Free Stuff Friday: Unlicensed Bootleg Realm

More free stuff for you, if you dare!

On offer today are some truly bizarre cards that come from the realm of unlicensed card manufacturers that sell on Amazon/overseas. I honestly couldn't tell you much about these cards other than that they were purchased on the big stupid site and they appear to be Japanese in origin (or at least the "manufacturer" seems to be.) I wrote a little bit about these cards in a previous PWE recap. These will be sent out along with anything else claimed in last month's Free Stuff in the next week or so.

The cards are all trading card shaped (standard sized, rounded borders and very thin) and have various background patterns. The primary theme is gold, GOLD, G-O-L-D.

All of the backs look like this, although I've seen a few listings on eBay with different background patterns but similar player selection.

There are a bunch of bizarre player/team identification issues in the set. I'm offering up the leftovers of stuff I didn't already sneakily insert into trade envelopes over the past year or two. I also recently purchased a similar NBA set which disappointingly only had a couple of egregious errors. If there's any interest there, I could also put some of those up grabs on a future Friday.

CLAIMED: Harper, Arraez, Kluber, Swanson, Glasnow

As always, click to embiggen. Dansby Swanson gets the full name treatment here.

CLAIMED: Stargell, Melky, Bryant, Kiermaier

Here's a good example of some of the strange player selection. Stars, HOFers and journeyman relievers.

CLAIMED: Acuña, Horner, Chisholm

Here's the first two two Acuña cards along with a reverse Bob Horner.

CLAIMED: Swanson, Acuña

Dansby reappears without his legal first name and in a different uniform. We also get everyone's favorite "Alexander Emmanuel" and Acuña #2.

Free Stuff Friday: Damaged Goods 2025

It's giveaway time!

I have a bunch of cards sitting on my desk that I don't know what to do with. That's where you come in. These cards for the most part all have a flaw, but none are really what I would consider "trashed". A good chunk of these were dime box pickups at card shows over the past year where upon closer examination at home, I saw something that gave me pause about listing it for trade on TCDB. Others came out of the package in the state they're in. Most of these just have a small corner issue, but if you'd like more info about any specific card, let me know. Click an image to embiggen and all that.

[CLAIMED: Palmer, Batista, Fisk, Sutter]

These are free to anyone who is interested. I'm not looking for anything in return. I do love getting cards in the mail, but it's up to you if you'd like to send me something I might be interested in. You can always "pay it forward", as they say. (Do they still say that?) There's no limit to number of cards you can claim. Comment here, or send me an email, or reach out to me on Discord or Bluesky to claim something and I'll take into consideration timestamps and all that. I know that commenting on Blogger platforms can be a bit of a pain these days (seems to only work on Chrome browsers for most folks), so anonymous comments are also fine as long as you identify yourself in a way that allows me to get in touch with you somehow.

[CLAIMED: Alomar/Thomas, Magic, McGwire]

I actually bought an entire blaster of cheesy unlicensed college football cards that had corner damage. Fun.

[CLAIMED: Kaat, Williams, Simms, Komminsk, Booker]

[CLAIMED: LaForest, Olajuwon, Here's Bo (x2), Ripken, Lee]

The McGwire PowerDeck CD thing is cracked, so don't bother trying to watch it on your 1990's PC.

[CLAIMED: ALL but Holliday]

The Collect-A-Books are all fine if you ask me. I just don't know what a "mint" one actually would look like.

[CLAIMED: Bregman, Stanton, Piazza, Verlander, Castro, Castro, Kluber]

[CLAIMED: Freeman, Jackson, Tudor, Templeton]

[CLAIMED: Ott]

[CLAIMED: Doval, Herr, Delhanty, Rolen]

Who among us doesn't need some Cardinals fingernail stickers?

[CLAIMED]

This is one of those "Super Box" box topper things that are almost impossible to keep in pristine shape because they just chuck them into the box unprotected.

This is a 1985 Topps Super card.

I actually have a bunch more of these that are in great shape if you're looking for a certain one from this 1985 Donruss Action All-Stars set.

Free Stuff Friday: Damaged Goods II

More free stuff. 

 

It's time for another round of free cards to claim. Similar to January's "Damaged Goods" post, these are all cards that I didn't feel comfortable adding to my TCDB trade list for one reason or other. Some of these cards are leftover from last time while others are making their first appearance here.

No qualifications are needed here. If you have something you'd like to send me in return, feel free, but don't sweat it. (If you're someone who likes to pay things forward, you can always send me -- or someone else -- something I might not collect but might be something someone else could use some other day.) I'm happy to also just send these out to be rid of them.

As with last time, if you have any questions about what the damage or flaw is with any of these cards, feel free to let me know and I'll get back to you. You can claim cards here in the comments, on Bluesky, via email or Discord if you know where to find me.

There's a perfectly good set of fingernail stickers if that's your type of thing.

Click to enlarge any of these images.

FYI, not all of the pocket schedules show any damage. I just felt like throwing them in here.

Some police giveaways from my childhood where the community outreach officers would come to your school. I must have upgraded all of these at some point.

Damaged Goods

Free to a good home. 

 

I accumulated a small pile of cards that I didn't feel completely comfortable adding to my TCDB Trade List, and similarly I wasn't certain if I should just send these out blindly to people knowing that in each case there's a flaw. People aren't always into modern cards with dinged corners and the like. I thought I would go ahead and offer these up here with the caveat that there's a noticeable flaw in each of the cards. Let me know if you want to know more details about the condition of any of these cards as it may not be evident by the scan. (Click on each image to enlarge, as usual.) Claim away in the comments, or by email/Bluesky/whatever.

Free Stuff: Vintage-y Edition

Cards from the '60s and '70s on offer. 

 

I am decommissioning a small binder full of random cards that I've been hanging on to. These are basically cards from pre-1980 which don't fit into any of my collections, but had been hoarding because it was fun to keep a few example of cards from each set over those years. I decided it was time to finally add these to my trading coffers, but before I throw them all up on TCDB, I thought I'd offer them up here, "Free Stuff Friday" style. (Of course, it's not actually Friday.)

The cards are in various conditions -- some have creases and wonky corners. Some don't. Some might be good for your set build, while others might just be a stopgap placeholder. If you want to know any details about any specific card's condition, just let me know. Click the image to enlarge, as usual.

Simple rules:

1. Claim what you want, but if you claim something, I would ask that you at least look at my want lists either on the blog or on TCDB. If you can't find a card that I could need (I definitely have a lot of holes pre-1979), that's fine. Just think about me next time around.

2. I will assign each image a number. Claim in the comments by saying the image number followed by the player name (or more if it's ambiguous.)

The first image is #1. Avila and Chrisley have white backs.

(CLAIMED: Avila, Umbricht, Klippstein, Chrisley, Clevenger, Maas) 

I'll give this a few days until I start putting these up on TCDB.

#2 (CLAIMED: Staley, Howser, Taylor, Raymond, Nicholson, Hunt, Pena)

#3 - (CLAIMED: Bright)

Much more after the jump break!

Free Stuff Friday: Super Bowl Edition

Football! 

 

[updated 02/13/22 12:30 AM PST]

It's been awhile, but I thought I'd throw up some free football cards for the super big game on Sunday. The same rules as usual apply. Don't be a jerk, and, if we haven't traded in awhile, I would love to get a card or two from you in the mail. Mostly, though, this is supposed to be free and fun. Let's give the USPS some business. Click on each image to make it bigger.

I pretty much never buy football cards, but an unopened hanger box of 2021 Panini Prestige was the only thing interesting on the store shelves the other day. I'm offering up all of the cards, minus the Eagles and Ducks cards that I pulled and a Mac Jones Astral parallel that I listed over at Crackin' Wax. (If you're interested in trading for that, let's talk.)

This sheet features the starting QB of one of the Super Bowl teams. Nice.

CLAIMED: Stafford, Garrett

Here's the fun stuff. Parallels and inserts galore. The "Heroes" card looks similar to some of the case hit comic book style cards in other Panini products, but I am pretty sure it's a common insert. I don't think you can get case hits at the local Walgreen's.

CLAIMED: Bush II, Biletnikoff, Taylor(?), Rodgers, Largent, Jackson

Some rookies and non-rookies.
CLAIMED: Fitzgerald, Schwartz, Owusu-Koramoah, Robinson II

Finally, a Bengal!

CLAIMED: White, Donald, Hooper

I really should have defaced that card in the bottom center position.

CLAIMED: Kittle, Rodgers

Current Rams are well-represented in this lot. As a bonus, to fill out the page, I added some cards from a pack I posted recently at APTNL.

CLAIMED: Okudah, Davis, Taylor(?), Edwards-Helaire (Omega), Beckham Jr.

Claim away in the comments now. If you aren't able to comment for some reason, feel free to contact me through Twitter or email and I'll check the timestamps.

Free Buybacks

Free to a good home. 

 

I recently went through my set collections and took stock of certain rarer cards that I had accumulated. I trimmed up the want lists a bit and added some things to the lists that hadn't appeared before, including all of the buyback cards from the various Topps Heritage sets over the years. I don't have a ton of them and am certainly not making a point of looking for more, but I felt it was worth documenting.

I did decide that I have absolutely no interest in Allen & Ginter buybacks. If these were buybacks of original Allen & Ginter cards, I'd obviously think about this differently. However, for the tenth anniversary of the Topps revival of the Allen & Ginter brand, they stamped up a bunch of A&G cards from the previous 9 years. Buybacks of cards that were released in the past couple of decades are just not interesting to me if they aren't part of my team collection, so I'd like to offer them up to my readers.

This isn't an official "Free Stuff Friday", but the usual rules apply. Feel free to claim a card in the comments. Basically, if I haven't sent anything to you in the past (i.e. I don't have your address), then I'd like you to consider sending me something at some point in the future. That's really the only rule.

Free Stuff Friday: Vol 14

Now with extra Sport Kings. (Sportkings?) 

 

A brand new Target opened in my area recently. I had made plans to be there on opening day to see if there was anything interesting in their trading cards area, but I completely spaced it and missed the opening by a couple of days. As you might have expected, there wasn't really anything worth picking up by the time I was there. I did see a few Sportkings (aka Sport Kings Gum) blasters on the shelf and figured it might be worth a blog post at least. I double checked the checklist and saw that Randall Cunningham was on it, which pretty much sealed it. Will I find the Randall?

The cards, purportedly made by college football card manufacturers SAGE, are interest enough I suppose. The artwork is mostly fine, save for this monstrously freakish Maurice Cheeks card. What did they do to you, Mo?! Why does it look like you weigh about 700 pounds?

I found the Randall! He's also on the autograph checklist, and each box contains a bonus pack that contains some kind of hit. I wasn't quite that lucky, however.

I also didn't notice that there was a Cardinals card on the checklist, so this Ted Simmons was a nice addition to my collection.

Everything else from the box (excluding Cunningham and Simmons) are available. Feel free to claim away below. The usual rules apply.

The Froome card is creased for some reason.

Jesse Burkett is also creased, despite these being pristine looking cards inside pristine looking packs. Weird.

Old Tom and Mo Cheeks could be getting ready to wrestle.

This Froome card is not creased, however.

 Speaking of Froome, here's the card from the bonus pack. Any Tour de France fans out there?