So a couple weeks ago as usual it was time for the monthly show in Taylor. I once again took a Friday off to head that way since Michigan's season opener was the following afternoon and I wasn't missing that for anything, even the fun of a card show. So off to the east I went.
John let me know that the stars aligned and that he and his wife would be able to make the roughly two-hour trek out that way from the Portage area as well. I hadn't seen him in quite a while so I thought that was awesome.
They made it there around an hour or so after I did and had been looking through my favorite seller's boxes. We got to hang out and talk cards for a bit while flipping through the dollar and quarter cards, then John went off to check out some of the other sellers.
I was happy to get to see one of my Tigers/Michigan-collecting buddies and trade a few things in-person too. I'd found a Michigan Football t-shirt for him plus picked up a cool looking Topps binder in a Facebook deal, so I got those to him along with a little stack of cards I'd piled up. Shipping the binder would have been a pain so giving it to him in-person was fantastic.
John also brought this insert of Jarrett Irons, a former LB, that I'd forgotten I'd commented on when he posted it on Twitter a while back. As it turns out he had a double of it and remembered to bring it with him. Awesome! Irons was a mid-90s Wolverine who has all of six cards to his name per TCDB, and two of them are from Hero Decks playing cards, which tend to be too nebulous for me to worry about. The other four are from the '97 Press Pass product, including this Combine insert, which shows off some of his measurables on the back. He went undrafted and was out of the sport pretty quickly but seems to have carved out a nice business career for himself.
Big thanks to John for the first Irons card for my collection, and a very well-timed Michigan uni issue at that! I hope we can get together for another show in the near future, in Taylor or elsewhere.
As for my own spending, my notes indicate the following breakdown:
- One $5 card
- Two $2 cards
- 28 dollar cards
- 52 quarter cards
That came out to $50 according to my math and the seller discounted it down to $45. My man!
Here's the generic trade bait I scored that remains available (here and on TCDB):
The Finest cards are all Refractors. I found a big bunch of them together in the quarter box and snagged them all. The Brazelton auto is numbered /350.
And that brings us to the stuff I kept for myself this time:
Abbott's a 2020 Ginter Chrome Refractor, which is one way to spruce up a boring design! A very Michigan uni Jesse Franklin /999 hails from the same year's Elite product. It's hard to tell but the Conlon card of Greenberg is, well, Green! Speaking of that color, so is Rich Hill's card from 2020 Chrome Update Sapphire, which is numbered /45 and set me back a decent $2. Caris is the only basketball representative today, looking very Patriotic on a 2020-21 Prizm parallel.
On the football side there's lots more Michigan uniformity to love. Though it didn't scan as well as the LeVert above, the Nico parallel you see to start this image is also a Red/White/Blue Prizm. Evans' card is from the same product but is the Gold Ice version instead, which looks quite cool. My opinion of Lewan has fallen drastically the more I've learned about his terrible behavior, but I still pick up the occasional card of him like the 2019 Score Scorecard parallel you see above. New Patriot Jabrill Peppers popped up on a couple Prizm parallels of his own in the quarter boxes: Disco and Green. The slightly difficult to scan well Streets is a '99 Collector's Edge Advantage Galvanized parallel, numbered with a real foil stamp to 200 copies.
And then we have the two hits. The $2 2021 Absolute jersey you see of Collins above is just my second hit of the Houston WR. My collection of him is small at just 15 cards so I hope I can keep adding nicer stuff like this the longer he's in the league.
Meanwhile, the Paye autograph was my lone $5 purchase on the day. I don't know that it was necessarily the price it should have been but it ended up being worth it, especially with the little discount I got. Plus it's another first for me as I also didn't have any hits yet of the Colts' first rounder from '21, and better yet it's a full Michigan uni card--no airbrushing or anything! It hails from the extremely and wildly confusing 2021 Wild Card Matte product. I'll save you the details of my pursuit of more info, but from what I can tell it comes from the Matte Black version of the Red Hot Rookies Autographs insert and is numbered /50...on both sides. Yep, you read that correctly. See the stamp on the front above? Here's the back:
Today's Leaf and Panini aren't remotely the quality of the original versions of those brands, but once in a while they can be as fun as they are frustrating. Anyway, Kwity joins the football collection as new member #233.
So as usual I had a fantastic time, came home with some stuff I was excited about and also had enough to fill out 10 trade packages, a few of which have been blogged and/or tweeted about. And I got to hang out and talk cards with John, so it was a great Friday for collecting. Then Michigan opened up the season with a decisive win, so the four-day weekend was about as good as it could have been!
Depending on what comes in over the next couple days I may be recapping some of my recent TCDB deals next time, so watch out for lots more incoming cards soon!
