5/2/25 card show report: it's gonna be May

With another monthly show coming up in less than a week, tonight I'm recapping my Taylor Town trip from May.

Coming off a show where I'd spent a yearly low of just $55 I almost doubled my spending at a $100 even. Oddly enough I may have come home with fewer cards than April, but that was the result of an increase in quality at the expense of quantity. Hey, whatever works!

First up, I did snag a bit of trade bait to make available here, all of which is a bit higher end than normal:

The Lo Duca auto is numbered /227 while the patch is limited to 100 copies. I know I trade with a bunch of Dodgers collectors but decided I might prefer specific offers of items in trade for these as they're on the nicer side. Meanwhile, the jersey/auto of Stewart is /75, and the Sano manurelic isn't numbered.

Please claim any if you'd like to trade for them here or over on TCDb.

As for my keepers, I can also sum them up in a single scan:

#1 PC guy Cal gets yet another addition in the form of a '21 Topps 70 Years of Topps insert that imagines what he'd look like on the 1978 design. His fellow 2007 Hall of Fame inductee (I was there!) Tony Gwynn is the other baseball representative tonight in the form of a pair of early 2000s relics. The vertical card is from 2002 Topps 206 while its horizontal sibling hails from 2001 Upper Deck. The latter came out just four years after Gwynn was on the small checklist of the ballyhooed debut of UD's Game Jersey cards. It was certainly a different time back then! I now count 12 relics in my collection of Mr. Padre, and I'll happily spend in the $5-$10 range to continue growing that count.

As for football, the lone non-relic I picked up was a 2021 Absolute Blue Diamonds parallel of former UM RB Chris Evans. It's numbered /99 and the color was along the right lines so why not? Next to him we have my first two hits of 2023 National Champ QB J.J. McCarthy, both of which are Vikings jersey relics. On the left is a jersey from '24 Absolute's Rookie Force insert, and that's joined by the same year's Donruss Rookie Phenom Jerseys set. I hope he hits the ground running as Minnesota's QB this season after barely playing during last year's preseason due to injury. For now he becomes subject #265 in my football collection.

Last up is relic #5 (and 6th overall hit) of the electrifying Desmond Howard. He's pictured on the card above with the Lions but this one was actually made by Stadium Club in 2001 to celebrate his appearance earlier that year in the Pro Bowl as a KR for the NFC. That was his lone appearance in the NFL all-star game over his 11 seasons, and he was named to the team on the back of numbers like 457 punt return yards (including a career-high 95-yarder) and TD, plus 1401 kick return yards on 57 tries, including a season-high 70.

That's all for this time but I'll figure out what I'd like to show off next and try to get another post up soon. Until then, if anyone has any solutions for the reeling Tigers, please feel free to share them with the front office in Detroit!