Card Show Constipation

Let's check out some of my recent card show pickups.

The Dark Home Run King. Nice refractor. I think these were all 50¢ cards in this post.

Looks like this is /425.

Numbered Springer RC. Ugly card, but happy to throw it in the PC.

Schmidt happened.

1978 out of 1980.

Holy Cow! I've seen this Jordan plenty of times and finally picked up a copy. I'm lucky enough to have caught a lot of Harry Caray Cubs broadcasts on WGN back when I first got into baseball/cards in the early 90s.

I've never collected Nick Markakis much, but hey, he's put together a real nice career under the radar, having a career year now at age 34. Figured I'd pick up some early cards of the guy.

Trevor Story is a guy I collected during his hot rookie season, then cooled a bit on him when he hit a sophomore slump, but now he's having a good junior jumpback, so I'm warming up to him again. Yeah, I'm not always a very loyal player-collector.

Wow, this pic is tailored to Sport Card Collectors, with some Griffeys and Jeters and Mariano.

'75 mini Perez, Jackie Galasso, and '86TT Canseco.

Baby Beltre. Heard he just passed Chipper Jones for third place for homers by a third baseman. I assume Schmidt and Mathews top the list.

Gypsy Queen doesn't draw my interest much, but these tarot card are pretty cool. I could see myself trying to finish this insert set someday.

I still like Billy Hamilton, and was happy to add a couple shiny, early cards.

And we close with a shining Stargell and cool Correa. I suppose I prefer the days back when Topps Tribute had refractory base cards.

As for card show constipation, well, it's not that I've been backed up, but gotta admit these cards have been waiting in the chamber since last month's card show. I missed the August show the other day because I was busy doing family stuff. Always a bummer to miss the show, but nice to be out having fun.

Thanks for reading.

Cards from John, Kerry (though still nothing from John Kerry)

I was lucky enough to get a "Christmas in July" package from John Miller a few days ago.

I hadn't seen these before. Cool acetate Simpsons cards from Sykbox that you can apparently stack to create a completed image. Anybody got more of these to trade? Would love to add the missing piece(s) to this.

HOF relic!

John can always be counted on to send me a few Gileses.

Heck of a Josh Donaldson lot, with a couple shiny ones in the upper right.

End of Story; I just recently took Trevor Story off my wantlist and replaced him with teammate Nolan Arenado. Gavin Floyd is also fresh off the wantlist, though I did need that blue parallel. Nice Bird.

Here's some Padres cards, highlighted by a Wil Myers black parallel from '17 Stadium Club.

And a few miscellaneous odds and ends, including relics of Josh Hamilton, Juan Gonzalez, and Todd Helton.

Thanks, John! Always a pleasure.

-  - - - ----o

Next up is a surprise package from fellow Portland dweller, Kerry at Cards on Cards.

A Hawk sighting. The red parallel is #'d 3/25. Impressive!

It's the aforementioned Nolan Arenado, just added to my wantlist like 3 days days ago. Quick!

Bryce is having another solid year. Love that rookie cup xfractor!

Donaldson and Pedro representing Canada.

Manny Margot and Michael Conforto.

A couple legends.

Mookie!

Trout!

A few more cards, with Kerry even sneaking in a basketball card. I don't have many (any?) San Diego Clippers cards, so that World B. Free is pretty cool to get.

We close out with a couple nice relics; Adam Jones bat chip and a Chris Sale jersey swatch.

Awesome.. thanks, Kerry! I'm rounding up a return package for you and will get that out to you soon.

card show 3

In the past couple posts, we've taken a look at some of my quarterbox pickups from the latest card show. Now we're getting into the dollar bins (7 for $5 deal.. I managed to round up 14 for a ten-spot).

While I kinda collect Darvish, and like the look of these Beam Team inserts, a main reason for grabbing this one was the nice one-touch that came with it. (First thing I do when I step up to the bins is take an overview looking for special cases.. one-touches, graded cards, etc.. as that will often clue me into a good bargain.. though often it's just like an old screw-down case with a 1990 Upper Deck Mark McGwire or someshit.)

The George Brett 2016 Topps Chrome Update "3,000 Hits Club" is nice n' sparkly.

These 2 were actually from the quarterboxes but I didn't get around to including them in previous posts. A nice couple of framed cards, including a needed Lefty from the Gallery of Greats insert set I'm trying to complete, plus a similar looking Pudge, numbered to 500 on the back, I believe.

Trio of retro inserts of young dudes I collect.

2014 Bowman. Pretty sure I've already got that Conforto. Poor Mets fans have been having a rough season. Conforto has been playing ok, but not quite the force they need to string together more wins.
Billy Hamilton is leading the NL in stolen bases and is on pace to improve his season best total, though his batting average could use improvement. This blue shimmer mini is #/150, if I recall.

Ha, I only own like 4 or 5 Topps Now cards, one of which is this one, Trevor Story's first Topps-branded RC. I spent a lot more than 71 cents for my first copy back when he was on fire last year, but oh well, grab another one and increase my percentage of the print-run, why not. Hopefully he bounces back sometime.

As for the Brian Hunter, I've kinda got a long-term, back-burner collecting goal of going after the entire 1996 Leaf Signature autos.. at least the ones with the metallic ovals in the middle (ie, not including the Update Series). But there's a super expensive Jeter in there, so that's one goal I might not ever accomplish. But still, if I can pick up needs for under a buck, I probably will.

A pair of non-standard sized cards. The Giancarlo is #/199.

It's hard to pass up graded cards for under a buck when you consider it costs a few bucks just to get them graded. I've got a Browns collector in my trading circle (Angus, right?), so picked up the Kevin Johnson with him in mind. As for the Donté Stallworth, well his was a name that vaguely rang a bell so I grabbed it as trade bait. Anybody want to trade me for it?

I think that's all I have to show today. I also got some cd-rom "cards" that I'd like to rip and post the contents of in a future post. Other than that, that pretty much covers the haul from this show apart from plenty of trade fodder for my usual trader buddies.. some of which has made it into Big Fun Game prize packages., speaking of which:

I was glad when Rod bumped into me at the show so I could hand him his BFG prize, saving myself a little postage. Today I dropped off packages in the mail to the following zip codes: 06457, 14610, 02919, 95119, 55406. Additionally, PWEs were mailed to Billy and gcrl. Julie has asked me to hang onto her cards until the Supreme Court rules on if her trading ban is unconstitutional. If you were among those celebrating my 4 year bloggoversary in the Big Fun Game and I haven't mentioned you by name or zip, that means I'm still working on your package and hope to drop it in the mail no later than this coming weekend. A couple packages that might take a few days longer are Wes (I plan to include the WCOT stuff) and John Miller (nearing the end with that project that's taken me so long!)
Thanks again.. see ya.

card show covfefe

I missed May's card show this past Saturday, an aftereffect of my wife's car being totaled earlier in the month, but it was ok since I've had so many new cards to go through thanks to that big lot from Rod I posted about already, plus a few recent incoming maildays which I'll feature here today.

Ok, first up.. I've been Zippy Zapped! This brick of cards unexpectedly arrived on the day of the show, so it was soothing comfort when I needed it most.

The highlight has to be this glorious hunk of clear acetate autographed by Luis Torrens. The sticky-note from Zippy stated he was giving this to me on the condition that I keep it in the case as-is (complete with tampered-with tamper-proof seal). Ha, you got it, man. Thanks! I finally caught a game on TV where Torrens got the start behind the dish. He looks like he can hold his own, despite being rushed into the big leagues via Rule 5. Hopefully his bat comes around. I like how this 2014 Leaf Trinity card doesn't mention New York anywhere, so I can try fooling myself into thinking it's a Padres card.

Here are some keepers from the ample selection of Padres cardboard included.

Incredible lot of sparkly 2011 Topps parallels, featuring some favorites such as Jim Thome and Derrek Lee. Some dupes for me here, but plenty of needs too. I'm now over 2/5 complete (40%) with this crazy frankenset idea of mine.

It's not often you can send someone a 1992 Upper Deck card and a 1991 Topps card and have that person actually need/want them, but thanks to my recently rekindled Kevin Maas PC, Zippy pulls off the improbable. Also a couple other one-time Yanks I collect, Xavier Nady and Arod.

I got a laugh at that Steve Cummings, which I gotta assume was in response to my recent Dick Cummings pickup. I gotta stress, guys, please don't dump all your Cummings on me! I don't want to end up drowning in Cummings.
Also here is a Gary Sanchez (I guess his cards have cooled off a bit since last year?) and a couple Trevor Stories.

Shiny!

Some cool black border parallels. I think the 1962 design looks silly with black borders since you've still got that woodgrain corner. They should have made that all black and then changed the black text to light brown or something.

Some more Heritage Minors.. I believe these are parallels with various tints.

Some more cards that caught my eye.

Oh man, I love black refractors!

While not shiny, these Asian exclusive black boarder Bowman cards are pretty neat too.

Back to the shiny! More black refractors. Did you catch Hunter Renfroe's grand slam to beat the Cubs yesterday? As a Padres fan, it's nice to see them win once in a while.

Wave refractors! Love these! I wish Topps/Bowman would ditch that tired "transformers logo" refractor pattern they've been overusing this year and instead go nuts with wave refractors. Perhaps they could do a whole set.. like, Topps Wave consisting of nothing but various wave refractors! If that sells well, do Bowman Wave too. Eventually they'll get to Topps Wave Heritage and Bowman Wave Heritage. Five Star Wave. Wave Archives. Bunt Wave. Opening Day Wave... nah, scratch that last one.. not even making every card a wave refractor could save Opening Day from the redundant afterthought it's become.

Some shiny Star Wars cards, too.

Wrapping things up with a random game card (Magic?) and a couple hotties. Yuki is my favorite here. In fact, here's the back of that one...

Thumbs up!

Thanks a lot, Zippy! I'll do my best to round up some cards you might like.

--- - - - - -o

Commishbob was already on my list of "guys I owe cards" thanks to a great '64 Eddie Mathews he sent me a few weeks back, but before I had a chance to hit him back for that, he surprised me with a nice half-dozen 1957 needs he kindly scored for me at a recent card show...

Awesome.. thanks, Bob! Now I'm at 52/417 cards, good for 12.47% complete.

- - - -----------------o

Next is my first time trading with Jason's Sports Card Blog, a new blog started this past March.

Here we have the only two Gavins to ever play in the MLB. Unfortunately, 2017 hasn't been a good year for Gavins in baseball so far. Floyd was released by the Jays in spring training and doesn't seem to have caught on with another team, so his career might be finished. Cecchini is down in AAA, learning to play second base to make way for hot Mets shortstop prospect, Amed Rosario. After a slow start with the bat, Gavin's starting to heat up a bit, though we'll see if he gets called back up any time soon.

Some favorite players of mine.

A couple more needs for my 2011 Topps parallels frankenset.

Thanks a lot, Jason! I'll scrounge up some cards to return the favor soon.

- - -----o

Finally for today, here's a quick one-card PWE from reader mr. haverkamp...

...knocking off a need for my 1964 Topps setbuild. The star of the show here is Jim Ray Hart, who put up several solid seasons in San Francisco.

Thanks for the trade, man!

- - ------------o

To wrap up, May 2017 will go down as one of the worst months of my entire life. Let's see, there was the nastiest car accident I've ever been involved in, a heartbreaking incident where a scared lost dog slipped away from me as I was trying to help get her home, gruesome stabbings by a white extremist in my neighborhood, plus serious health problems emerging for some beloved members of my extended family. In light of all that, having to miss the card show is no big deal, but just piling on the shitshow of a month.

Thankfully, I've got the cardsphere to raise my spirits with thoughtful mailings of cards here and there. Big thanks again to everyone who's sent me cards. Thanks also to everyone who reads/comments on my blog. Always appreciated! BTW, this was post #999 for me.. expect a big contest next post.