Card show pinch hitter

So I haven't been able to hit any card shows for a looong time.  Sound familiar?  But a friend of mine, Rob, was able to go to one, and I sent him $20 to hit the cheapie boxes for me.  He got me some pretty sweet stuff.  Some of what he found was standard dime and quarter box stuff, but some was treasure!  

A quick aside, when I don't know anything about a card, my go to method to learn about the card is to look it up on COMC.com for a ballpark value, and then if I am still interested, look on Ebay to see what the card has actually been selling for.  So I will use that method a few times in this post, but it is for learning only, not because sales value is always the most important consideration.  But it helps, when I can't keep up with which versions of which cards from which sets are the hardest to find or the most desirable from a big picture standpoint.

Check it out...

Some Trout inserts!  These were quarters, if Rob is to be believed.  I don't remember Trouts in quarter boxes, but maybe times are changing.  Either way, I am happy to have these.

Next up, someone many of you don't know much about, but he has a good little cult following in the Seattle area.  It's a Slick Watts RC!!  None of his playing days cards use the nickname Slick, but "Don" just doesn't have the same ring.  This was a quarter!!  Cheapest copy on COMC tight now is $8.91, so a quarter sounds great to me!

Next up might be the find of the show, at least to me.  A 1997 Donruss Elite - Elite Series Mike Piazza, numbered to 2500.  I always liked the Elite series, but for some reason I had not seen one from 1996.  The cursive E is both strange and wonderful.  Just feels like a classy card.  For a quarter!!

And another sweet find!  I had never seen the 2013 Heritage Minors set.  Pretty good card! So young.  Probably just got his braces off.  This was found in a dime box!

The next card was also from a dime box, and Rob knew I had been looking for one of these.  From the front, you would wonder why I would want it so badly, but if you have already seen the back, then you know!

How often do you get to see a 6'10" scruffy lookin guy acting like a Raggedy Ann doll???  Sweet!

I guess this next one was a whole dollar.  Wasting my hard earned dough, Rob!!  But I do love the relics of the old timers.  This did not scan nearly as nice as it looks in hand

Next up are 2 cards that, when I first looked at them, I thought, 'OK, standard quarter box stuff'.  Right?  What I didn't know, but found out when I was researching the cards, is that both of these are the harder to find variations.  Sweet!  I love both Ozzie and Albert, so adding rarer (but not RARE of course) cards of either of them makes my day.

All right, these next 2 were total surprises to me when I went researching.  Before the research, I thought, hey, OK cards here.  But nope, these 2 are way more valued cards than I thought.

First up is a copy of the Topps Chrome version of the famous Bautista Bat Toss.  Iconic moment, well worth preserving on a baseball card.  But on closer examination, this card is numbered on the back to 150 copies.  Cool!  Turns out it is a Blue Refractor, and there don't seem to be many available on COMC or Ebay.

This is a card that doesn't fit my collection all that well, so it is available for trade if someone needs it.

And another card that I don't plan on keeping, but shocked me when I looked it up is this Kemba Walker RC.  I figured it would COMC for a few dollars and actually sell for maybe $2.  Nope.  The cheapest one on COMC is $23!  I would have never guessed, and this came out of a quarter box!  If you need this card hit me up for a trade!

The last "card" I'll show is a bit of a mystery to me.  Anyone want to help me ID this?  It is hard metal, different from other metal cards I have seen.  A little thicker too, and kind of heavy for it's size.

The back is an exact duplication of the real Murphy RC, with the 1977 copyright date.  I was hoping for another, separate copyright to point me in a direction, but no luck.  The only difference from the original (other than the obvious metal difference!) is the number 2536.  I assume that is a serial number, incremented for each copy of this card.

I found a copy of this, autographed, for sale online, but no details on who made it or where it is from.  I'm sure you experienced readers will have some info for me though.

Thanks for reading!!