3/7/26 card show report: NIRvana

Happy April, friends! Baseball's back, even if warmer temps aren't (at least consistently), and Michigan Basketball is in the NCAA tournament final for the eighth time, six of which have been during my lifetime. It's also Easter, and I hope some of you enjoyed some related treats!

I made it out to my monthly show a couple days ago, but before I cover that we're going to have to go back to early March since I still have some catching up to do.

I actually went on a Saturday for the first time in a while for a couple reasons, but it worked out nicely. Because my usual seller hasn't had much time to add newer stuff, I didn't spend much on items from the boxes I usually buy from. I think it came out to $20 or so worth of dimes, $1s, $2s, and $5s. However, besides grabbing a couple more $5 cards from his showcases, I had a blast looking through one or two of his unsorted/unpriced boxes, as I do from time to time. He takes a bit of time to figure out his asking price, and it's always been very fair as far as what I'm willing to pay, so we both end up happy.

In this case I grabbed a handful of pretty nice stuff, most of which you'll see in this post, and much of which falls under the category of the greatest thing in sports cards: 90s inserts (which, of course, rule). Hence, the title of tonight's post: #NinetiesInsertsRule!

For that stack he wanted just $40, which I was more than willing to throw down, especially considering how much other sellers seem to love to jack up the price of increasingly scarce '90s cards, if not everything. That put me at a solid $70 total with lots to enjoy.

Here are my keepers:

The cheapest cards in scan #1 were the '25 A&G base of Tigers HOFers Cobb and Kell, both of which I believe were in the dime boxes. That's pretty cool since Kell's actually an SP! I can't remember if the Ginter insert of Gibby was in the $1 boxes or the misc. ones, but either way I love seeing a World Series celebration card of my favorite postseason homer celebration of Kirk's; We had him first, Dodgers! And Liranzo's Topps Pro Debut base is my first card of the top-100 catching prospect.

Besides those, let's celebrate some 90s inserts! #1 is a Tony Gwynn 1998 Leaf Fractal Matrix parallel, a set limited to 1600 copies which I think was the inspiration for Leaf's crazy Fractal Materials product. Mr. Padre also appears on one of this post's top cards: a 2000 Paramount Fielder's Choice insert. These die-cut chase cards done up in the style of a glove illustrate the greatness of Pacific, and I love grabbing these when I can.

Going back to "matrix" for a minute, we have HOF Wolverines SS Barry Larkin flying high on 1997 Stadium Club parallel called "TSC Matrix," so named for it's crazy cool background. Then we're back to another of my absolute favorite inserts (and brands): 1996 Studio's Masterstrokes, in this case featuring HOF P Greg Maddux. Like Pacific, Donruss/Leaf cranked out some beauties, like the artistic chase card above, numbered /5000 on the back. And lastly in this scan, the newest Dean Palmer to join my collection is a 2000 Stadium Club Chrome Refractor. SCC was even cooler back then than it is now, and the Refractors still look amazing today. (Also, 2000 is an honorary member of the #90sinsertsrule club.) I'm nearing 500 cards of Palmer, which is crazy to me.

I've got one more baseball scan with some heavy hitters before we get to lower-end stuff from other sports. No Griffey this time, but Gwynn and Maddux were joined by Ripken thanks to my 21st card of the 2007 Ultra Iron Man insert. This one celebrates his first AL MVP in 1983. Next to him is a cheapie 2020 Absolute Spectrum Blue parallel of future HOFer Max Scherzer that I thought looked very cool.

We'll get to the biggest card in this group momentarily, but first I'll cover the horizontal cards. All four of these guys actually appeared in the first scan. Gwynn's third pickup is a '98 Leaf Statistical Standouts insert, a chase set with a bit of a matte texture that was numbered /2500 on the back (and the first 250 were die-cut). Larkin #2 is a shiny 1995 Score Summit Nth Degree parallel with cool rainbow foil line/dot patterns on it. Maddux's second is a Chrome parallel inserted into 1999 Stadium Club, a year before it became its own product, as seen on the Palmer above. And another of my fun gets from the random box was a manurelic of Cobb from 2015 Topps. These "medallions" celebrate each subject's first HR, and for the Georgia Peach that was September 23, 1905, the lone run in a loss at Washington.

And now we have my co-favorite card of the show (that Fielder's Choice Gwynn, tho!) in my newest Gibby relic. Also part of the $40 assortment of cards, this is a 2005 Donruss Prime Patches Portraits Quad Swatch that comes with two jersey swatches plus pieces of a bat and hat. It's numbered /150 on the back and offers a design typical of Donruss/Leaf/Playoff back in the day, one I still miss. The presentation here is great, with an 80s photo of Kirk atop the four relic pieces, which are arranged nicely (even if they aren't terribly large). I now count 13 Gibby hits in my collection, including four autographs to go with this, my ninth relic.

And we'll close things out with some Wolverines. As I mentioned, men's basketball will be playing for a second title tomorrow night, plus the women's team also made it to the Elite 8 over the course of a fantastic season of their own. (AND Michigan Hockey's in the Frozen Four this weekend, but I've got no hockey cards to talk about this time.)

Basketball is represented by some colorful parallels of Trey Burke along with Pistons teammates Caris LeVert and Duncan Robinson. Detroit's show quite the improvement this year to rocket to the top of the Eastern Conference, and maybe they can throw it back to the late 80s (and the Bad Boys teams) like Michigan's doing. Meanwhile, I scored some cool football inserts as well, starting with a die-cut Prizm of David Ojabo (now of the Dolphins). DPJ and Nico Collins are WRs depicted in chase cards from Mozaic and Prizm, which are so similar I often don't notice a difference. And last up is LB Josh Uche on a blue(!) Donruss Optic parallel, another brand that falls into the Panini version of Chrome cards. As it turns out, Uche just signed with Miami as well so he'll be joining Ojabo as a Dolphin.

This was obviously a fantastic show and I'm excited to add even more cool 90s chase cards to my collection. I know I can count on comments from at least a couple of my regular readers who'll appreciate some of these!

Next time I think I'll be doing a recap of a few eBay purchases I made in the first quarter of 2026, then it should be Facebook Marketplace purchase #1 followed by this month's show. Go Tigers, go Blue, and go spring!