6/20/26 card show report: meetup mania!

It took me until early August to post this but tonight I'm finally giving you a recap of the much-hyped June show and meetup!

It was another amazing one, as you can tell from this picture of me, John, Jeff, and Jason, plus Jason's wife Sam. I headed west to Kalamazoo, picked up John, and got us over to the Wings Event Center, a place that's hosted this show a number of times. This one was actually down in one of the ice rinks instead of the expo space, which was weird but ultimately fine.

When we got there we were able to meet up with everyone else, then we headed to the tables run by the Hollister family, some very nice folks Jeff knows well from previous shows when he and his cousin were also dealers. They were nice enough to take the above picture, and I spent plenty of time at their tables piling up some great cards.

This was almost like a mini National for me since I'm used to spending most of my time and money at one person's table thanks to my monthly show. There was a lot more variety to check out here, and Jason pointed me to a number of sellers who had stuff I could most definitely use. I think I bought stuff from around four or five dealers there, and I could have probably spent more time and money if I had any of either left!

Here's what my box looked like when I got home to give you an idea of just how much I picked up. That's one of those graded card boxes, and it works perfectly for me at my monthly show, but in this case it wasn't nearly enough to transport my haul! I spent $140 that Saturday in late June, making up for the small amount I'd thrown down a couple weeks prior, and I'm thrilled at some of the big items I found for myself and others. Most of the latter have already been sent out in trade packages, but tonight you get to see my goodies:

Not a ton of baseball stuff, but some good ones for sure. I think Jason might have picked up that Clark for me. He's been a bit of a spark for the Tigers post-trade deadline, which is very cool. That second Gwynn is numbered out of 2001, the Ripkens look great, and Pudge #1 is actually a sample version of a favorite 90s insert (they rule!) of mine, Great X-Pectations.

That Pepsi Palmer is a bit beat up but is something I'd never seen before--a 2000 collab with Upper Deck comprising 15 Tigers. And lastly for baseball, I think the Bondo bat is another card Jason scored for me. It's always funny getting bat relics of pitchers in the DH era, though at least we got to see some of these guys at the plate before both leagues succumbed to the designated hitter. Baseball-Reference says that Jeremy had 31 plate appearances over 15 games, and he was lucky enough to tally one hit in that time. He singled to lead off the top of the 5th against Jon Lieber and the Phillies on June 15, 2007, and a couple singles got him to third before a Gary Sheffield sac fly brought him home for his only career run scored.

The baseball stuff was nice, but football clearly won the day here in terms of my keepers. More specifically, I came home with tons of inserts, color, and RCs of Michigan gridiron stars--enough to need six scans to capture everything! I won't bore you with details, so feel free to just admire these if you feel like it.

I'm enjoying continuing to build out my Corum PC, and I've been surprised by how reasonably affordable Graham's cards are, but I guess that's what happens when you play defense.

When I said lots of color, I meant it! A good chunk of these came from the Hollisters' 3/$1 boxes. The cards were originally a buck each and for me they would have been overpriced at that level, but they worked fine when they were 67% off.

That Prestige Gold of Kwity Paye, numbered /99, was one of my favorite pickups of the show. Gold is a nice parallel color when you're wearing the maize & blue.

By luck this scan contains most of the numbered football cards I scored. Peterson's 2001 Chrome Refractor is limited to 999, Denard's Topps Platinum goes to 99, and Terrell's Pacific chase card is also SN999. I guess these three were dressed to the nines!

The last football scan includes a few more inserts before getting to the hits, including a '97 Pinnacle Inscriptions V2 card I already owned, allowing me to peel the protective coating off of this one.

To those I added a third auto of OT Trezelle Jenkins (third hit), a jersey relic of the A-Train (#55 overall), and football relic of Thomas's positional counterpart Tyrone Wheatley (#8).

My haul didn't quite end there, though, as I picked up this Pacific jersey relic of Wings legend Nick Lidstrom from the same seller that had the above relics (and some other nice cards I scored for trade packages). I think this one was something like $3-$4 so I was happy to add it to my small collection of Wings hits.

As you can tell I had a blast, not only because of my pickups, but especially because of the great time I had seeing Jeff, John, and Jason & Sam. It's a treat to hang out with all of them and I'm glad I've been able to do so a few times now! I don't know if we'll be able to do it again this year, or at least maybe not all of us, but if it can even become a yearly tradition I'd be over the moon. A big thank you again to everyone that made the trip, you're the best!

I'm not quite sure what I'll be back with next but I've still got plenty to cover, if not the attention span and energy to do so. In the meantime, please let me know what you think of my pickups, your recent show experiences, or anything else that makes you want to comment.

11/8/25 card show report: a triple "J" meetup

For what will likely be my final post of 2025 (man, the year went by so fast!) I'm going to close the book on my collecting for November by covering the show I went to the weekend after the one I just covered.

Thanks to a bye in Michigan's football schedule I was able to head out west to Portage, not far from Kalamazoo, for a show held in a school gym. I made the 1.5 hour-ish trek out there because I'd get to hang out once again with John, Jeff, and Jason (plus his fiancee Samantha). You just don't pass up opportunities like that! John lives nearby and I was able to pick him up, Jeff's about a half hour closer than I am, and Jason's drive was just a little longer than Jeff's.

Of course I mention all three of these guys here and then didn't think to get a picture of all of us together while we were at the show. At least I got one of John and me when I dropped him off before heading home:

Anyway, just like I enjoyed hanging out with Angus at the show the week before, I had a blast with these folks. I ended up spending a bit of time with each of them, including Jeff before he took off (he beat us all there), but not before handing me the stuff I posted in this trade recap. I then stopped at a few tables where Jason and Sam were looking before they headed out. Then I closed out the show looking at a few other tables with John before we got out of there.

It was really nice seeing all of them in person and I greatly appreciate that they all took the time to hang out for a bit. I'm grateful for all the cool people I know through this hobby and here I was surrounded by a bunch at once, truly a treat.

I ended up spending $79, every last dollar in my wallet but one, apparently, and scored some cool items that went in Christmas card packages. I also came home with a few keeper items for myself, but thankfully not so many that I'll need to spend a lot of time going over them.

This 73-card boxed set focusing on Mr. Tiger, Al Kaline, was actually the very last thing I bought. I noticed it on a table way in the back and made sure to come back for it before I left. It's fairly low-end as far as production value goes, but for $5 I couldn't just leave it.

Here's a look at some vertical fronts. If the design isn't much to write home about, the photography choices are still very cool. The cards span Kaline's playing career and life beyond the field. There's a mix of orange and black borders not to mention black & white and color images.

 
There were some fun horizontal images too so I included a scanner bed worth of those as well. 

The backs are about as simple as the fronts but the write-ups are solid. You'll notice the first card is numbered "1A" and there's a "1B" as well, and then the rest of the numbers go up to 72.

One other thing to note is that the set was made with both black and red borders on the back, and mine obviously has the latter, which is a bit less common.

Overall I thought this was a great value for just $5 and it allowed me to add more than 70 cards to Al's PC!

I believe the rest of my cards, all but one of which were of the football variety, came from three different tables. First up is my sixth relic (13th hit overall) of Sauce Castillo. I'm pretty sure this came from a younger guy, probably a teenager, who was wearing a #2 Michigan Football jersey, so I was happy to give him a sale.

The cheapest football card here is a SAGE base of Michigan/Bengals DB DJ Turner. And then I found three very nice hits from the sport. One is my 12th autograph of TE Jake Butt, out of 2017 Spectra and numbered /75 on the back. #2 is a large multi-colored jersey swatch (with stitching) of RB Hassan Haskins from 2022 Panini XR, which is limited to just 25 copies. And last up, I overpaid a bit for the auto you see of Iowa/Michigan/Lions QB Jake Rudock, but it just looks so cool! It's a 2016 Panini Black Gold card, and I'd already scored the "White Gold" version (numbered /99, as opposed to 199 here) so now I have its twin. The signature and player image areas being enhanced by acetate make this a big winner for me in addition to the black background with gold foil. Besides the other auto I mentioned, I have a plate of Rudock as well and therefore three hits of him overall.

Thank you again to John, Jeff, and Jason & Sam for a nice meetup at this show. I hope we can set up something similar in 2026 depending on when these shows are scheduled!

This should be it for me for 2025. I'll mostly be spending tomorrow watching Michigan face Texas in the Citrus Bowl as my fellow fans and I look forward to a new coach next year, plus I've been putting in some effort cleaning up and updating my trade bait on TCDb. I should be back early in 2026 (maybe as soon as Thursday? We'll see!) to recap this month, which brought a couple more blogger trade packages, plus I have the December monthly show and rest-of-year looks at my eBay purchases and TCDb trades to get to.

So Happy New Year to all of you, and GO BLUE!

7/4/25 card show report: fireworks on the fourth

I guess Saturday night's alright for blogging after enjoying watching your favorite college football team emerge victorious on a lovely fall day.

But for tonight let's go all the way back to July and the monthly show I made it to on the Fourth! I dropped $130 on some very nice stuff, a high so far this year, and some of that was thanks to the presence of some cards from my favorite decade. I also enjoyed another blogger meetup:

John and his wife made the trip all the way from the western part of the state and it's always great to see him when it's possible. Side note--we may be able to meet up at another show next month, fingers crossed! Anyway, as you can see we were repping our favorite teams.

I've slowed down my acquisitions of unassigned trade bait not destined for specific folks as I have a good amount I still need to move if possible on TCDb, so once again tonight it's all keepers. And yes, the "90s inserts rule" tag is in full effect!

CF Max Clark, the #3 overall pick from 2023, is one of Detroit's absolute top prospects, so I thought to snag a few Bowman Chrome inserts of him. Then I went much older school with Cobb on a GQ Framed parallel, which makes a set I don't otherwise care about look better.

Oh hey, it's the first of our awesome 90s inserts, Griffey-style! #1 is a '97 UD chase card called Long Distance Connection, one that notes Junior socking his 200th career HR the previous season thanks to a then-career high of 49. He'd go off for 56, 56, 48, and 40 bombs over the next four seasons. And speaking of a guy who could flat-out Play, how about a Pinnacle Epix insert, one of the cooler offerings from the 90s, with multiple colors and designs? This one mentions his '95 ALDS-winning run, which was probably the high point of the franchise until 2001, and maybe this season as well.

Maddux's 2008 Topps Gold parallel isn't a 90s insert but I do enjoy a good numbered card like this one numbered to the year it was made. I'll say it again: Gold is a good parallel but we don't need 74 others every year.

Also back when things were simpler, 2001 Bowman Chrome had exactly two parallels: Gold Refractors and X-Fractors, like the Dean-o you see above. I also happen to think modern X-Fractors look very ugly compared to the original ones from the 90s/2000s.

And would you believe I didn't own an '83 Fleer second-year of Junior Ripken? Well, I previously lacked that but can now lay claim to all of his regular issue '83s.

Speaking of the Iron Man, another sweet 90s insert I dug up this time was his '96 Flair Diamond Cuts. Nope, the scan doesn't do it justice at all as this one combines holofoil, a diamond-like background, and a simulated "cut-out" of the player. Sweet!

Next, Pudge isn't one of the guys I put much effort into collecting since his time with the Tigers was relatively brief, but I wasn't going to pass up a Refractor from the original iteration of Stadium Club's Chrome insert back in '99 (before it became its own product the following year).

I do believe the 2001 UD Vintage RC of HOFer Ichiro came from a $5-ish box, and the value was too good to pass up. Besides, I really respect the hell out of his game and still feel like he doesn't get enough credit for how good he was coming over from Japan.

We'll finish up baseball stuff by going back to the 90s one more time. Griffey makes one more appearance on the Radiance parallel of the 100% numbered '98 SPx Finite set. While the base cards were numbered /7000, Radiance came in at 3500, and Spectrum were limited to half that. Hooray for more numbered cards!

And Gwynn closes out the hallowed quartet with a shiny die-cut 1999 insert out of the awkwardly-named HoloGrFX product called Future Fame Gold, a parallel of a relatively easier-to-pull six-card set. Four of the subjects are the big four that I collect so needless to say, I'm a fan.

As for basketball stuff, well I did get some, but my write-ups above went kind of long and I'm not huge into the sport anyway. So I'll just say I nabbed the seven inserts above, probably from dime or quarter boxes. Cool.

Ending with football, here's four guys that were part of the '23-'24 National Champs who beat today's opponent, Washington. Corum (SAGE HIT) was the automatic short-yard back who rewrote the record books. Sainristil (Absolute Retail Red parallel) was the WR-turned-DB who led the defense.

And then we have two RBs represented on autographs to introduce them to the hits collection. Ben Hall ('24 Leaf Trinity) played a little during the regular season behind the dynamic duo of Corum and Donovan Edwards. He transferred to the dumpster fire in Chapel Hill with bowl star Jordan Marshall returning and stud RB Justice Haynes transferring in from 'Bama. His two TDs this season are hopefully softening the blow of being on a 2-4 Tar Heel squad led by a senile grandpa who's dating a girl that's barely older than a teenager.

Mullings (SAGE HIT), meanwhile, picked up a few carries in the title game as back #3, spelling those two guys after a position switch from LB over the summer. He then became the main guy in '24 and was a bit of a bright spot on a not-so-great team, going for almost 1000 rushing yards and scoring 12 TDs. The Titans grabbed him in the 6th round this year but he's been on IR with an ankle injury and hasn't played yet.

Both of these guys are very welcome to the hits collection which now stands at 269 subjects and growing.

That's it for the July show but I still have more pickups to share. Until then, RIP to the Tigers season and all of its squandered chances, happy belated Yankees Elimination Day, and thanks to John for the meetup!

5/3 and 5/11/24 show reports: May the shows be with you

This past May was another two-show month for me--technically three if you count the first day of the June Taylor show being on Friday, the 31st of the year's fifth month.

First, as usual, I headed east to Taylor and dropped $80 mostly on some nice trade bait for packages that have since been sent out. I did snag a small handful to offer up here:

I'm pretty sure both jerseys were a buck and I'm relatively short on baseball trade bait compared to football, so I thought the jerseys repping the Texas teams were worth it. Claim 'em in the comments if you want 'em!

And now here are my May Taylor keepers, largely from the cheapo boxes like I like them:

Nothing crazy, just some of my usual favorites. Cronenworth is a natural when it comes to blue inserts. I was happy to find a high-end Larkin base for what I believe was either a quarter or a time. Three new Maddux cards? Not too shabby! A pair of fellow HOF pitcher Jack Morris was a nice find. And lastly there's one of two Ripkens I dug out this time.

That '96 Score Ripken you see above is specially numbered "2131" and had been on my wantlist for quite a while so I was happy to come up with it. A trio of Pudge closes out the baseball stuff.

When it comes to collecting basketball-playing Kobes, Bufkin's definitely my guy, and the lone basketball entrant here. But I did find a cool trio of non-UCLA cards of transfer RB Zach Charbonnet, including my first relic of him, making him member #252 of the football collection.

Here's some great looking football inserts including one of recent alum Ronnie Bell along with cool QB chase cards of Elvis Grbac and Jim Harbaugh. The former gets the Dufex treatment while the latter feels more like a Donruss insert to me than Pinnacle, though it looks great either way.

And here's the last of the football including dumbass LT Taylor Lewan and talented d-man Kwity Paye on parallels, a couple Absolute Retail RCs, and two more of GOAT DB Charles Woodson.

That was it for Taylor but I wasn't done for the month just yet!

Eight days later I made the 90-ish minute drive west to Kalamazoo so I could meet up with some great hobby friends. I knew Jeff and Kevin (Sluggo) would be at that big show selling, plus Jason from TCDb and John planned on attending as well. I got there in the early afternoon and met up with the Sluggo's guys, catching up with them first. Jason appeared a little later, and then John. As always it was great to catch up with everyone.

Here's a pic John got of the two of us, and clearly only one of us knows where to look when taking a picture. Anyway, I spent a total of $100 at this show between four or five sellers, I believe. Kevin gave me another outstanding deal and I snagged some quality stuff from a few others I may look for again the next time I head that way.

Once again most of my purchases were destined for mailers, but my combined haul looked like this:

Give me new Gwynns any day, horizontal or vertical. Haskins was let go by the Titans but just joined the Chargers and reunited with coach Jim Harbaugh. Higdon was another successful college back, just not in the NFL. Ruiz is one of a few recent talented centers the program has produced. And I found what ended up being my fifth auto of DB David Long Jr. (not to be confused with the LB from WVU) who was released by the Giants and doesn't appear to have joined their practice squad or another team just yet.

I also found this nice little six pack of Michigan Hockey guys in a dime box, of all things, which was a surprise given the star power here. Beniers just got paid big time by the Kraken and Fantilli, as I've mentioned a couple times, won the Hobey Baker after an outstanding '22-'23 campaign.

Many thanks again to Jeff and Kevin plus Jason and John for another quality show meet-up, and I hope we get to do it again soon, though not in September as that conflicts with Michigan Football's big matchup with Texas.

In the meantime I'll continue to play catchup as I now get to move on to June with still a TON of great pickups to cover.

1/6 and 1/20/24 card show reports: 2 shows 2 start 2024

That's right, it's show time once again! For this post we're traveling all the way back to the beginning of 2024 when I made it over to my first show of the year in Taylor, before heading to my second just two weeks later.

We'll get to that one in a bit, but first here's a quick recap of my usual monthly show.

Somewhat unusually I headed east to Taylor on the first Saturday of the month instead of Friday, I think because I didn't feel like taking that Friday off. Michigan had just earned a thrilling OT win against Alabama in the Rose Bowl a few days earlier and I was just biding my time until the following Monday's matchup with Washington, not realizing what was in store for my Wolverines.

While I was at the show I spent a pretty reasonable $70, and if you'd like me to break that down further I'm afraid I can't because it was literally almost four months ago now. Suffice to say I dug through my usual favorite boxes and was pretty happy with the results.

First up: a tiny amount of trade bait, I believe from the $1 and $2 boxes:

Reed is /500; Michael is #105/105(!); Durham is #03/10.

Claim 'em if you wanna trade for 'em!

Next up we have my keepers:

This is a great scan buoyed by some "90s inserts rule!" goodness. Junior is from an awesome '96 Stadium Club insert called Mega Heroes and the card has an excellent comic book vibe. Grandy's from an insert Donruss did much better under its original name than the Panini version: Career Stat Line. He had 1564 hits (before finishing with exactly 1800) but Panini numbered the card /500. Henry is a Michigan guy, nuff said. I don't remember if I paid $2 or $5 for Mad Dog's '97 Ultra Baseball Rules insert but I don't care because it's a sick die-cut chase card anyway. Mize has been solid in his return to the mound this year. Then Maddux is back with a numbered card (/799) from 2008 UD a Piece of History, and Pudge gets some love for winning the NLCS (and eventually the World Series) in '03 with the Marlins.

The basketball content is exactly one card: a '17-'18 Donruss Optic of ex-Wolverine and 2017 Bucks first-rounder D.J. Wilson, featuring that Rated Rookie logo that I can help preferring over Topps' rookie cup (it's ok, unfollow me if you have to!). Griese is a '99 Score Anniversary parallel numbered /1989 on the back while former teammate and GOAT DB Charles Woodson hails from '22 Classics' Premium Edition.

In terms of hits, the first is a SAGE HIT, oddly enough, starring former Michigan OL Ben Bredeson. A fairly successful lineman out of Wisconsin (maybe their top export?), he parlayed solid performance late in the 2010s into a 4th round draft choice by the Ravens in 2020. Since then he's suited up for the Giants and signed with Tampa. His only cardboard appearances are from SAGE brands but I'm happy to welcome him to the collection with a signature.

And lastly, I think I've had more luck buying Devin Funchess hits at this show than anywhere else, though I have no idea why. Anyway, I came home with the 2015 Certified and Crown Royale jersey/auto/RCs and a relatively low numbered sticker auto for just a few bucks each and was happy to do so. The trio pushed him up to 28 hits and 12 of those include a signature, so that number's growing nicely.

Two weeks later I was excited to be heading about an hour and a half west to Kalamazoo for an awesome meetup opportunity. Not only did I have the chance to see Jeff and his cousin Sluggo who were all set up again as sellers, and not only did John make the quick trip down from nearby Portage--a combo that's happened on a few fun occasions--but my buddy Jason a.k.a. jasongerman9 from TCDb, who lives an hour-ish away in Niles, stopped by as well with his girlfriend Sam. The two hung out at the show for a bit before taking in the hockey game at the Wings Event Center where the show was, and it was awesome to finally meet them in person.

Here's a quick look at all of us:

Me, Kevin, Jason (kickass t-shirt!), Jeff (kickass jersey that I got from Jason!), John, and Sam.

I had a blast hanging out with these folks and picking out some stuff for some of my favorite traders (a few of which were at this very show with me!). Between trading Kevin a few cards he could use and the very generous discount he gave me I spent $25 at his tables, all of it for trade bait (including some Red Sox for Boston/Alabama fan Sam!). I love in-person meetups like this and you just can't beat talking cards with friends for an hour or two.

So yeah, I'd say I started the year with two very successful shows. Thanks again to all the folks that made it to Kalamazoo, and I'm hoping to see some or all of the same friends in just a few weeks if we can all make it back there!

9/1 and 9/16/23 show reports: Social September

It's showtime! With October's even just a couple days away I thought I should get around to recapping the two I hit up last month.

First up was the usual monthly trip to Taylor on the first of September. With Michigan Football due to open its season the following day I made sure to take Friday off so I could head east and take my time. It's been long enough that I can't remember the exact breakdown but I do know I scored LOTS of dime cards and then a few in the $1 and $2 categories for a total of $40 spent.

I'll get the usual disclaimer out of the way that much of what I picked up is destined for trade packages, but first we'll start with the available trade bait, almost all of which hails from the dime box. When you're like me and you see stacks of numbered cards for $0.10 you don't put 'em back in the box! As always, please claim anything you'd like in a comment below, via email, or on TCDb.

All of these are numbered and all are available as of my posting this.

The Johnson jersey set me back a buck. Most everything else is numbered besides the Butler and Young in the upper-right. Palmer is pending on TCDb.

Here the Westbrook/Galloway, Harrison, and Housh are spoken for or pending.

McKenzie and Rowe are pending a TCDb transaction, everything else is still up for grabs.

Last one! D. Thomas and Ricky Williams are gone.

As for my keepers this time, it was a good mix of baseball, basketball, and football dimes:

Dingler is an interesting catching prospect for the Tigers even if he IS a Buckeye. Big Daddy and Hammerin' Hank show the evolution of Diamond Kings from the early 90s to today. I also went 90s/recent with a couple cool Gwynns. The Palmer First Day Issue was a huge find for me in a dime box. The Diamond Kings inserts like the Ripken you see tend to look ridiculous to me as the players are depicted in an old-timey fashion, but hey, new Cal! And Rogers is the Tigers' catcher of today, doing a solid job as the only player of any value Detroit kept from its deals of players such as Verlander and J.D. Martinez.

While I don't tend to go out of my way for Scherzers I won't turn down some fun ones for a dime each. Logoless or not, old action shots of '84 Tigers like Tram are great! Gallery offers a masterpiece of an image of pitching Maestro Verlander. Pudge and Yadi make for a pretty good pair though the latter's HOF case is much less obvious number-wise, though his many accolades certainly help.

On the court side of things, we go way back to current UM coach Juwan Howard's rookie year, and I  join the UM community in wishing him the best on his recovery from heart surgery. Current guy Caris LeVert looks great on a Red Cracked Ice Prizm, one of the parallels I can actually ID without help.

The football bunch opens with this sweet five pack of '22 Donruss Premium Press Proofs. They're not the numbered Gold versions but they still look terrific in hand, and a stack of them has a pretty impressive heft to it. I was thrilled to find this quintet of Wolverines including Collins, who's finally benefitting from a functional QB in Houston, and Gary and Paye, who are making noise on the defensive side of the ball.

Clark's still a jackass but that Red Score parallel looks good with his Chiefs uni. Collins has popped up a good number of times in those dime boxes recently, much to my benefit, and that acetate Playoff card looks awesome. Like Clark's card, I couldn't have asked for a better Prizm parallel color for Graham. Haskins just had his aggravated assault charge from earlier this year dropped, but he still has plenty to do to repair the rep he damaged. The SAGE card of him does look excellent short of lacking UM's iconic wings that were removed from the helmet. Jabrill was a serious Heisman contender thanks to his do-everything skillset, and I'm glad he's moved on from the disgraceful Giants franchise. He's actually a teammate of the final guy here, Josh Uche (Michigan uni card!), who's got 2.0 sacks in four games this year after piling up 11.5 in 2022.

That's it for Taylor for September, but I wasn't done because buddy of the blog Jeff and his cousin Sluggo (Kevin) were heading up to Kalamazoo on Saturday, the 16th for one of the many shows they do in the northern Indiana/part-of-Michigan-ish area. My previous experience with them earlier this year in Lansing was a very positive one, despite a super rainy day plus it being, you know, Lansing, and it's not like they're in reasonable driving distance from me very often, so I happily made the effort to drive a bit more than an hour and a half west. It also doesn't hurt that fellow buddy of the blog John and his wife would be driving down from nearby Portage. A chance to see that many collecting friends in person? I couldn't miss it! (Also, Michigan would be playing later that evening so I had all day to kill.)

You may have already seen this image recently but that's Jeff, John, me, and Kevin in a picture snapped by John's wife just before we all left. When I say we all had a great time talking cards and baseball for a while, I mean it, and I think you can tell here.

Speaking of John, he brought along a few cards for me, all of which I'm happily adding to a couple PCs:

Despite three of these being some cool Ripkens, my favorite is easily the Fleer/SI Gwynn insert, definitely the "90s inserts rule!" card of the day. Thanks, John!

So I enjoyed talking to the guys while flipping through the $3 and $5 boxes and 2/$1 cards (all sorted by team!) and $10 and up stuff. In the end I put together a stack I was happy with and Jeff gave me a price, then Kevin lowered it a bit based on some Braves stuff I brought him in trade. My total ended up being a very reasonable $50, and some nice cards are heading for trade packages soon!

I also kept these two for myself:

The Stadium Club Gwynn insert (second place for "90s inserts rule!" today) looked too cool to pass up from the $0.50 box. And the Funch jersey, which is bordering on prime/patch territory, was $3, I believe. I was a bit surprised that it got past Jeff's hands, but in the end it worked out because I already had a copy I'd mis-IDed on TCDb, so I corrected that and ended up with an upgrade, and Jeff gets his own copy on my dime!

Thanks again to Jeff and Kevin for another outstanding show at one of the most well-run operations I've seen, and to John and his wife for hanging out and making it a great time as well. If any of you are ever in their area, there's absolutely zero reason not to go see Sluggo's Sports Cards at one of their many shows.

As I mentioned I'll be heading back to Taylor on Friday but before then I may try to recap a couple Facebook-related purchases that left me with a lot of misc. trade bait, though some will surely result from the show as well. Either way, expect double-digit trade packages to be heading out as soon as early next week!