Cards from S.R. '75 Cards and KnT trip

Almost 2 weeks ago, I received my side of a trade with Stuart of S.R. '75 Cards. I sent him a bunch of basketball cards that didn’t really fit my collection, and he sent me a nice binder full of Tigers and a few Rays. I enjoy getting cards in binders in trades because I can use the pages and binders, and I want to store all of my cards in binders. I am currently in the process of putting my loose cards into binders, and I would love to finish it by the time 2027 Topps is released. So far, the Diamondbacks, Braves, Cubs, Reds, Rockies, and Marlins are finished, and even those all have some new cards that probably won’t go in binders for a while as they are from either the ‘70’s or ‘90’s, which happen to be in the beginning of the first binder, and my cards are sorted by years. I’ll be able to add cards from 2024 and later pretty easily, as that won’t take much reorganizing at all, and I will probably have to do that before the 2026 Topps set comes out, as I anticipate getting some stuff from 2025 Topps Holiday, Update, maybe Chrome Update, Archives, and perhaps Allen & Ginter. 

This is the stack of cards that Stuart sent me. They will probably be in one of the last binder updates I do, as the Rays, Tigers, and favorite players will probably be the last 3 I do since I acquire so many and they make up a good amount of my collection. It would be interesting to see how many cards they make up as a percentage. 

There were so many good cards among the keepers. I love any card of Joe Coleman, the longtime Lakeland Tiger pitching coach, right next to the former Lakeland manager for many of those teams, Larry Herndon. I swear I had that 1996 SP Justin Thompson, but TCDB says it is new. The 2000 Gallery Eric Munson card would’ve been coveted when it came out, and I really wished I would’ve had it back in the day, because I got a ton of Munson cards signed, and I’m sure this one would’ve been towards the top of my list to get signed. Stuart found a Tiger I had never heard of in the 2001 Prospect Premieres Matr Coenen, which is a very hard thing to do, even with career minor leaguers. I would’ve loved to have the ‘02 Chrome Traded Franklyn German refractor to get signed, as I had a ton of cards signed by him as well. 

Same with the 2004 Bowman Chrome Joel Zumaya rookie. From about 2002-2010, I spent 90% of my free time either at church, going to ballgames getting autographs, at a card store, playing with bands, playing video games, going to concerts, or at my piano. It was a pretty easy life back then. The ‘06 Fleer Zumaya is a sepia parallel, which must’ve been tough pulls, as I opened a number of packs of the set and never pulled one. Another Zumaya  parallel shows up with a 2006 Upper Deck gold foil parallel. I was happy to get the 2008 Heritage Clete Thomas because I collect him. 

Getting to more recent stuff, I was happy to find some Stadium Club cards, and especially some Heritage Minors and Pro Debut cards, since I barely have any of them, and for one of my favorite teams, that just shouldn’t be. I think the one I was happiest about was the Dillon Dingler Pro Debut rookie. He could be a cornerstone catcher for Detroit. I hope he can sign a long term offer with Detroit and maybe have a shot at a title. It’s too bad management didn’t offer Skubal a decent extension offer and go all in at July. With Skubal, Mize, and maybe a decent 3b, SP, and a reliever or two, this team could’ve made some noise in the post season, and not had to deal with playing Tampa/Boston, Yankee$ until the ALCS. I just hope Tampa Bay doesn’t eff it up and somehow the Brewers or somebody can oust the Dodger$.  

Other sets that aren’t well represented recently are Finest and Chrome Platinum, but Stuart made up for it with the Baez and trio of ones from the 2024? Chrome Platinum set. The Heritage Rays were nice adds to my Tampa collection. The last 2 were religious cards that players sometimes add to autograph requests (at least that’s where I’ve acquired all of mine). These are my first 2 for the Tigers, so I may add them to the back of my binder since I can’t nail down the exact year they were produced. Thanks, Stuart, for the great cards in the trade!

A few weeks ago, I went to K n T Sportscards to see what they had in the dime boxes. I was expecting to find a few additions to the Rays, Tigers, player collections, and maybe a few other gems, but what I didn’t expect was a number of singles from the 1977 and 1978 Topps sets. I had my list of Topps needs with me, and I probably added 100 or so cards to the ‘77 set. 

I opened a ton of packs of 2002 Bowman, but never pulled the Lyle Overbay from the set. There were a few stacks from that set in the boxes, and I pulled players that interested me when I saw them. Ozzie Timmons is a Rays coach, and I try to have cards of all of the Rays coaches for autograph opportunities. We looked at perhaps getting playoff tickets for the ALDS, but decided to hold out for the World Series. Unfortunately, the way the Bankee$ looked last night, they could have a cakewalk to the Fall Classic, and we could have Manfraud’s dream of an LA/NY World Series instead of the Brewers/Rays Series everyone else wants. I also found a number of cards from the 1996 Upper Deck set, which is an extremely underrated set as far as from a design standpoint. I picked up any subset I didn’t have, as well as any from players I liked. 

Josue DePaula’s name has been mentioned frequently lately, so I figured I would pick up his card. Same with Zyhir Hope, one of the scraps that the Tigers got for Tarik Skubal. I hope he turns out to at least be a starter, cause the whole direction of Detroit’s franchise turned with this trade. The McGwire was from a 2026 Finest insert set. I really wish I would’ve picked up a box the one time I saw them at Walmart because they had some pretty neat looking cards from what I’ve seen online. 

John O’Donoghue sent me a nice note with an autograph request one time, so I was happy to see one of his cards in the bin. I actually met Tyler Cropley 2 years ago at a Stetson baseball game. Tyler went to school with the Iowa Hawkeyes, and got drafted by KC, playing with them in 2023. He got released in the spring of 2024, and then returned to Iowa as a coach. He got in the 2024 Topps set, and when Iowa came to Stetson for one of the first games of the season in 2025, I gave my buddy Jim a copy of the 2024 card to get signed. I figured if Iowa ever comes back to play Stetson again that the 2024 Heritage Cropley would make a good card to get signed. I found it crazy to have a player basically retire, get on a card a few months after playing your final season, and then get that card signed less than a year after it came out. I’ve always liked Orlando Palmeiro. He was really fan friendly when I saw him in Spring Training in the late 2000’s with the Astros. He was asking a few fans if they wanted a foul ball, and I told him I would rather have an autograph. He kind of kidded me for wanting an autograph over a ball, but came over and signed my card anyways. There were a few Predictor insert cards from the ‘96 UD set thrown in as well and I picked up all that I found. 

Any time I see a Jim Abbott card that I think might be a tad hard to find, I snag it, as I know a few people collect him. I found a few nice cards for the Favorite Player collection, including Chase DeJong and Carson Fulmer. Guys like those are tough for me to find new cards of just because they didn’t play long, don’t have too many cards, and because I have most of their major cards. While not technically acquired at K n T’s, I have always admired hoopster AC Green, and found some of his cards while going through some basketball cards I had at home and added them to the photo. There were some nice Casey Mize cards at K n T, and I made sure to snag them. I wish he were still with Detroit, but maybe Illich will resign him. 

There were a good amount of Tigers and Rays that I added, including some Bowmans. I love the postseason Arozarena card. He was just lights out in the 2020 playoffs, and I will go to my grave saying that they got screwed out of that title. 

There were some nice rookies that I found, including a 2002 Bowman Francisco Liriano. From about 2006-2011, that card would’ve been on many collectors wantlist. There were a number of 2025 Topps parallels, and I picked up a few. 

Where the dime boxes really hit for me was Heritage SPs. Before I went, I made a page in my wantlist where I listed out each year of Heritage, the design it mimicked, and what the SP card numbers were (400-500, 700-750, or whatever). This helped me immensely in picking out which ones were SPs (especially with the 2024 set where it was 1-100 and not 400-500. 

This is a photo of the reference list that I made for Heritage SPs. It has the year of the Heritage set, the card number ranges that are SPs, the year of the set it is designed after, and any other notes. Some sets like  2003-2007 and 2026 have random numbers as the SPs, but other than that, this has helped me greatly the one time I used it at a card shop. It helped me with the 2024 set that has the 1-100 cards as SPs instead of the usual 401-500. Some of the high number SPs also have unusual numbers where they start like 686 instead of 701, so my list has helped with some of the earlier ones as well. Feel free to use the list I made or modify it so it fits your collection needs and you can get some of those SPs that might be hiding out in dime boxes. 

I have my SportLots box pending shipping, and once it arrives, I anticipate my 1980-2026 Topps run to be complete. There are probably some gremlins lurking, as I feel like I am missing some Red Sox from 1999-2000 and maybe some Giants that got lost while sorting, but if I can’t tell without having to go through a checklist, I’ll consider it done. Right in time for 2026 Update to come out. 

In non-card news, I will finally be going on vacation in November. I saved up most of my time, and we finally decided to go on a cruise from the 2nd to the 6th. I’m hopefully going to get plastered at least once, and just enjoy some time away from the grind of work, relatives, and just the normal everyday stress of being an adult. Speaking of work, the boss that I have been wanting to quit/get transferred/get promoted finally was given the boot a little over a week ago. All it took was a new store manager who actually listened to concerns, and to top it off, it was because of me coming forward with some issues, and he actually got de-moted to assistant bakery manager because of what happened. Definitely a little vindication for me in all of this, and hopefully this job can be less stressful with no up-and-down emotions with our new manager and we can just work as a team to do the production and go home at the end of the day. It has definitely been a nice change in the week we've had without the old boss. 

Things have been looking up ever since the beginning of the year. I had 3 things I really wanted to happen in the future that would just make my life a lot less stressful. My boss to leave, Karen's health to get more stable (the breathing has since the surgery in NJ last December, and we have a new doctor we saw a few days ago who has some ideas on why her nausea is so prevalent and why she is producing so much insulin, and that would solve a lot to get it cleared up), and finally, for us to get our own place and get a little distance from Karen's mom. That one is tricky, but I know if I can get my boss out of my life and Karen's health stable, anything is possible. Life ain't going to be simple or easy as pie, but it shouldn't be crazy difficult. All in all, I have had the best year I have had in a long time, and the friends, memories, and baseball cards I have gained along the way are just icing on the cake.

I have also been talking with my brother-in-law JT about recording a serious music album. He has been making some stuff with AI, and he has edited some rough recordings we made of a few of my originals about 15 years ago. I have a few rough recordings of some more of my originals that are on a CD. Only problem is that I don't have a CD drive on my current laptop, so I have no way of sending JT those songs. I will probably get an external CD drive and get those songs on my laptop, email them to JT, and get him the 2-3 songs he needs to finish the album. All in all, if things work perfectly, we will have 5-6 of my songs (Plan B, Strength, Why do you do the thinigs that you do?, Come and adore Him, I am your peace, and maybe a song about Karen called Worth the wait). Hopefully I can play piano on each track of the album, because that would mean almost more to me than having some of my originals out there. If AI does the piano, I would still be happy that I wrote the piano part, but it wouldn't feel the same. As with everything I do lately, it is probably going to be a slow process, but maybe it will get done sometime in 2026. It's hard to believe the year only has about 3-4 months left, but there is still time to finish some projects and get more cards. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

I finally joined 'The Club'!!

 It's been a little while since I've last posted. Nothing too earth shattering has happened since then. I did, however, get to join a select club. 

In 1991, Topps Stadium Club was the biggest thing. I was in 2nd grade back then, and mainly had some 1989 Donruss, Topps, and Bowman cards in my collection. Add in a pack of 1990 Donruss from Grandma DeJong for my birthday, and that was about my whole collection back then, and Stadium Club, let alone regular Topps, wasn't really on my radar. The next year, 1992, I got a ton of 1992 Topps, a pack or two of 1992 Donruss, and a pack or 2 of Pinnacle and Ultra. I also dipped my hands in Stadium Club for the first time. We were in Michigan for a family reunion (it may have actually been 1993), and we stopped at Meijer's grocery store. There were packs of cards by the checkout, and I asked for 2 packs of '92 Stadium Club, and my mom, like usual, told me I could only have 1. I whined, and for some crazy reason, she gave in, and I got 2!  The only time in my life I remember it happening. I enjoyed the cards, especially the back, with the rookie cards. So many designs I had never seen, including the MLB Debut ones from '90-'92. The BARS charts were neat as well. 

I believe I got one of those info cards that told you how to join the official Topps Stadium Club. Something like sending them $20 or $30 bucks check or money order, and you would get your official membership card back, and a special 30 card set. I never did it, and always wondered what everything looked like. Well, with the help of the internet, I am now finally part of the Topps Stadium Club around 35 years too late, and for only about 10 bucks. 

This is the first of 3 cards that I ordered. I'm actually not quite sure what it is, and maybe a veteran collector can help me figure it out for sure. 

So the set that you got for joining the club appears to come in a box, and along with it, you got a gold Nolan Ryan card, a keychain, and this Nolan Ryan membership card with your club number and Charter Member designation. I'm not sure what the card could get you. Perhaps a discount at the Topps mail order or telephone store if you give them your membership number?

The back of the card looked like that basic back of a credit card, and an address for you to return a lost card to. I wonder if it is still around. 

The card is almost the size of a regular card.

The confusing thing happened when I looked at a few other listings. There was one for an almost identical membership card, but it had the members name on the card instead of Nolan Ryan's. Perhaps this card came when someone joined the club but didn't get the 'Charter Member' set? 

Another listing, which I won, included a 1991 membership card with the members name on it, and a 1992 membership card with the members name. I guess you had to renew every year, and this member must have done that, and it looks like they had the same number as in 1991. I'm not sure if the club continued into 1993, but in 1991 and 1992, it seems like it was going strong. 

I am kind of drawn to odd things from important card sets. The 1991 Stadium Club set was a historic set, with full gloss photos, no borders, gold foil, and rookie cards and the BARS system on the back. It paved the way for more super premium cards. I feel like the membership cards are nice pieces of that set that aren't too common. I also got a promo sheet from the 1996 Topps Chrome set. '96 Topps Chrome was a parallel set that paved the way for Bowman Chrome, and the Topps Chrome sets that we know and love/hate 30 years later. Lastly, I have a promo sheet from 1997 Bowman Chrome. This set added so much value to card that would be worth maybe 1/3 to 1/2 as much as the Chrome version. If the '97 Bowman Chrome set had never become a thing, just 4 years later, we wouldn't have had a Bowman Chrome autographed card of Albert Pujols. A regular Bowman card with Pujols signature and a 'Certified Topps Autograph' stamp would still have tremendous value, but if money was no object, I would get the Chrome one every time. This set opened up the floodgates for high value Chrome autographed cards with Bowman. 

I also have had some Donruss autographed cards come in. I purchased a blaster of 2026 Donruss, 2026 Elite, and a hanging pack of 2026 Donruss. Out of those packs, I got cards that gave me 400, 400, and 250 Panini points. I almost wonder if Panini is still printing 2026 Donruss, putting them on shelves to satisfy demand, and maybe they have been running low on autographs and are putting the 'points cards' in the product. I think that instead of putting points into packs to redeem for old autographed cards, maybe Panini should focus on collation. Topps as well.

Anyways, I redeemed them for 5 cards, basically 2 Rays, 1 Tiger, a cool Dodger, and a Cardinal who is a borderline Hall of Famer. Not bad for my point total. The thing that got me was the shipping. 20 bucks!!!  For 5 cards!!!  I will admit that the cards went from TX to FL in 3 days, and that it was packaged pretty quickly (I expected the process to take a month or so), and that was surprising. I will mess up the Elite years, but here goes: 2015 Elite Extra Edition Daz Cameron, 2022 Mosaic Scripts Luis Patino, 2017 Elite Extra Edition Ronaldo Hernandez (which I couldn't find on TCDB), 20178 Donruss Signature Series Andrew Toles, and a 2025 Donruss Signature Series Jim Edmonds. I got Toles, because I liked his story of how the Dodgers kept him on the roster so he could have insurance to help his mental health, and I've always thought Jim Edmonds was a borderline Hall of Famer. I wasn't sure if my Cardinal-autograph collecting friend Jim had an Edmonds autograph (he did), so I figured it was a decent pickup. 

Tomorrow will be the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. I was 18, away in college at the Univeristy of Mobile. I didn't understand the gravity of the attack, as I wasn't into history and hadn't traveled much, but you knew by how everyone acted around campus and how everyone was glued to the TV that this was something big that we were witnessing in real time. Karen's mom worked in the pentagon at the time, and they know people who were supposed to work in the towers that day who didn't go in for whatever reason. I didn't know anyone who worked there, but did manage to get an autograph of a victim who did around 5 years before 9-11. 

Marty Boryczewski played for the Lakeland Tigers in A-ball for a few years in the early '90's. Being the baseball fan I was, I went to a few Lakeland games then, as well as many Spring Training games. I usually had a ball and some cards to try to get signed every game. I must've gotten Marty a few times, because I found his autograph on a ball and a pennant while going through stuff a few years ago that will go in my future man cave. 

Marty started working as a trader after his baseball career, and was in the North tower on 9-11. I am grateful to have these 2 autographs of him, but if any of his family happens to be reading this, please reach out to me and I will be happy to send them to you. 

While I have never visited the towers pre- 9-11, and haven't got to see the memorial as it was being constructed in 2007 when I visited NYC, I did go past Ground Zero, and got a piece of cinder block from the area. While I am not positive that it was from the towers, I think there is a good chance that it was from the rubble, and although not a part of my baseball collection, I might put it by the autographs of Marty if I ever get a man cave going. Hopefully, we as a country never go through something like that again, and may we always remember how the country came together that day. 

On a more positive note, I will have some 'alone time' after work on Saturday, and I pan to stop over at K n T Sportscards in Ormond the minute I get off, and dig through dime and dollar boxes until they kick me out of the store. I also hope to hit up Orlando Sportscards with Jim at some point in the future, hoping to dig through their cheap '70's boxes. 

I am still waiting on 3 cards to get delieverd to my SportLots box, and once they get there and are shipped, I will have the 1980-2026 Topps sets complete (I guess until 2026 Update comes out). It will feel good to basically have all of the cards I need to update my binders, and then comes the process of actually doing it and finding time to do so. So far, I have the Diamondbacks, Braves, Cubs, Rockies, and Marlins done. I have the Reds binders and loose cards out, but have just been doing other things on evenings when Karen is working. Tonight, I have mostly done this blog post, but might have a chance to do so starting on Tuesday night. Hopefully I will have a ton of cards from Saturday to add. We will see. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy