6/4/21 card show report: That's Bait

As much fun as I had at last month's show where I made good use of my favorite seller's $1 box, my enjoyment and loot were both doubled yesterday. How do you top a take-home like that? Cut prices in half! All of his cards that were previously a buck were now $0.50, and friends, I went nuts. The box you see above is the haul I brought home: 124 $0.50 cards and 130 dimes ($75, for those of you that are as math-challenged as I am). A few of the dimes went towards my collections, I found a ton of great stuff for upcoming trade packages, and I landed a ridiculous amount of general trade bait figuring I'd either find takers here or throw them on TCDB. At those prices I was much less likely to toss something back in the boxes, though I did tend to ignore the minors/low-end college hits. I grabbed so many cards thinking "This is only $0.50?!"

So have a quick look at my personal dime pickups and then settle in for a trade baitapalooza!

Just a reminder: almost everything here cost me a dime. Gwynn's first card is from the pre-Chronicles/Optic combo product 1998 Donruss Collections and is a chromed-out version of his Leaf base from that year. Flagship Donruss, Elite, and Preferred could also be found in those packs. Speaking of Donruss, I also found Mr. Padre's base from last year's product, at least the one that uses his more common name instead of an "Anthony" variation.

My lone personal pickup from the $0.50 was the '96 Studio Bronze Press Proof of Cal, and I was pretty excited to nab that parallel, one of "just" 2000 copies made! The foil's a bit messed up on the back but that doesn't bother me as I'm a huge fan of that year's design, and the product in general. To that I added a 2019 A&G Ginter Greats insert and 2020 Donruss base (I already had the variation of this one) for a dime each.

I've mentioned him enough here for all of you to know that I love collecting HOF former Wolverine George Sisler, and I snagged the 1999 UD Century Legends card you see above out of the dime box because I wasn't sure if I had it. As it turns out I didn't because it's actually an NNO (no number on the back) version with a Washington logo on something that looks like a circular sticker where the number would be:

Finally, on the basketball front I couldn't ignore a new Jamal Crawford insert for a dime. It's from 2012-13 Panini Prestige's Bonus Shots Gold parallel set and is numbered /249, which coincidentally seems like the number of years he played in the league!

I had even better luck when it came to football dimes, especially on the rookie card front. Card #1 is my first of TE Devin Asiasi, who played one season in Ann Arbor and then transferred back home to UCLA. He joins C Cesar Ruiz (RC #2) and LB Josh Uche (also #2, plus a Michigan uni!) out of 2020 Donruss. I was also very happy to find my third first-year of CB Jourdan Lewis, this one out of 2017 Playoff.

On the insert side of things, I believe the two Thomas Rawls parallels were pretty close together, if not back-to-back. The first is a 2016 Panini Sacrifice Die-Cut and is numbered /199 up front (and, yes, die-cut) while the other is an unnumbered Blue Press Proof from the following year's Donruss. Speaking of transfers, he also departed the Wolverines for his senior season, going up to Central Michigan before appearing in parts of four NFL campaigns.

One of my favorite recent guys, Denard Robinson, overlapped with Rawls' college career for a pair of seasons, and there was no way I was going to ignore his 2016 Prestige Xtra Points Green parallel you see above, because chances are good that if I didn't need it, Jeff would.

And then we have two more items of star WRs bookending Uche's RC. First up is a sweet Amani Toomer that isn't an insert but might as well be with its stylin' foil at the bottom. That's his 1996 Press Pass Paydirt base. On the other side is even more gold, specifically a Gold Medallion parallel of former #1 Derrick Alexander's '95 Ultra 2nd Year Standouts. I already had the regular version of that so I'm glad to have finished off the pair.

That was a pretty nice take-home for me, but obviously I'm even more excited about the cards I've already sorted into piles for future trade packages, plus this bonanza that I'm geeked to offer today.

Briefly, if you see anything that interests you, please leave a comment here, shoot me an email, or hit me up on Twitter, then I'll see about working something out with you. I'm being up front in stating that these cost me $0.50, so it's not like I'm gonna ask an arm and a leg. If you're already a common trade partner of mine, I may already have a stack going for you and will be happy to add to it. If we haven't dealt before I'll probably want to come up with a deal with you first.

Also, if anyone needs details on one or more of these (e.g. name, team, serial numbering, etc.), please let me know!

Baseball and football dimes. I leaned towards numbered stuff and parallels since those tend to be good items to have for TCDB deals. I don't know why most of the baseball ones were Twins, but maybe a Minnesota collector will want them!

Vertical baseball autos, auto/relics, and relics. (The Inscribed Overbay is actually a $1 card from last time, but I figured I might as well include it here.) A bunch of these (and the rest that you'll see) are also numbered.

Horizontal baseball autos, auto/relic, and relics. Beltre and Johnson hits for $0.50? Sign me up!

I even grabbed a few basketball autos (and one relic) to diversify my portfolio, as it were!

It wasn't on purpose, but football definitely overtook baseball in volume. Here's all the vertical autos and relics. Again, lots of numbered stuff.

And lastly, here's the horizontal football autos and relics.

I'm hoping at least a few of these result in deals here but if not I'll eventually get them added to TCDB and see what I can get done over there.

Once again I had a blast at a show, my second in as many months since it became possible to get back to them, and I'm already excited about the next one!

I believe my next post will cover the Facebook purchase I've teased a few times now, so stay tuned for that. While you're waiting, let's get trading!