February 16th Midlothian Card Show: Holliday Weekend

    This past Presidents Day weekend was the nearly bi-monthly card show at the Midlothian Four Points Hotel.  The last show here was way back before Christmas.  If I recall, I think I remember spending less than 10 dollars.  It seemed like there just wasn't much to look through with most of the sellers having mostly graded cards or Pokemon.  I get it, if being a card vendor is your livelihood, you need to sell stuff that people will buy.  None of the sellers are getting rich off of dime and quarter boxes, or from my meager, penny pinching purchases. I remember feeling a little disappointed that there weren't any recent releases to thumb through but all in all the show was fun because I got to hang out with my nephew Blayke and my friend Blake.

    With this show being my "home" show, I always have high hopes for it.  Knowing the history of the fun I've had at this show and that the Three Point show from a few weekends was so awesome, I didn't know what to expect this time around.  It ended up being the most disappointing show that I can remember.

    I had planned on going a little later because I spent some time with my wife in kids going out to brunch.  I got a text message from a fellow baseball collector,John, who lives in my neighborhood that he was actually leaving the show empty handed.  He said it was about 90% Pokemon cards.  Still undeterred, after finishing up brunch I made my way to the hotel.  As I walked in, I noticed that there were tables extending all the way into the lobby. I walked in through the lobby, down the hallway, and into the main conference room, it was nothing but Pokemon seller after Pokemon seller.  I took one quick lap around the main room and realized that if I hadn't come with a Plan B, I would have just left and gone home.

    I found Blake's table as he was set up in his usual spot.  He had Tom, another friend of his, helping out.  Tom and I have a "I give you cards of your team, you give me cards of my team, value be damned" agreement going on.  I gave him a few Cubs cards I picked up last show and he handed me three O's cards:

I don't have an official PC of Jackson Holliday, so this Black Gold will go into my insert set build for now.

    A Topps Holiday Holliday with candy cane bat.  The SPs from this set can be hard to notice sometimes. I don't actively seek out the Holiday set but I will gladly take them in trade.

    The last card Tom gave me was Cedric Mullins relic card.  It will be interesting to see who Mullins does this season since he is eligible for free agency next winter.  Some guys crumble under the pressure and some have career years.  We'll see.

    I brought a stack of Cal Ripken inserts that I didn't need from my No Brainer binder purchase to see if it was something Blake could use for his Whatnot streams.  He allowed me to pick through his earlier in the day purchases and we worked out a trade.  I picked out these four cards of Orioles phenoms.  The two cards in the left column are refractors that my scanner didn't pick up. The top left Gunnar is a Prism refractor parallel and the bottom right Holliday is a mojo refractor.

    The final card of the deal was this 2021 Topps Brooklyn Collection of Cal.  I'm keeping my streak alive of coming home from card shows with a Ripken card I didn't have before.  It has been my experience that when online sets are released by Topps, you can find them for a few months and then they just disappear.  I'm happy to have this one into my collection and having a friend that is a bloodhound for awesome cardboard.  

    My one purchase for the day was from a seller set up catty-corner to Blake.  I've seen several of these non-serial numbered team logo borders cards over the past year but had never seen an Orioles one in person. What this scan and the pictures I've seen don't show is that it has some refractor-y details.  2024 Topps has hidden details anyways, but the Team name, the piping around the picture and the team logo have that signature refractor-like shine.  For five dollars, I'm over the moon to have this one of Corbin Burnes!  I wish him well in Arizona and will miss seeing a true ace pitch for my favorite team.

    Plan A of digging through boxes and boxes of cards didn't work out this time.  Sometimes that's just the way it goes.  I'm glad I came prepared with a Plan B since that really saved the day.

No Brainer or No Brains? The BINDER

    I've kept all four or five of my blog readers at suspense long enough.  At the end of my last post about the card show I went to a few weeks ago, I posted this picture of a binder cover: 

    While digging through a value box of fifty cent cards, the seller asked the few of us standing there if we were interested in any full binders of cards. My interest was piqued and I politely said "I might."

    My experience with binders at shows has been mixed. They have been either completely filled with a full set of 1990 Fleer that the 9 pocket sheets are more valuable, a complete set of  1953 Topps that I could never afford, or they could be a cardboard gold mine.

    I made a great buy on a binder last summer, at the behest of my friend Blake, that was a gold mine of football cards.  I sold a few the next day and then passed the rest off to my nephew who then made some money off of it.  With that experience in my back pocket, I asked "What's in the binders?"

    "There's four binders left here of player collections. Manny Ramirez (meh...), Jeff Bagwell (a little more interesting...), Tony Gwynn (ok, I have a not-so-great story about him, so meh.....) and...

"CAL RIPKEN JR."  

    My interest went from about a three to an eleven.  I've improved my poker face over the years, so I tried to play it cool.  I have just over 2200 different Ripkens in my collection and it gets tougher to find new ones to add even with new products being released all the time.  I definitely did not want to find that the binder was chock full of 1989 Donruss, 1993 Topps and off-brand Star Ripken cards from the early 90s.  I definitely do not need a ton of dupes either. I get it, the cards from this era are plentiful, but even if it is Cal, I don't need 50 copies of the 1988 Donruss with Cal Sr. and Billy.    

    I said I'd love to take a look.  Right inside the front cover was this:

The seller mentioned as he handed me the binder there was more than 600 cards inside so it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to understand where that information was gleaned. $55 would be a good starting point in negotiating if that was what the purpose of this pink sliver of a Post-it note indicated. I began to flip through the pages and here's a small sample of what I saw:

    I know that binders can be a lot of work to break down and sell off.  Even if the seller wanted to pull all the cards and put them into sleeves and toploaders, it could take hours just to do that and then you have to price it all out. It seemed he thought it would be more work than it was worth. I saw a few cards from my quick glance that I could use so if the price was right, I was gonna buy it, damn the torpedoes!  I'm no stranger to hard work and this is a hobby after all.  I figured whatever cards I didn't need, I could figure out something. 

    After I finished flipping though he said he'd sell me the entire book for forty dollars!  There is no doubt I broke my poker face but quickly inside the terror welled up when remembered I only wandered into the mall with $30 in my pocket.  I fast-walked to the ATM that was at the other end of the mall only to find it was completely out of cash.  Thank the lord we live in an age where phones are our lifelines and he luckily, he said he'd take Paypal, so I paid him that way.  

    In total there were 77 regular 9 pocket pages in the album and 2 in the back that had a few jumbo sized cards.  When I pulled all of the cards out of the pages there were 739 cards.  I know the math doesn't check out but there were plenty of pockets that were double or triple stuffed.  

• I'd estimate that 65-ish % of the cards were from 1995 through 2001.  That's good!
• Most cards were in near mint condition. 
• There was one 1990 Topps that looks like it was a wallet card for a while and an '87 Topps that had some, what I thought was bubble gum residue on the bottom.  I know it was not gum residue, ask me how I know! 
• There were no cards newer than 2012. 
• The most duplicated card was 1991 Leaf with 10 copies, 1991 Leaf Checklist with 9 copies, and 1993 Leaf and 1994 Pinnacle tied with 7 copies apiece.  
• I paid 0.0541272 cents per card

    I ended up with 5 Set Needs. I'm working on completing '07 UD Masterpieces again, so these four cards from the binder will go in to the set:

There was an '08 UD Masterpieces SP in the binder so there's one less to chase down now

There ended up being 23 brand new additions to my Cal Ripken Collection!  Here's a few of my favorites, even though I love them all:

Most of the needs were from 1999, 2000, and 2001.  I was still collecting at this time, just in a smaller capacity.  I was in high school at this time, so playing baseball, watching baseball, playing N64, schoolwork, cutting grass for neighbors, working on the farm, partying and chasing girls divided my time.  All these activities, are listed in no particular order. We were all in high school once. HA!

I definitely never saw packs of Donruss Class of 2001 on the shelves. 

I'll gladly take Pacific inserts from this era.  I used to hate Pacific but my tastes have completely changed.  LOVE Pacific these days.  There are so many rare inserts of Cal that I need to chase down.

I think Cal was a spokesman for Fleer around Y2K and there's a ton of inserts of him I don't have from that time period.  They're more affordable than Pacific, its just a matter of winning the lottery

A shiny Fleer Brilliants blue parallel.  I like the blues better than the dull chrome base set.

Its hard to tell but these three are all parallels.  I guess they are just plain foil parallels but they sure hold a finger print well! I'll probably polish them a bit with a microfiber towel before I put them in the PC albums 

    When I created my Orioles Team set binders I truly agonized over whether or not to include Cal in them or not.  From 1982 to the present, he's in just about every release.  It adds up after a while but I ultimately decided to include him.  It just wouldn't seem right to exclude him even if it means I have dupes of lord only knows how many Ripkens. I also have my other Orioles player collections that I duplicate with Team Set cards.  Either way, I was able to find 40 Cal additions to the Orioles Team Set binders:

    At the end of what I took, I ended up with 671 cards I didn't need, and 1 totally random Mark McGwire Topps Micro from 1992.  68 useful cards might not seem like a ton but I would make this buy 100 times out of 100.  I pulled about 70 or so cards to send to COMC, and listed probably about 125 more of them on my Sportlots store.  I even was able to swing a trade of 30 or so of the lower end inserts at the latest card show this past weekend.

    If there's anything that you saw you might want or know any Ripken collectors that may be interested in trading, please, please don't hesitate to reach out.  I'd love to get back into doing more blogger trading!

    I'll close this post with a picture I snapped of our family dog Parker, semi-snuggled up with the empty binder after I pulled the cards out:

February 1st Regency Mall Card Show: No Brainer

The most recent card show I went to was the one that was held at Regency Mall in Richmond.  I mentioned a few posts back that when I was growing up, a lot of my back to school shopping was done there.  The mall declined and has been redeveloped as a multi-use town center and has made come back.  Even so, the quarterly card shows, put on by Three Point RVA, that have been held there the last few years has packed the mall with the most people it's probably seen in 25 or 30 years.  Going to this show is a no brainer if you're involved in the hobby in the Richmond metro area.  This particular show nearly filled the entire 2nd level of the mall, so there was plenty of cards to peruse.

Cal Ripken was always known for being a heady ball player.  His baseball knowledge led him to being a leader on the field from the shortstop position and made his team better just by being on the field.  Of course, he accomplished plenty through his athletic ability also, but he was the total package ballplayer because of his baseball IQ.  I was able to pick up this image variation SP from 2020 Topps of him doing a press conference probably thinking about a situation on the field.

One of the first tables I came to was a father and son seller that I've become acquainted with over the last few years.  They mostly deal in mid to higher end cards,  but at this particular show they had their value boxes and of course I had to dig in.  Searching through the boxes, I did have to check the back of both of these Vlad Daddy cards to see if they were reprints of some sort.

These two cards are not reprints and as you can see, there were the price tags on the cards.  It goes without saying, I did not leave these behind!

Another card that came out of their boxes with this Mark Reynolds rookie autograph from 2007 SPx.  Since he was a UVA guy and an Oriole legend (!), this was an incredibly easy two bucks to spend!

I was able to pick up this Green Cracked Ice parallel of Yennier Cano.  A steady force in the O's bullpen the last 2 years, I have confidence he can keep up up this year.

I finished up with that particular seller pretty happy with how good of a start I had to the the show. I could have left the mall not spending another dime and been satisfied with my purchases but it was only about 10am.

For the next few hours, I was working on stretching my money as far as it would go.  I didn't have a huge budget and spending a good portion of it at the first table, I started searching the cheap-o boxes for cards that fit into my collection.  I can't complain with finding a Rainbow Foil parallel of Felix Bautista.  He missed last season with Tommy John surgery, but I believe he will be gradually worked back into the closer role this year.

I picked up a few parallels of so Japanese players for my album on the cheap. Kenta and Kodai, welcome to your permanent home.

Skipping ahead toward the end of my purchases, I was able to dig through Dollar Dave's boxes and find some Orioles autographs from the dark ages.  Tripper Johnson never made the majors but at least he had a nice and legible signature.  Dave Crouthers never made the majors either but went on to be inducted into his alma mater's (SIUE) Hall of Fame in 2018.  Travis Driskill had a long career in the minors until the O's gave him a shot at the majors where he was knocked around to the tune of a 5.23 career ERA.  Better than I did!  Steve Bechler, if you remember, collapsed during a work out in spring training 2003 and died.  The death investigation led to the chemical Ephedra being banned by the FDA. I'm glad to add all 4 of these cards to my collection.

Backing up, I made one more huge pick up.  It came from a seller I passed a few times because he had a crowd around his table.  He had about ten or twelve boxes of fifty cent cards.  I couldn't resist.  It was hodgepodge of cards from the 80's through the present.  There was plenty of cards that I liked but I had to restrain myself due to the constraints of my budget.  I was able to pull a few of the 2023 Topps Chrome Titans I need for my set.  I love the panoramic view of the stadiums on most of the cards and the larger than life Titans just looks cool, IMHO.

Also, in the boxes I pulled a few more of the 2022 Topps Chrome Heart of the City cards I need. Again, the skylines of the cities they represent is not something that gets put on cards that often.  I'm inching toward completing the entire set.

Another bunch of insert sets I'm working on is Black Gold inserts from all years.  The ones from the'93 and '94 are a little more common, yet I haven't completed them after thirty or so years (I only started truly collecting them the last couple years).  The newer Black Gold inserts from '21, '22, '23, and '24 Topps Update is what inspired me to go back and complete the old sets.  The newer ones are tougher to find at a decent price but at fifty cents a piece, these were easy buys.  I think the 2022 design is probably the weakest out of the revival Black Gold sets but I still like 'em enought to still complete it.

A couple of nice insert cards of guys I grew up watching. Kenny Lofton in criminally underrated and deserves to be in Cooperstown already.  He'll get there eventually. The Big Hurt is already enshrined there.  I have a couple pages of each of those guys (along with quite a few other great players) in my PC.  I enjoy picking up cards for these PCs because I tend to gravitate toward great photos or card design and not because they are just fillers from any old list.  Both of the albums are just fun to pull off the shelf and flip through.  Posting a random page from these binders could be interesting if I ever need writing inspiration.

Speaking of binders:

The last big purchase of the day was an entire binder of cards! It was very much a no-brainer purchase, especially for me. The opportunity was too good to pass up and had me running to the ATM to withdraw more cash.  I don't want to spoil what is contained inside, because it actually deserves its own break down post. I'm still wading through and processing what's inside and I hope to share very soon...  I'd love to hear if anybody has any good guesses on what lies beyond the front cover.