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.