January 4th Colonial Heights Card Show: A Return to Form

    I started off the new year heading to one of my local card shows.  Originally, I hadn't really planned on going, but at the behest of a few friends who were attending and Blake setting up shop there, I made the game time decision to go.  The last couple of Colonial Heights shows have been sparsely attended by sellers and buyers so that was why I was going to skip it and just spend a Saturday at home.  I'm glad I went because it exceeded my expectations.

    I didn't end up spending a ton of money (never really do) but I did find some quality.  I can't complain about adding a Stadium Club Chrome Cal Ripken for a buck. No, hats off to you, Cal.

    I've started paying closer hobby attention to buying cards of Japanese players and placing them in a dedicated binder.  Each player will end up having a page or two of cards, though Nomo, Ichiro, Ohtani, and Koji may end up with more than that. These two cards will look great in that album.

    I've sort of stopped buying base cards at shows unless they are in the quarter and dime boxes.  The value just isn't there and they are printed to the moon and back.  Parallels are where its at for me these days.  Red Stadium Club Heston? Check, Ginter Chrome Cowser? Check. Raywave Eflin and Mullins? Check and Check.  A buck a piece? Check.

    Raywave parallels of good young players? Check x4.  I play close attention to Andrew Abbott since he's from Virginia, and played for perennial ACC contender UVA.  Can't beat these for a dollar a piece.

    I did a bit of dime box diving and was able to find a few Orioles I liked but also these rookies from 2022 Topps Heritage High Numbers. They may seem random to you but I can explain.  Winder and Overton are from the Richmond area so you never know who you might run into around town for autograph signings.  Not that I carry these cards around all the time, lol.  Ethan Roberts has ridden the shuttle back and forth between Triple-A Iowa and Chicago the last few years.  He's a big card collector and is pretty active on Whatnot.  He often hangs out in Blake's stream as well as a few others and is an overall cool dude.  When the Cubs came to Baltimore last summer,  Ethan was nice enough to give us tickets to one of the games.  Five of us made the trip up there and we got to sit in the Cubs player's family and friends section.  It was the only place at Camden Yards where I stuck out like a sore thumb since I was wearing all of my Orioles gear.  Here's a view from our seats:

    Unfortunately, right before the game, Ethan was optioned to Triple-A, so we didn't get to see him in person but hopefully when the Cubs play the Nationals this year, we'll be able to meet up.

    Overall, the Colonial Heights show was a return to form. It was great seeing friends again after the holiday season and to look through some cards. I can't wait til the next show.

November 9th Regency Mall card show: From the Penthouse, to the Dump and Back

I went to the local card show last weekend at Regency Mall.  The mall itself actually used to be named Regency Square back when I was a kid and I remember going back to school shopping quite a few times there.  When I was a kid, we were probably about an hour and a half away and going to Richmond was a big deal.  Regency Square was awesome back then like most were back in the late 80s and early 90's.  

The Penthouse if you will.

It's no secret that shopping malls have slowly declined in the last 15 or so years and Regency has not been an exception.  Regency actually started to decline in the mid 90's with new malls springing up in the area and the changing consumer tastes. Not that Regency became a Dump by any means but it definitely went into a steep decline until it was redeveloped a few years ago.  It has been turned into somewhat of a mixed use development but it still is around.  Not quite the Penthouse it once was but at least its not totally gone.

What does the history of the mall have to do with baseball cards? Not too much but it does somewhat tell the story of my experience on Saturday. I apologize for the weird mix of phone pics and scans.  I'm lazy today.

I arrived around 11ish since I had a few errands to do beforehand (blowing leaves, free document shredding.. to name a few).  The first table I came to had an assortment of  dime, quarter and dollar boxes. My kind of table.  I started off with these from the dime box:

We don't leave rookies of star players to rot in the dime boxes.  The Big Unit insert is the blue bordered parallel that definitely wasn't going to be left for other vultures. Most any of these cards pictured can be had in trade if you'd like to strike up something.  

I also picked up these 3 cards of Japanese players.  I recently started a binder of only MLB Japanese players and these will fit nicely into it.  For a dime a piece I'm happy.

I moved through the show being a bit choosy with my smaller budget.  I picked up the trio of cards for 3 bucks at another table.  It seemed the seller was just more of a football and basketball guy and really just wanted rid of the baseball stuff.  I'll take a rookie card of Mike Cuellar and two numbered Orioles HOFers for 3 Washingtons anyday.

The next table I came to was a guy who I'd never seen before at local shows.  He says he only sets up to get rid of his excess cards and that Regency has the most affordable table cost.  We talked for a bit and I found out that he was also an Orioles fan.  He is a big Jackson Holliday fan, whereas I've taken a liking to Jordan Westburg.  He was very reasonable on prices on his other Orioles cards.  I picked up the following for 10 bucks:

I think the Hobby Rip Night Gunnar is somewhat rare. The Hobby Rip night cards are only issued at special events at official Topps Hobby Shops as far as I know and haven't seen many in the wild.  Maybe its because there has been no official Topps Hobby Shops in Richmond for quite some time, but I believe that is going to change with Graybo's opening recently. The other cards in the scan are the red parallel Gunnar SC rookie, Chrome Cosmic Adley, Rainbow Foil Grayson, and a black parallel '88 of Moose.  Cannot complain for 10 dollars.

The next batch of cards is a culmination of pickups during the day.  The All-Aces insert from 2023 Topps flagship products caught my eye and decided to collect the entire run much like Chris of Nachos Grande.  The guy running his table wanted $5 a piece but I talked him into 6 dollars for the trio and another 2 for the Harper Black Gold from 2023 Topps Update.  The 2024 Topps Update Black Gold set is pretty much hot off the presses and I found the 7 you see here for a buck a piece.  What luck knocking some of the biggest names off the WANTLIST in one fell swoop. With Judge, Ohtani, Soto, Jackie, Mantle, etc off the list early I might finish 2024 before either of the past 3 years of sets!

I also found this beauty in the same row as the all of the Black Gold inserts.  I had been seeing Yamamoto rookies all day and I knew this one was different.  SSP different.  We don't leave cards like this behind!  

The show had begun to wind down for me at least and I wandered back over to my bathrobe Blakes table and hung out and helped him run his table for the rest of the afternoon.  Blake's good buddy Tom who also helps him out was also there and we talked sports and random stuff between the spurts of business coming by the table.  Tom had cracked a box of 2024 Stadium Club baseball and a box of 2024 Donruss football. and was kind enough to give me the stack of base cards he didn't want.  He also gave me the Chrome Orange parallel of Felix Bautista that he pulled. I'll hand the Donruss Football cards off to my nephew.  I can safely say Tom is now my friend too!  I'll keep on the lookout for good Cubs stuff for him .  

One of Blakes customers brought a stack of cards for sale and I cherry picked the following two cards for my last 5 bucks in my pocket.  

The show wound down and as I was helping break down the table, I noticed a table near the mall entrance had a small sign that said FREE.  Right in my price range.  I tried to not be greedy but once again, I could't resist some of them.  I've removed them from the top loaders so you can see them.

These toploaders are literal toast (worse than a Crackhead Gary toploader) but will be fine for me shipping out Sportlots Orders. Check out my store HERE.

Also at the same FREE table, I there was a showcase that had a small hole in the bottom wood that was up for grabs.  Once again, as a bottom feeder, I grabbed it and carried it to my car for my nephew.  He's setting up at card shows in his local mall (in Roanoke, VA.) selling his excess cards to fuel his cardboard card addiction.

I had not planned on staying for trade night but I was Peer Pressured into it by Tom and Blake.  The Card Show and Trade night was put on by Three Point RVA, the card shop in Regency mall. The had free pizza.  How could I resist free pizza and trading sports cards?

I helped Blake go through the pickups that he purchased to fuel his business and even did a trade myself.  I was able to trade the Yamamoto SSP for this card to a younger guy who had some killer cards in his trade box.  He went to the National this past summer and got a free pack of '24 Topps Heritage. I need to hang out with him because maybe his pack ripping luck will rub off on me.  This is the card he traded to me for the Yamamoto:

I'll take an autograph of a PC guy for a buck (my purchase price of the Yamamoto SP)!  

So, overall, a great show for me.  I spent about 40 dollars total and ended up with a bonanza of pickups.  It feels great to be in the Penthouse of card collecting and having some good people to share it with.  A big thanks to Three Point RVA for the show and trade night, Blake and Tom for putting up with me Saturday and you readers for checking out my card show haul.

Pack Break: 2013 Baseball Magazine

When I made my trip to Japan and subsequently went to Mint Opa Urawa (the card shop in my cousin's town) I had to pick up a few packs to bust.  There were some packs of this years Flagship Topps as well as some Bowman and some assorted packs from the past few years.  I can get those anytime so I decided to pick up a couple packs of this year's BBM.  I don't think I pulled anything really good since I've looked them over several times but I did enjoy busting a few packs while overseas.

These names should look familiar to Dodgers and Brewers fans.  It's interesting that I got quite a few cards of players that had MLB experience.  Maybe Nyger's time in Japan will chill him out a bit.  I really can't stand the guy and this will probably be the last time you see him on my blog unless he plays for the O's (unlikely) or knocks on my front door offering up free autographs (extremely unlikely).

In the 3 packs I busted I got a good amount of Lions who I had just seen play a few days earlier.  Though neither of these guys got in the game I think I did spot Spilborghs in the dugout.

A couple more players with MLB experience.  It's quite strange that Andruw Jones is now playing in the Japanese league considering his past heroics stateside.  I also saw Bryan LaHair play on TV while we were just sitting around at my cousin's house.  We watched most of the game though I understood about 3 words that the commentators said.  Good thing I have a decently high baseball IQ so I could figure out what they were talking about.  Funny thing is about televised baseball in Japan (at least the few that I caught on TV) was that if the game wasn't over by the time the 3 hour timeslot was up, the next program came on.  A show about cooking bamboo shoots was more important than what happened over the last inning and a half of the game.  It was a good 1 inning ballgame too!  I never did find out how it ended up but I did learn all about growing bamboo shoots and how to cook them!

Judging from the numbering on the backs of these cards, these are some of the subsets.  Apparently Kenta Maeda is a lights out pitcher since he rocked and ERA of 1.53 last season.  I think I remember him from the WBC this spring and seeing some highlights.  Tadahito Iguchi is a name that should ring some bells too.  He played for the White Sox and Phillies.  I'm not sure if he played anywhere else.

Overall these cards are really sharp looking.  Each card has full bleed photography (a la Upper Deck) even though these are just the flagship issue that BBM makes.  I think the design is pretty good too.  It doesn't detract from the photography but I do think the addition of the team logo would be an improvement.  I wish Topps could do a set like this (similar to Stadium Club) but they are too good to take suggestions from actual collectors!

So that pretty much wraps up my Japan trip.  I think I'll be back on track here with a couple of pack breaks that I've recently done as well as a couple of trades.  Plus the CSA card show is next weekend and I've been saving my money up for that.  I should have a bunch of stuff to share from the show over the next few weeks.

Japanese Baseball: Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters @ Saitama Seibu Lions 5/4/13

I mentioned last week that I visited Japan for about 2 weeks in late April/Early May.  While I was there I saw many, many cool things including temples, shrines, landmarks, and castles.  Overall it was a very satisfying trip in that I think I got to see how a completely different culture lives.  There are similarities and one of them is baseball!  My cousin lives a little north of Tokyo in a town called Urawa.  My wife and I stayed with her for most of our tripUrawa is located in the Saitama prefecture which is where the Seibu Lions play.  Being a huge baseball fan I really wanted to see any baseball game I could while I was there just to take in the experience.  I choose a Seibu Lions game for a reason which I will explain just a little bit later in this post.

We boarded a train from my cousin's condo around noon to head out to the ballpark and after changing a few trains, we arrived at Seibu Dome.  There were several merchandise stands outside of the stadium as well as food vendors and other team related things going on.  I bought a Lions hat as well as picked up a few pocket schedules to give to some of my friends.  Here is the view of the outside of Seibu Dome:

I guess you could say that it's an open air dome some it does have a roof but as you can see from the picture below, you can see there is a gap between the bottom of the dome and the top of the seats.  The stadium itself is kinda carved out of a hill and if you look over the railing out behind the homeplate area, there's a golf course!  Here's the view from our seats:

I said above that I picked the Seibu Lions for a reason.  There was an off chance that I would be able to see former Oriole Dennis Sarfate pitch.  Other than that reason, I really had no rooting preference to which team won the game.  I guess by a stroke of dumb luck, Dennis got in the game!  Here's a shot of him warming up in the top of the 8th inning after being called in from the bullpen!

Amazingly enough when he came in he gave up the tying run to the Fighters but limited the damage and finished the inning without giving up any more.  Luckily for him, he was only tagged with a Blown Save but he also picked up the win because the Lions offense scored in the bottom of the 8th to take the lead for good!  How cool is that!  I got to see a former Oriole pick up a win in a foreign country!

After the game, I was able to find Sarfate's banner on one of the lightposts outside of the stadium:

It was a long game ringing in at 4 and a half hours.  It was only a 9 inning game too!  I can't remember any 3-up 3-down innings either.  There were errors, there were, hit batters, there were pitching changes, there were bases loaded jams, there were home runs, there were bunts.  Pretty much anything that could happen on a baseball field happened that day!  Even I, the big baseball fan that I am was getting a little anxious for the game go be over!

All in all it was a good experience and I'm glad I was able to share it with my wife, and my cousin who got went to great lengths to make our entire trip to Japan very enjoyable.

My 2012 NSCC Experience

I think I am finally officially back in blogging mode now since several things have have been resolved with the old and new house and we officially have internet at the new house!  This will make the process of scanning and writing much more convenient and easy.   Not a moment too soon either as my day at the 2012 National (Saturday) wrap-up will only take this one post.  I got a ton of cool Orioles cards that I won't bore everybody with since they are really only of interest to me and my team set binders.  I didn't make a ton of purchases but the ones I did make were pretty awesome.

I'm just going to get this out of the way.  I bought a 1957 Topps #328 Brooks Robinson rookie card!  This was the #1 priority wantlist item that I wanted and it was a long search for it.  I probably asked about 75 different dealers if they had one and I got the answer of "no"from 70 of them.  I think I wasted a lot of time looking for the right one but I'm very happy with the results.  There were several near mint copies that I saw that just weren't the right card for me.  When I was going to drop about half of my budget on 1 card, I was going to make sure it was the right one.  I got a great deal on it and spent about 15 minutes talking to the dealer that sold it to me.  It has a little bit of paper loss (near his ear), the corners are a little bit fuzzy and the centering is a bit off (the scan cut the bottom border off a bit) and there's a wax stain on the back.  This is what a vintage card is supposed to be (IMHO, of course!).  It's such a great card that I'll treasure always, especially since my wife gave me some money towards it as an early 1st wedding anniversary gift (she got a new puppy out of the deal, so everyone is happy)!

Moving right along to my next purchase is this triple GU card of the Orioles brightest stars in 2010.  It's number 9/18!  Adam is haveing a great season, Roberts can stay on the field long enough to contribute and Nick just came off the DL and is hitting like a crazed animal.  No matter the on field performance, this is a sweet card!  I've seen a few of these on ebay but was always outbid.  I got this card for an Andrew Jackson. The only way this card could have been better would be an Orange background instead of a green one.  This card will definitely be sitting on my desk so I can stare at it.

While on my search for the Brooks RC, I walked by a table that had tons and tons of Japanese baseball cards and memorabilia.  Since I have an interest in Japanese baseball because of my own heritage, I had to stop and check it all out.  There was a lot of cool things there including a bargain bin of unopened packs 5 for 10 bucks.  I rifled through the bin and found 3 of these showing Yu Darvish and Tsuyoshi Shinjo.  These are from the team set so there was an increased chance of pulling a Darvish card.  I didn't get one but it was neat to rip these packs.  I also got the one pack that was from the 2006 Tokyo Yakult Swallows team set since I actually saw them play in person that year.  I also grabbed a pack of 2009 Baseball Magazine First Edition because Darvish is on the front.

I bought myself a box of 2012 Topps Series 2 since during all the moving and painting, I almost totally ignored the set.  I'll be busting that box in the near future and posting up the results.

I also had a dumbass attack and bought 2 boxes of 100 ct. 1 pocket pages (for holding 8x10s in binders).  I didn't realize my mistake until I got home Saturday night.  If anybody needs them I'm willing to trade them to you since they do me no good.  I really needed some 9 pocket pages so I'll just have to wait til next time.

I perused a lot of bargain bins at the show and filled a bunch of holes in some of my O's team sets.  I even met up with Julie from It's Funner Here at one of the dime box tables.  We kept running into each other throughout the day exchanging pleasantries and showing our latest purchases to each other.

I also met up with fellow Orioles Blogger Ryan S. from The Great Orioles Autograph Project in a chance meeting while walking through the cardboard jungle.  We talked for couple minutes about the team and about our respective collecting goals.

And I can't forget my good buddy William from foul bunt.  He stayed at my house Friday night and we stayed up way too late looking through cards.  I appreciate him putting up with my scheduling conflicts and my random sense of humor.  It's always fun going to a card show with someone you know and being able to "geek out" with a person with similar interests.

Overall, I had a good time at the show.  I'm already looking forward to the next card show!