some more trades in the hopper to share, and a quick single PWE today from TCDB member JCD with some hockey cards that came my way.

The 1994 Missing Links set is a beautiful "remake" set that does the old time feel and look of the cards right. I have the Toronto team set done on it, but want dupes to work on the full set which is why the Leaf cards here.

The other, newer cards help move along some additional Leaf related sets, and most importantly, getting the 2025-26 O Pee Chee base team set to a remaining two cards left to finish off. This is quite quick for me getting a newer release Leaf team set moved along this far since I do most of my collecting on the secondary market.

A great and much appreciated treade - thank you JCD!

Under 100

Another TCDB trade to share today. A great trade to knock off another 30 cards for my 1982 Topps baseball set build. Brando7288 sent along the following...

Can't complain getting a Pete Rose, George Brett and Rollie Fingers to start.

With this trade, I am just under 100 cards remaining on this 792 card set. I think we are another 50-75 cards away from getting a bit harder to collect. Cal, I expect, will be the last card I need for the set unless I preemptively go out and get one, but I really want to avoid spending those dollars on a card if I could trade a bunch for it. I don't need a high quality version - I'm fine with rough condition for this build.

One thing about this set, and others of the 80s - centering can be hit and miss, with lots of variation. I know it's can always be an issue with sets, but very noticeable for many of these - Summers isnt too bad but a bit to the right, the other two more obviously high on the front.

Honestly though, on a build like this, those imperfections just build card character!

Thank you again for the trade!

Set To Help

An amazing trio of PWE trades for share today, all smaller, but all useful.

First up a trade with dugoutdeals (at TCDB - as are ALMOST all of my trades)...

The first two cards are the only two Jays for the 2025 Bowman Chrome Prospects inserts, so cool to get them both and be done, while the final is a second copy of Arjun's Bowman Draft Chrome parallel.

Next trade is with MichiganFan9...

Continuing to chip away at the 2020 base set, I am down to 61 cards to go with these 5 now in hand. I don't think there are any real big rookies left to get per se, but I do have to double check. The work on it's been fast enough in trades, I haven't worried about how to get any last few cards just yet.

Last up, a couple older hockey cards...

Pennytendencies sent me a couple vintage Leaf cards for half a dozen base basketball and hockey cards from more recent times. I would do those trades any day for non-star vintage cards and am thankful for the opportunity and trade. We have my second O Pee Chee Leaf card from 1972-73, and my first from 1973-74. I have some Topps cards for both years, but first O Pee Chee ones believe it or not.

Jim was almost, only a Leaf, with his final season being all of 10 games with Minnesota. Before that, a Leaf from 1965-66 through 1977-78. Just shy of 600 games for the Leafs, and a solid time indeed - at least he was able to win a Stanley Cup here....which was, well, a long time ago.

Thank you for all the trades!

Tucha Trade

 Hello and welcome to another post about awesome trade partners, with tucha being the trade partner of choice from TCDB for today's share. We get baseball, hockey and wrestling, all in one!

Before the trade, as a Jays fan, a thank you to the Brewers for the little baseball revenge on the Dodgers. Can joke about karma but really - for the series, the Brewers were the better team and the result was what it should have been. Not like the Dodgers will be hurting, and this run is great for Milwaukee.

A few more 2020 Topps flagship baseball cards helping the cause on completing the set. Hockey gets to focus on Marner and Matthews with one team completion with all 3 pure base 2020-21 SP cards now in my possession.

Always love getting wrestling cards in trades as they don't happen enough, and here we get a variety of cards with sets that I still have a ways to go on.

Definitely an old school theme as even the newer cards are for older stars that I grew up on. Fantastic cards and sets - love it, even the tribute to Warrior is a great card about a sad moment. A shame he passed when he did, but at least it was after reconciliation with the WWE.

Chronicling Some Chronicle

 Like Prizm a couple days ago, we have a bunch of (mostly) Chronicles cards for football from the 2026 Lot today. I don't mind the set when the design is consistent, and some of the years are pretty nice, so let's see what we have today.

A single Warner for 2002, then a few cards for 2021 before slipping into some Contenders from the same year.

Mahomes and Kelce - the couple big names for KC for the times.

Some Playoff cards to boot...

Then into some Donruss...

Solid variety of newer sets, most we have seen to some degree and most of these still being new to my trades list for getting out there to the TCDB community through trades hopefully.

We do get back to Chronicles for the 2022 design which may be my favourite of the three years shown here. They are not very drastically different, but enough to see the change year to year. Honestly, I like the slow progression in changes for a set over years instead of the full revamping where you can't even recognize it.

Too Many Variations

If you get into the details of the late 80s and early 90s, and microvariations - this isn't nearly as bad (in my opinion). In the early 90s though, you had Upper Deck using different hologram stickers on their sets creating a microvariation for those sets. Include that the sets in the early 90s also had French versus English versions, and you have something else to look at as well.  

I did get a few keepers from the 2026 Lot and these early 90s Upper Deck cards. At least looking at French versus English, it's easy to tell on the front of the card, like Luke above. THe Euro-Star Jarmo was a nice surprise to see - but I can see how these end up in bulk buys as the design is very much identical to the base set.

I do try to sort and separate the cards of course by language - I am not a monster - and also log the hologram variations correctly - I know it matters to many on TCDB - but it does make for a slightly more tedious process.

Thankfully it's something we don't see (as much), these days. I am fine with different language sets - I get it, it makes sense, but the microvariations of holograms.....I could have done without those.

Prizms

Definitely winding down on the football cards in the lot, but today, it's all about the Prizm set.

It will only be the big names that resonate with me - plus some Buffalo bias. Peyton is always a good card to get, even just a base card.

I feel like I need to start a Travis Kelce collection from the number of cards of his I have pulled in this lot. Maybe I am just noticing it more given his bigger role in main stream news these days, but either way, I definitely notice it more.

 I actually like the set up of the back of the 2021 Prizm cards, just two fixes - a different picture, and shorten it to at least add a few more stat years and you would have a near perfect back for a football card.

To go with the multiple Kelce cards today, we even get multiple Josh Allen cards too. Wonder if he will be just another quarterback in Buffalo to which hopes are pinned, and then dashed. Unfortunately to date - kind of looking that way, though hopefully I am speaking too soon.

Checking In

With the lot checking in with a small group of 2019-20 Panini Mosaic cards, let's take the first scan to look at a familiar (to me) name.

Jonas Valanciunas is a name that stuck out going through these cards because of his tenure as a Raptor. He started his NBA career with the team back in 2012-13 with the 6' 11" Center taking the court in about 75% of that season for the Raptors.

Funny enough, he was essentially traded to Miami and back to Toronto before this. Well, the 2011 1st Round draft pick of Toronto was traded to Miami in 2009 and then back to Toronto in 2010, before it was then used by the Raptors to select Jonas in the draft.

He played in Toronto until he was traded in February 2019 as part of the trade that saw Marc Gasol come to Toronto from Memphis.

Jonas had a bump in play leaving Toronto as he seemed to excel at the start of his time with Memphis, and for Toronto, he was a solid Center, but never really lit the world on fire. A good hand and a solid career.

We get a former teammate of his as well, from the Toronto days, with DeMar on the back half of the cards for today - nice Raptor connections all around.

Vladdy and a Bo Show

 Always happy pulling baseball from the 2026 Lot - and at this point, it looks like we are getting close to the end of the basketball and football, looking to leave around 3k of baseball and hockey only cards remaining, which should make for a fun end as far as my own keeping and collecting goes, but today, recent baseball to be surveyed.

Vladdy is always a welcome sight, and adding in a few base card additions for the 2024 Topps Chrome base set build is a great pick up too. Bryant is my fave of the quartet.

More keepers today with Bowman cards of the insert variety.

Unfortunately no Jays in the bunch, but happy to get a fix of inserts.

As for how "good" these guys are, I try and give it about 5 years from the release date when it comes to prospects to be able to really comment on how they are doing and where they will end up. It's not the case for everyone (some fizzle quickly, some shoot to the moon just as quickly), but a good time frame to really know their direction.

Cards that hopefully are only making a pit stop here...

Bound to get dupes for some of them, and all good there - but let's adopt these guys out if we can!

Shiny and Inconsistent

Basketball cards with attitude today...

Mason on the SkyBox E-X 2000 set is a fantastic card in hand. The cut our player on a see-through sky background looks amazing in hand. Hadn't seen these cards before and wish there was more than just the one, but a very cool set. If I collected basketball, would need to take a look for this one and, if affordable, look to collect the set.

2019-20 Panini Status tris to draw ALL of the attention with the hyper sparkle design, but I'd take more E-X myself. The scans don't do credit for the level of shine from these sparkly cards, and with the background removed so it's just player focused, it really just becomes background focused.

Then, the backs of those same cards - leave a lot of space wasted. I mean, either do an actual picture or something, but to just let the background used photo be "there" for half the back - I'd rather not.

Speaking of I'd rather not. If I were to make any sports card set, I'd rather not mash together designs that are massively different from one another, slap on numbering so that it runs as a single base set, and make it confusing to try and put together - but that's what Panini does here with Chronicles in 2020-21. I can't even complain about the individual designs - some are good, some not so much, but to just say the cards are all from the same set? I mean, thank goodness we have gotten to the point that the name of the set, or at least enough of the name, is on the back copyright information, so I can figure it out (or use TCDB's search functions with the player name and card number), but it really shouldn't be THAT hard.

Whether I like the Revolution design or not, at least I can look at the cards and say yes - those are all part of the same base set. I know some may argue that Archives sets do the same things and are great. I like the design use, but would still prefer a single year throwback instead of using say three past designs in a single base set.

We end with a Stallion apparently, in Sochan. Sochan spent a few years with San Antonio, but made it out this past year, just in time to join the Knicks and be on the team for their NBA Finals victory. He didn't have any big role in it, but being in his early 20s and on a Championship team - that's going to be a career highlight no matter where the career goes from here.

Continued Panini

 Back to football in the 2026 Lot today, and a number of Panini sets dibbled on today...

I will say, it has been nice to see as many star cards come through this lot as there have been - especially guys like Mahomes - as I am usually expecting the big name guys, and any of their cards, to be out of these lots. I don't care from a value standpoint, but it does make it a bit easier for trade purposes to get some stars in the bunch.

There have been a lot of Mosaic set cards in football come up, and a bit of Select, like we have here today, but very few Phoenix set cards. It's not a set I am familiar with - even though it has apparently been around since 2016. Also had to look into where the set "sits" as far as being low, mid or high end, and appears to be mid-tier (feel free to argue), which makes sense as I expect sets like Score and Prestige are lower end. 

These lots allow me to grow my knowledge a little bit each day when it comes to sets and collecting, especially in areas that are not where my main interest lies, so football, definitely in that realm.