10/1/21 card show report: I want Blue to show me the way

With a big Michigan game looming at noon on Saturday (which went quite well for the Maize & Blue, if you hadn't heard), I once again took a Friday off to head to the monthly show in Taylor a couple days ago. Although I was disappointed to see that my favorite seller still had no dime boxes with him, and that most of what was in the $0.50/$1/$2 boxes was as uninteresting as the last couple shows, I did have some fun going through his quarter boxes, pulling out 60 items, mostly for trade bait, for $15. Given how busy his tables were when I got there, though, I started at the table of a guy I don't remember seeing before. He had a shoebox of 2/$3 autos and relics, of which I grabbed eight, plus some quarter cards that were serial numbered. I snagged eight of those as well, dropping another $14.

Again, it was nothing huge to write home (or blog) about, but I still accomplished my goal of adding some trade bait plus new items to my collection--two scans' worth--so I left reasonably satisfied. Here are my scores from this trip:

My baseball pickups all came out of the big quarter boxes. Griffey's is a base from Topps' 2006 Co-Signers product, and while some might call the design "busy" I find it shiny and fun, plus it's a new Junior! I still appreciate Kinsler's time with the Tigers enough that I sometimes collect cards of him with the team for whom he's more well known, the Rangers, such as Bowman Chrome Refractors from 2011 and '13. Maddux was my other baseball twofer thanks to a 2016 Topps Wrigley insert and '96 Collector's Choice Silver Signature parallel. '96 was definitely a good year for UDCC's design. Last up is a 2002 Leaf Rookies & Stars subset issue of Cal Ripken Jr., meaning I have 3/4 of his run in the bunch (missing #251 celebrating his '82 AL ROY). Not a bad little group with three of my big four non-Michigan PCs hit!

Meanwhile the Michigan side of things was a full nine cards strong with the three other sports represented. Coach Juwan Howard stars on one of the two numbered cards I grabbed for myself, a '98-'99 UD AeroDynamics Tier 1 die-cut that was limited to 2000 copies. It's even more enjoyable collecting him since his successful return to Ann Arbor has made some "experts" look foolish for predicting that he'd be a bust.

Of course football was the main attraction and I scored seven cards of six subjects. TE Devin Asiasi transferred out to UCLA but remains in my collection thanks to non-Bruins cards like his 2020 Absolute Retail base, which I'm not sure counts as a RC. I'll decide at time point. Former UM footballer and US president Gerald Ford gets in on the action with a 2015 Topps baseball insert. Quality OL/unquality person Taylor Lewan pops up twice on Score Gold parallels from 2017 and 2020, with the design on the latter much better since it goes all the way around the border. Bengals TE Tony McGee is the subject of a '96 Pro Line parallel that was a staple of the era: a Printer's Proof. Cleveland WR DPJ's partially airbrushed uni/helmet comes courtesy of 2020 Leaf Draft. And top 10 college football player of all time Charles Woodson continues to appear in the base sets of newer Panini products, such as 2020 Mosaic, in this case with his first/final team, the Raiders.

And finally we have one more quarter numbered card, one that I was excited to dig up: a Mike Knuble 2001-02 Pacific Hobby LTD parallel that's numbered 76/99 on the back. I'm a fan for a few reasons: I love Pacific's base designs from the time, their numbered parallels are fun, and Knuble's one of my favorite Michigan Hockey alumni as he also played for the Wings, winning the '97-'98 cup that brought glory back to Hockeytown. There are few ways to spend a quarter better than this!

It's hard to believe that just two more months and their respective shows remain in 2021. Given how bad things were last year (and in some cases continue to be thanks to selfish idiots) I'm grateful to have been able to get back to them this year even if the results aren't always what I hope.

But speaking of results I did hope for, Saturday's destruction of Wisconsin has me in good spirits as I look to have another good week of collecting no matter what it brings. That should include a post showing off another PWE that showed up the other day, one that brings some shine to ward off the recent cloudy weather here in Ann Arbor. Stay tuned and Go Blue!