4/7/18 card show report: Gold Glove Guys

(Before I get started I'd like to insert a quick note that you should all check out my revamped Player Collections page.  I put in lots of work over the weekend to try to clean it up a bit to make it easier to look at given the large number of players.  I also added 11 new collections:  one from baseball (Brett Adcock, for whom I have zero cards at the moment), eight in football, and two hockey guys.)

Today's post recaps the most recent show I attended a couple weekends ago, back at my usual haunt in Taylor.  I was thrilled to have better-than-usual success in finding PC stuff and trade bait from my favorite seller; besides scoring 120 quarter cards and a few dollar hits I got a rare chance to flip through a higher-end box of his, coming up with two very nice hits for me and two for a future trade.  All that came out to a very reasonable $50 and I left the show in a great mood.

As usual a large chunk of what I picked up is heading out in trade packages (or already has, actually, so watch your mailboxes the next few days!) but I've got plenty of highlight-worthy stuff for you here and over on TMM.  Here's half the damage:

We'll begin with a very nice Griffey base card out of 2001 Upper Deck Gold Glove, a product with an excellent theme.  The Gold Glove stamp in the lower-left corner is a reminder that Junior won that award every year of the 90s, a testament to his five-tool greatness.

Speaking of Gold Gloves, they're the focus of the first of this Greg Maddux insert trio.  A 2003 Bazooka Comic makes light of Maddux winning 13 straight fielding awards (1990-2002), and he went on to pile up five more before retiring!  Card #2 is a 2007 Topps Allen and Ginter Dick Perez sketch, an insert that brings back the glory days of Diamond Kings (even if Mad Dog is in a Padres uni).  Last up is 2016 Topps Hallowed Highlights, a card that commemorates the HOFer needing a ridiculous 76 pitches to finish off the Cubs on July 22, 1997.

While I knew I had a Cal Ripken Jr. 2001 UD Gold Glove card to go with Griffey's, I hadn't realized that all four base cards I picked up of him this time featured the Iron Man in the field until I scanned them together.  That card looks fantastic but card #1 here--2000 Topps Gallery--gets the easy win for best photo and overall design.  Check out that huge bunch of dirt on Cal's uni!  The other two cards here hail from a couple more 2001 Upper Deck products:  SP Authentic and Pros and Prospects.  Definitely a nice quartet of the guy who won AL Gold Glove Awards in '91 and '92 before running into the Omar Vizquel buzz saw.

Last up today I have two Verlanders, which can seem like "many" when you're digging through a quarter box just a few minutes outside of Detroit.  I thought this 2017 Donruss Optic Diamond Kings subset card looked awesome so I had to have it.  The "chromifying" effect that Optic gives the regular cards looks great and I wouldn't mind scoring some of the parallels if I find them.

Wait, I said two Verlanders--where's the other one?

Bingo.  This is one of the cards that bumped up my total a bit but was extremely reasonably priced overall:  a Sepia parallel of one of JV's 2008 Topps Triple Threads triple jerseys (#24/27).  He may have shipped off to Houston last season but his Tigers cards are still plenty in demand here so I wasn't leaving without this one.  A year after his ROY award campaign that included a trip to the World Series, Verlander indeed one-upped himself with 18 wins in 2007, a career high that he's eclipsed twice since.  This surprise addition is my 22nd hit of Mr. Kate Upton, and 12th relic.  Not a bad way to end the day!

As good as this little haul was, the pickups you can see over on TMM this evening are just as nice, so please don't forget to head over there too!  As for posts over here, now that I'm caught up on shows you should see a couple trade packages next, followed by eBay pickups, pending any other surprise additions.