Recommendation - Yogi

 First, since this is a card blog, here are all of my Yogi Berra cards:

How about that 1953 Bowman Color??  I love finding beat up old cards like that, only way they fall into my price range.

And the reason for Berra cards today, is that I watched the new documentary on Netflix called "It Ain't Over", about one Lawrence Peter Berra.

If you read this humble blog very often, you may know that I really love it when new, decent baseball documentaries come out.  There are not enough of them!!  I want them to gain popularity so more are made!  Hence my plug, go watch "It Ain't Over"!!

Not much in the way of spoilers, but this documentary is pretty good.  It is narrated, and commented heavily in, by Berra's granddaughter.  She is a bit biased, and sometimes forceful in her views.  But if a girl can't gush over her grandpa, then I don't want to be a grandpa.

There are several touching segments to go along with all the baseball.  They are well done.  At more than one time, Berra reminded me of my own grandpa.  He passed 2 years ago, and like Berra, was loved by everyone, and underestimated by many.  Like Berra, he was short, funny, stubborn and had a unique way of expressing himself.

Have you seen "It Ain't Over"?  What did you think?  Are there other baseball docs I may have missed?  And most interesting to me, what subject would make the next big baseball documentary???

Quirky Show Pickups

 Well it looks like whatever Blogger was doing to keep my posts from getting seen is over, thank you to those who provided me some feedback.  Back to the normal...

The cheap boxes were not overly kind at my most recent show. I think the dealers in my area are either running out of stuff I like, or just putting it in the more expensive boxes.  But I will stick to my strategy for now!

Here are a few things that I grabbed out of a dime box:

The Koufax is a prizm, so that was a fun find.  The Judge is from the "2020 Topps X Super 70s" set and the Robert is from "2020 Topps Throwback Thursday's", supposedly 1665 produced. 

Other than the Randy Johnson, I don't think any of these will make it into my keepers, but they sure were fun for thin dimes.

The Alonso in the lower left corner is a custom art card #d /25 from Team Brinkz.  Here's the back.

It is not something I would want to pay real money for, but at a dime, it was a very fun find.

Then here are three cards from 2020 Topps Brooklyn Collection.  Whatever that is!!  Some kind of Montgomery Club exclusive.  I did a little math based on the info on baseballcardpedia.com and it looks like there are probably about 320 copies of each base card out there.  So these aren't super common.  I had never seen them before!

Again, not something I really need, but they are limited, and kind of cool.  Maybe I will throw them into the next card draft I put together (Thanks to Chris for reminding me I need to do that!)

Here are some of my favorite oddball type cards I got:

Yes that top row is more of the "2020 Topps Throwback Thursday's" set.  Weird.  I quite like the Molitor, we don't get that food issue around my part of the country.

What's up with a beat up Bud Harrelson, you ask?  Well, it is actually folded up.  When you unfold it, you get this:

Totally hammered, but a 75 Pete Rose in a panel for a dime?  Worth it just for the giggles!

Thanks for reading!

Another try...

 I am still not getting any page views on my recent posts.  I have posted a few times, but nobody ends up visiting.  It is definitely viewable on my site, but it didn't show up on anyone's blogroll, which is how I seem to get all my traffic.

Anyway, if you see this post, let me know.  I have some stuff I want to show/do/give away, but until I know the blog is 'working', I am going to hold off.

And since it's a card blog, here is a random card for you:

Anyone hear me?

 Hey, just testing blogger.  I posted a post earlier this week and it never got viewed.  So I posted it again.  Nothing.  And over and over.  It is definitely viewable on my site, but it didn't show up on anyone's blogroll, and the only person who visited it was someone who I told specifically about it.  The post is here if you care.

Anyway, if you see this post, let me know.  If not, I am not sure what to do to get my posts viewed!!

And since it's a card blog, here is a random card for you:

Quick Gwynns from Rod!

 ***This is the 5th time I have tried to publish this post.  Each time I try, it does not show up on anyone's blogrolls and I don't get any pageviews.  Trying again....

Real life blogger meetups are extremely rare for me.  I don't want to list the two I remember for fear of offending someone who I forgot, but even if it is more than two, I have been blogging (off and on) for over 10 years, so the number isn't large.

Well I recently posted that I would be going to a show, and who reached out to me but Rod from Padrographs!  He is a good example of the generosity of bloggers.  He's given away quite a few cool things over the years, including a few to me!

Rod said he had something for me and wanted to meet at the show.  We made the connection and had a few minutes of chatting, before he ran off to some good quality family time.  The box o' goodies he gave me held mostly Tony Gwynns!!  Who doesn't love Gwynn?  Quite a variety, just a few are pictured below that I threw on the scanner:

Filled some holes in my Mr. Padre collection.

Rod also dropped these three Project 2020 cards on me!  I love them!!  Bulky for sure, but a small price to pay for these fun slabs.

As cool as those are, my favorite card was (I think) a Rod custom creation!!  Check this out!

An autographed Frank Peters card!!  Who you ask?  He was the manager of the Portland Mavericks, the subject of the documentary "The Battered Bastards of Baseball".  I think you can probably catch that on Netflix if you haven't already.  Very fun watch!

Here is the back for some more info:

Thanks a ton Rod!!

Winner of the 2nd 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 Chris!!!

Looks like I will be searching the cheap boxes for 1993 Donruss Diamond Kings inserts, current/recent Packers and any color Prizm football parallels.

....

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

Card show cheapies for someone - part 2

 We did this once before and it was fun!  I didn't find AWESOME stuff for the winner, but decent stuff...So here's the deal:

I'm heading to a card show this coming Saturday (Oct. 14th), and if you are lucky, it might benefit you! 

This is a quick little giveaway with a prize that might be good, or might be bad, it depends on the cheap boxes at the show!  Here's how it works:

To enter, comment on this post with the players, teams, sets etc. that you want me to look for in the cheapie boxes at the next card show.

Examples:

"I want you to look for Francisco Lindor, Clayton Kershaw, any serial numbered under /1000"

"Please look for all Diamondbacks, any Panini colored parallels and Bowman cards of young up and comers"

"I'd like any cards from the 1950s, late 90s inserts, Tom Glavine and any O-Pee-Chee"

Feel free to be more or less detailed with your request as needed. Keep in mind that I am looking in cheap boxes, so some requests will be harder to fulfill.  Like the request for cards from the 1950s above!  If you ask for Roberto Clemente, and that is all, I may not find anything, and even if I do, they will likely be modern cards.

You can put other sports than Baseball if you like, but I spend most of my time in the baseball boxes, so take that for what you will.

I will take all the comments and use Random.org to select a winner (randomized 3 times).  For the winner, I will look in the quarter (or less) boxes for you, scanning for cards that fit your request.  You will receive up to 18 cards, depending on what I can find, PWE shipped to you.

This contest will close on Thursday, Oct. 12th at 5PM PST!!

**No promises on what you will get.  I usually have good luck in these boxes, but I am looking for a really wide variety of cards.  Limiting it down to specific requests will certainly make it harder!

Back to the shows - Stained Glass edition

 So I went to another card show recently.  I know, I have been showing soooo many card show pics lately, right?  But those were all from a few shows over the last few months, this one was very recent.

I left this show with the fewest total cards purchased, well at any card show ever!  I walked out with only 24 cards, which is crazy for a guy who spends a lot of time at cheapie boxes pulling card after card out.

Anyway, blah blah, here are 4 cards I bought, then some fun with stained glass, and at the end a card I did not buy.

Here we have a holiday variation (candy striped arm) of Acuna - $.25.  And a refractor version of the 2023 Topps Pristine Rollie Fingers, also $.25.  The Rodgers is from the 2013 Panini Elite - Portraits insert set.  I love cards like that where the pic is created by tiny cutouts in the card - $.50.  And lastly, my first Home Field Advantage card!!  These guys are somewhat rare, so I was happy to land this Perez for $1.  Yeah, he's not the biggest star out there, but I do like him.  Happy with the deal!

I have always loved stained glass cards.  I have a few, and will generally pick them up whenever I can find them at cheap prices.  Which is NOT OFTEN!!  Here are a few that I have in my collection:

I also have the Mike Trout from the 2013 set, which is quite a nice card.  By the way, if you have any of these kinds of cards for trade, let me know.

OK, the last card...  I was watching a friend pick out a stack from a box that did not have price tags, but was obviously more expensive stuff.  When I saw he had pulled this card, I expressed my jealousy, maybe a little too exuberantly.  But I like the card, and I had actually not seen this set before:

Well about a half hour later, my friend walked up and handed me the card for free!  He had gotten a good discount for buying a large stack, and is just a really nice guy.  Pretty awesome!  

And when I got home and looked for details about the set, I was even more blown away.  These are kind of tough pulls!  The print run is only 25 (no serial number though).  Sure, I might want other players on the checklist more (McGwire comes to mind...) but this is an awesome card that hits my love of stained glass cards and my love of tough pulls all in one!

Quick show scans - Last Scan!

 Scan 17 - $???

OK, so I cant' actually remember how much these cost, I just know they were all in 50 cent boxes or cheaper.  None of these actually made it to my keeper boxes, but I had the scan, so what the heck.

The Ryan is a 2020 Topps X Super 70s - On Demand Ultimate Uniforms.  Whatever that is, but it is a cool looking card.

Most of the rest are serial numbered, including: Marichal /299, Blyleven 149, Lux 999, Jones /999, Aparicio /100 and Ashburn /199

And I am out of old show scans!  It's been nice posting every day.  I definitely won't keep that up, but I do have some things on the horizon, hopefully I won't go dark.

Quick show scans - Scan 16

 Scan 16 - $3

4 .50 cent cards, and 5 .20 cent cards.  Kershaw, Raines and Chicken are my faves.  The mini's almost look like they are uncut here, but there were just 2 cards in each penny sleeve.

Leaf is the dumbest-est

Another quick break from my endless card show scan posts.

All card companies do dumb things.  Irritating things.  Obnoxious things.  Leaf is the worst.  Here is proof:

This is, at least as far as I can tell by the name of the player on the card, a Tim Duncan card.  Tim's picture does not appear on the front of the card.  I am not as knowledgeable about basketball, but I do know that Jazz player pictured is not Tim Duncan.  

Tim Duncan is also not on the back of the card:

I get that this is a ticket card, and tickets don't have all the players in the game pictured on the card.  But it still seems like a really lazy and uninspired card (or complete set of cards!) to make.

A case could be made for a lot of other card companies, bit right now, I feel like I can go on the record saying that Leaf is the worst.

If this sounds like I'm mad about this, I really am not.  I would never go purchase these things, I got this one for free.  I am actually pretty amused by it.  But Leaf is still the worst today!

Quick show scans - Scan 15

 Scan 15 - $1

All of these were back to back in a very fun 20 cent box.  Insta-rainbow!!  I am sure there are more variations of this card, and if I see any, I will try and get them to 'complete' the rainbow, something I have never done.

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!