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.

2018 trade package #19: Scribbled Ink

I enjoyed one of my best blogger meet-ups yet a few Sundays ago when I joined Paul from Scribbled Ink and the eponymous John of John's Big League Baseball Blog in attending Alan Trammell's number retirement ceremony on August 26.

I'll pretty much defer to Paul's outstanding pictures from our seats in the Kaline's Corner section of right field, but I snapped a few shots myself.  This was the scoreboard as we waited for things to begin.  The "72 degrees" temperature was wildly inaccurate considering the muggy weather, but it didn't stop us from having a great time.

Tram joined Morris, who'd enjoyed the same honor earlier in the month.  Unfortunately Paul and I arrived just a hair too late to snag the promotional giveaway jersey--it was like Black Friday up in there--but the occasion was enough by itself for us to have a great time.  The speeches by Lou Whitaker and Trammell himself were great and really highlighted why they continue to be revered a couple decades after retiring.

The game itself was pretty typical for 2018.  Overpriced flop Jordan Zimmermann continued his reign of terror, putting the game practically out of reach for the stalled offense by allowing five runs, including a two-run shot a handful of rows behind us.  And at-that-time uninjured future star Michael Kopech showed why he was so highly regarded, stymieing Detroit's hitters for six solid innings.  Fortunately Detroit kept it somewhat interesting by loading the bases a couple times, even if they couldn't capitalize.

A particular highlight for us was a ninth inning HR by SS Ronny Rodriguez that barely eluded our section and went into the tunnel, where it was hoarded by staff working down there.  John and Paul are clearly visible in the video replay while I'm obscured by the foul pole (which is fine--I got some screen time a while back thanks to a Rajai Davis walk-off slam!).  John's the circled guy while Paul is the dude wearing the Detroit jersey.

So all in all it was a great time and I think we're all itching to do this again next year, maybe even with others involved.

A positive outcome of this event was Paul and I swapping some cards.  He brought a bunch of surprises to go with a couple things I'd claimed, and I'm very excited with what I ended up with:

It's the namesakersons!  Grandy is from the '07 Topps Generation Now insert set I'm chasing while JV is an Orange parallel (#189/299) from 2017 Topps Fire.

PC guy Rich Hill had just bested fellow PC guy Clayton Richard a couple days before this game so it was fun to see an autograph of the former pop up here.  As with the rest of his cards produced in 2009 he appears as a member of the Orioles on this Topps Career Best auto.  That came out a year before his first tour of duty with the Red Sox, after which he bounced around between LA, New York, and indy ball.  Things turned around from there and the rest is history!

Dual-sport star Drew Henson was the surprise star of the package thanks to these six cards.  The RC from 2001 Fleer Platinum plus the Fleer Tradition This Day in History insert from the following year were both new to me, with the latter joining up nicely with the autographed version I own.  The others are quite nice as well, including the Triple Crown RC which is numbered /2999.  I shouldn't be too surprised a local guy like Paul came up with these for me, though!

The Barry Larkin pile was almost as good in quantity with this cool five-spot.  A brand spanking new 2018 Archives base was a nice touch but I'm especially excited about getting the pair of 1998 Pinnacle Inside Stand-up Guys inserts that comprise this piece:

This product's can packaging and inserts like this were literally outside the box in an era where cards were fun, prior to a Topps monopoly seemingly imposed by the Dolores Umbridge of collecting.  Anyway, Barry's in good company on these cards, too, joined by the likes of Nomar, Jeter, and A-Rod.  Anytime I can add something like this to my collection it's a win, so bonus points to Paul here.

Here's one last trio of Michigan Baseball guys in my PC:  Hal Morris ('89 Donruss), J.J. Putz (2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary) and Chris Sabo (1994 Score Rookie/Traded) rounded out a very nice bunch of cards I didn't know I was getting.

But what I was prepared to haul home, thanks to Paul being nice enough to tote them to Detroit and then to Greektown from his parking spot, was this pair of sets:  1989 and '92 Topps.  He'd grabbed them on the cheap at a show and I claimed them as I continue to try to fill out Topps' flagship products from 1983 (when I was born) to some endpoint, maybe 2010 since I don't care about the more recent versions.  Thanks to Paul, plus arpsmith earlier this year, I'm one set away from that goal:  1990.

While I try to track that down I'll do up posts for each of these sets similar to the ones I did for the four I grabbed from Adam back in January.

Once again, a big thanks to Paul for bringing all of this great stuff, and to both Paul and John for a fun day at the ballpark.  I'll see you guys there next year, and hopefully sooner too, maybe for a show!