4-3-15 card show report: happy showpening day!

The Cards and Cubs are underway kicking off the 2015 season after the usual long winter wait.  Better yet it even felt like spring up here in Michigan on this fine Easter Sunday.

To celebrate my favorite sport I'm showing off my little haul from the monthly show I made it to on Friday.  I was able to throw a nice chunk of change towards some much-needed trade bait for some great people, plus a little bit at Michigan stuff, posted on TMM this evening.  The rest was all baseball, all the time, and therefore perfect for posting on opening day 2015!

No hits here, but it was money well spent for cards towards some of my favorite PCs.  Everything's an insert, and these all came from one seller from a $0.50 box, though he clearly appreciated my business and gave me a very nice discount on my total purchase.

First up is a nice quartet of Griffeys.  The first card is what I believe to be Leaf's first foray into the Slideshow cards, an insert set I've always enjoyed, even when they were as simple as this back in '94.  Second up is a Topps insert from the same year, the second iteration of their Black Gold insert set, which was a decently tough pull at the time.  Jumping ahead to 1997 we have a Silver Press Proof from that year's Donruss (Update) set, a parallel of one of Junior's cards, this one celebrating the recent innovation of interleague play by pairing him up with Andres Galarraga--not a bad comparison!  Finally, I snagged a 2000 Power Players insert which looks kind of cool but also blends in with a few others from that year.

I also snagged this 1996 Pinnacle Starburst parallel of Mr. Padre, Tony Gwynn.  Gwynn appears on three different cards in that set (and I have a ton to scan for all my PCs combined!) including this subset, and I love Pinnacle's old dufex parallels like this one.

I did quite well when it comes to the Iron Man as well.  As you can see I managed to find both Juniors from the 1994 Topps Black Gold set, and as always I enjoy shots of Ripken in the field.  Also from '94 is an Ultra All-Stars insert which has a very, very red background.  Speaking of backgrounds, the '96 Collector's Choice Crash the Game insert has a very nice Baltimore orange foil thing going for it.  That was one of the earlier interactive card promos where if the player pictured homered during the series taking place between the dates on the front, you could send it in for an upgraded version.  Each player had three cards with different dates and this one for Cal is the first.

Verlander may be on the DL for the first time in his career but that doesn't mean I forgot about him!  I found a pair of 2010s Topps parallels to add to his collection.  First is a Refractor I was surprised I didn't have from 2010 Topps Chrome.  The other is the Gold Sparkle version of the 2011 AL ERA leaders from 2012 Topps.  2011, of course, was JV's Cy Young/MVP year, and winning the pitching triple crown, including the ERA category, definitely earned him some votes!

That was certainly a fun way to celebrate the first day of baseball.  Happy opening day 2015 and happy collecting, everybody!