Quick show scans - Scan 14

 Scan 14 - $2.40

I love so many of the Stadium club shots, and several of these have been on my "get that" list for a while.  The Kershaw, Boggs and Bench with the balloons are a few of those!  All of these were either in dime boxes or 20 cent boxes.

Quick show scans - Scan 13

 Scan 13 - $1.50

Yep, six quarters here.  

On the top row are variations, Schmidt and Ozzie are 2022 'Greats Variations'  SP's for quarters, very cool.  The Ruth is not a variation, but is from 2011 Topps Archives.  Nice card.

The Vladdy Sr confuses me.  As far as I can tell from research, it should be serial numbered /299.  But nope, no serial.  Don't know if it got left off inadvertently, or if I am just missing something.

The Bichette's were new to me.  They are from the "Topps X Pete Alonso" set.  I guess it was a topps.com online thing?  3000 sets made.  Very weird.  But I do like Bo Bichette RCs, so...

I'm happy to trade any on the top row if anyone is interested.  Probably the Vladdy too.  Hit me up.

Quick show scans - Scan 12

 Scan 12 - $2.25

Quarters.  The Top Sosa, I grabbed just for the pic.  It is a pre-production card.  The Guerrero is a Club Level parallel, kind of cool.  Serial numbered Mantle and Kershaw, Sweet Larkin insert and Gold Rush Bo all made my day.

Quick show scans - Scan 11

 Scan 11 - $1

Oops, today we have 2 scans instead of 1, but there is a reason!

I pulled this Greg Luzinski bat card to pair with the Luzinski Auto I got last year.  A buck is steep for me, but worth it.  I was skipping through a box pretty fast, so I didn't notice that the top loader it was in was a little thick, and even if I had, aren't bat cards thick sometimes?

But I got it home and pulled these out from behind it:

All in the same top loader for a buck.  Awesome!

Quick show scans - Scan 10

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 10 - $4.50

All 9 out of a 50 cent box today.  Every one of these is quite cool to me.  The Gwynn is my favorite, I want all of that set.  The blue Vlad in the middle is #d /99.  And the 2015 Vlads at the bottom are pretty cool too.

Quick show scans - Scan 9

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 9 - $1

Two cards from a 50 cent box today.  The McGwire is amazing, and on COMC.com and Ebay, it goes for way more than 50 cents.  Quite a deal, especially since I collect all McGwires.  This was my 1310th unique Big Mac.  The Perez is just crazy.  I agree with Night Owl's disgust with Topps for just recreating old stuff forever, but in hand this card pops hard!  Better than the scan for sure.  Numbered /99 to boot.

Quick show scans - Scan 8

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 8 - $1.50

Super thick cards today...  Bad scan on the Trout, but it looks fine in hand.  The Posey was 50 cents, and is pretty cool!  The Trout was $1, and I couldn't pass it up.

Quick show scans - Scan 7

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 7 - $2.25

I think these were all quarters.  Love getting quality catcher RCs for a quarter!

Quick show scans - Scan 6

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 6: $1.35

Dimes and quarters again.  I think the Canseco, Ryan and Sabathia were quarters.

Koufax

 Hey!  Taking a one day break from the card show scan posts, they will resume tomorrow.  Though today's post isn't that different really.  It's a 2 scan post of a card I got out of a cheapie bin at a card show.  I guess the only real difference is a bit more rambling from me.

Even though I dislike that only parallels and inserts are really 'worth' much, and serial numbered versions even more, the sheer number of variations sometimes benefits me.  What I mean is that sometimes there are rarer versions of a card that slip through the cracks and make it into cheapie boxes.

This is one of those posts.

I found this cool Koufax, and snapped it up as quickly as I could, before moving on through the rest of the box.

When I got it home, I realized that it is one of those pesky serial numbered cards that don't look too different from the base.  It turns out that it is an Orange Refractor from 2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome.

Since it looks pretty blue to me, and not at all orange, I was confused until I noticed the orange backing to the logo in the upper right.  I guess that's it!

And the numbering that goes along with that on the back:

Yay!  /25!!  There aren't any of these on COMC, but there is a gold version, numbered /50.  That one has a price of $57.98.  Which is ridiculous, but still gives me happy thoughts when I think of this version of the card in my hands.

Honestly, the big Dodger fans out there probably would appreciate this card more than me, but I definitely like it!  Cheapie box wins....

Quick show scans - Scan 5

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 5 - $1.35

The top 2 rows were dimes, the last row was quarters.  Love, love the old gold refractors.  I can't believe I didn't have a Vince Coleman RC.  The Delgado is #d /35.  And the rest are just cool!

Quick show scans - Scan 4

 I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 4 - $4.00:

I was especially happy about my deals here.  The Uncle Larry popped out of a .50 cent box and I had to have it.  The Rose was $3, seems like a steal.  And the Ichiro is a 2001 Keebler Seattle Mariners - Stadium Giveaway.  Ichiro Rookie Year!!  Love it.

Quick show scans - Scan 3

  I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 3 - $4.50:

These guys were in a .50 cent box, which is usually over my limits, but I feel pretty good about them.  The most surprising to me was the Acuna serial numbered /99.

Quick show scans - Scan 2

  I'm posting one scan of cards per day, of cards I got at some recent card shows until I run out of scans.  Quick posts!

Scan 2 - $2.25:

These guys came from quarter boxes, I am pretty sure.  The only exception might be the Vladdy, which is definitely my favorite from this scan. It is the 'Limited Exposure - holographic' version.  Whatever that means...  The Cornerstones card is #d /500.

Quick show scans - Scan 1

 I have had a ton of trouble posting lately, so I am going to knock out a bunch of small, quick posts until I run out of scans...

I'm going to post one scan per post, of cards I got at some recent card shows, until I run out of scans.  Right now, I have 12 scans, but I am going to more shows, so that number will grow.

Scan 1 - 30 cents:

I grabbed these three Ellys from a dime box around the time he got called up and hit the league with a bang.  Since he doesn't have any RCs, these are pretty good for now, especially for base cards.  I would be willing to trade any of them except the chrome on the right.

Weird Griffey

 Help me out folks!  I recently acquired this Ken Griffey card that is pretty strange.  It appears to be a 1995 Flair 'Hot Glove' insert.  Pretty sharp card:

And here is the back, everything seems to be in order:

But you may have noticed that while the embossing of the glove in the background is there (the card feels bumpy along the contours of the glove), some of the etching that should be here is missing.  Here is a pic from COMC.com of how the card 'should' look:

Mine is missing the "Flair" logo and the "Hot Glove" and player name in the lower left.  Anyone seen anything like that?  I have not, maybe it's rare enough that some Griffey super collector would trade me some good stuff for it!!

Parallels should look different

 I got the old man disease.  You know, the one where everything new is dumb?  Yeah, I kind of have that.  Too many sets, too many inserts, too many parallels.  Too many graded cards, too many new fanboy collectors etc.  As if the hobby could really change back to the way it was in my youth.

However, sometimes, I think some of my complaints are actually pretty legit, not just my age showing.  My current example and topic of this post is this card of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. 

Looks like one of the common, standard 2021 Topps Update - All Star Game inserts.  But it's not.  First complaint is that these "All Star Game" cards are inserts, not part of the base set, but they have the exact same design as the base set.  Minor complaint, but still!  But the bigger complaint is this:  the card shown is actually the "Platinum Anniversary" parallel of the base insert.  It's numbered /70!  But you can't see anything in the appearance of the front of the card that would tip you off to that (or at least I can't).  Unfortunately, I don't have the base insert to compare side by side, but looking around on the interwebs, I just can't see a real, meaningful difference between this fairly low numbered parallel and the base.

Parallels should look different!!  And the old man rant concludes.

Hopefully that doesn't bother any of you, and you would like to have this card.  Because this situation bothers me enough that I am going to PWE it out to someone for free.  If you want the card, guess the serial number (any number between 1 and 70) in the comments.  You can guess once per day if nobody gets it right off.  The first person to get it right will receive it in the mail.  If I already have the winners address, I won't even announce who won, the card will just show up.  If I have to ask, then there won't be a surprise.  I'll update once a day if the number has been correctly guessed.

Let's see how it goes!!

All I blog about is shows

 Sometimes it seems like all I blog about is card shows.  Must get tedious for my readers, right?  If I was a better human, I would try hard to fix that, but I am not, so here is another card show post!!

This show was all about dime and quarter boxes.  I had to search hard, and in one case, negotiate, but I ended up finding a lot of quirky and fun stuff.

Let's start up with some wonderful dime box baseball:

That top row might not be knocking it out of the park 'value' wise, but I really like all three cards.  The second row, at least to me, DOES knock it out of the park 'value' wise.  Miggy pre-RC looks somewhat valuable on COMC, and an Arenado and Verlander RC for a dime?  Sign me up for that!  And the last card in the scan used to be worth $20 at your local card shop, but the deadline on the MVP Buyback program was March.  Still, I was tickled to find this in a dime box.

Now some dime box basketball.  I found pretty much every star card from this NBA Jam Session set sitting in a dime box.  I hate trying to store these cards, but I always liked them anyway.  These 6 are a few favorites I pulled out to scan.

And finally, some dime box  weirdness:

I guess these were giveaways at the National?  I don't pass up Jordans and some of these others for dimes, so when I found all five of the cards from this set in there, I grabbed them.  Anyone interested in these?  I will not be keeping them.

On to quarter box finds...I came upon a guy with a box marked as "$1 - 75% off".  That seemed a little vague to me, so I asked if it meant these were originally $4 and were now $1, or if they were originally $1 and were now quarters.  He was pretty confused, but decided that they should be dollar cards.  I looked through a few and didn't find much I wanted at a dollar, so I started to walk away.  He called me back and said that he'd give anything in there to me for a quarter.  Since that made it much more worth my time, I went through the whole box, and was glad I did.

He had a TON of Royals in there, that might have been worth something once, but now were less interesting.  Many, many serial numbered cards of Whit Merrifield, Alex Gordon and Billy Butler.  Those didn't really catch my eye.  But almost 2 years ago, I blogged about deciding that I wanted to build up a little collection of Zack Greinke.  And there were a ton of him that I liked in there!

These are nine of the 28(!!!) Greinkes I added from these quarter boxes.  Suffice it to say, that my Greinke collection is no longer lacking.  All of the cards I grabbed were serial numbered, usually low numbers, or nice refractors.

And here are a few Non- Greinke cards from this box:

A different quarter box yielded a ton of cards of another player I have been trying to build up a small collection of, Larry Fitzgerald. 

Shockingly, all of these are numbered under 299 and were all quarters.  Now I just need a nice RC of Larry and I will feel good about my Fitzgerald collection.

And to finish it off, a couple of non-quarter bargain vintage cards I picked up.

The Martin was $5, which might not be a steal, but I was happy.  The Mays is a 1969 Globe Imports Playing Cards - Gas Station Issue.  Don't know much more than that, but I love playing days Mays anywhere I can get them.

Thanks for reading!

Check it out giveaway

 OK, as promised I have a little giveaway for those who were willing to look at my video in the last post and respond with something constructive for me.  

Here are the people who commented, and are eligible at the moment (read on to become partially eligible!):

The Angels In Order
Jon
Jeremya1um
Chris
Crocodile
Johnnys Trading Spot
night owl
Matt
Damien

Now 'constructive' is a pretty vague way to put it, so I will leave it to them to determine if they were constructive in their comments, lol.

Each of those commenters above can pick up to 6 cards from the scans below as their reward.  Use the usual method, scan/page number-card number.  So if you want the "Ron Hunt All Time Mets" in the second scan below, then you would select 2-6.

**Now it's not too late!  If you want some of these cards, but didn't comment on the previous post, you can still go there, watch the video and leave me a constructive comment on that post.  Then you can come back here and choose up to 3 cards from the scans.  Only those in the list above are eligible for picking 6 cards.

The cards will be sent in a PWE, and won't probably go out until mid-next week.  I am going to be out of town for a bit.

Some cards are beat up a little like the Bench in the first scan.  Hopefully the scans show the condition OK.

Page 1

Claimed - 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9

I kinda doubt the auto on the Warren Giles is authentic, but you never know.

Page 2

Claimed - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7

Syndergaard is serial numbered on the back

Page 3

Claimed - 1, 3, 5, 6, 7

Page 4

Claimed - 3, 6, 7, 8

Page 5 - a little weirdness

Claimed - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Page 6

Claimed - 4, 5, 6, 8, 9

Cabrera is serial numbered on the back

Page 7

Claimed - 1, 2, 3, 5

Page 8

Claimed - 1, 2, 3, 4

Page 9

Claimed - 4

The Sutton is serial numbered on the back

Page 10

Claimed - 2, 5

Check out what I made!

 

Hey guys, I know there are not a lot of folks who read this blog, but I would appreciate a few minutes of your time to check out "The Diamond King - Card Collection Tool" and give me feedback!

Here's the idea:  I love the TCDB concept, but it takes me forever to get my cards in there, and it doesn't give me some features I want. 

Features I want are the ability to quickly search, sort and report on my collection, and to have scans of my personal copy of the card right there.  I also want to be able to customize other things.  And so, I started putting my cards in a SQL database.  That solution had usability issues too, so I have created The Diamond King Card Collection Tool as a front end for that database to make things easier.

In a nutshell, I made my own card collection cataloger.

Now I am not a programmer, and this thing needs a lot of work.  I don't plan on anyone ever using it but me though, so as long as it meets my needs, that's all that really matters.

But I would really, really love your feedback on it!  So I did a short(ish) video that shows the program and it's basic features.  It's viewable on YouTube at this link:

https://youtu.be/JYZ6vdbovFY

I doubt this would be very easy to view on a phone, as the program takes a lot of screen real estate.  A computer monitor would be lots better.  I really tried to keep it short, but the video is about 7 minutes long. If you can spare that time, I would really welcome any and all feedback, questions and especially criticisms!!  Features you think it needs are welcome too.

I imagine there is already something out there that I could download or buy that does all that my program will do and better.  But I have had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to do this, and make my own.

As (hopefully) motivation for some of you to spend the time and give meaningful feedback, I plan on making a post later this week, or next week, with some freebies for people to claim.  But to be eligible for the freebies, you need to comment here with something that you think would be helpful to me on The Diamond King Card Collection Tool.  Just saying "That's cool!" or "You really aren't a very good programmer" is great, but to be eligible for the giveaway, you have to try a little harder.  No deadline to make that comment though, if you see the giveaway post and have not commented, you can come back to this post and comment then.

Thanks!!!

Stuff in the mail

 I went through a bit of a drought on getting cards in the mail.  But that has ended due to three packages in the last week!

First up is a PWE from gcrl.  I had mentioned that I didn't have any Julio Urias RCs, and poof, these just showed up!

These 2 cards had the honor of being the first 2 cards I added to my card database using a new tool that I created.  That's just a tease, I will post about it soon!

Thanks a bunch for filling that Urias sized hole in my collection gcrl!

And I won some stuff from Johnny!  As has been the pattern lately, I got some Diamond Kings.  Good variety and players.

And as a bonus, Johnny sent this!

I love it!!  But strangely, even though I have been all over my home state, Walla Walla is someplace I have never been.  I guess I better listen to Alf and get my butt over there.  Thanks Johnny!

And Night Owl makes an appearance too.  He claimed some freebies from me a while back, and must have felt the need to reciprocate.  And boy did he!

Some great variety here.  Love old Finest, and that Gwynn is wonderful.  And getting McGwires I need in the mail???  That almost never happens!!

On to some shine and some RCs:

Three players I definitely collect, all refractory.  Great stuff.  And we finish off with a couple of PED users, lol!  But RCs I want and need, thanks a bunch Greg!!

Keep em rolling in!!

a show

 Quick card show report here.  This show wasn't great.  Which really stunk, because I was supposed to go bargain hunting for Matt who won my Card Show Cheapie contest.  Don't worry, I found him some stuff, but it was definitely a down show.

Let's go Football, Basketball then Baseball!

Football - These 3 cards make me happy!!

The Taylor is just a BEAutiful card.  And from my research, it looks like this insert set is quite sought after.  As much as I like looking at it, this is one of only 2 cards in the post that is up for trade.... shoot me an offer!   The Sanders caught my eye in a dime box.  Barry is probably my favorite footballer of all time, so it was a no brainer.  And another stunning card, the Wilson is even better looking than the scan shows.  Too bad he stinks now that he's a Bronco.  But that's probably why I could afford the card in the first place.

Basketball - one card, the newly crowned MVP!

This is a card that I don't know much about.  Some sort of Black Prizm Refractor from the 2022/23 Panini Prizm Monopoly set.  The only 2 on COMC.com right now are a LeBron, sale price $107 and a Kristaps Porzingis for $15.  Seems a bit high, but if you are interested, this is the other card that is available for a trade.  Let me know if you are interested.

Baseball - I grabbed about 40 baseball cards at he show.  Here are a few of my favorites.

Sweet shot of Ichiro, even if it is 'just' a base card.  I'd like to get my hands on a refractor of this.  Old Row 0 insert of Boggs was a good deal.  My first Nomo RC!  And three great looking cards on the bottom row.

And I found some more nice Griffeys.  My favorite dealer charged me 50 cents each for these.

Some of them are quite nice!  The Authority Figure is serial numbered /1750, I think.  I've always liked the cool Pacific inserts, and the lightning really looks great.  That Topps Tek is one of the difficult to figure out patterns, but I think it might be one of the little more valuable ones.  Not sure I care enough to put in the effort to find out.  And the one with a map in the background is a "Eyes of the World" insert, and I think it is pretty great.

So for a so-so show, I guess I did pretty good!

Winner of the cheapie hunt

 Thanks so much to all the people who entered the little card show contest!  Super quick post to randomize and select the winner.

As I said in the original post, I will take the entries and randomize them three times.  Here are the results:

Original list:

First randomization:

Second randomization:

Third randomization:

And the winner is Matt!!!

Looks like I will be searching the cheap boxes for Red Sox cards of Pedro Martinez (any Red Sox really), Laughlin World Series cards, cards from the Senior Leagues and Sporting News Conlon Collection sets.

The Red Sox stuff will certainly be the easiest, but I will try for some of the other stuff too!

Again, thanks to all who entered, and have a great day!