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.

My Latest COMC order

    It seems to be pretty popular here in the blogosphere to do Black Friday COMC shopping and show off the spoils.  I've done COMC show and tell in the past, and so I'll throw my hat in the ring and show some of my favorites from this batch. I usually only ship cards that I buy on COMC once a year so this shipment of 266 cards was even larger than normal.  I rarely ever load money into my account and just spend what I am able to sell on my own.  This year I actually put sixty extra dollars into my account for the Black Friday sales.  In total, I spent $368.13 and got 266 cards.  I spent $1.38 per card.  I'm a value shopper to the extreme.

    Here's a shot of my invoice.  I was targeted to ship in early January but I actually got it right before Christmas.  I'm just late posting....
 

    These three fill some sets. The Gorman Thomas was the last Diamond King I needed from 1983, Harper was the last of the 15 Chase it Down I needed to complete that insert set. The Pro-Vision Sheffield is from 1993 and the price was right.  1993 Pro-Visions are actually much rarer than other years.

    I added the Post cereal box cards from the early 60's to my Orioles team set lists and binders.  These three are in pretty good shape and exceptionally cool

    Trey Mancini has been a favorite of mine since he carried the O's through a dark period.  I read he's trying to make a comeback this coming season, so I wish him well.  Since he left Baltimore, his stats have declined severely so we'll see if a team gives him a shot to see if he has something left in the tank.

    More Mancini hits.  His cards are really cheap right now.  I'm happy to take them off of the hands of the sellers.

    Austin Hays is another former Oriole (although more recent) that I have a PC of.  His cards are also cheap and I'm more than happy to grab a few nice hits at a low price.

    Jordan Westburg is a player I've really taken a liking to.  He reminds me a lot of JJ Hardy and Cal Ripken with their steady play, are all business between the lines but have easygoing, soft-spoken demeanor off the field.  It also doesn't hurt that I ended up talking to his parents the whole game when he was in the minors.  When he was with Double-A Bowie, they were in town to play the Flying Squirrels, I ended up striking up a conversation with a couple during the game.  I didn't know it until after the game was over that I had been talking to Jordan's parents the whole game!

    Of course, I had to indulge in Cal Ripken cards.  This Cal to Greatness is #11 of the 15 card set and finishes off the insert set for me.  Cards 11 thru 15 of the Cal to Greatness set are actually much tougher to find than cards 1 through 10.

Its not often I'm able to find numbered Cal cards for less than ten dollars.  I was ecstatic to get this Big Boppers from 1998 Upper Deck Retro for a great price!

Diamond Producers was quite rare (case hits) back in 1997.  It took me a while to find a Ripken at a price I could stomach.  It was a near instant buy when I saw it pop up.

I bought this card the night Corbin Burnes was traded to the Orioles.  He was great for the Orioles this year.  I'll miss him every 5th day but I understand why he wanted to play for the Diamonbacks.  Good for him and good for D-backs fans.

It's not often you run into Albert Belle relic cards.  ESPECIALLY ones where he is pictured as an Oriole.  Old school Pacific is just the best.  

I'm not going to bore you with all the team set fillers and such that I got in this shipment.  This was just the highlights that I wanted to show off.  Hopefully, you've all enjoyed the cards as much as I have.