1-2-16 card show report: home of HOFers

It's a new year and a new month which means I made another trip to the monthly card show in Taylor.  The show went for only two days last week due to the holiday, so I headed over on Saturday.  There was a surprising dearth of cards that interested me this time so I only spent about $25, but I eventually came away mostly with some nice dime, quarter, and up box content, both in terms of trade bait and PC stuff.

First up is a '93 UD insert of MLB's newest HOFer, Ken Griffey Jr.  Better yet, in a somewhat higher-end box I found this:

You'd better believe the "90s inserts rule" tag is in play, guys.  '96 Bowman's Best was the first year that the Mirror Image idea became its own insert, and it improved on the previous two subsets by going double-sized with twice as many players.  In terms of sheer talent this is probably one of the three best groups of players in the set, with Frank Thomas/Richie Sexson/Jeff Bagwell/Todd Helton and Tom Glavine/Billy Wagner/Randy Johnson/Jarrod Washburn also rating highly.  Man, now I really want to put this set together!  Maybe I'll just see about doing that, along with the equally superb '97 version...

That card gives me a nice segue into our next player, Tony Gwynn:

This is a fun little trio that's another good cross-section of 90s inserts.  The '99 Topps Lords of the Diamond set has always kind of appealed to me, but I think the '96 Summit insert is even more interesting, not only because of its cool design, but because it's one of the earlier cards I own that features the foil-stamped serial-numbering that became so common in the 2000s.

I had even a bit more luck with one other PC player that day--Greg Maddux:

Everything here is from the mid-to-late 90s except for the last one, which hails from 2005 Leaf.  First up is a '94 Pinnacle insert which means the much-loved Dufex!  The Masters insert comes from Fleer's short-lived Emotion product.  The '96 Fleer insert credits Maddux with a crazy excellent 18-0 road record since mid 1994, proving just how dominant he could be.  I also scored Maddux's version of the '99 Topps Lords of the Diamonds insert.  Finally, another short-lived product makes an appearance with the awesomely-named Nitro insert from '99 UD Ionix.

I guess when in doubt, just scour the cheap boxes for fun 90s inserts!  That's all for this time but please head over to TMM this evening to see the rest of my pickups.